Developmental Math Coordinator Report
George Alexander
August 30, 2001
I extend my personal welcome to all new members of the department, and especially to those assigned to teach developmental mathematics. I hope to have the chance to meet all of you soon. Please feel free to call on me (galexand@uwc.edu or 608-758-6627) for course and teaching advice anytime during the year. You may also want to check out materials available on our developmental math website at rock.uwc.edu/galexand/devmath/devmath.htm. You can also find my reports and recommendations from last year there if you wish to review or catch up on that information.
The 2001-02 academic year will be my third working as the Developmental Math Coordinator. Last year, Vice Chancellor Margaret Cleek, past department chair Karl Schmid, and I reviewed the position description and came to an agreement on plans to continue at least another year. One change we made was to increase the teaching load from one course to two. Due to needs at UW Rock County, I am currently scheduled to teach Mat 090 and Mat 091 this Fall semester. I will have to make adjustments in how I carry out campus visits this year. I may try to make it to 5 or 6 campuses in the Fall and the others in the Spring. I will keep department members informed as I come up with a plan.
Developmental Math Updates:
A. Course Guidelines for Mat 081, 090, and 091.
Course guidelines for all three developmental math courses were approved during the last academic year. Copies of the guidelines are available from the developmental math website or from me (just ask!). Although we just finished these, I am always open to suggestions for improvements. I also urge the department to continue progress on other course guidelines. In particular, a final course guide for Mat 105 would be very helpful to developmental math instructors.
B. Assessment Plan for Mat 091.
The first round of assessment for Mat 091 was completed in the Spring 2001 semester. Seven instructors representing 10 sections and 175 students reported on one or more assessment questions. If you used assessment pool questions on your final exam but did not send me your data, you may still do so. I will be sorting the information we have and sharing it with the assessment committee in the near future.
As most of you are aware, the enrollment limit for all developmental math courses is now set at 25 students per section. I will be monitoring enrollment data as information becomes available this semester. I hope that it is becoming easier to hold to these limits as the campuses have now had more time to plan for necessary course sections. If you are teaching a section with more than 25 students, I’d like to hear about it. Perhaps we can at least discuss ways to reduce the section sizes in future semesters.
In an effort to reach students who need math help in on-line courses, the UW Colleges has entered into a contract with Academic Systems to give all UWC students access to tutorial units at Academic.com. UW System has agreed to pay for half of the $5000 institution license for the year in exchange for information on how it works for us. If successful, we may see future contracts negotiated for system-wide usage. I will be working with Pat Fellows and math department members to work out details on implementation and assessment. We will likely package the academic.com materials in a Blackboard course shell. Any student interested in using the tutorials can then be added as a user to the site with their standard Colleges’ login. In addition, we are trying to procure funding to hire and train some student tutors who would be available on-line to answer student questions. If this comes through, we will have a great start on building an on-line math lab!
If you’d like to preview the academic.com materials, you can access a demo at www.academic.com. Click on Academic.com on the home page (note: Interactive Mathematics is a different product). Content is available in study skills, basic math and algebra into pre-calculus skills, and applications in economics, biology and chemistry.
Pat Fellows would like to schedule a 4-5 hour training session for interested faculty and academic staff. I think this product will be most useful at the Mat 105 level and below. It may also be helpful to other math students who want a quick review of basic topics. If you are interested in learning more, please contact me. I will try to arrange a suitable meeting time for those who want to get involved.
We need to begin planning early if we want to consider offering any distance education sections of developmental math courses in the next academic year. I would like to see at least two sections offered in the Fall 2002 semester.
Mat 091 as an on-line course would serve students in the growing on-line degree program. Although we currently have plenty of opportunities for our campus students to take Mat 091, we have no current way to serve remote students in developmental math. The UWS math placement test is now being given on-line in a pilot format, and we have seen our first applicant who placed into Mat 091. Our only choice right now is to recommend that such students take developmental math at a local community college and then come back. We will need an on-line Mat 091 soon if we want to serve these students ourselves.
Mat 081 could be offered either on-line or through compressed video. My main concern with this course is to serve students who are already on our campuses. Several campuses are currently unable to offer Mat 081 because of low enrollment levels, yet most have at least some students who need the course.