Title:  Introducing and Cultivating Meta Skills in Math Majors (in the Age of AI)

Time:  saturday,  2:00 pM - 3:00 PM

Abstract: “Good mathematics is not about how many answers you know…it’s about how you behave when you don’t know.”

This quotation opens all of my upper-level math course syllabi, to set the stage that the “how we behave when we don’t know” will be one of our fundamental course goals. I interpret this as referring to the habits of mind (“meta-skills”) of mathematicians, such as persistence, experimentation, creativity, and critical self-analysis, that we aim to develop in students and which are arguably more important than the course topics themselves. As many of us have probably experienced however, these are unfortunately the most vulnerable to the easy access of AI-produced solutions. How can we design our courses and create assessments that will still build these skills? How can we communicate their importance to students in a way that will resonate and stay with them? Is the answer the same for every student? In this session, I will not claim to have resolved these deep and complex issues. I will however offer some perspectives and specific suggestions from my own classroom experiences, and we will take time to brainstorm and discuss as a group to generate insights and share ideas.

Bio: Rachel Schwell is a professor of mathematics at Central Connecticut State University. She completed her B.A. in mathematics and French at SUNY Geneseo, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Connecticut. Her current pedagogical interests center around inquiry-based learning, particularly in proof-based courses. She has written IBL course notes for several math courses, with her text for Transition to Advanced Mathematics being recently published in the Journal of Inquiry-Based Learning for Mathematics. She spends several months in France every year with her French husband and cat and attended her first francophone math education conference in Montreal this past spring. She has been the Managing Editor for the journal PRIMUS since 2019.