In connection with LACOL’s Upper Level Math collaboration, Assistant Professor Jingchen (Monika) Hu at Vassar College is opening her Fall 2017 Bayesian Statistics course to students from across the consortium. As the course unfolds, Prof. Hu plans to share bi-weekly lectures and screencasts with the class and engage with remote students via video conferencing and online office hours. On each participating campus, a local faculty liaison will be on hand to guide students as needed. Technical support will be provided in partnership with instructional technology/academic computing groups on each campus. In exploring the opportunity for the pilot experiment, Hu said:
To me, this shared/hybrid model can be a great way to get students on our campuses the access to upper level statistics courses. After collecting some data, I am very amazed at how rich the upper level statistics offering [across LACOL] could be if we can share the resources in some way.
The Bayesian Statistics pilot will complement another hybrid/shared offering in Real Analysis from Associate Professor Stephan Garcia at Pomona College. Because sharing Garcia’s course lectures will require capture of his mathematical notations on several blackboards, he is testing a robotic camera rig that can be positioned to record high definition video all around the classroom.
Groundwork for the two pilot courses has been laid in a series of ‘proof of concept’ activities led by Associate Professor Steven Miller in his Problem Solving course at Williams College this spring. Miller has been working with remote students joining the class from Amherst College and Swarthmore College. He will be sharing lessons learned so far in a talk at the consortium-wide workshop at Vassar College in June. All together, over a dozen faculty at seven campuses are engaged with the project as instructors and advisors.
