The Accelerated Instructional Program Review Narrative Report
1. College: College of Alameda
Discipline, Department or Program: Mathematics
Date: October 22, 2007
Members of the Accelerated Instructional Program Review Team:
Kelly Pernell, Deidre Baker
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2. Narrative Description of the Discipline, Department or Program:
Please provide a general statement of primary goals and objectives of the discipline,
department, or program. Include any unique characteristics, degrees and certificates the
program or department currently offers, concerns or trends affecting the discipline,
department or program, and any significant changes or needs anticipated in the next three
years.
The primary goals and objectives of the Mathematics Department at the College of Alameda are to equip our students with
· practical math skills and knowledge
· the critical thinking and reasoning skills necessary to succeed in their chosen fields of study.
· time management skills to excel in their studies, at work, and in their life.
Our program offers an AA degree in Mathematics.
Mathematics instruction is rapidly changing given the addition of online and in-class technology resources for the discipline. The COA Math Department would like to improve its program by developing and offering online courses in mathematics, and gaining access to in-class technologies such as SmartBoards. We believe it is the best way to stay current with mathematics education and to be competitive with other community colleges in the state.
Educators in the state and nation are also doing a lot of research in Basic Skills mathematics instruction. There is a lot of research that strongly suggests that Math departments across the state should re-evaluate their teaching methodologies with respect to Basic Skills instruction. The COA Mathematics Department will be very involved with the Basic Skills Initiative at COA.
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3. Curriculum:
· Is the curriculum current and effective? Have course outlines been updated within the last three years? If not, what plans are in place to remedy this?
All course outlines are current for the Mathematics Department. Most of the course outlines were updated in 2006. The rest of the course outlines were updated in Fall 2007.
· Has your department conducted a curriculum review of course outlines? If not, what are the plans to remedy this?
The Math Department is currently working on reviewing its curriculum. We started this review in Fall 2007.
· What are the department’s plans for curriculum improvement (i.e., courses to be developed, updated, enhanced, or deactivated)? Have prerequisites, co-requisites, and advisories been validated? Is the date of validation on the course outline?
We would like to explore the possibility of merging Geometry with Trigonometry and making the Trigonometry class a 4 or 5 unit course. Our reason for this is to shorten the education plans for our students so they can transfer in a shorter amount of time. Another reason is that most students skip the Geometry prerequisite and are not adequately prepared for Trigonometry.
We are considering developing a PRE-Statistics course that would replace students’ need to complete both Math 201 AND 203 before enrolling in Math 13 (Statistics). We would like this PRE-Stat class to also satisfy the AA requirements for quantitative reasoning in 2009 (i.e. be equivalent in rigor and student learning outcomes to Math 203). We believe the PRE-Stat class would also improve success rates for Statistics students and improve retention rates for Math 203.
We are now working on developing an online course for Math 201. We hope to expand our online course offerings in the future.
· What steps has the department taken to incorporate student learning outcomes in the curriculum? Are outcomes set for each course? If not, which courses do not have outcomes?
We are just starting to incorporate student learning outcomes in the curriculum. Some faculty members already have them on their syllabi.
We have student learning outcomes for all of our developmental math courses. We plan to complete the SLOs for our college-level math courses by the end of Fall 2007.
· Describe the efforts to develop outcomes at the program level. In which ways do these outcomes align with the institutional outcomes?
We’re working on program level outcomes in Fall 2007. We cannot comment at this time on their alignment with the institutional outcomes.
· Recommendations and priorities.
We recommend that faculty members receive release time or money to develop the PRE-Stat class as well as online Math courses.
In the meantime, we recommend that all faculty and staff honor the department’s list of prerequisites for EACH course – especially for Math 13 (Statistics) and Math 50 (Trigonometry). We believe placing students in their appropriate level math courses is the most effective way to improve success AND retention rates in ALL math classes.
(Reference: Section D2. of the Basic Skills as a Foundation for Student Success in California Community Colleges -- Curricula and practices that have proven to be effective within specific disciplines are employed.)
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4. Instruction:
· Describe effective and innovative strategies used by faculty to involve students in the learning process. How has new technology been used by the department to improve student learning?
Some faculty members require their students spend 10 hours in the campus Math Lab throughout the semester. Giving this assignment as part of the course grade motivates students to actually do the assignment. Then, doing the assignment exposes the student to the math resources available to him/her for free.
Several math faculty members have become ETUDES-NG certified. We are working on developing an online Elementary Algebra course. We considering on initially offering it as a hybrid and will explore going completely online.
Some faculty members maintain class Web sites that include homework assignments and exam schedules available for download.
· How does the department maintain the integrity and consistency of academic standards within the discipline?
For our core Algebra and Basic Skills series the Math Department uses a standard textbook (Angel or Aufmann).
We could improve by insisting that no waivers on prerequisites, other than for equivalent work completed or multiple measures assessment tests, be granted for any of our courses.
(Reference: Section D5 of the Basic Skills as a Foundation for Student Success – A high degree of structure is provided in developmental education courses.)
· Discuss the enrollment trends of your department. What is the student demand for specific courses? How do you know? What do you think are the salient trends affecting enrollments?
It appears that our enrollment is decreasing. However, our productivity is increasing. Because we also note that our average class sizes in our developmental courses are too high, we should do an analysis on the number of sections we offer for each course.
Our Elementary Algebra and Statistics courses have the highest enrollment. Overall, there is a higher demand for developmental math courses. Please see the chart in the Appendix, which includes enrollment data for each math course.
Enrollment in Geometry is dismal. Our success rates in Trigonometry are around 55%. This rate could be improved by ensuring that all students take Geometry before enrolling in Trigonometry.
With the new Math 203 AA requirement in 2009, we should see a small spike in enrollment in Math 203.
· Are courses scheduled in a manner that meets student needs and demand? How do you know?
The Math Department offers many options to students to meet their needs – day and evening classes, Weekend College, and Inter-session. We are looking to expand these options to include online and/or hybrid math classes.
The Math Department would like to ask how we can determine WHEN students want to take classes (not just mathematics classes). This will help us to determine the best schedule to meet the demand.
· Recommendations and priorities:
Over the next year, we would like to analyze enrollment, retention rates, and success rates for Intercession, Weekend College, and summer.
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5. Student Success:
· Describe student retention and program completion (degrees, certificates, persistence
rates) trends in the department. What initiatives can the department take to improve
retention and completion rates?
Our advanced courses in Calculus, Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, Discrete Math, Symbolic Logic, and Statistics have adequate retention and success rates – in the 70% range with a few outliers.
The success and retention rates for Intermediate Algebra are not as stellar. It would if we could split Calculus-bound students and the Statistics-bound students into separate sections or courses. Perhaps the development of a PRE-Statistics course (equivalent in AA requirements to Math 203) will help boost enrollment in college level statistics and therefore boost our transfer rates to 4-year universities.
We are currently working on developing an online and/or hybrid Elementary Algebra course. This will allow students the flexibility to complete courses at their own pace, therefore increasing their chances for success and completion of the course.
The Math Department feels that decreasing the average class size of Developmental courses will increase success and completion rates. Success rates will also improve if you put teaching assistants in all Developmental Math classes, especially large ones. Getting these same teaching assistants to also tutor in the Math Lab would greatly improve student success. These teaching assistants would have extra knowledge of the students’ behaviors in class and the instructor’s methodologies.
(Reference: Section D10 of the Basic Skills as a Foundation for Student Success – Programs provide comprehensive academic support mechanisms, including the use of trained tutors.)
· What are the key needs of students that affect their learning? What services are needed for these students to improve their learning? Describe the department’s efforts to access these services. What are your department’s instructional support needs?
Our students often do not purchase the required text for the course. Often it is because they do not receive their Financial Aid in enough time to purchase books and supplies by the first day or week of class. Perhaps we can put a few copies of each text on reserve in the library for these students. The Math Department will need a budget for this to happen as book publishers are becoming increasingly stingy with evaluation copies.
We feel SmartBoards will help with student learning in the mathematics class room. Electronic classroom notes available to students for download will help students with their own class note-taking and allow them to participate more in classroom discussions.
As mentioned above, decreasing average class sizes and adding teaching assistants in all developmental math courses (especially large ones) will improve success, retention, and persistence rates for our students.
· Describe the department’s effort to assess student learning at the course level. Describe the efforts to assess student learning at the program level. In which ways has the department used student learning assessment results for improvement?
The Math Department will track course grades and success rates for the majority of the SLOs for each course. The district provides this data to us, so it is a simple thing to track.
The department is thinking of creating standardized multiple choice pre- and post-tests for each course. We would not require these standardized tests be part of the course grades but rather simply only used to assess the SLOs for the course. The department is also thinking of tracking attendance patterns of students in each course to help assess their time management skills.
We have not yet determined what measures we will use to track students at the program level. We do know, however, that we will not use the number of AA degrees in mathematics because not enough of our students major in math. We, may, however, choose to monitor transfer rates to 4-year universities and break down the rates by the last level math class students took before transferring. We would appreciate help from the institutional researcher in determining how best to assess our program level outcomes.
· Recommendations and priorities.
Decrease average class sizes in all developmental math courses.
Add instructional aids to all developmental math courses (especially the large ones)
Add SmartBoards to a few classrooms and schedule all math classes to be held in SmartBoard rooms.
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6. Human and Physical Resources (including equipment and facilities)
· Describe your current level of staff, including full-time and part-time faculty, classified
staff, and other categories of employment.
The Math Department currently has six full-time faculty members. The rest are adjunct faculty. The Division II office assists us with administrative duties. The college is creating department chairs for the coming year.
· Describe your current utilization of facilities and equipment.
The Math Department primary use of facilities and equipment is use of classrooms. We manage the Math Lab on the second floor of the Library. Some faculty use computer labs for their classes.
· Are the human and physical resources, including equipment and location, adequate for all
the courses offered by your department (or program)? What are your key staffing and
facilities needs for the next three years? Why?
Members of the Math Department need a significant upgrade to their office computers because they haven’t been updated in over five years (some in over ten years). We anxiously await the distribution of new computers and printers to COA faculty. Faster, more equipped computers, make for more current content in our courses.
The Math lab computers are current and fine for the next year or two.
The installation of whiteboards in all classrooms was an improvement. We would really like to gain access to SmartBoards and believe all math classes be taught in rooms with SmartBoards. The reason for this is that it will help build electronic content for our online math courses as well as assist our disabled students with notes.
Every math course offered on this campus should be scheduled in a classroom that is conducive to mathematics learning. Some courses have been scheduled in really tiny computer labs with very small chalk/whiteboards. This is not acceptable. The most important aspect of the math classroom is large white or SmartBoards on which to write. Large math classes need individual desks. Small math classes can use big tables.