New Developmental Math Pathway

This course (MAT 109 ) was developed by Kavita Bhatia and I using guidelines made by American Mathematical Association for Two year Colleges (AMATYC), which were grounded in research done by many educators. The development was supported by a two year Growth Agenda Grant by the UW System. The curricular connects mathematical concepts learnt into students’ everyday life as well more global problems. Each collection of topics is accompanied by a project-like real life focus problem, which brings together all the concepts taught in that chapter together. The number of realistic applications, scattered through the course, on everyday medical errors, tips, credit card payments, comparing pay plans, comparing percentage vs. flat discount options etc., proved beneficial to all audiences, especially to non-traditional students to see that algebra isn’t a meaningless collection of rules to memorize. Most non-traditional student populations are back after being out of mathematics for a very long time. Research has also shown that a cyclic style of introducing algebra concepts goes a long way towards reinforcing the concepts in mind. This course follows this method for all the key algebra concepts. In 2016 I was part of a small team of mathematicians who obtained a Chancellor Award for Excellence for the development of this pathway.

Data and Placement

Performance

The chart below shows the MAT 109 success rates from the pilot offering of the course in Fall 2015 for both the sections combined (Click on Chart to see full)

Post- MAT 109 Student Progression

Seven students who obtained C or above in Fall 2015 registered for mathematics or equivalent courses in Spring 2016. Of those students one withdrew. The remaining all successfully completed their subsequent course. The lowest grade for this group was a B-.

Note that our new course MAT 109 fulfills the Core requirement, so students getting an Associate degree do not need to take any math course beyond it. The details of their progression is shown in the table below.

Student Perception

The chart below summarizes the results of the student survey (Click on survey to see more).