Yesterday was the last day of the teaching semester, and the last formal class I have to run until March next year, when the 2009 academic year begins. This semester I’ve taught two subjects: cryptography, and internet security. The first subject is designed to be mainly mathematical, and the second more general and managerial. Originally I was hoping to have some students from the Faculty of Business and Law in the internet security subject, but they didn’t like my assessment scheme, which has an exam worth 70% of the subject’s marks.
I’ve used the cryptography subject as a means of teaching some mathematics at a third year level. The nice thing about cryptography is that you can pull lots of mathematics into it, depending on the structure of your course. Mine is pretty standard (see the link above), and so the associated mathematics consists mainly of computational number theory, and some work with finite fields. My students, who are not really mathematicians, have always risen to the challenge, and this semester as always I’ve been delighted with their engagement with the subject material.
I was hoping, as I did last year, to allow the students the choice between Maxima and Axiom, but owing to some difficulty getting Axiom installed at the beginning of the semester, we used Maxima only. This certainly made it easier for me! and by the end of the semester some of the students, at least, were showing a real flair for its use. The others were certainly managing fine.
And I also had the pleasure of teaching again using the access grid; my university has one of the best access grid rooms in the country, and so I had (only one) student off-campus, at a university interstate.
I’d like to think this subject will run again next year, but several factors at the university make this doubtful. First, falling student numbers means that my school (comp sci & maths) has been subsumed into a larger school of “Engineering and Science”, and in an effort to maintain a healthy budget, elective subjects don’t run unless they have at least 16 students enrolled. Second, our VC has just announced a budget deficit, which can only be remedied (in her eyes) by declaring 250 staff redundant by the end of the year, of which 150 will be higher education academic staff – that’s nearly 25%! So I may not even be employed next year… I’ll keep you posted.
Filed under: Maths teaching
> This semester I’ve taught two subjects: cryptography, and internet security.
> The first subject is designed to be mainly mathematical, and the second
> more general and managerial. Originally I was hoping to have some
> students from the Faculty of Business and Law in the internet security
> subject, but they didn’t like my assessment scheme, which has an exam
> worth 70% of the subject’s marks.
Since starting uni, I’ve always wondered why many undergraduate units have such a high percentage assigned to final exams. But I took many units that I didn’t like, some of which had final exams worth up to 80%. As you can tell, I’ve been trained in the art of regurgitation ;-)
Fortunately, I’ve been through all such hurdles and I’m glad that I can now do units that don’t have exams at all, which have allowed me to concentrate more on researching, writing papers, and giving talks about them. I find this process to be a better way of learning about and understanding subject matters, as compared to regurgitating lecture materials on exams. Many students (and people) have phenomenal memories which help them in passing such exams, since many of which can be passed by regurgitating lecture notes. But work places of the “real world” demand “flexibility” and “adaptability”, whatever those words mean, but I don’t think they refer to a Bachelor (Bachelorette?) of Funology in Gymnastics ;-)
> I’ve used the cryptography subject as a means of teaching some
> mathematics at a third year level. The nice thing about cryptography is that
> you can pull lots of mathematics into it, depending on the structure of your
> course. Mine is pretty standard (see the link above), and so the associated
> mathematics consists mainly of computational number theory, and some
> work with finite fields. My students, who are not really mathematicians, have
> always risen to the challenge, and this semester as always I’ve been
> delighted with their engagement with the subject material.
Crypto is also a unit in which you can introduce non-maths students to serious and deep mathematics without them knowing it.
> I was hoping, as I did last year, to allow the students the choice between
> Maxima and Axiom, but owing to some difficulty getting Axiom installed at
> the beginning of the semester, we used Maxima only. This certainly made it
> easier for me! and by the end of the semester some of the students, at
> least, were showing a real flair for its use. The others were certainly
> managing fine.
Axiom and Maxima are venerable CASes. But throughout this year, I’ve had pain in downloading and installing Axiom. Maxima has given me little to no problems so far.
> I’d like to think this subject will run again next year, but several factors at the
> university make this doubtful. First, falling student numbers means that my
> school (comp sci & maths) has been subsumed into a larger school of
> “Engineering and Science”, and in an effort to maintain a healthy budget,
> elective subjects don’t run unless they have at least 16 students enrolled.
> Second, our VC has just announced a budget deficit, which can only be
> remedied (in her eyes) by declaring 250 staff redundant by the end of the
> year, of which 150 will be higher education academic staff – that’s nearly
> 25%!
From a 17 October 2008 at
http://www.vu.edu.au/About_VU/Media_Releases/VU_to_future_proof_itself_for_new_competitive_education_environment/indexdl_93897.aspx
we have this quote from the VC:
“A decision like this falls very hard on all our staff and is the hardest decision I have had to make at Victoria University – but the world is changing and VU will be ready.”
With the “real world”, change is a constant, as expressed by a famous ancient Greek thinker. But in some respects, VU won’t be ready. Did you notice the “.aspx” extension in the above URL? Did you know that VU student emails are now managed by technologies and services owned and operated by some corporation in Redmond? Did you know that there’s a mid-night ad on TV advertising IT/networking training in technologies by that same company? Why wouldn’t VU be ready? Hmmm… I let your imagination run wild.
> So I may not even been employed next year… I’ll keep you posted.
Well… I’m more fortunate than you — I’ve been redundant already, so no need to keep anyone posted in the future, which means less typing ;-)