AMATYC Webinar on the Michigan Transfer Agreement (MTA) – March 27

I’ve posted previously about the new Michigan Transfer Agreement (MTA), which will help students considerably by identifying 3 pathways in mathematics.

AMATYC is offering a webinar next week on the MTA for community college mathematics departments.  Here is a portion of the description:

The Michigan Transfer Agreement (MTA) is the new general education transfer agreement in Michigan, meant to facilitate transfer between institutions in Michigan.  The basic MTA plan calls for a block transfer of 30 credits for students who have “MTA Satisfied” approved on their transcript.  For the first time, the requirements call for a math course – college algebra (or above), statistics, or quantitative reasoning.

Any AMATYC member can register for the webinar by logging in to the AMATYC web site and clicking on the link in the right column for the March 27 webinar (3 to 4pm, EST).  I will be presenting this webinar.

Although of special interest to Michigan AMATYC members, this webinar might be appropriate for faculty in other states who want to see how a pathways approach to general education works.

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Pathways … for the New General Education

We’ve been working over the past 5 years to develop new courses for our students.  Mathematical Literacy is the first new course, and is doing very well; Algebraic Literacy is the second course, and is just beginning to get ‘traction’.  To help our students, though, we need a new plan … especially for general education.

Take a look at this map:

The Michigan Transfer Agreement (MTA) is designed to improve the transfer of general education courses in Michigan.  The MTA requires one math course; students can use one of the 3 courses ‘in blue’: college algebra, quantitative reasoning, or introductory statistics.

Notice that students can meet their general education math requirement with one developmental course and then the MTA course … unless they need college algebra or pre-calculus.  We have embraced the pathways concept, with direct benefits to our students.

This is good news for students in Michigan.  I hope that other states will create similar structures.

 
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Math is Different

A student applies for a community college, having set a personal goal of earning an associate degree in a field with good employment prospects.  The college informs her that she needs to take a placement test to confirm that she has her basic skills in science and history; clearly, a student needs to have those basic skills before taking college courses that involve science or culture.

The student, Lindsay, takes the tests; she learns that she has to take two remedial science classes and one remedial history class before she can start her program; these courses correspond to 8th and 10th grade science and to 9th grade history.  With relief, she learns that she does not need to take a course like her 12th grade mathematics.

What’s that you say?  This is ridiculous and untrue?  Yes, clearly I’m making this up.  However, it is possible that our approach to mathematics in college is just as ridiculous.

We say, and do many others, that “Math is Different”.  Of course.  Does the set of differences justify the punitive approach we use for mathematics?  We place students in boxes, each with a label for the degree of deficiency.  These boxes have no known connection to college courses, justified by a belief that ‘high school’ must be mastered before ‘college’.  The most common math courses taken by college students were never designed to provide benefits in college; they are copies (sometimes poor copies) of outdated school mathematics imposed on students.

Do we have students who truly need remediation in mathematics?  Absolutely; the rate is probably large — over 20% of incoming students probably need some remedial math course before they have a reasonable chance of success in college courses in science or mathematics.  Some students come to a community college with extensive needs in mathematics, and need help with number sense, proportional reasoning, algebraic reasoning, basic ideas of geometry, and more.  Many come to us with weak skills in algebraic reasoning and basic geometry — combined with needs for other areas of mathematics.

Placing students into a sequence of courses covering years of school mathematics makes no sense in college.  Research suggesting that many students are equally successful placed directly into college courses reflects a design problem, as much as ‘remedial is not working’.    As an analogy — I had a flash drive stop working this week.  Now, a flash drive needs a port and an operating system; there is a sequence of things here.  Our approach to remediation is like installing a new cover on the flash drive so it looks more like the computer, instead of making sure that the system works together.

Redesign of developmental and introductory college math courses is not enough.  Instructional delivery systems will not solve our problems.

We need to look at root causes and basic relationships so we can identify student capabilities that will make a difference.  In developmental mathematics, the New Life Project has done this type of analysis; take a look at http://dm-live.wikispaces.com/ for information.  Not as much has been done for basic college mathematics (college algebra, pre-calculus, etc); the MAA CRAFTY materials provide a start — see http://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/CUPM/crafty/CRAFTY-Coll-Alg-Guidelines.pdf  for information.

Math is different; students are different.  Take a look at the differential pass rates among groups of students.  The types of students most of us really want to help — those lacking prior success (predominantly poor and minority students) have significantly lower course pass rates in our current courses.  Sometimes, the differential is so severe that completion of the sequence is a trivial number of such groups.  The conditional probability of “need 3 developmental math courses AND is black/African American” is somewhere around 5%, compared to about 18% for all students.  A cynic might say that the primary purpose of developmental mathematics is to make sure that the high paying jobs stay in the hands of the ‘haves’.  I do not believe that we want to block the upward mobility of students in our communities.

We need new math courses, courses designed to provide benefits; courses designed to provide equity to our students.

All other improvements in mathematics at colleges will be temporary relief at best.  The system is not designed to succeed, and that is the problem needing our attention.

 
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Is Mathematics a Science?

My college has recently completed a ‘reorganization’ of programs and departments.  As a result of this change, mathematics is now in the same administrative unit as science. Is this a good fit?

Although we share much, I have seen some interesting differences.  One striking difference is this:

Mathematics faculty are expected to be flexible generalists.

Science faculty are expected to be specialists.

We are likely to be posting one full-time position in mathematics, and at least 2 full-time positions in science.  As the programs talked about requirements for the positions, mathematics consistently kept flexibility as a top priority — to be able to teach a variety of courses.  Science faculty, on the other hand, consistently listed specific backgrounds — micro-biology versus biology, physics versus geology, etc.  I have asked about why this is the case, irritating a few of my friends along the way; the rationale basically boils down to ‘we need a specialist to teach x’.

In mathematics, we sometimes seek a specialist — like a math for elementary teachers course, or statistics.  The vast majority of math faculty (full-time) are qualified (in our view) to teach any of a dozen courses.  Science faculty seem to keep themselves in a box, where they may have 3 to 5 courses that they can teach.  I am not sure which approach is superior, but I do know that the situation is related to the other observation about math & science.

Science, in general, does not do developmental.

Students in K-12 have had a variety of science.  When students arrive at college, the college-level science courses they take are determined by their program — not by ‘deficiencies’.  Certainly, students who have struggled in science select programs that will provide them with lower-level science courses.  Every student begins chemistry with a college-level chemistry class; every student begins biology with a college-level biology class.  [My college had, at one time, a developmental science course — never a large population.]

Part of this is the acceptance of ‘science’ as a set of (almost) independent disciplines (sometimes competing disciplines).  Students will generally take courses in 2 science disciplines.

Mathematics is seen by policy makers as a single, continuous strand.  At the bottom is arithmetic; at the top, calculus … in between, lots of algebra, a little geometry, and some trigonometry.  There is “one mathematics”; there are “multiple sciences”.

Of course, this ‘one mathematics’ is an incorrect view.  First of all, that image confuses a sequence of prerequisites for a content structure; only parts of algebra are needed for calculus, as is the case for geometry and trigonometry.  Students in occupational programs are the ones who might get to experience the other parts of these mathematical disciplines.  We, the faculty, reinforce this incorrect view by testing and placing all students along this single continuum (including the requirement for remediation of arithmetic and algebra).

Secondly, there are mathematical disciplines that are relatively unrelated to calculus preparation … disciplines that are used extensively in the modern world.  Students are more likely to interact with network problems than they are common denominators.

As we talk with career experts and other programs about what their students need, what topics do we ask them about?  I suspect that 99% of the discussion focuses on the ‘calculus continuum’ (arithmetic to calculus, via algebra).  Do we ask about topics that are not in developmental math courses?  Topics that are not in introductory college courses?  I’ve not seen that done.

Could we envision a world where there really was no need for developmental mathematics (in the sense of repeating school mathematics)?  Unless students need calculus for their program, would it be possible to start with “basic quantitative reasoning” or “introductory statistics” or “math for electronics” for students less prepared?  Better prepared students, perhaps, could take “applied calculus” or “diverse mathematics for college” or “statistics and probability”.   Students needing calculus could take “general calculus” as a preparation for a calculus sequence. These questions, perhaps, are related to the nudge that some state legislators are giving us when they limit developmental education.

Although mathematics is the “Queen of the Sciences” (historically), our practice of mathematics is not so much a science.  A science is based on a collection  of methods applied to related sets of objects (like chemistry does); mathematics does consist of several disciplines.  However, we do not function like a science, nor do we provide students with preparation for scientific thinking within our math classes.

Mathematics in college is not a science.  Would we serve our students better if it were?  What would that look like?

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