Putting it in Context: The Institution and its Students
Student Demographics
The University of Houston-Downtown serves a very diverse, nontraditional student population. Some students are starting college for the first time, while
others are starting for a second, third, or fourth time. The average age is 25. For the last two years, UHD has been named the most ethnically diverse western US liberal arts institution, a distinction which indicates that the student body accurately reflects the community it serves: Houston is one-third Hispanic, one-third African-American, and one-third traditional white. An administrator considers the student population's racial diversity an important strength because UHD is able to tap into the best resources of all three groups:
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Figure 2. Demographics of UHD by race from 1990-1994.
Click on the image to see a larger image.
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Since we are so representative of the community, our students, as they grow in their learning ability, are able to capture the different characteristics of all these groups. So when they go into a work environment, they're fully competent in their ability to know what to expect, how to relate, and how people think. Clearly, each individual group thinks, acts, or behaves a little differently. So our students are exposed to a variety of ideas and backgrounds, which we view as a very important part of our educational process.
(George Pincus)
There is general agreement among faculty and administrators that the University serves a largely under-prepared student population that does not place college education at the top of a priority list.
This realization lies at the root of many University decisions involving technology use in teaching both college-level and remedial courses. It is interesting to note that most faculty are not discouraged by, or ashamed of, the lack of preparation of their entering students. On the contrary, they see this as a challenge that validates educational institutions and environments like UHD. A faculty member reflects on this:
I think we serve a large portion of under-prepared students and also under-represented students. A lot of them are first-generation college students, so their family may not have any experience with going to school. I think that's our most important audience, although we also serve a lot of people who are working in the downtown area and just are coming here to try to complete their degree at night or whenever they can get off of their job. Most of our students work, and many of them work full-time, so they're not the traditional college students that you would see at a prestigious university like Wisconsin. College is not usually the first priority for them. Many of them have families and jobs, so college is something that they have to fit into their schedule. And they're under-prepared. They're not academically gifted students, or at least that doesn't show up in their records usually. We also have a large group of students who have been to other schools like A&M or Texas and for various reasons have flunked out, so for them we're kind of the second-choice institution.
(Bill Waller, Faculty)
According to one faculty member, many students treat UHD as a "junior college," although there are no associate degrees granted. A significant proportion of these students complete only a couple of years of college coursework. This coupled with the open enrollment practice at UHD can have a detrimental effect on the attitudes, commitment, and expectations that students bring to class, according to the faculty member:
Because of the open admission policy of the University, it can occur to a student that day or the day before to attend, as registration is occurring. There's nothing to prevent that student from enrolling.
(Linda Becerra, Faculty)
However, those students who do graduate from the College of Sciences and Technology have been successful and have tended to follow one of two paths: They either continue their studies at a graduate institution (for example graduates in science programs, like biology and chemistry, may go on to medical school), or they go into the work force (for example, graduates of computing and mathematical science programs may find employment in the private sector).
Faculty Responsibilities
UHD's primary mission is teaching, and most faculty and administrators are in complete agreement on this priority. Here is one faculty member's comment:
The primary mission of the school is teaching. Teaching is the stated mission of the school, and I think that's the administration's emphasis. There are some faculty who, I don't want to say disagree, but have a different idea of our mission and see it as a more typical research institution. But I think the administration's views are focused on teaching.
(Bill Waller, Faculty)
An administrator concurs:
To us, the primary focus is quality teaching, quality transmission of knowledge. If that component is not there, the faculty will not be promoted. The first question we ask is, how is the performance of the individual in his/her teaching activities? We also value scholarship, and I'd say, depending on whom you talk to, you may hear that it's equally weighted.
(George Pincus)
There appears to be a small segment of UHD faculty who wish that the University leaned a bit
more toward the research university model. However, high quality classroom teaching seems to be the most important criterion in promotion and tenure decisions. Classroom performance is determined primarily by way of student evaluations. Like many other teaching universities, the importance of research or scholarship is established only after teaching. An administrator frames the issue this way,
Well, I think we are still pushing teaching as the main thing. If you are not doing well in the classroom, you won't be able to get tenure. But on the other hand, once one does that, we are requiring more and more that one has to do some kind of-it's not called research yet, but creative activities. So you have to be involved in something professional, whether it be writing papers, giving talks, writing textbooks, something that shows that you are active and contributing, and that you have the potential for continuing to do that.
How important scholarship is in promotion and tenure decisions depends on whom you ask. Administrators are mindful to portray the faculty as current and productive, and faculty scholarship is defined in such a way that it can involve the participation of students:
We expect our faculty to show progress in scholarship, and we define scholarship in a very broad sense, including what is traditionally called research. We like to call it scholarship, because to me it has a better definition of what we expect individuals to do, which is, perhaps, a little broader than writing journal papers. It indicates participating actively in self-development, continuing to develop through, for example, joint activities with students, the kind of activity that we encourage here. So to us, a faculty member sitting in his office working out new theorems, or developing new theories, or writing individual papers is not really what we want. We want activities with students. We do have a large number of professors in the computing and mathematical science department who are very, very active, and they're active nationally-they publish textbooks and papers-but they also have very strong interactions with students. The students are all required to complete a project in their senior year, and this is where much of interaction comes in.
(George Pincus)
Despite this broad definition of research, the importance of traditional research seems to be increasing.
. The College now has a significant amount of external funding, and many investments in the technology infrastructure come from externally funded projects. One wonders whether in the future there will be pressure on faculty to obtain more of the sort of outside funding that this College has benefited so much from. An administrator proudly touts this accomplishment of the College:
Four years ago, this institution had practically zero external funding. Our college today is running up to two million a year, in terms of externally funded support. A lot of that money is directed towards student support, but some of it is also directed towards supporting faculty scholarship.
(George Pincus)
Currently, the high teaching load that faculty are responsible for seems to keep scholarship expectations modest, as indicated by an administrator:
Well, if you are teaching a full load, which is twelve semester hours, we're fairly happy if, for instance you are doing research, if you do a paper every year or every other year; that's, I think, considered sufficient. I mean, we still think 12 hours is a heavy load.
With such a high teaching load, one wonders about the faculty's ability or willingness to engage in collegial activities, such as curriculum reform, departmental and college-level academic discussion, or governance.
To further consider this, and to explore the appropriate conditions for change at an educational institution like this one, one might ask how the institution accommodates change and/or adjusts to new ideas. How is change received or tolerated by the faculty as a whole? Is there peer pressure to accept, adopt, adapt, or reject change? Here's how one administrator answered these questions:
One or two instructors could deviate from the standard way of teaching a course, as long as they let us know. They could experiment with something, and I've basically told them that if they find something that is really good and is working, then it's their responsibility to convince the rest of us to change. So, I think there's freedom and people feel like they can try things, but it's very difficult to get the department as a whole to switch over to something. I mean, we can't even get the department as a whole to agree to use calculators in a particular class. There are some who say, "students have got to be able to do it without the calculator; I won't use it."
Thus an accommodating environment lets faculty make changes in their own courses. Beyond that, though, there does not seem to be a process which could be used to allow an entire department or college to adopt reforms. Instead, it is incumbent upon reformers to convince their peers, one by one if necessary, to adopt or adapt their method. It should be noted that in the case of the college algebra course, faculty success in implementing reform might have been predicated by the fact that the three faculty members responsible for teaching the course work well together and advocate for a reform agenda.
Institutional Organization
The University of Houston-Downtown (UHD) is divided into four colleges. One college, an intake unit that accepts freshman and transfer students, is called the University College. The Natural Colleges encompass the other three colleges, and each offers its own degrees: the College of Business, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the College of Sciences and Technology. The algebra course of interest, Math 1301, is offered by the College of Sciences and Technology.
Overall University enrollment is slightly over 8,000 with a target enrollment of 8100 to 8200 students. Approximately one-third of all credit hours taken by these students are earned in the College of Sciences and Technology, though it does not have its proportional share of majors. Only about one-sixth of all majors are in the College of Sciences and Technology, so a major function of this College is to provide service courses for other University programs, especially in mathematics.
The College of Sciences and Technology is comprised of three academic units:
Computer and Mathematical Sciences Department, The Natural Sciences Department, and The Engineering Technology Department. It also houses The Center for Computational Sciences and Advanced Distributed Simulation (CCSDS), a research center charged with developing additional external support for the institution and for students. An administrator speaks of the CCSDS's success in supporting the University's teaching mission:
A lot of the funding has been generated by or comes from that center. This is mainly a teaching institution. It's not a flagship university, as they call them in Texas or wherever. The main emphasis is the discovery of knowledge. Our main emphasis is transmission of knowledge, or teaching. Although we have a significant amount of research, the research that we do here is very much student focused. The research really lets students get involved.
(George Pincus)
The Department of Computer and Mathematical Sciences, home department for this college algebra course, has some twenty faculty, both tenured and tenure-track. There are about twenty-five more part-time faculty members. A typical teaching load is 24 credit hours per year, but many faculty members teach two additional courses (6 credits) during the summer for extra pay. A Chairperson leads the Department while still carrying a heavy teaching load (6 courses or 18 credits per year).
An accurate count of students majoring in mathematics is difficult to obtain, because many do not declare their major until they reach their senior year. Typically, however, about 35 to 40 math students graduate per year.
In terms of technology, it is clear that the University is investing in both its infrastructure and its people. A staff member reflects that opinion:
I sense that the administration is very committed to technology. We have a big teaching technology learning center, and the people on staff there are very helpful. They have twenty or thirty labs on campus, computer labs that they support, many of which are for the math department.
(Phillis Griffard)
The University is increasingly participating in distance learning via television or online course delivery. Because of the composition of the student body, the University is also trying to make use of asynchronous, self-paced materials in its remedial programs.
To me, computer tools are learning tools. I would hope that we are using the better learning tools that are available today. I know that in all the courses that we called remedial there is a requirement that students follow certain tutorials using the Plato system. We do have a Plato Lab set up for them. The lab is open seven days a week, about 12 hours a day, and working there is part of the learning process. So there is a lot of computer-related learning going on in the mathematics area. I do know that we have designated a significant proportion of resources for modernizing our equipment. We have a very nice simulation laboratory, and we have several laboratories where students have full access to a lot of these tools. We have been fortunate in that the state has provided us with higher educational assistance funds, HEAF for short, which is the way the state of Texas allocates equipment funds.
(George Pincus)
The need for computer-based remedial activities, like the Plato tutorials, is exacerbated by Texas State law, which limits student enrollment in remedial classes.
The Learning Environment
The creation of a
learning environment (defn),
that incorporates computer technology is necessary for successful reform efforts. In our interviews, we focused on activities that make up part of the reform strategy for UHD's algebra course. In doing so, we considered the opinions of a close faculty collaborator. This faculty member did not work on the college algebra course per se, but his reform agenda for his linear algebra and differential equation courses and his close collaboration with the group of three reforming college algebra instructors provide important insights on the planning and implementation of the college algebra reform.
Computer Enabled Learning Activities
Computer-enabled activities are
learning activities (defn),
that require the use of computers or are significantly enhanced by computers. At UHD, the reformed college algebra
course embraces visualization and real-world examples while taking advantage of computer speed to present images, graphs, and relevant problems and data. An overarching point that faculty made is that students also need to use computers to carry out rote calculations, because doing so allows them time to focus on conceptual learning:
Any instructor who has taught this course to beginning students knows that if students experience difficulty, it's typically in carrying out the procedure. "Where did I make my arithmetic mistake?" It's like looking for a needle in a haystack. It's not that the student doesn't understand the concept, it's that he or she has made a mistake in carrying it out, in the manipulation. So a high percentage of the time when you're teaching students these procedures, these algorithms to solve systems of equations, you're spending a large amount of your time saying, "Look, you didn't multiply two times all of the left-hand side of the equation." We just said, for the sake of time, let's turn that over to the computer, because the manipulations are only part of the problem. We really want to answer these conceptual questions at the end.
(Linda Becerra, Faculty)
Visualization
Instructors in College Algebra use visual aids in a way similar to the way they might use a graphing calculator. The visual aids provide students a means to graph and manipulate functions with a friendly
user interface. However, a computer is a lot more powerful than a graphing calculator, one reformer indicates, because it shows the graph in color on a 15" monitor or on a larger area through a projection system.
Graphs offer instructors an avenue to interact with students. Discussion can begin with a function's graph, so students can attempt to determine the properties of the function, or it can begin with the mathematical function, so students can determine the graph and its properties. One instructor explains the importance of graphing as a teaching strategy:
Those are certainly the high points: changing representation, beginning a problem with function, exploring properties by looking at tables more closely or by looking at a graph, or starting with a graph and trying to develop the function formula. We constantly go back and forth between the representation and the mathematical function, showing how you can illuminate certain properties depending on the form that you choose to work with, and we try to cut down on the tedious calculations.
(Linda Becerra, Faculty)
Course discussion focuses on the course's central theme, functions, and it emphasizes interpretation of functions, not rote calculations. This fundamental strategy is based on the connections between mathematical functions and their graph and table representations:
The whole course revolves around functions. Almost everything is done in that context. We do lots of lab activities where we just explore some functions that have meaning to the students and are practical. We do a lot of graphing and a lot of creating tables of functions, so we take a formula and make a table out of it or we graph it.
(Bill Waller, Faculty)
Student interaction seems to be an important learning strategy, and when computer-enabled visualizations are utilized, student interaction increases. Students feel engaged when instructors use graphing tools to help them understand difficult concepts. One student explained:
I like the graphs. The instructor will ask, "What does this mean?" And the class is like, "Oh, I don't know," and he'll say, "It means all the points in this plane." And then we're like, "what plane?" And then he'll show us on Maple, and it has a 3-D graph that shows the colored plane. And then suddenly we all understand what he's talking about. Or two intersecting planes, and it'll be a line between the two planes. It has a very good visual interface.
(Student)
Connecting to Real World Data
In this college algebra course, instructors attempt to stimulate students' interest and engage them in the learning process by giving them mathematical problems to solve from everyday situations. An instructor comments on this approach:
For example, in lab activities we give them a postage rate table and ask them to calculate the postage for a letter weighing so many ounces. Another example is a single taxpayer with this much income. They are asked to calculate what the taxes will be. Or we give them a tuition table and ask what the tuition cost will be for a student enrolling in twelve credit hours. So all these examples come from their everyday life experiences. It's true that some of our students have never worked with a tax table before or gone to the post office and paid anything different than regular first-class postage. Nevertheless, these activities, because of their relevance or connection to real life, keep them interested.
(Linda Becerra, Faculty)
The connection to real-world problems lets students discover mathematics, while the interaction between students and instructor creates a sense of apprenticeship. Here's a student's viewpoint on this:
He would give us projects where he'd say, "we have three companies and they produce these products." He would ask us a real-life question that would require that we use a matrix approach, but he wouldn't tell us how to set up the matrix or what variables to put where. We'd have to set it up on our own. I think that's a good way because it made us talk to each other. We got to know each other, and we learned to rely on each other. You know, if some of us had problems, we'd show each other how to do it.
(Student)
There are additional advantages in using computers in a curriculum. One is that they enable instructors to include, not just canonical problems that illustrate concepts, but also more complicated problems that have a real-world basis. Said one faculty member:
With the computer, you get an opportunity to give more complicated examples. Then there is the question: What's the meaning of the example, what's going on here? You might be doing an example from finance or from science, so you get a chance to discuss the context of the problem. That helps them, I think, and gives me a lot more opportunity to interact with the students.
(Bill Waller, Faculty)
These sentiments, namely that computers have an ability to expose students to more real-world problems, are echoed by a student. He explains:
A lot of the faculty members like the technology because you can actually do some real world problems. You don't have to restrict it to one- or two-digit numbers and only five data points when you are dealing with calculations. You can really do some high-powered nice problems.
Finally, one stereotype of the academic world is that teaching sociology or
communications is more enjoyable than teaching mathematics because instructors can draw their students into conversations about content. With contextual examples and computer-enabled visualizations to illustrate concepts, mathematics instructors are able to create similarly enjoyable classroom environments. In addition, they are finding it easier to make seamless transitions between one topic and another:
Using graphs and providing a context for problems also help me as an instructor. They provide me a good opportunity to make connections between topics. How am I going to move from this topic to another topic? In math classes, when you're looking at a graph, you almost always stop, and almost always something that you're leading to is showing up in that graph. Then you get to at least ask the question that introduces the next topic.
(Bill Waller, Faculty)
Speed
Earlier, when we discussed faculty and institutional goals and computer-based technology, it was clear that cost efficiency was one important goal of the institution, while faculty place student learning as their priority. Given the large number of under-prepared students at UHD, faculty are especially concerned with the efficient utilization of classroom time. We asked instructors if they attempted to maximize student learning by using computers. An instructor answered:
You asked if technology helps you make more efficient use of class time. Yes, it does, because without it you might have spent a lot of time graphing functions by hand. That's a time-consuming process. Your graphs are usually not very good, and the way that we teach students to graph functions by hand is not the way we usually do it in practice. We'll either use a tool or we'll just roughly think about what the function looks like. Often we won't bother to draw a very accurate representation, or we don't need to draw a very accurate picture of the function in order to answer the sorts of questions that we want to answer. So, yeah, technology is great for helping you spend a lot more time looking at graphs and thinking about what they mean and the information that they convey rather than going through the tedious process of drawing. That's what is really important about doing graphs with the computer.
(Bill Waller, Faculty)
While technology provides tools to produce accurate visualizations quickly and hence increase the time available for student learning, this "extra" time is not used at UHD to pack more content into a given time period. Rather, it is used to explore topics more thoroughly.
Using the computer's speed to graph functions not only allows the students to focus on concepts as opposed to arithmetic, it also gives them the opportunity to perform additional tasks and to consider more examples in a relatively short time period. This ability to work through more examples aids both the students' the learning process and the instructor's teaching process.
Enhancement of Student Collaboration
Collaborative learning is an essential part of the reform of this college algebra course. Students are assigned to groups and asked to work together on problems with a computer and also to interact with an instructor. However, the success of collaborative methods in the Department of Computer and Mathematical Sciences is mixed from the points of view of both instructors and students. On one hand, instructors see the benefits of group work, and they experiment with ways to engage students in collaborative activities and come up with a working model. An instructor explains:
The collaborative learning I've experimented with takes many different forms, but I've yet to find one that really works for me because our student body is strictly a commuter one. It's hard to get groups that can continue and build relationships beyond the classroom. How many students should make up a group, two versus three versus four? I don't know. And should it be set groups or rotating groups? Should you let them self-select, or should you appoint them? I've tried different variations, and I still haven't found one that works every time. So I think those are typical problems that most people have in trying to implement a collaborative learning method.
(Linda Becerra, Faculty)
On the other hand, students do not appear to appreciate the social benefits of learning via group work. They are still operating in a competitive individual mode, where everyone needs to outperform their classmates in order to progress. One student explains:
As a student, I think there's advantage and disadvantage in doing group work. There's an advantage if you are a little slower than your peers, because you will have ample time to benefit from your peer's knowledge. But it is a disadvantage for the one who learns quicker. He gets bored working with the group.
(Student)
Evidence of Success
In general, the people we talked to at UHD realized that their work on College Algebra has not yet yielded the results they had hoped for, but preliminary results are promising.
Moreover, the faculty are determined to continue their reform efforts and seem willing to consider other options, particularly those relying on computer technology.
In order to get colleagues to accept (not necessarily adopt) reform ideas in a lower-division, required course like college algebra, it is important to have evidence that the reforms work. At UHD, this evidence takes the form of both anecdotes and student performance data. The college algebra course was reformed at a time when a sizeable fraction of students were failing traditional algebra sections. Passing rates in the reformed course sections significantly increased in comparison to passing rates in the traditional sections:
We went from a 38% passing rate in 1996 in our traditional section to a 46% passing rate in our "unified" technology section. (We use the term "unified" to describe our approach.) During the spring 1998 semester, the gap was even bigger. The passing rates were 35% and 51% for the traditional section and the unified technology section, respectively. That's quite an accomplishment.
(Bill Waller, Faculty)
The table below provides comparisons between reform and traditional sections over a two-year period. No only does this table contain passing rates in college algebra, it also shows passing rates for students in the subsequent math courses.
| Semester
|
Type of Section
|
# sections /students
|
Grade C or better
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Grade C or better in next course
|
| Fall 1996
|
Traditional
|
6/202
|
38%
|
35%
|
|
|
Reformed
|
6/185
|
46%
|
36%
|
| Spring 1997
|
Traditional
|
3/91
|
38%
|
32%
|
|
|
Reformed
|
3/75
|
39%
|
26%
|
| Fall 1997
|
Traditional
|
3/74
|
45%
|
20%
|
|
|
Reformed
|
3/51
|
48%
|
29%
|
| Spring 1998
|
Traditional
|
3/82
|
35%
|
19%
|
|
|
Reformed
|
3/69
|
51%
|
28%
|
Passing rates are not the only evidence of success, according to the reformers. Instructors report that there is anecdotal evidence of an improvement in students' experiences--students seem to enjoy the course more:
I think that we may not be able to quantify success with passing rates alone. But in discussing with students, asking them to consider their overall experience, and reading some of the general comments, I do find a number of them who say it was a worthwhile course. Maybe they actually enjoyed it. We don't really have data that we could use to compare [comments about the reformed course] with those of the traditional course.
(Linda Becerra, Faculty)
If students enjoy being in this course, so do instructors. Before reform, the classroom atmosphere was less than enticing for an instructor. Attendance was low, as were interest and participation. An instructor explains:
I can only give you anecdotal evidence, but the ambiance in the classroom is totally different compared to before. The biggest thing that I've enjoyed about it is when you go into the classroom, you're not dreading going. You're not thinking, How many are going to show up today? How many are going to be paying attention? Are they going to ask any questions? Am I going to get people to ask any questions? It's just a much different classroom atmosphere than before.
(Bill Waller, Faculty)
Nevertheless, not all the faculty members in the department share the reformers' enthusiasm about the success of this reformed algebra course. Many question the adequacy of course content and the students' ability to use their algebra skills proficiently, a charge that is answered by one reformer as follows:
We did reduce the content in designing our unified course. But in tracking the students in later courses, we haven't found any noticeable difference in performance between those who attended the traditional course and those who went through our unified section. A lot of the skills that you teach in traditional college algebra, you treat them so superficially that you wind up re-teaching them anyway in later courses. So the students in the traditional sections really didn't have much of an advantage because they didn't remember that one specialized skill they had been taught for one lecture.
(Bill Waller, Faculty)
Some faculty also imply that there is a certain amount of grade inflation in the reformed course, that students are graded on the basis of activities that have nothing to do with college algebra. One reformer responds to this allegation by bringing attention to the data shown in the table above:
When you're teaching the college algebra course here, you can expect that the average number of times that a student in your class has taken the course is more than one, and that's on average. I've had a lot of students who have been able to pass my reformed class, but weren't able to pass the traditional course. A lot of people will say, "Well, there you go; it's too easy. They shouldn't be passing." But in tracking these students, we find that they seem to do okay, not any worse than other students in later courses. I think to at least be successful once in a college math course is important for them.
(Bill Waller, Faculty)
There is also skepticism on the part of some faculty regarding the validity of the performance data (see table above), given that students enrolling in both the reformed and traditional sections are not selected at random (the sections that rely heavily on computers are so noted in the sign-up schedule). However, the reformers point out that at UHD the dominant factors in class selection are course availability and section time, not the methods used to teach content. Said one reformer:
People always question the validity of those statistics because students self-select the section they want to enroll in. The sections are identified in the schedule, so they know which ones are going to be using computers. How much does that affect our outcomes? I don't know. But I strongly believe most students are selecting classes based on availability and their schedules. I don't think that we're having a lot of people who are gravitating toward the tech sections just because they want to be in that section.
(Bill Waller, Faculty)
While some questions about college algebra reform exist within the department, we should note that in many respects the objections of faculty are tempered by the fact that at UHD they do not have to adopt these reforms. At UHD, because there is no institutional push to adopt reforms department- or campus-wide, being a reformer is not very threatening to non-reforming colleagues.
Getting Started
Even when a faculty member is faced with serious challenges in his/her
learning environment (defn),
and thus is eager for reform, there is still a fairly high activation barrier in starting to develop a reform agenda. Potential examples of barriers at UHD are the high teaching load, the university's reward system, and student demographics. In this section, we consider the internal and external factors that propelled this group of three algebra instructors to begin the reform process.
Instructor Traits and Motivations
When queried about their motivation to start this reform effort, the faculty gave several reasons. 
There was, of course, the high failure rate in College Algebra that they wanted to reduce. Also, as already mentioned, they wanted to change the
faculty to consider reforming College Algebra. Seventy percent of students across all course sections of Math 1301 failed. UHD's large population of under-prepared students probably played a role in the dismal performance recorded before reform. A faculty member reflects on the outcomes when traditional teaching methods were used:
administrators hail the nontraditional aspects of their student population as a strength. However, while it is clear that the University takes pride in serving this population niche, it also faces some daunting challenges in terms of the preparation and traditions of its incoming students. When asked why he thought students were failing so miserably, one algebra instructor answered:
They felt that it was imperative to link mathematical content to students' everyday lives. Material and its relevance, that is, making course content useful in students' eyes, became a theme that we heard frequently in investigating this case. Use of pen and paper, or blackboard and chalk, added to students' impressions that course content was obsolete and passŽ. A faculty member reflects emotionally on that issue:
Faculty are aware of the classroom challenges they face, but that only reinforces their resolve. UHD prides itself openly on its ability and commitment to provide many learning opportunities to its students, whether they need remedial activities or are prepared for college-level work. Several instructors speak about UHD's
One goal is for students to thoroughly learn certain fundamental algebra concepts, such as functions. To that end, these reformers incorporated a number of activities in the revised course, and course breadth was reduced to accommodate these new activities. On the other hand, they recognized that college algebra is also a skill-building course designed to prepare students for more advanced mathematics courses. The re-designed curriculum focused on mastering a reduced set of skills that faculty felt students must have in order to succeed in future mathematics courses. This strategy did not compromise quality, since most advanced courses often had to subsequently re-teach those skills anyway. An instructor explains:
at educational institutions nationwide. Because UHD is located right in the middle of a large urban community, one can easily conjecture that campus leaders see clear potential financial benefits in using technology to provide educational services through television and the worldwide web. However, the faculty seem more interested in using computers to solve learning-based problems than to augment the University's market share. An administrator talks about this disconnect between the administration's goals and those of the faculty:
brought serious attention to the magnitude of student needs. These problems in turn heightened awareness of the need for remedial education, something that computers can play a substantial role in, particularly self-paced instruction. Many of UHD's students come with poor pre-college preparation, and UHD's ability to serve these under-prepared students is crucial to its survival, since that is its niche. UHD has resolved to find ways to remedy its students' poor background in math, science, and writing, even if the administration determines that success will necessitate a sizeable investment in infrastructure. A staff member provides some context:
a certain modernity in the University's equipment and the work of its faculty. Classrooms and labs that are outfitted with the latest computers and devices figure constantly on a UHD campus tour. A staff member who provides technology support to the faculty clarifies this: