Innovations in MTH 100E Kristen Bieda and Raven McCrory, Teacher Education Steven Wolf, Post-Doc in CREATE for STEM Funded by the LPF Endowment through the CREATE for STEM Institute

Personnel  Pavel Sikorskii, Julie Cioni, Ron Powers, Mathematics faculty support  Joanne Philhower, Jamie Wernet, Frances Harper, TE Teaching Assistants  Jen Nimtz & Kenneth Bradfield, Graduate Research Assistants  Funded by the LPF Endowment through CREATE for STEM and by a TUES grant from NSF

Why this project?  Remedial math at MSU: over 1000 students per year (Freshman class of 7800)  High failure rates: 15-25% drop or fail  Another 10-20% below 2.0  Prerequisite for College Algebra  Essential for later success in STEM-related fields Math Perspective

Why this project?  Future math teachers need realistic teaching experiences  Microteaching Lab has been problematic Teacher Education Perspective

Win-Win  For Math  For TE

A non-credit, on-campus enrichment seminar (Intermediate Algebra Workshop) that meets twice a week for two hours a session Open to students taking MTH 1825, an online developmental math course using ALEKS ~ 10 sections per semester. Enrollment in most sections capped at 20. Most taught by undergraduate LAs (some of who are students taking TE secondary math ed coursework). What is MTH 100E?

Who takes MTH 100E? Primarily freshman Those who do not place into MTH 103 or higher based on their placement exam score Self-selected Students in the College Admissions Achievement Program (CAAP) or College Assistance Migrant Program Scholars Initiative (CAMP)

Who takes MTH 100E? Approximately 40% are minorities by race Approximately 15% intend to pursue STEM majors (based on 2012 data) Some future mathematics teachers

What are the ongoing challenges in teaching MTH 100E? Reducing failures and drops in MTH1825 from ~30% Students’ attitudes about math and math courses (Larnell, 2010) Students’ prior knowledge and math coursework experience varies widely in 100E Disparities in achievement levels and ALEKS performance

Fall 2012 Pilot Intervention MTH 100E Tuesdays MTH 100E Thursdays

MTH 100E Tuesdays TE 407 student instructors Inquiry- Oriented Curriculum & Group Work Coaching by GAs Fall 2012 Pilot Intervention

MTH 100E Thursdays MTH 100E Tuesdays Fall 2012 Pilot Intervention

Secondary Mathematics Majors as Instructors TE 407 is a 5 credit course that includes a microteaching lab experience Lab is supervised by graduate TAs who are former secondary mathematics teachers and mathematics education graduate students Beginning in 3 rd week of semester, pairs of TE 407 students took responsibility to plan and enact instruction under supervision of TAs Fellow TE 407 peers observed instruction and participated in a post- lesson discussion with instructors after TE 100E class

Inquiry-oriented curriculum MTH 100E students need to develop more than just procedural knowledge. Tasks in lessons were designed to develop conceptual understanding, problem solving skills, and reasoning.

Example 1: Simplifying Rational Expressions Key Idea 1: Understanding the structure of rational expressions i.e. that and are portioning a whole into different size parts

Example 1: Simplifying Rational Expressions Key Idea 1: Understanding the structure of rational expressions i.e. that and are portioning a whole into different size parts Key Idea 2: Understanding the process/object distinction i.e. x + 3 describes a process AND is an object

Example 1: Simplifying Rational Expressions Key Idea 1: Understanding the structure of rational expressions i.e. that and are portioning a whole into different size parts Key Idea 2: Understanding the process/object distinction i.e. x + 3 describes a process AND is an object Key Idea 3: Understanding that simplifying fractions and rational expressions involves applying the multiplicative identity i.e. that x * 1 = x for all real numbers x.

The Lesson on Simplifying Rational Expressions (from CPM curriculum ) Part I: Have students consider what they know about the number 1. Part II: Have students consider the claim that anything divided by itself equals 1. Students are asked to generate their own algebraic fractions that equal 1. Part III: Students are asked to simplify and Part IV: Students are asked to use what they know about the number 1 to simplify some given rational expressions

Reflections from 100E Students “This is my favorite class this semester.”

Reflections from 100E Students “This is my favorite class this semester.” “I found the equations surprisingly easy to create when usually it’s fairly difficult for me.”

Reflections from 100E Students “This is my favorite class this semester.” “I found the equations surprisingly easy to create when usually it’s fairly difficult for me.” “ This class wasn’t helpful. It’s more for math majors who want to deeply understand math. Not people who just want to know how to solve the problem.”

Reflections from TE 407 students “I really enjoy the fact that we have a micro-teaching lab, because being able to connect what we've talked about in lecture and put it to use in the classroom as been really neat to see.”

Reflections from TE 407 students "The micro teaching lab observation and discussions about them have helped me change my ways of thinking what makes a ‘good’ teacher. How you can question students to help lead them to the answer without being too direct. It is still going to take time before it becomes second nature but it has definitely had an impact.”

Reflections from TE 407 students “ I'd say the 5pm meetings on Tuesdays really help us to unravel all the different aspects of what is happening in the MTL…. these meetings help clear up what and why we did, if it worked, and what we could do differently. I think the transparency it brings allows us to better accept changing of our ‘image’ of teaching from ‘telling’ to ‘student-based learning’.”

What data do we have?  Course data:  ALEKS (homework, assessments, time on task)  Exams (final and interim)  Math Placement Exam scores  MTH103 College Algebra enrollment and grades  MTH 100E and PSTs written reflections

2012 Results Summary  100E students start out behind other 1825 students  100E students end up even with or ahead of other 1825 students on the various measures  100E Intervention students have the best performance  These results carry over into MTH103 College Algebra Report available:

2012 MTH1825 Study Population  Only students in 1825 online sections  Excludes Lyman Briggs and DREW students  Group 1: 1825 only: 701 students  Group 2: 100E non-intervention sections: 71 students  Group 3: 100E intervention sections: 34 students  Total: 806 students

2012 MTH1825 Study Population  Out of 806 students in the study, 100 unique majors in 15 colleges. The top three, and two others especially relevant to CREATE, CollegeNumberPercent of total Social Science Business Natural Science Education566.9 Engineering374.6

100E students start out behind Scores for 100E (Groups 2 & 3 together) are significantly lower than those for Group 1 (1825 only) Statistically, Groups 2 & 3 are equivalent on these measures

Comparative final results Group 3 (intervention) scored higher on both measures: Final exam and ALEKS Post. Not statistically significant, but practically, predicts a higher grade in College Algebra by half a grade point.

Withdraw, Fail, D  Group 3 had lowest rate of failure/D  Group 3 had NO students who apparently dropped the course (Groups 1 and 2 had 7% and 3% respectively)  Group 3 had NO students with zero on both the final exam and final grade (Groups 1 & 2 each had 1%) % zero final grade % <2.0

Enrollment & performance in College Algebra Group 3:  Higher percentage enrollment  Comparable % with 2.0 or higher  But getting 2.0 is not good enough…

Challenges  Attitudes and beliefs data – low response rate  SOLUTION: homework credit for completing the surveys this year  Assessment not aligned with project curriculum  Non-normality of data restricts statistics that can be used  Sample size issues  Staffing limitations  Maximum of 20 – 30 future mathematics teachers each year  Model requires an additional TE teaching assistant AND a ¼ course equivalent for a TE faculty member.

Current work  Second round of implementation Fall 2013  Writing items to assess mathematical proficiency  Developing models to predict  1825 outcomes  103 (College Algebra) outcomes  Collecting longitudinal data about the 2012 cohort to follow their progress at MSU (in all three groups)

2013 Model MTH 100E Sect. 76 Tuesdays TE 407 lab A MTH 100E Sect. 76 Thursdays TE 407 lab B TA 1 TA 2

Take home messages  Intervention works for MTH100E students  100E is important  Final Exam and ALEKS assessment are NOT highly correlated  None of this is good enough:  Drop/fail rates are MUCH too high Important to figure out why not. Are students able to game the system? Is ALEKS not teaching what is being tested?

We still have a lot of work to do… Better preparing graduate TAs to support inquiry-oriented instruction Finding the “sweet spot” of scaffolding and curriculum support for TE 407 student instructors Scale up to a larger corps of Learning Assistants who implement the curriculum

Thank you! Report available: