Innovative ways of teaching her students, from the Newspapers, translated…
Math is a feared subject and a major headache for a lot of the students, but the Chinese Technical University’s Associate Professor, Huei-Li Hsu was able to combine mathematics with arts, literature, and even games, to teach a common course, so the students no longer feared it, they’d even begun to believe, that math is fun, interesting, and, one of her students even WON a game at the night markets after graduating from the university too.
The Department of Education held its seventh common course outstanding instructors award yesterday, the winners included the associate professor of Taiwan Technical University, Wang, the associate professor of Chinese Technical University, Hsu, the associate professors from Changhwa and Taidong University, Shan, and Hsieh, a total of four winners.
Hsu said, that a lot of the students disliked math because back in middle and high school, they’d done so many problems that it’d become, aversive to them, at first, when she’d set up the common courses that were math related, “when the name of the course has math, nobody would sign up”, later on, she’d changed the course title to “Math & Games”, then finally, the classes made it, but, as she’d started teaching, she’d found, that the majority of her students hated math, and, they’d had that look of “I give up” when they see math problems.
Seeing how disinterested her students were over math, Hsu started contemplating, how she can make the students motivated to learn in math, because she didn’t just teach the students the concepts they needed to learn, but instead, used the games to lead the students into understanding the concepts, through giving the extra credits, to encourage for participation of her class, the students felt that it’s fun, and felt that they’d learned something, that way, they would not reject math altogether.
Other than using games and hands-on activities, started two, three years ago, Hsu started combining literature with mathematics.
She’d said, that a lot of the mathematic principles can be connected to real-life experiences, she would assign a basic level math books, and allowed her students to freely connect the terms in math to create literature, she’d even invited professors from the Chinese department to get involved with her class, to connect the mathematics with poetry too.
So, this professor had put a LOT into thinking about HOW she can help her students learn math, and she’d used some innovative measures, by devising games for her students to play, and, the students felt that math became fun, and stopped saying NO to the subject, this just shows, how with a little heart, someone can help change people’s beliefs on things, and this teacher had devised this wonderful program, so her students will find learning more interesting.