Thursday, November 05, 2009

Universal Lesson Plan

I've run out of things to talk about in my seminar course.

Fortunately, this is not that big of a problem, as the official syllabus that I put together says that I have to fill up one more class period, and then after that the students will be doing presentations.

The following lesson plan works in just about any non-calculus class that I teach.

1. Discussion. Have students start in small groups and respond to the question, "How would you take what we've been studying and turn it into a movie?" After small groups have discussed this for a while, have the class get back into a big group and share their ideas. (This is the universal discussion question.)

2. In any remaining time, talk about either graph theory or game theory.

3. If there is still time left, talk about Michael Kearns's work involving both graph theory and game theory.