The fall of freshman year isn’t like high school any more than Oz is like Kansas. That fact is reflected in how much science and engineering majors struggle when they encounter math taught at the pace and in the style of university instruction.
“Nationally, there’s about a 40 to 60 percent failure rate for pre-calculus,” said Sandra Cooper, associate professor of mathematics at WSU. “Our goal is to change that for our students not by changing standards, but by changing other factors.”
It took a lot of work by the math department, the Registrar’s Office, and freshman advisers throughout the college, but last fall many students who were not passing pre-calculus in the sixth week of the class were given options. They could soldier on in the course – usually with predictable and dismal results – or they could join a “late start” version of pre-calculus that divided college algebra from trigonometry.
The late start classes met Monday through Friday – giving students an enormous amount of support for their learning.
“We had to have the special late start sections at 8 a.m. and in the late afternoon, when students’ other classes would not conflict,” Cooper said.
All pre-calculus students also have the support of a computerized system that frequently
tests their progress. Unlike facing one blanket set of problems – for example, all
the odd problems at the end of Chapter 7 in a book – the students face one problem
on the computer screen.
tests their progress. Unlike facing one blanket set of problems – for example, all
the odd problems at the end of Chapter 7 in a book – the students face one problem
on the computer screen.
If they get an answer right, they proceed. If they get an answer wrong, the computer system sends them back to other similar problems meant to shore up the underlying knowledge they need to understand what’s at issue in what they missed.
The data are in from the fall, and the experiment with the late start versions of the divided pre-calculus classes – although costly in administrative labor – proved to help students.
“It’s working well,” Cooper said. “There’s still room for improvement, but we are headed in the right direction.”
Students included those who were both enormously helped by the new system and enormously grateful for it.
“At the first exam, I was really not passing, despite all the work I was doing,” said junior transfer student Zach Duris. “The (regular class) was moving really fast and I was falling behind. But meeting five days a week really helped me, because I could retain what we were doing.”
The method of learning help Duris so much he earned an “A” grade after he switched into the late-start section taught by Cooper.
The chairman of the Department of Mathematics, K. “Ari” Ariyawansa, is pleased to see some positive results of the effort the department is making to help more students and meet them where they are in their journey through pre-calculus.
“Sandy Cooper, mathematics instructors, and math graduate students who participated in this pre-calculus experiment deserve the credit for its success,” said Ariyawansa.
For background information about Cooper’s research into teaching pre-calculus, see an earlier WSU Today article here.