The Envelope, Please!! The answer is …

The next AMATYC Webinar will be April 3 (3pm EDT).  My goal in doing this webinar is to provide some answers to help you deal with the present … and the future.  See http://www.amatyc.org/events/EventDetails.aspx?id=1084248 for details.

In order to understand the present and future, we need to gain some understanding of the past.  Therefore, the first part of the webinar will present a fast-paced summary of where developmental mathematics has been in the prior 40 to 50 years.  We will see that some of the current trends had their origins in past practices in the profession.

The second portion of the webinar deals with the present, responding to the primary current theme … “minimization” (pathways & co-requisite remediation being specifics).  I will share our current curricular structure at Lansing Community College — providing a template which any college can implement, without depending on grant money nor on external directives.  You will see modern curricular standards in practice.

The third portion, somewhat intertwined with the second, deals with the future … what is a viable structure for both ‘developmental mathematics’ and college mathematics in the first two years?  You may discover that the current all-purpose ‘solutions’ are not projected to be a central component of our future mathematical landscape; co-requisite remediation has a role in the future, just not primarily as math avoidance.

Throughout the webinar, we will keep the focus on mathematics — good mathematics for ALL students, opening doors previously closed and allowing every student access to upward-mobility.  Embracing mathematics will be our goal, and that includes the scourge of Complete College America — “ALGEBRA”.  Not your grandmother’s algebra … not your father’s algebra … but algebra as part of an education resulting in better lives for our students.

I hope that you are able to participate in this webinar; feel free to invite non-AMATYC members to view with you.  I am especially interested in academic leaders and policy makers/influencers being a part of the process.  I am working hard to make this webinar enjoyable, helpful and possibly inspiring.

The webinar link is http://www.amatyc.org/events/EventDetails.aspx?id=1084248

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Corequisiste Remediation as a STEM Recruiting Tool

Seems like much of the world (in higher education) has gone ‘crazy’ with reforms intended to remove mathematics as a barrier.  Are we happy with that vision of mathematics?  Are we content with a system which minimizes the learning of mathematics in college?

Perhaps we have not seen some potential opening doors which could support the vision for mathematics we would advocate.  Corequisite remediation has been implemented as a disruptive influence on an algebraic-based mathematics requirement … if a student does not qualify for “college algebra”, put them in a non-algebraic course (statistics, liberal arts math, QR, etc) with a support course which will cover a minimum of mathematics (just enough to learn that stat/Lib Arts/QR course).

Take a step back, and think about these questions.

• Do these non-algebraic courses typically have high needs for ‘remediation’? Or, did we have artificially high prerequisites for these courses … so now corequisite remediation allows us to save face while not providing any significant advantage to students?
• Do the initial STEM-enabling courses (such as college algebra and pre-calculus) have high needs for remediation and support?

To the extent that the answers are “no” and “yes” (respectively), the reform process has been mis-directed.

In addition, we have students who have the potential to be STEM majors — but are intimidated by the prospects of passing the STEM-enabling math course (college algebra, pre-calculus, calculus I).  The current reform work deliberately pushes these students into programs outside of STEM.

Let’s re-direct the reform work to meet student needs and enable many more students to achieve their STEM dream.  Instead of attaching co-requisite support classes to non-algebraic math, attach them intentionally to STEM-enabling math courses.  Whether a student barely places directly in to such a course, or minimally passes a prior math course, their prospects are not good currently.   Think about students within 1 standard deviation above the cutoff on a placement assessment, and those with 2.0, 2.5, C, and C+ grades.  Maybe something like this:

Where do we want students to succeed?  If we are okay with students succeeding if they avoid STEM-enabling mathematics courses, then continue doing the current reforms.  On the other hand, if you want students to choose STEM and succeed, it might be time to consider a better use for co-requisite support classes.

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Our Future … Are we Creating it? Or, Putting up with It?

We are familiar with the types of changes that are currently happening in developmental mathematics and general education mathematics, with pathways and co-requisite structures.  Certainly, large forces in these changes are external — legislation, state direction, and institutional leadership.  Are we abrogating our responsibilities to create the future shape of college mathematics?

The most fundamental nature of a profession is that it changes over time to reach a more ideal state; you might even call this ‘making progress’.  When change is primarily imposed on the profession (which has occurred frequently in our profession), the changes do not normally reflect the values and standards of the profession.  Obviously, quite a few of us are distressed for this very reason.

However, it occurred to me that these external forces might tend to make some of us more conservative than we would have been.  Are you resisting basic curricular changes because of fear … fear that somebody is going to tell you what you are going to do?  Perhaps those of us who have not yet been ‘mandated’ are holding on to our traditional curriculum with a tight grip, although we would be open to basic change if it came from ‘us’.

I encourage you to continue thinking about what the future of college mathematics should look like.  What types of courses do you want?  What should the content be focused on?  What types of support for student learning do you want?  We need to have a vision, an idea about what the future should be, before we can make progress towards achieving that vision.

As part of that process, you might plan ahead for an AMATYC Webinar I am scheduled to deliver (April 3, 2018 at 3pm EDT).  The webinar is entitled “Dev Math: Past, Present, Future”, and my goal is to provide you with some ideas and tools so that you can formulate a clearer vision of what OUR future should look like — at the basic college level as well as pre-college level.  I will share both what my institution is currently doing, and a specific projection to a future state (‘a vision’) for you to consider.  Part of this ‘projection’ is a structure to modernize our STEM mathematics program (especially pre-calculus and the calculus sequence).

If you are not creating our future, you are merely putting up with the future.  Our students depend upon us creating that future in ways that we believe will help them succeed.

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Anti-Algebra College Mathematics: What are we DOING?

Much “cool-aid” has been distributed in recent years (as in “he/she has drunk the cool aid” … become a ‘convert’).  Our institutional leadership cadre sing the praises of ‘alignment’ and pathways, and celebrate the emphasis of non-algebraic courses in college curricula.

Of course, the word ‘algebra’ itself has multiple meanings. In this post, I am referring to polynomial algebra along with the reasonable connections to geometry, trigonometry, and modeling at the curricular level of first year of college.  The delivered curriculum in ‘algebra’ has degraded to the point that the primary student outcome is ‘survival’ that qualifies them to take another course.

This is not the same discussion as “Algebra II for All” in the K-12 world; we could debate the pros and cons of that issue, though in most ways that train has left the station.  Our interest is in college mathematics in the first two years.

At the  highest level, an observation is that the enrollments in STEM-enabling math courses is declining based on increased enrollments in courses aligned with programs (by which I mean statistics and quantitative reasoning [QR]).  As a general education course for students in non-scientific programs I think a rigorous QR course is the best option.  Such a rigorous QR course includes a significant focus on algebra and algebraic reasoning.  We probably don’t reach that goal very often in QR courses.  In any case, the STEM-enabling math courses are declining in enrollment.

Why?  Why does our leadership consider these non-algebra options to be superior?  Is it because they have conferred with us about the mathematical needs of students within the context of their programs and the issues of the 21st century?  Have some of us taken on the anti-algebra mantle to the extent that we encourage excessive emphasis on statistics and QR?

Sometimes, algebra has been used as a filter to weed out students who “can’t make it”.  Let’s be honest — that is not the nature of algebra, only the nature of algebra courses used to weed out students.  A positive … and accurate … conception of algebra is this:

• Algebra provides a set of tools for representing scientific and technical knowledge
• Algebra provides a framework for dealing with quantitative problems which are not primarily computational exercises
• Algebra encourages precise communication

If students do not need to deal with scientific or technical knowledge, AND will not need to deal with quantitative problems, then the emphasis of QR and statistics is not inappropriate.  As mathematicians, we value the precise communication aspect of algebra, and we might even make the case that this type of communication is just as foundational as the ‘regular’ communication areas (writing, speech, etc).  That rationale is probably insufficient to require students to take an algebraic STEM-enabling course.

Let’s just consider the first feature of algebra — representing knowledge.  Take a look at the occupations with the best employment prospects (above minimum wage), and I think you will find primarily scientific and technical fields (including health careers).  Some of the very best employment prospects are in highly quantitative professions.

We don’t need all of our students to declare a STEM major (though we can always dream of what this would be like).  However, I wonder if the rush to completion is putting a large portion of our students in programs for which they are either not prepared for the jobs available OR not prepared to handle the quantitative demands of those jobs.  That statement might not be clear; here’s an example of the latter condition: students in an associate degree nursing program take a statistics class to meet their math requirement, but they are not prepared to deal with problems requiring algebraic representations or algebraic reasoning.

The ‘elephant’ in the room is how poorly we have been delivering algebra-based courses in college.  In spite of fundamental changes in both the mathematics profession and in K-12 mathematics, we still emphasize courses which might be called “death by algebra” … which serve to weed out students rather than prepare students.  How could we, in good conscience, suggest to our leadership that these algebra courses should be used instead of the QR or statistics course?

The changes in college mathematics, so far, have been at the edges — developmental mathematics reform and co-requisites (usually for QR or statistics).  I believe that the external pressure will come to our algebra-based STEM-enabling courses:  either we make fundamental changes to those courses OR the leadership will make curricular changes that take our courses out of the normal set of student programs.  Within 10 years, we could be dealing with a situation in which the only students taking STEM-enabling math courses are those in ‘high’ STEM fields (physics, engineering, perhaps a few math majors).

What’s the future you want to see?  What’s the role of STEM-enabling math courses in your vision?

 
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