Peh's Teaching Page

Peh's Teaching Page


My Teaching Philosophy © Peh Ng, 1995-2016

My teaching philosophy is based on my unequivocal belief that education is a never-ending two-way process . With the students' willingness and commitment to learn, I will do my best to guide my students in developing the following abilities, namely, to think and analyze mathematical problems, to communicate with people in other fields, to be self-sufficient, and to not be afraid to be innovative even if it means making mistakes sometimes. In return , I expect myself to learn as much from my students as they do from me.

Based on my many years of teaching experience, I found that that there are ideal conditions under which students will learn effectively, namely, when:

In addition, within the subject matter of mathematics, I am convinced that different people have different learning styles with which they grasp these concepts. Thus, without losing any rigor on the subject matter, whenever I teach I make sure that I include these components of these styles so as to maximize the learning capabilities of my students on the subject matter. In other words, the students must:

In the lower level math courses, since more students have a less solid background in theoretical mathematics, the strategies used are lectures, the first few minutes of which are usually question/answer discussions, and daily assignments. The reason for the daily assignments and weekly pop quizzes is so that students have enough practice and maintain a up-to-date schedule with the course materials so as to feel more comfortable and confident in the subject matter. In addition I also give a few more elaborate problem sets where students have to make use of technology to obtain numerical solutions. Ocassionally, I will ask them to work a few challenging problems in groups (in class or outside of class) and ask them to write the solutions up, formally, and to present them in class.

During my lectures, I always make the process an interactive form instead of just myself talking and the students writing. In other words, I try to lead my students into new concepts instead of just telling them. I let my students know from the very beginning that I strongly welcome any questions pertaining to the subject, and that I do not consider any question about the material as stupid .

For the upper level mathematics courses, my teaching method is via lectures, weekly assignments, discussion sessions, and projects related to the material taught.

Since assignments in my upper level courses are more elaborate, I give them on a weekly basis. Course projects (groups and individual) are mandatory in all upper level applied math courses I teach. The purpose of such course projects is for students to be aware of how and where concepts of the courses are applied beyond the walls of academia. I also require students to turn in written reports and to give oral presentations about their course projects.

Brief and Precise Description of my teaching interests

In a nutshell, I am a die-hard, self-avowed and practising applied mathematician who is interested in teaching a variety of undergraduate math courses, including the following: In general, my areas of teaching interests include, but are not limited to, diverse areas in the field of operations research and its applications, namely, most of the aforementioned areas. For more information on these topics, try to either take or audit the following scintillating mathematics courses, namely, Discrete & Combinatorial Math (Math 3411, or Math 1760 & 3370 under quarters), and Operations Research (Math 3401, or Math 3270 under quarters).

These areas of mathematics have a plethora of real-world applications and applications in other areas of theoretical mathematics. If you would like to learn more, please feel free to talk to me or take or audit the courses I teach.



Peh's Semester Courses


Peh's Quarter Courses Taught (1995-1999)


[ Peh's Teaching Page | Peh's Research Page | Peh's Schedule Page ]
[ Peh's HomePage | Peh's Teaching, Research, Service, Personal Page ]

This page's url is http://personal.morris.umn.edu/~pehng/teach.html

Please email comments or suggestions to: pehng@morris.umn.edu

© Peh Ng, 1995-2016