“Take Boards!”: An Effective Approach Routinely Employed By Instructors At USMA Whereby Students Discuss, Perform, And Present Mathematics

Erik W. Drake, United State Military Academy

The United States Military Academy has an innovative classroom setup for the core courses in the Department of Mathematical Sciences. The setup is a horseshoe shaped seating arrangement with chalkboards going around the room behind each desk. Within this classroom environment, instructors routinely ask cadets to “take boards” whereby cadets will go to the boards and model, prove, solve etc… mathematical constructs and problems. The cadet may them be called upon to “brief his/her board” to the classroom to gain valuable insights and confidence in his or her ability to speak the language of mathematics. This tool is invaluable to the instructors at USMA and is imbedded in the core mathematics curriculum. Just to name a few benefits, “taking boards”: allows instructors to make immediate on the spot corrections; gives students valuable lessons in public speaking; builds confidence; allows the instructor to show the class how different students used different problem solving techniques to come up with the same solution; allows students to work in groups of 2 or 3 to “brain storm” modeling techniques and approaches to mathematical problems; and shows students (and instructors) trends of commonly occurring errors. This paper will discuss all of these benefits of teaching in this type of classroom environment and more, and will also discuss different way to get students to “take boards” when the USMA classroom set up is not available in your classroom.