In Praise of Noise: Teaching Statistical Sciences with Theatre and Multimedia

Description

The session addresses the theme "hybridity" in several ways:

1-As a professor in a STEM field (actuarial and financial mathematics), and an ”emerging” Asian playwright, I often use theatre and multimedia as a core component of my pedagogy. I have created various mini-theatre projects to improve teaching and learning as well as scholarly communications in the past several years. 2- Such teaching practices helps injecting humanities into STEM education, to add "noises" back to the "signals", to help students find meaning and purpose in their studies. 3- As my students are overwhelmingly of East Asian/Chinese descent (and are living in a predominantly white North American metropolis), the theatre projects integrated into my teaching serve the additional goal to acknowledge the composition of our student body, to see them as individuals with unique struggles and incredible journeys.

The session will focus on teaching and learning practices that cross borders and shift boundaries across disciplines.

Takeaway

1. To understand the value of using creative practices including theatre, storytelling, and multimedia in STEM education.
2. To see examples of the above practices in several of my undergraduate courses
3. To understand how to conduct "embedded ethics" education in the neoliberal economy using creative arts

Abstract

As a professor in financial mathematics and data science, and an ”emerging” Asian playwright, I stumbled upon theatre as pedagogy, particularly in STEM, by chance four years ago. Since then, I have created various mini-theatre projects to improve teaching and learning as well as scholarly communications. My experiments showed that theatre as pedagogy is especially effective in the following ways: (1) it helps injecting humanities into STEM education, to add “noises” back to the “signals”; (2) it is a brilliant way to conduct “embedded ethics” education, to covertly shift learners’ perspectives from what the neoliberal economy requires them to what benefits the general public. As my students are overwhelmingly of East Asian/Chinese descent, the theatre projects integrated into my teaching serve the additional goal to acknowledge the composition of our student body, to see them as individuals with unique struggles and incredible journeys. In this talk, I will present outlines of several theatre-as-pedagogy projects I have implemented, the efficacy and lessons learned. Session participants are encouraged to share similar experiences and/or brainstorm novel ways to provide students with a sense of purpose and meaning in their learning.