I am not sure if I can fully differentiate my feelings and thoughts on this course and the one in Umeå as they followed each other and I listened to Ed in both ones. But I try.

The main feeling I got from the course was a good inspiration and push to try to do things differently in teaching, so that people would really learn and understand. I had read about APOS theory before the course and understood some of it, and I knew about the use of ISETL in teaching, but on the lectures the theory became much more clearer to me. I also got a good view of the ACE teaching cycle and cooperative learning that are both used in teaching.

Now I am really facing the opportunity and challenge to teach algebra in Joensuu university with this method. It involves many new things: the use of ISETL as a means of getting acquainted with the concepts, classroom discussion that is NOT lecturing, grading all homework, group work all the time. I just hope I can implement them all in a one shot. Anyway, I am interested and should I say enthusiastic about it at this point. I am interested to see how all that works out.

The lectures in the course were very clear and well organized. It was quite easy to get a good overall view of the teaching system and research paradigm from them. Sometimes the lecturer spoke too loud, and sometimes he went on too fast for the people to write down things. But that might also be because of the language: it is more difficult to write down what you are hearing in a foreign language than in your mother's tongue.

The computer exercises were very illustrative of the method. I actually caught some insight into why some concepts are so difficult, for example the difficulty of seeing the derivative as a function. I also noticed how lacking some people were in their calculus knowledge. For me the computer exercises were not too difficult as such, but I could see their value in fostering mental ideas in students' minds. Of course it was all the more interesting from that viewpoint.

ISETL program could be refined however. The set language in itself is quite good because it resembles mathematics so much and because of certain operations you can use (eg arb(), choose). But the implementation had some bugs and annoying features. For example the feature that it cannot store too big files was VERY annoying, and then the need to find a 'working' prompt after all the syntax error mess was difficult. Of course that is not our job to make it work better; it is up to programmers.

I think that professor Ed Dubinsky did a good job in presenting us the main points of his teaching system and research methodology in such a short time. This kind of course where one learns about certain teaching system and can also try it oneself should be a compulsory part in teacher training, and we should have several such courses presenting different views of teaching.

The distance learning course that Asuman Oktac presented to us was also very interesting. It sounded like she had succeeded in it quite well. That of course gives us the challenge to do the same and better. Listening to her experiences also made me more convinced about the advantages of cooperative learning.

The course structure was quite OK. The days were a bit long maybe, and maybe the lunch break could have been only one hour. Otherwise I don't have anything to complain.