125 Geoscience Education (Posters)

Monday, 28 October 2013
9:00 AM - 6:30 PM
Hall D

SUCCESSFUL MATHEMATICS PREPARATION FOR UNDERGRADUATE GEOSCIENCE COURSES USING THE MATH YOU NEED, WHEN YOU NEED IT ACROSS DOZENS OF COURSES AND INSTITUTIONS

Paper number: 125-6
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 9:00 AM – 6:30 PM

Authors

Abstract

Since its pilot implementation in 2008, more than 5000 students and approximately 40 instructors have participated in a study of the effectiveness of The Math You Need, When You Need It [TMYN]. Both two-year and four-year institutions are included in this study, with about 50% of each institution type participating. In addition, courses were integrated at both the introductory and upper-level. The results of this large-scale expansion of our pilot study indicate that asynchronous, self-paced web tutorials, like TMYN (http://serc.carleton.edu/mathyouneed/index.html), support and facilitate quantitative learning in a geoscience context. When integrated into a geoscience course, TMYN provides students with mathematical support, motivation and value for quantitative skills and opportunities for students to succeed. Student success is demonstrated in pre- to posttest changes indicating that more than 70% of students show learning gains when TMYN is implemented in a geoscience course. Furthermore, although learning gains are, on average, realized for all students, students who perform low on the incoming pretest improve at a higher rate on the posttest than their better-prepared peers (those who perform higher on the pretest). Thus, TMYN has the effect of “leveling the playing field” for all students. As this NSF-funded project draws to a close, we summarize our findings with a particular focus on the learning gains shown by participating students and ways that this innovative approach to “bridging the mathematics preparation gap” may be implemented in other disciplines.