Two math instructors featured in UVA campaign for utilizing the Numbers App

Today, the University of Virginia’s Center for Teaching Excellence released the second installment of their “Small Changes, Big Impact” series. UVA Wise’s Rachel Clay-Keohane and Wendy Martin, who each serve as instructors in mathematics, were featured.

The series features videos that showcase the small yet effective ways that both UVA and UVA Wise faculty engage students, build community in their courses, and use technology to enhance students’ learning. The goal of the initiative is to explore and inspire other faculty to share their most innovative teaching practices.

Professor Clay-Keohane used collaborative documents to foster real-time collaboration between students in her class by using the Numbers app.

“When using collaborative documents, the instructor can also be included in each group to oversee the work,” Clay-Keohane said. “I set up problem-solving sessions ahead of time so that very little class time is wasted.” 

In her College Algebra course, which had been taught in a hybrid course, Professor Martin noticed that students sometimes have a hard time with notetaking because they get caught up in writing instead of listening to the discussion. She used the Numbers app to create interactive learning guides for students and plans to continue doing this in future courses. 

“With interactive notes, students can listen and be more focused on what I’m discussing in class,” Martin said. “Using the interactive notes allowed us to make better use of class meetings and discussions.”

Both of the teaching methods shared benefitted from UVA Wise students each having an iPad, Apple pencil and keyboard as part of the innovate2elevate initiative.