Contents

  1. This agenda
  2. Extra copy of “Milestones” for this semester
  3. Separate handout of details about Net Support School Tutor
  4. Separate handout of details about setting up individual exams in MyMathLab
  5. Copies of students’ first day handouts, so you can see it from their point of view
  6. List of students “in-progress” who are starting somewhere other than Module 1 (0097) or Module 6 (0099)

What is changing?

What’s Old

/

What’s New

4-credit all-or-nothing Math 0097 and Math 0099 / Ten Modules, corresponding to Chapters 1, 2, 3, …, 10.
The student progresses through ten Mini-Courses.
Entire class moves at the same pace, takes exams at the same time / Students work at individual pace, subject to your prodding and coaching in time management as well as in algebra. Student is stuck on the current chapter until it’s mastered.
Traditional lecture / Only minimal Mini-Lecture, perhaps 15 minutes
Traditional note-taking / Pre-printed notes handouts in various forms: Mini-lecture handouts, module packets’ red pages of general reference information,
module packets’ blue pages of examples to accompany Notebook assignments #.#.N
You as lecturer / You as facilitator. More one-on-one interaction.
Homework at home / Most work gets done in the supervised lab setting. An hour or two outside of class is probably needed for most students.
Students need to put together 16 good weeks to succeed / Fault-tolerant structure. Illness, childcare crises, children’s issues, work schedules, evictions, breakups, vacations, moodiness, hangover, legal troubles, etc. come and go. The student eventually returns and continues from where he left off. There isn’t a need to catch up.
You failed this chapter, too bad. We’re moving on. / Study and retake the exam. Repeat until you meet the passing standard. Don’t move on until you do meet the passing standard.

What is staying the same?

  • The textbook
  • MyMathLab
  • The Final Exam
  • Math 0097 and 0099 are still there (but merely as “shell” courses). It’s still the unit of reporting final grades to the Registrar
  • You – and your knowledge and experience and familiarity with our students

Why is it changing?

  • Retention and graduation rates - Regents-level attention, pressure on the College.
  • NCAT, has coordinated and funded many colleges’ transition to modular delivery, with much success. See web site for background from NCAT’s perspective.
  • Dr. Palombi, former Dean initiated it.
  • President Sireno said “Full speed ahead!”

Desired outcomes

  • Fewer dropouts. More students stay, enroll in credit coursework, and graduate.
  • Students who need three semesters to get it done can complete three semesters with some quality of achievement – no more dilemma about passing them along with a charitable “C”
  • Students who work fast can finish sooner, sometimes doing 0097 + 0099 in a single semester.
  • Students who can work independently have that option.

Structure

First Day

Startup Packet #1 – Course Compass

Message to convey: Get online ASAP.

Startup Packet #2 – Notebook Setup

Message to convey: Get a three-ring notebook and use the notebook dividers.

For us – important to try to three-hole punch all handouts.

Startup Packet #3 – Syllabus

Message to convey: Read it. Sign and return the Statement Of Understanding

Startup Packet #4 – Campus Computers

Message to convey: You must check your College e-mail. If you don’t want to log in to a separate e-mail account, then set it up so it auto-forwards to your real e-mail. Complete the form and return it to your instructor.

Instructor issue: do you ever send e-mail to the entire class? Use Banner to do so. You can MyMathLab but students are all over the place in different modules.

The packet for your current module

The chapter is a mini-course and the packet is a syllabus for the mini-course + notes.

  • Grading criteria for the module.
  • Notebook assignment examples – blue pages.
  • Miscellaneous summary notes – red pages.

And a separate, related handout:

  • A standard schedule of assignments and time (customizable at

Instructor note: If you have students who are beginning from someplace other than Module 1 in Math 0097 or Module 6 in Math 0099, those students need different packets.

Major Student Mistake to avoid: The very first question in a Notebook #.#.N assignment asks the student “Do you have the blue pages in front of you right now?” If the student lies to the computer and goes ahead and tries to do the assignment without the blue pages, it’s just plain stupid. The Notebook is a quick tour of all the lesson’s concepts. The blue pages are step-by-step solutions of similar sample problems, much better than the “Help Me Solve This”. Be on the lookout for such situations and urge that the blue pages be used.

Second week handouts (second week, probably)

Packet #5 – A few more items of interest

Message to convey: Read and do. The MyMathLab tips can save you some aggravation. You need to know about especially if your instructor wants you to file timecards or make exam requests online. This is where you can build your own customized work schedule, too.

Packet #6 – Home computer advice

Message to convey: If you use your home computer for MyMathLab, this can be helpful info.

A typical work day

0:00 – 0:50 / Students work on current material.
Instructor circulates and gives assistance, pushes, encourages, as needed.
Some exams might be given (set up passwords, preferably in advance of class)
0:50 – 1:05 / Mini-Lecture on a topic of your choosing.
See for a link to a list of available handouts. (optional)
1:05 – 1:15 / Break time (many students work right through without taking a break).
1:15 – 2:00 / Work time continues (students work, instructor circulates, some exams possible)
Special / Sometimes, if you have a handful of students all struggling with the same topic, you might take them aside to a separate room for a special group time to have a traditional style of notes and problem-solving. Opportunities for this might come, for instance, with Chapter 2 word problems, Chapter 2 abstract equations, and Chapter 3 (equations of parallel lines and perpendicular lines). In Math 0097 this happened with some Chapter 7 topics (Rational Expressions).

About the Mini-Lecture

  • It protects us against the (groundless) complaint that “nobody is teaching us”.
  • It might develop some sense of “our class” identity.
  • It gives students another reason / requirement to show up for class.
  • I’ve been choosing more difficult problems for Mini-Lecture on purpose.
  • Keep it “Mini”. Try to not let it turn into a full-length traditional lecture. Preprinted worksheets can help keep it moving. Fill in the blanks, not copy a lot of information.
  • You can seize control of students’ computers while you do whole-class activities
  • There is something of value for everybody in a Mini-Lecture. Example: Chapter 4, systems of equations. Portions of this should be accessible to all students, even those who are still stumbling in Chapters 1 and 2. And for someone who has worked ahead, even deep into Math 0099 chapters, it is worthwhile review.
  • Don’t have to do the entire Mini-Lecture. Sometimes I just hand out one page. Sometimes I use front-and-back to last for two classes.

War on cell phones!

Unrestrained texting will kill somebody’s achievement. Run your own classroom the way you want to. I’m going to intensify my zero-tolerance policy from this year.

Final Exam

  • There’s a Course Compass course you’ll need to copy. It has the standard Practice Exam as well as the real one, hidden by default.
  • All students must take the standard departmental Final Exam regardless of how many or how few modules were completed.
  • Note that the Math 0097 Exam should be the full Departmental exam, even with the Chapter 6 problems in it.
  • Try to give the Final Exam online (work with me when the time comes, as there are details and issues).
  • But if you want to give a paper exam, I will print one (or two) for you. (Use the one that I print, with problems and answers shuffled, rather than the static original version.)
  • I have written up the detailed solutions to the sample exam in an online web page. At the 9799 page, click on Mini-Lectures, Chapter X for 0097, Chapter Y for 0099. Maybe too big to handout to everybody. I’ll try to have a few printed copies available in 101 when we get near the end.

Exit Exam

  • There’s an online Review you can copy – it’s a MyMathLab course with copies of Prof. Cotter’s worksheets.
  • Otherwise it’s all the same – give list of qualifying candidates to Traci Griffen, etc.

Grading

Course grade depends on how many modules completed + Final Exam score.

  • Individual chapter grades don’t get averaged. This would take too long and it gets too complicated if a student did Chapters 1, 2, 3 in a previous semester, for example.
  • And some ambitious students would get bogged down in pursuit of a 90% on this chapter and fall behind. On rare instances what I’ve done for such students is to allow them access to the Final Exam with no password needed, so if they want to go in and retry, they can do so and it doesn’t require extra work for you. Since it’s the same question pool in the Practice Exam, we aren’t giving anything away.
  • Scoring well on the Final Exam does count. That’s the major item in separating A, B, C. The Math 0097 Final Exam includes the Chapter 6 problems, so if you want an “A”, work ahead and do Chapter 6. Many students have earned “A” even without Chapter 6, surprisingly.
  • The challenge is to get students to use the Final Exam Review starting a couple weeks before the Final Exam. Some very bad scores among Math 0099 students last spring who thought they were headed for A’s and ended up with C’s.
  • Attendance and good behavior do count. See syllabus.
  • Bonus available for TI-84 Competency, Arithmetic by Hand competency. Students should contact me – schedule a time using the Exam Request on the menu. I’ll let you know the results. TI-84 competency exams probably will happen later in the semester. Arithmetic By Hand might dribble in as the semester goes on.
  • Notebook bonus – check them sometime near the end of the semester. Just please don’t give the full 5 points to everybody.
  • “Other”, “Miscellaneous”. Too much to keep track of during each of several different modules. I tried it. Just leave it at machine-scored Homework + Exams.

No need to do MyMathLab “Manage Incompletes”

Students’ grades start at 0 and increase to up to 30 as Homework and Quizzes are completed. The Module Final Exam can bring it the rest of the way up to 100.

Situations you can send to me

TI-84 Competency Exam and Arithmetic Without Calculator Exam

Optional, bonus for final grade. Students should go to and look down for the link for more info. We should probably announce this about one month into the semester and once a month thereafter. Students register for online for an exam time – I’ll proctor and let you know the results. I’ve set aside four or five hours during the week when such exams are available.

“Testing Out”

The Syllabus has a policy for students who wish to “Test Out” of a Module. It is new. I would be surprised if anyone ever uses it and more so if anyone succeeds.

If you have any students who are interested in doing this,send them to me.

Speedsters

If you have a student who’s working fast and might possibly make it into Module 6, 7, or beyond, I’m willing to get involved. Or you can copy those modules, too. We had three students who started at Module 1 and exited Math 0099 in the same semester. They didn’t get all the way to Module 10 and Albany may disapprove, but they did a lot of work and passed the Exit Exam. That’s good enough for me.

Preregistration

Pre-registration is scheduled for the week of November 14. We have to give advising forms to students during the prior week.

Note from the Milestones handout that students need to complete Module 4 on the week of November 14 in order to be “on schedule”. You can use this as a factor in deciding whether to recommend the student for registration in Math 0097 or 0099.

Someone who’s starting at Module 4 in the spring is a borderline situation.

I might have a dual section in the Spring for Math 0099 with room for Math 0097 students who might get through Module 3 or 4 but not quite finish Module 5. Such students might fit better in an 0099 classroom. Two students were in this situation last year. (I’ve been letting them take the Exit Exam if they complete through Module 8; there might be a minimum Final Exam score required in addition to completing Module 8 by now – or maybe in the future – still fine-tuning the grading policies.)

Assignment Types

How the MyMathLab is structured and why it was done that way:

Customizable assignments choices – and keeping students productive

  • “P” prep, “N” notebook, “A” homework, “Q” quiz, and Module Exam all required
  • Video Lecture, Animations, “B” and “C” Homework, Practice Quiz, Practice Exam all optional. The point values are trivial.

More about customization, below.

Assignment Type

Prep #.#.P

Short and sweet. Prerequisite skills for the lesson.

Lecture and Animation

Video Lecture and Animation worth almost nothing because MML gives them credit just for clicking on it, even if they bail out after a couple seconds, which seems to be the usual case. Most students get by without them but I think more students should have watched them. Some of the Animations are hokey.

Because of network troubles here, some days these just don’t work on campus computers. OIT have been looking into bandwidth but my gut feeling – and experience - is that it’s not just bandwidth, something else is not quite right here.

A few headphones available – see Work Study or Night Admin to borrow them – in case you have someone playing them at high volume. Not all computers have speakers.

Notebook #.#.N

It is very important that the student use the blue handout as a companion to the #.#.N assignments. Otherwise, he will be bogged down in the on-line Show Me An Example, which is often hard to follow. My printed handout is much more usable but all too often it is ignored, even after Question #1 asks the student “Do you have the blue paper in front of you right now?” The online Textbook link is often underused, too. The online Examples can be very very bad on occasion, long plain text excursions into overly-theoretical explanations that require scrolling through two or more screens, tempting students to just guess at the pattern and make the numbers fit.

HW #.#.A

The meat of the lesson. Designed to be about 30 minutes but sometimes it takes longer.

HW #.#.B and HW #.#.C

Good review, reinforcement, and depth, especially if College Algebra is in the future. They are not worth a lot of points. But try not to advertise how much stuff is optional, lest nobody do it. Try to not make 2-year Nursing students feel less worthy; try to not feed their attitude of “I don’t need this.” A common misconception that they come right after the HW #.#.A – they don’t – they come after subsequent lessons’ HW #.#.A. Green flags in MyMathLab indicate that a “prerequisite” is blocking you.

Quizzes

Goal is ten minutes or less, unlimited retries, on your own. The intent is “Are you getting this?”, to catch the problem of a student who just got by the homework on examples and guesswork without any learning. I’ve added more Practice Quizzes and Speed Drills as a result.

New in Fall 2011: The Quiz is a prerequisite for the next lesson, at some point (the “A” assignment? can’t remember right now). The reason is that too many students in the pilot program were skipping the quizzes. The quizzes would have caught their lack of depth and skills earlier. So now they’re forced to do the quizzes along the way.

Exams

See below for more information on setting up exams. Goal is 30 minutes or less, to-the-point, either you know it or you don’t. If a student insists on a quiet location, then the exam must happen outside of class time by special arrangement. I’ll help with proctoring. So far, everybody has done fine working in the lab environment.

Practice Exams

For the entire chapter: Practice exams are available – the problems come from the same pool as the real exam. Any complaints about “my exam wasn’t anything at all like the practice exam” are the fault of the student for taking too small of a statistical sample.

Incremental practice exams at checkpoints during the chapter. There are incremental practice exams available at various checkpoints in most, if not all, of the modules. These were added because of situations where a student completes a chapter by finessing his way through the problems on pattern matching and guesswork rather than learning. If a student manages to get to the end of a Module and the Module Final Exam is a total bomb-out, repeatedly, the incremental practice exams are the place to go.