Teaching in Illinois and Delaware
From RateMyProfessor.com
Every year I supervised 3-5 annual theses and 2-5 master's degree theses. I consulted three PhD theses in Italy (one defended in 1996 got special award of Italian National Science Foundation in 1997, another defended in 2002, one more defended in 2003), consulted one Master's thesis in Italy (1998), supervized three Ph.D. theses in Moldova (defended in 1998, 2000(2)). All these were in Mixed Hypergraph Coloring.
I consider that in any course, material should be given in a consecutive complication way for best understanding. First, the audience should understand the idea. There should be a reasonable balance between ideas and technical results. One idea costs more than 10 shallow theorems. Beauty of Mathematics is in ideas; the beauty itself is an idea.
Competitiveness means that students must compete for better implementation of tasks. For example in 3., one assignment was to program a game on graphs. To win the game, students competed with each other by using own knowledge from theory, algorithm and strategy but the same initial conditions (graph and positions of players) and data structure. Winner got a credit.
One more favorite assignment (in 4.) was to program the algorithm of planarity testing - only the most strong and talented students were successful to do that in time.
In education, interest is the base of all and everything. I look at surprize as a major component of interest. Very often, the interest is based on contradictions between ordinary reasoning and new facts. Class was lost if it was not interesting for students. I consider this as a PERSONAL DEFEAT of a professor. Each course must not be very difficult, must not be very easy, but MUST BE INTERESTING.
In this respect (apart from excellent exposition of the course), historical and philosophical remarks, comments related to other sciences, the real life, even humour put on right places are relevant. They should be thought-out in advance and collected all the life.
1. EVERY LECTURE IS A PERFORMANCE, EACH PRACTICAL TRAINING IS A GAME, AND BOTH ARE BIG ART.
2. FOR 90%, THERE ARE NOT UNSUCCESSFUL STUDENTS - THERE ARE UNSUCCESSFUL PROFESSORS.
3. THERE ARE TWO EXTREME WAYS TO TEACH ANY COURSE: THE FIRST, WHEN STUDENTS HATE THE COURSE, THE SECOND, WHEN THEY FALL IN LOVE WITH IT. I DO MY BEST TO FOLLOW THE SECOND ONE. BUT IN ANY WAY, STUDENTS MUST WORK HARD!
4. I TREAT EACH STUDENT AS A TALENTED PERSONALITY WITH OUTSTANDING CAPABILITY, NOT YET DESCOVERED. THEREFORE THE INDIVIDUAL APPROACH TO EACH STUDENT IS THE KEY TO HIS/HER SUCCESS.
Probably, my most successful example to make the course interesting and useful is the Hypergraph Drawing and Optimization System. This was encoded by my students that attended 1., 2., 3., and 4. It is a big program with many subprograms created by different students using however universal ideology and data structure developed for hypergraphs. It was designed for automatical drawings of hypergraphs and contains open library of algorithms for solving some computational optimization problems. Having and modifying the picture of a hypergraph on the screen, one can directly apply to it any algorithm from the library. When implementing the tasks, students interacted with each other, used the accumulated knowledges from all 1., 2., and 3., and, moreover, applied the entire system for annual, master's and even Ph.D. theses research. Usually, the best students worked with me. The system was demonstrated at many international conferences and can be shown on my laptop.
The anonymous final instructor and course evaluation was conducted on May 03, 2002.
Some of students' opinions:
"...good at emphasizing the main point in ideas..."
"...clearly explains topics..."
"...very friendly and knows the material well..."
My favorite optional lecture for students after having this course was titled "Philosophy, combinatorics and the meaning of life". I also demonstrated the Hypergraph Drawing and Optimization System using my laptop.
The anonymous Midterm evaluation (with questions recommended by the Office of Instructional Resources and complemented by me) was conducted on February 27, 2002.
The anonymous final instructor and course evaluation was conducted on May 03, 2002.
Some of students' opinions:
"... simply a general high quality of teaching..."
"... he explains things very clearly and logically..."
"... The teacher explains the new material very well. His overall teaching is excellent. He makes sure to emphasize ideas...."
"... explains material with extreme care for students understanding and shows real passion for his work..."
"...Professor ... was perhaps the best teacher I have had for ANY teaching at class..." (the word "ANY" in capital and underlined - V.V.)
All evaluations (without any exception) are available.
Anonymous final instructor and course evaluation was conducted in December 2002. All evaluations (without any exception) are available.
Typical students' opinions:
"...Dr. Voloshin ranks among the best math professors I've ever had - and I have had quite a few. He made the classes fun, provided interesting topics and lectures and made it very relevant to Computer Scince. The class was great!"
"...BEST MATH TEACHER I'VE HAD AT UD PERIOD." (all letters in capital - V.V.)
"... He did a very good job explaining things. I learned a lot."
" This guy rocks! Best MATH210 teacher at the University. ... runs the show."
"I enjoyed this course very much, despite the difficult material it covered."
"Very nice professor, was a pleasure to be in class."
"One of the best math professors I've had. Would definitely take another course from him if I had the opportunity."
Overall rating of "instructor as a teacher" on Math210:
excellent: 58.8%, good: 35.3%.
The same rating on Math243:
excellent: 54.5%, good: 36.4%.
Overall rating of instructor: EXCELLENT: 75.2%, GOOD: 22.4%, Mean=4.73.
Overall rating of instructor: EXCELLENT: 60.9.2%, GOOD: 24.6%, Mean=4.42.
Overall rating of instructor: EXCELLENT: 73.6%, GOOD: 9.4%, Mean=4.40.
Overall rating of instructor: EXCELLENT: 96.32%, Mean=4.93.
Overall rating of instructor: EXCELLENT: 63.82%, GOOD: 25.2%, Mean=4.53.
Overall rating of instructor: EXCELLENT: 100%, Mean=5.00.
Overall rating of instructor: EXCELLENT: 55.0%, GOOD: 22.5%, Mean=4.23;
Overall rating of instructor: EXCELLENT: 66.3%, GOOD; 23.3% Mean=4.56;
"Clear lectures, friendly attitude, always ready to help, learn a lot - excellent teacher!" "...was very good..." "Outstanding teacher!" "Dr.Voloshin is a great instructor. He really cares about how you do in his class..." "...he kept it interesting and fun..." "The course was very well planned! Dr.Voloshin was VERY helpful. He broke down the topics from the book for us to better understand. Dr. Voloshin's way of teaching is very strategic and ORGANIZED." "Dr.Voloshin pushed for the best out of every student." "Dr.Voloshin was very helpful in Stats 1 and 2! Thanks to him I have an understanding of Probability and Statistics" "I enjoyed this class very much. It was conducted in such a way that made it easy to learn. The grading system was very fair."
Overall rating of instructor: EXCELLENT: 81.532%, Mean=4.79.
Overall rating of instructor: EXCELLENT: 65.2%, GOOD: 20.7%, Mean=4.43.
>Introduction to Advanced Mathematics and Proof Techniques
Overall rating of instructor: EXCELLENT: 73.8%, GOOD: 26.2% Mean=4.74.
"Help me a lot! Great Professor." "It is very good and I think it is very hard to improve." "He teaches very well." "I love his way of teaching." "I thoroughly enjoed this course. Dr. Voloshin is a good teacher, and he helped me to make a definite decision to continue math as my major." "Dr. Voloshin is a great teacher, who is willing to help his students. His knowledge in math helps his teaching ability." "Great job, hope to see you in the Fall." "I thought I was great in math, but statistics is a little confusing. Overall, I do understand better. Great job!!"
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Overall rating: EXCELLENT: 80.2%, GOOD: 13.6%, Mean=4.74.
ALL OPINIONS: "Good class. Well presented. A pleasure." "None." "Good course."
Overall rating: EXCELLENT: 74.4%, GOOD: 19.8%, Mean=4.67.
ALL OPINIONS: "Great teacher!!!" "Great course and professor."
Overall rating: EXCELLENT: 82.2%, GOOD: 14.0.8%, Mean=4.77.
ALL OPINIONS: "Dr. Voloshin was very interested in each student’s success! He presented the subject matter very clear! It was a very interesting class." "I enjoyed this class. I understood most of it very well. However, the sections on big-o, big-theta, big-omega, and complexity were very confusing. Perhaps more examples could be worked in class to help this." "Good teaching. I like it." "Enjoyed course. Very well taught and organized. No suggestions." "Maybe a little more explanations on the algorithms, understood graph theory much better. GREAT TEACHER!!!" "Great class, great teacher. I really enjoyed it." "I believe that homework assignments should have been taken up no more than two weeks after it was assigned. (not at end of semester) Also, I do not believe class credit should be given for presentations whose topics are not relevant to class material." "It was a class that I did not enjoy, but that is NOT the professor’s fault. I just did not enjoy the particular area of mathematics taught, and feel that this class should require a few computer science classes as prerequisites. "
Real Analysis 4424/5524.
Overall rating: EXCELLENT: 82.5%, GOOD: 9.5%, Mean=4.71.
ALL OPINIONS:"This course was very elegant, beautiful, and profound. Much of this was thanks to Dr. Voloshin." "Tests should be shorter given the time frame." "Enjoyed the course very much. There were a lot of proofs but it was good to suggest ones that would be on the test." "A lot of the time I did not understand even after clarification by the teacher. However, the tests went fairly well so the teacher was understanding. Overall, this class is not extremely interesting so possibly more actual working with theorems instead of just memorizing them would help."
Overall rating: EXCELLENT: 80%, GOOD: 13%, Mean=4.73
ALL OPINIONS:
"Great Class" "Cannot wait until next semester" "Enjoyed this class. Very well presented. I don't like having to do homework to get an A, b/c I don't have time to do homework since I work full time." "Dr. Voloshin is a very excellent and fair teacher. I really enjoyed the class even though I failed it!" "Class was enjoyable." "He always made himself available for outside help. I did have problems understanding him most of the times"
Overall rating: EXCELLENT: 91%, GOOD: 5%, Mean=4.89
ALL OPINIONS "Very informative course however may be next time the format should be a little diferent. Meaning, tell us what to do before expecting us to do it. Job well done!!"
- Dr. Voloshin really stayed involved with the students throughout the entire course to ensure we successful!
- I believe Mr. Voloshin was a very good teacher. He was always on top of everything and always emailed me back usually within a couple hours. I would love to have him again for a teacher.
- This was an on-line course. I did not realize that the on-line class would take up so much of my time; the class was an overall success. The professor was always in constant contact with the students and answered all questions or comments very quickly.
- This was a great online course and the instructor was great. The reminders of assigments were helpful and the instructor was always willing to answer questions!
- I appreciate my instructor for trying to assist me with finishing my tasks on time and emailing me on important deadlines.
- TSU has the best Professor's, thank you and Happy Thanksgiving!!!
- Excellent course. - The teachers interaction with the students is the most I have had in any of my on-line classes. It was nice to see that added effort in teaching.
- Very well organized class!
- Although I have used MML for two other courses, I feel that this is the first course that I have truly seen how all the different components come together. The study plan and practice tests are extremely helpful.
- I may not understood much, but I enjoyed this course very much.
- This instructor is excellent! He keeps us VERY well informed and responds to our e-mails in a very timely manner.
Dr. Voloshin was a great instructor. He answered any questions we had in a timely manner and he really cared about the students learning the material. I've learned a lot from this class.
• Dr. Volosin was probably the most involved and most interested instructor I've had in years. The instructor must have spent the whole term at their computer because the professor's responses were given minutes after m emails were sent. This included one saturady night after midnight. If it weren't for the professor I would have never finished the course and would have gave up after the first week. I wish all of my instructors were as good as Dr. Volosin
• Dr.Voloshin is the BEST!
• Great responsive teacher, interested in your progress.
• Mr.Voloshin was a great teacher. Don't get me wrong this course was hard but he was there every step of the way. I was emailing him like everyday and he never got upset and tired. He just kept on encouraging me to do my best and I did. I wish I could take him for pre-calculus. Hey, please let me know if you teach it and I will change my class.lol
VOLOSHIN IS AN AWESOME TEACHER!!!!!