Math for Emerging Technologies — CRAFTY and the Vision

Perhaps we do not think enough about what mathematics is needed in emerging technologies — those fields that are relatively new and generally have good employment prospects for our students.

So, I am getting ready for presentations at the AMATYC conference and at the National Summit on Developmental Mathematics later this month (Anaheim, CA).  My presentations focus on the New Life model, which has been around for about 4 years.  Partially due to the related work of Quantway™ and Statway™, much of the attention in our field has been on the Mathematical Literacy course.  I am actually putting more energy in to the new course which follows Math Lit — Algebraic Literacy.

In the process, I am going back to the source documents that we used to develop our curriculum.  We used professional references to identify learning outcomes for the target courses our students will take.  Among those targets was ‘technology careers’ — what mathematics students need to succeed.

If you have not seen this source, I highly recommend that you study the “Vision: Mathematics for the Emerging Technologies”.  This report is the result of an intensive effort organized by AMATYC in 2000 and 2001, and involved convening dozens of experts outside of mathematics education.  Here is the link: http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.amatyc.org/resource/resmgr/publications/visionweb.pdf

Among the identified needs:

• Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Communicating Mathematically
• Algebra (ability to apply mathematics topics outside of mathematics, or in a new setting, is vital)
• Geometry
• Trigonometry
• Statistics

The list also included arithmetic (proportional reasoning, measurement), which our Math Lit course takes care of.  The report lists calculus as needed for a few technologies.

The question is … should the development of these needed skills fall entirely on the responsibility of courses in the student’s program?  Or, should ‘developmental’ mathematics provide a foundation in these areas?

If these needs were unique to emerging technologies, we might have some rationale for leaving this work to the occupational programs.  However, each area listed is also important for other reasons — other “STEM” fields need them.  These needs fit very nicely into a course preparing students for a first math analysis course (also known as pre-calculus).

Here are the current goals and learning outcomes for Algebraic Literacy: Algebraic Literacy Course Goals & Outcomes Oct2012 Algebraic Literacy Goals and Outcomes June2013

In case you are wondering, the ‘CRAFTY’ in the title of this post comes from the MAA acronym “Curriculum Reform Across the First Two Years”; the AMATYC grant involved work that supported this effort.

I’ll be talking about this “Vision” report in my Summit presentation on the Algebraic Literacy course, as well as in my New Life session at the AMATYC conference.  I hope you can make it to one of those events.  [I’ll post the presentations here later.]

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