About the Repository
The First-Year Mathematics and Statistics Courses Repository is a resource supporting an ongoing national dialogue about teaching first year mathematics and statistics at Canadian universities. This shareable dynamic online database contains extensive data collected from mathematics and statistics instructors across the country. Data includes course content, resource and technology used, learning outcomes, modes of delivery, connections with other courses, as well as informal descriptions of various practices in teaching these courses.
It is our hope that instructors (i.e., our contacts at all participating universities, or their colleagues) will keep the database up to date, as well as provide missing, and additional information.
The main purpose of the First-Year Mathematics and Statistics Courses Repository is to provide an open, organized and comprehensive resource of information about first-year mathematics and statistics courses at Canadian Universities. We hope to enrich the content as we move along.
Slides of the presentation (containing a broader context of our First-Year Math project and information about the Repository) that Veselin Jungic gave at the meeting of Canadian Mathematics and Statistics Department chairs in Ottawa, 23 March 2019.
Forthcoming activities – conferences and meetings in 2020
To continue a recurring dialogue and strengthen the FYMSiC community, we are going forward with an Online Teaching Meet Up this Summer 2020. We hope that these meet ups will help our FYMSiC community better prepare for online teaching in math and stats courses within the 2020-2021 academic year and beyond, as well will provide support and networking opportunities. We are a fam peeps! 🙂
We will host the meet up sessions at 2pm EDT on Mondays. Each session will be approximately 1-1.5 hours with the following flexible structure: a short presentation, guided discussion in breakout rooms, and a general discussion. Each session will have a specific theme related to online teaching. We will send out a communication a week before each session so that you can prepare yourself to chat, share, and listen. The dates are:
June 15: Student Engagement in Asynchronous Course Components. Short presentation by Brian & Barb Forrest, followed by breakout rooms and general discussion. Documents: Barb and Brian Forrest slides 15 June 2020 | Padlets live link | Padlets (pdf file) as of 3pm on 15 June 2020.
June 22 (11am-12:30pm PDT; 2pm-3:30pm EDT; 8-9:30pm Central European Summer Time 🙂 ) Teaching Matters: Contract cheating – what is it, and what can we do about it? Please submit your questions in advance at this link.
June 29, 2pm EDT: Lessons Learnt. Short presentation by Andie Burazin, followed by breakout rooms and general discussion. Documents: Andie Burazin slides 29 June 2020 | Jamboard idea-sharing tool | Planning Calculus I week by week (Mateen Skaikh)
July 13-16: Online CMS meeting.
July 27th: Transitioning to university: high school teachers’ experiences and views. Starts at 11am PDT, 2pm EDT, 8pm Central Europe. Denise Grightmire’s slides.
August 10th: Technology show and tell (zoom link). Starts at 11am PDT, 2pm EDT, 8pm Central Europe. Five presentations, Q&A, and discussion. Documents/ handouts: to be posted here after the meeting.
August 24th: Icebreakers – what to do on the first day of classes. More information coming.
Past conference:
♦ Online FYMSiC Conference: Teaching First-year Math and Stats Courses in Interesting Times (to say the least). Saturday, May 23rd, 2020, starting at 12 p.m. EDT (9 a.m. PDT).
From the organizers:
As part of our conference preparation, we have created a short and anonymous survey about some of the issues and dilemmas that we, the community of Canadian math and stats instructors, face during these interesting times. Our hope is that the outcomes of the survey will help us all to better understand where we are, as a community, at this point, and to help us guide our discussion on May 23rd. We will also present the outcomes of the survey in the upcoming issue of FYMSiC Newsletter. Regardless of your plans to attend the conference or not, please take a moment and share with us your experiences and thoughts about how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected your teaching.
This online conference will be hosted on Zoom with a link provided to registered attendees a day before the online conference. For questions, or inquiries, please email Andrijana Burazin (a.burazin@utoronto.ca).
Conference Materials: FYMSiC Remote Classroom Survey Results: Course Delivery | Assessment | Meta
Breakout Rooms Topics and Deliverables
Conference Schedule:
12PM – 1:30PM Course Delivery
1:30PM – 1:45PM Break
1:45PM – 3:15PM Assessment
3:15PM – 3:30PM Break
3:30PM – 5PM “My Online Experiences” 5-minute Talks
5PM – LATE Discussion and Social Stimulated by Real Drinks Shared Virtually
To register for the conference (free, of course) and to sign-up for a 5-minute talk (if you wish), click here.
Conference Notes: Course Delivery | Assessments | Five Minute Talks25 (Notes and Slides)
Conferences and meetings in 2021
♦ *** POSTPONED FOR 2021, new dates TBA *** First-Year Math and Stats in Canada: Creating Epsilons of Improvement. 22-24 May 2020, University of Toronto Mississauga.
Program, schedule, registration and other information to appear on the conference web page https://mcs.utm.utoronto.ca/utm2020
♦ Canadian Mathematics Society Summer Meeting (5-8 June 2020, Ottawa) *** POSTPONED for 4-7 June, 2021, in Ottawa *** Meeting information.
Brief notes
Veselin Jungic published his opinion piece “Despite the pandemic, the rules of academic integrity still apply” in University Affairs, 21 April 2020.
NEW! Registration in UBC Vancouver MATH courses as of 21 August 2019: 20,822 individual registrations. 9,579 of these are CALC 1 and CALC 2 courses, 5,267 are in 200-level courses, and 3,714 are in 300 level courses. If you are willing to share similar information about your university, please send an email to to our First-year Math and Stats in Canada Newsletter editors.
CMS Notes Editor-in-Chief Robert Dawson (St. Mary’s) published a short opinion piece “Why Do We Teach What We Teach?” in the latest issue (51(3), June 2019) of CMS Notes. To access it, visit CMS Digital Archive https://cms.math.ca/notes/.
A critique “Rethinking Teaching First-Year Mathematics in University” by Andie Burazin and Miroslav Lovric, appeared in the Proceedings of the 2018 CMESG meeting in Squamish, B.C. (pages 123-130).
CMESG Newsletter/Bulletin 35(2) May 2019 (pages 2-5) published the report “First Year Mathematics Repository Workshop BIRS, Banff, AB, February 8-10, 2019” by Andie Burazin, Veselin Jungic and Miroslav Lovric.
Links
First Year in Maths is a network of over 200 mathematicians, statisticians and educators teaching in universities, colleges and schools in Australia and New Zealand.
Have something interesting to share? Send your contribution to our First-year Math and Stats in Canada Newsletter editors.
Past events
♦ Canadian Mathematics Society Winter Meeting, 6-9 December 2019, Toronto (Chelsea Hotel).
♦ Open Education Resources and Technologies in Mathematics, BIRS (Banff, Alberta), 26-28 July 2019.
Information about the workshop is on this page.
♦ Canadian Mathematics Society Summer Meeting. 7-10 June 2019, Regina, Sask.
Conference web page. Notes on Indigenization and Reconciliation in Mathematics and Assessment in Mathematics sessions and a summary Highlights from the Education Sessions at the Summer 2019 Meeting of the Canadian Mathematical Society, both prepared by Darja Barr.
♦ First-Year University Mathematics in Canada: Time to Rethink our Curriculum? 3-5 May 2019, University of Alberta in Edmonton.
Conference web page. Plenaries: Keith Mertens, Yvan Saint-Aubin, Linda Braddy, Scott Rodney. Working group reports: What should we teach (Saturday), Active learning (Sunday)
♦ First-Year University Mathematics in Canada: Repository and Service Courses. 8-10 February 2019, BIRS, Banff.
The workshop (workshop web page) activities have been summarized in this Report. Workshop notes by Darja Barr (notes) and Amanda Malloch (notes part 1, part 2, part 3).
♦ Canadian Mathematics Society Winter Meeting. 7-10 December 2018, Vancouver, B.C.
♦ First-Year University Mathematics in Canada: Facts, Community and Vision, 27-29 April 2018, Fields Institute, Toronto.
The conference (conference web page) activities are summarized in the two documents, named Snapshot Document (Saturday, 28 April) and Future Directions (Sunday, 29 April).
Our Vision
We believe that only by sharing experiences, gathering data, and looking at research-based decisions and strategies, our mathematical teaching community can come up with ideas and initiatives for university faculty and instructors to restructure their programs and to respond to the demands that the realities of today’s living place on us and our students.
It is our belief that the contacts at a national level (such as the Mathematics Education Session at the CMS conference in Waterloo in December 2017, the First Year Conference in April 2018 at the Fields Institute, and the Winter CMS Session in Vancouver in December 2018) will connect, and unite Canadian teaching and research faculty in their efforts to provide the best, and most adequate, post-secondary math education possible, and will provide a forum for all involved to learn about the complexity of issues related to teaching mathematics. We see the national dialogue as an ongoing process that will keep us all connected and strengthen our community.
FAQ
1. Who is the intended audience?
All interested faculty in mathematics and statistics departments in Canada, mathematics and statistics department chairs, college instructors, high school teachers (grade 12 mostly) interested in knowing what’s going on in level 1 mathematics and statistics, as well as education developers and publishers.