Students Don’t Do Optional … or Options

In the Achieving the Dream (AtD) ‘world’, the phrase “Students do not do optional” is used as a message to colleges that policy and program decisions need to reflect what we believe students ought to do — if it’s a helpful thing, making it optional often means that the students who need it the most will not do it.  I tried something in my class that suggests a slightly different idea.

For the past two years, I have ‘required’ (assigned points) students to connect with a help location at the college.  The idea was that students need to know — before they think they need it — where they can get help for their math class.  I allow days for this — usually, until the 4th class day.

Until this semester, I provided students with options for how to complete this required activity.

• my office hours
• the college’s “Learning Commons” (tutoring center)
• the college’s library tutoring (also staffed by the tutoring center)
• special programs tutoring (like TRIO)

Typically, I would have about 70% of students complete this ‘connect with help’ activity; most of the struggling students were in the 30% who did not.  Some of these students eventually found the help.

This semester, I tried a revision to this connect with help activity.  I provided students the following choice(s):

1. the college’s “Learning Commons” (tutoring center)

The result?  I have 100% completion for this activity.  All active students have completed the activity, and most of these did it right away.

This is summer semester, and “summer is different” (though it’s difficult to quantify how different).  However, the results suggest that the existence of options creates barriers for some of our students.  We have evidence that this problem exists within the content of a mathematics class — when we tell students that we are covering multiple methods (or concepts) for the same type of problems, some students struggle due to the existence of a choice.  [For those who are curious, you may wonder if students are not coming to my office hour — so far, I actually have more students coming to my office hours.  No apparent loss there.]

I think the basic question is this:

Given that choices (options or optional) creates some risk for some students, WHEN are there sufficient advantages to justify this risk?

If dealing with a choice has the potential for improving mathematical understanding, I will continue to place choices in front of my students.  We should resist the temptation to provide simple answers when students struggle with mathematics; the process working (learning) depends upon the learner navigating through choices and dealing with some ambiguity. On the other hand, when the choices deal with something non-mathematical, we should be very careful before imposing the choice on students.

Some people might be thinking “So, it’s okay for us to be rigid and not-flexible” in dealing with students.  That is NOT what I am saying.  If one of my students gave me a valid rationale for why they could not do the ‘one option’, I would offer them an equivalent process.  Our rigidity needs to be invested in what is important to us; I would hope that the important stuff is something related to “understanding mathematics” (though we don’t all agree on what that means).

I would suggest that the AtD phrase be modified slightly:

Options will cause difficulties for some students.  Allow options when this provides enough advantages to students.

We usually try to be helpful to students, and part of this is a tendency to provide students with options. Putting choices in front of students is not always a good thing, so we need to be selective about when we put options in to our courses and procedures.

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AMATYC 2014 … The New Life Project

Here is an ‘early alert’ — among the sessions about the New Life Project at this fall’s AMATYC conference are two sessions that I am presenting.

The first session is “The Missing Link: Algebraic Literacy to Replace Intermediate Algebra“.   Here is the session description:

Does Intermediate Algebra work? Not so much! Come learn about a better model for a course that connects your students to
college mathematics, while supporting general education. Algebraic Literacy is a course from the New Life model, designed to
meet the quantitative needs of college algebra, pre-calculus, and science courses.

This session is scheduled for November 14 (Friday) at 8am.

The second session is “Accelerate and Improve Developmental Mathematics: The New Life Model“.   Here is the session description:

Acceleration is necessary, but not sufficient. Typical developmental courses deliver outdated content to our students. The
New Life Model enables many students to complete their developmental mathematics in one semester while receiving the
mathematics they really need. Learn why 40 colleges have implemented Mathematical Literacy and/or Algebraic Literacy.

That session is scheduled for November 15 (Saturday) at 2:15pm.

My goals with both sessions are to provide information about the curriculum reform work from AMATYC’s Developmental Mathematics Committee and the New Life Project subcommittee; this work is not a random branch of mathematical history — it builds on decades of professional work by other groups and teams, and uses that work to design new solutions.  The New Life courses (Mathematical Literacy, and Algebraic Literacy) can be offered side-by-side with traditional courses, and can also be a total replacement for existing courses.

I hope to see you in Nashville for the AMATYC conference.  Spread the word about these sessions!

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STEM Prep … Make That Path Straight!

We’ve been dealing with two basic issues in our work:  First, helping students succeed in mathematics as a service (general education especially).  Second, helping students realize dreams of being in a STEM program.

Since the current reform efforts started in 2009, most of the focus has been on the first problem (geared toward general education math courses); this is the problem that Statway™ and Quantway™ provide a solution for, and this is also the connection between the New Life course “Mathematical Literacy” and general education (like the Michigan Transfer Agreement).

However, the professionals involved with the New Life project have … from the start … kept the second issue in mind.  We saw a need to provide better mathematics for those in STEM fields, as well as a new model that enabled more students to reach their goals.  This is why we designed the second New Life course “Algebraic Literacy” the way we did; the content is based on professional standards, with special focus on STEM boosting learning outcomes.  I often refer to this Algebraic Literacy course as the “Missing Link” because it seeks to connect more students to the STEM programs with better employment and quality of life.

This week, the Dana Center (University of Texas – Austin) announced that they have launched their “STEM Prep Path”.  You can see some details at http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u=f75754127932b3bd8ffbea25c&id=3f956c1b40&e=23e0b88a42#STEMPREPTeams

Throughout our efforts, the Dana Center work on New Mathways has been consistent with our New Life work; in fact, the Dana Center has involved AMATYC members of New Life in all stages of their work.  In the case of STEM Prep Path, they will design a course serving the same purpose as Algebraic Literacy; I’m sure that they will differ in some basic ways, but am also sure that the content will be similar in basic ways.  One thing that is different — the STEM Prep Path for the Dana Center includes work in the domain of College Algebra & Precalculus.  This is very exciting work, and offers the promise of cleaning up the swamp our students face in those courses.

The STEM Prep Path is an effort to make the path straight — in other words, design the curriculum to serve the purpose and combine this with instructional methods and support that allow all students a high probability of success.  Currently, our path to STEM is not good for equity; developmental math classes can be high minority classes (that’s not necessarily a problem) while STEM math classes are very low minority (and that is definitely a problem).  The New Life work in Algebraic Literacy is part of this same effort to support a broader spectrum of students a path to STEM fields.  For information on the Algebraic Literacy course, see the presentation on the “Missing Link” at https://www.devmathrevival.net/?page_id=1807  .

I hope that you will take a look at STEM Prep Path, and a look at the Algebraic Literacy course, so that we make a straight path for our students with a goal of a STEM program.

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Language as an Impediment to Improving Mathematics Education

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education was:

Remedial Educators Contest Reformers’ ‘Rhetoric of Failure’ ( http://chronicle.com/article/Remedial-Educators-Contest/145351/)

This is a good article, worth the time to read and think about.  I was drawn to the phrase “Rhetoric of Failure”, a phrase that Uri Treisman used in a presentation at the NADE conference.  However, I’ve been bothered by another aspect.

Think about the word ‘reformers’ in the title … the word is being used to describe the groups (mostly external) who are trying to impose a different design for getting students in to credit-bearing courses (Florida, Connecticut, etc) with the most common strategy being the avoidance of developmental education.

One can not reform a system by avoiding it.

Reformers are those who seek significant changes in an existing system.  I am a reformer; perhaps you are.  We seem to have little power to resist the revolutionaries who want to avoid the system.  Part of this lack of power is likely due to the fact that few people outside of our profession know of the reform work we’ve been doing.  Sure, many have heard of the Carnegie projects (Statway™ and Quantway™); as a high-profile endeavor, that work has been widely publicized outside of mathematics education.  However, few (very few) outside of our profession have heard of our effective work at truly reforming developmental mathematics — the New Life project.

Do the destroyers know that we have a better model that will accelerate students to credit-bearing courses based on a professional re-design of the curriculum combined with a modernization of teaching?  How many people know that there are far more New Life implementations than any grant funded work, past or present?

Calling a group ‘reformers’ is assigning them an intent to improve a system; when revolutionaries make drastic changes, a better word would be ‘destroyers’.  Now, sometimes we need revolutions … sometimes we need destruction.  As I understand the views in the social sciences about change, revolutions and destruction are usually ineffective at producing long-term change.  I know of no reason why mathematics education would be any different.

As long as the ‘reform’ word is used for revolutionary changes, improving mathematics education will be very limited; we are, in fact, likely to regress (which is the most common result of a revolution).  We need to articulate our visions for reform with clear statements of our rationale; we need to challenge statements that attribute ‘reform’ to a revolutionary process.  We need to be comfortable telling external groups that imposing change (a bullying behavior) is not going to fix a problem; revolutions seldom work.

Calling something a ‘reform’ does not make it a good thing.

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