What Michigan Math could learn from YouTube

Though many things seem more uncertain than ever, some things never change. James Cameron is still making Avatar movies. The State Street Chipotle is still out of ingredients. And, “Michigan Math” is as notorious as ever.  Michigan Math is the colloquial term for the introductory calculus sequence at the University of Michigan, which includes MATH 115 and MATH 116. Discussion about the sequence is lively. There have been more than a few Reddit threads discussing Michigan Math over the past few years, and undergraduates, graduate student instructors and faculty have all voiced their opinions about the program on these very pages.  Here’s a short recapitulation of some of the main criticisms of the program. For one, there aren’t enough faculty to teach the boatload of small discussion sections — which most education research shows is more effective than large lectures. This leads to GSIs with relatively little training being thrown in the deep end to teach the class. Because every GSI is different, instruction quality is highly variable. There’s also an absolutely Sisyphean workload: lecture videos to watch, team homework to collaborate on, quizzes to study for, textbooks to read, exams to take and WebWork that feels like it’s due
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