Some concerns from (most from Jeff Slye) to address:
Slow to set up the intuition, forcing fast dash through Chapter 5+
Unclear how fully we should prove some items in class or for homework assignments
Very difficult to come up with exam questions during the first half of the course. We don’t quite have all the tools we need to prove more standard proofs.
The focus on visual examples and net actions caused students to refer to group elements in all groups as “net actions” for a while, which was interesting.
Should have made students create a group portfolio with notations, graphs, tables, etc. They had trouble remembering what we knew about a group so far.
As a professor running through the first time, it would be helpful to know about key theorems that students are really going to struggle with and need a lot of time on.
Some students were frustrated with terms not being clearly defined.
Max number of spins for 2.8 was difficult.
Actually challenging for me to figure out the center of Spin 3x3 early on (2.11), causing me to wish for a guide or hint system.
Problem 2.49 Very thrown off by what property would guarantee (ab)^2 = a^2 * b^2, and when we should move on as a class (since it isn’t a proof?)
Comment about chapter 2: While the intuition here was helpful, the notation and more “proofy” proofs were a bit too much like jumping into a cold ocean for some students. We have doubly-indexed words which we must create for our net actions. Certain parts seem too obvious, while others seem too hard to prove.
Problems 2.78 - 2.82 were very hard. We would get stuck, often try to get unstuck using a more algebraic approach, but then it gets away from what we were trying to accomplish with diagrams?
Theorem 3.24 + others Unclear to students what we mean by “largest” or “smallest” group.
I wouldn’t necessarily change it, but some students were confused by Figure 3.6 and 3.7 (“I thought I understood a matching, but I guess you don’t need to match everything???”)
Add comment to instructor about brushing through dihedral groups section.
Some concerns from (most from Jeff Slye) to address: