Description

Plane Analytic Geometry and Calculus I (MA 16100) is a historically difficult, required course for engineering and science majors. The traditional configuration consists of 250 students meeting in a large lecture 3 times per week and twice per week in smaller recitations of size 40. Additionally, those who repeat the course often continue to encounter difficulty. A scalable re-design has been implemented to attempt to address the needs of students that are not being met in the traditional configuration by diverting resources from lecture to problem sessions and from traditional Q&A recitations to student-driven presentation/collaboration-based recitations. The students work in groups of 4 on activity sheets during the weekly problem session and instructors are available to assist at a ratio of 15:1. A complete set of lectures have been cut into 5-10 minutes tagged clips and stored in a database so that students may reference them as needed to study and complete online homework. Preliminary results indicate a strong socio-academic environment in the problem sessions and within the recitations. A comparison to the traditional sections on standardized assessments indicates the experimental section maintains or exceeds the outcomes of the traditional version. Furthermore, students may benefit in ways that contribute to their academic growth and promote long term student success but may not manifest on the high-stakes assessments in the current semester.

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Jan 1st, 12:00 AM

Lecture-Free Calculus for Science and Engineering

Plane Analytic Geometry and Calculus I (MA 16100) is a historically difficult, required course for engineering and science majors. The traditional configuration consists of 250 students meeting in a large lecture 3 times per week and twice per week in smaller recitations of size 40. Additionally, those who repeat the course often continue to encounter difficulty. A scalable re-design has been implemented to attempt to address the needs of students that are not being met in the traditional configuration by diverting resources from lecture to problem sessions and from traditional Q&A recitations to student-driven presentation/collaboration-based recitations. The students work in groups of 4 on activity sheets during the weekly problem session and instructors are available to assist at a ratio of 15:1. A complete set of lectures have been cut into 5-10 minutes tagged clips and stored in a database so that students may reference them as needed to study and complete online homework. Preliminary results indicate a strong socio-academic environment in the problem sessions and within the recitations. A comparison to the traditional sections on standardized assessments indicates the experimental section maintains or exceeds the outcomes of the traditional version. Furthermore, students may benefit in ways that contribute to their academic growth and promote long term student success but may not manifest on the high-stakes assessments in the current semester.