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University of Houston-Downtown
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Executive Summary
Key Practioners: William Waller, Linda Becerra, Ongard Sirisaengtaksin
CASE IN BRIEF:
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Problems: Poor student performance in which 70% of the students in Math 1301 failed. Closely tied to this was poor student preparation. Instructors also felt that traditional mathematics teaching methods wasn't connecting with students.
Goals: The instructors wanted to provide numerous opportunities to learn, have their students learn fundamental concepts and skills through real-world problems, make mathematics relevant to student, and increase the mathematics literacy with a technology-dependent curriculum that encompasses diverse learning strategies.
Guiding Principles: Make mathematics come alive by making it relevant to the students' live, and to enable learning to occur in diverse ways using technology.
Discipline: College algebra course with some use in one advanced mathematics course.
Type of Institution: University of Houston-Downtown is a 4-year urban university with a commuter and ethnically diverse student population.
Class size: About 20 students per class.
Computer-Based Activities: Computer-based problem solving that actively engage students through real-time hands-on visualization of algebraic functions.
Other Activities: Group work is used with many learning activities.
Resources: Networked desktop computers; software and curriculum materials.
Limitations: Typically used in small classes (~20 students). Adaptions of these materials/methods have been done by other universities but aren't presented here.
Assessment: Improvement in passing rate and gain in conceptual understanding as measured by widely accepted pre/post-tests.
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Show entire case study
Linda Becerra
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The University of Houston-Downtown (UHD) is a four-year urban university with a commuter and ethnically diverse student population. Located in downtown Houston, the University provides educational services to non-traditional students, many of whom are under-prepared and work full-time.
In the past, students learned mathematics simply by becoming familiar with the manipulations and calculations required in their courses. Fundamental concepts, as well as their
Bill Waller
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relevance to real life problems, were often entirely ignored by both students and faculty. As a result, students saw mathematics primarily as a requirement that they must satisfy in order to obtain a college degree. Students did not appreciate algebra's use and applicability to real-life situations. Moreover, those skills that students supposedly learned in algebra courses often had to be re-taught in subsequent courses.
With this as a backdrop, three faculty members initiated reform in their college algebra course to solve three challenges:
- Student performance
About 70% of the students across all course sections of Math 1301 (College Algebra) were failing.
- Student preparation
One of the key reformers said, "Many of our students don't have a high level of academic success.... They have had bad experiences with math... or haven't enjoyed it...."
(Bill Waller, Faculty)
- Traditional methods weren't working
"Students didn't see the content as relevant... "It's not fun for them, so we have all the ingredients of a disaster. The course was not technology oriented, so to them that just emphasized that it's irrelevant."
(Bill Waller, Faculty)
Specifically, the reformers were trying to:
- Provide numerous opportunities to learn.
An important trademark of UHD is its commitment to help students succeed, regardless of previous poor performance or failure.
- Have their students learn fundamental concepts and skills through solving real-world problems.
"They wanted to make sure that the fundamental concepts and skills (and they thought a lot about what fundamental means) are emphasized. Said one faculty member, "We wanted to give them the idea that mathematics is meaningful to their lives and that they're capable of doing it a little bit. Most important, we wanted them to understand why they're doing certain things."
(Bill Waller, Faculty)
- Stimulate interest and increase motivation (and thereby improve retention) by making mathematics relevant.
The content in this reformed course comes from engineering and science disciplines. Math is thus presented in context, and the solutions to math problems are therefore practical solutions to daily problems students may encounter.
- Increase math literacy.
As one reformer said, "We hope to just inform them of the possibilities."
(Linda Becerra, Faculty)
- Use diverse teaching strategies.
Given the diversity of the student population and the variety of learning styles among students, faculty wanted to teach in diverse ways so that all students, regardless of their strengths, would have a chance at success.
- Offer a technology-dependent curriculum.
As one reformer said, "We wanted to think about making the curriculum in such a way that it required the use of technology."
(Bill Waller, Faculty)
To put all of this into context, we'll provide
Ongard Sirisaengtaksin
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a brief overview of the problems the faculty faced and their goals for solving them, as well as the institution's goals. We'll then describe the students, the faculty, and the institution itself. We'll also explain specifically what the reformers did with the technology and what evidence they have that it worked. Finally, we'll discuss how and why these faculty members got started down this reform path and describe the myriad implementation issues they overcame to make this all happen.
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