Developmental Mathematics Revival!

An Emporium Story

Once upon a time, a community college noticed that their developmental math classes were not very effective … too few students were completing the course, and the cost of delivering the courses was higher than the results warranted. An obvious solution was a methodology now called the emporium model; however, this was 1970 so that phrase was not available. Students spent their time working problems, focusing on what they needed to learn — no lectures, just work.

The college was my institution (Lansing CC), and the emporium model was called the LCC Math Lab. I began working in this Lab in 1973, when we had strong faculty leadership to make it more than isolated skills taught in modules. The work was not easy, but we were able to provide improved instruction and results (though we did not worry as much about saving a lot of money).

Fast forward to 2010 … the College closed the Math Lab at LCC because the results showed the method was not very effective and the cost of delivering it was too high.

After working in this ’emporium’ methodology for 37 years, I can tell you that it does not take any outstanding wisdom to predict that the emporium model will work on a limited basis for a limited period of time. The student results depend greatly on the institution’s support and planning, and the cost savings is grounded in administrative procedures — not the method itself. Our program went from using 80% of the standard cost to using 190% of the standard cost, due to administrative changes.

Unless we want to return to a painful change process in a few years, we should look further than these “ISO” type redesign methodologies … the improvements are not universal, the curriculum is not up-to-date, and the cost savings are administrative (and perhaps temporary). Using emporium-buffet-etc redesign is like installing a GPS unit on a 1973 Pinto — yes, we get better data and we feel ‘with it’, but it’s still a 1973 Pinto. We will not save the planet by driving a Pinto, nor will we save our profession by emporium models; we need a top-to-bottom new vision of our work, whether this is the New Life vision or some other model.

ps — ‘ISO’ is ‘International Organization for Standardization’, as in “ISO 9001” a set of management criteria (see http://www.iso.org/iso/home.html)… focusing efficiency from a management point of view; I see emporium and related models as being ‘ISO applied to developmental mathematics’.