Conference Session

Issues and Answers in Mathematics Education

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Paul Chanley, North Essex Community College; Michael E. Pelletier, Northern Essex Community College; Linda A. Desjardins, Northern Essex Community College; Lori Heymans, Northern Essex Community College

Tagged Divisions

Mathematics

a degree program.The genesis of SI at NECC began in fall of 2008 with Northeastern University's invitation toattend an SI workshop. SI provides peer-facilitated study sessions led by competentundergraduate SI leaders who attend scheduled classes with students and then help the studentsto practice and discuss course materials in a series of review sessions. Sessions are open to allstudents who are enrolled in the course and want to improve their understanding of the material,as well as improve their grades. In the fall of 2008, two of the four co-authors of this paper, withfinancial support from Northeastern University's STEP UP National Science Foundation grant,attended a workshop on SI held at Boston University.After completing the one-day

Conference Session

Issues and Answers in Mathematics Education

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Peter J. Sherman, Iowa State University

Tagged Divisions

Mathematics

the „dumbing down‟ uf universitylevel STEM curricula,, then isn‟t it possible that STEM education at the K-12 levels hassomehow failed? Furthermore, could it be that many of their peers who have deemed themselvestoo lacking in mathematical ability to pursue STEM majors, in fact, have a strong potential tounderstand mathematical concepts, but lack the opportunity to realize this potential throughoutthe K-12 STEM education curricula as currently constructed?These response questions are rhetorical. Of course, if indeed, students who graduate from STEMuniversity programs having glaring weaknesses in understanding of basic mathematical concepts,then, by definition, there is a fundamental flaw, at least in the guiding philosophy of STEMeducation

Conference Session

Issues and Answers in Mathematics Education

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Amelito G. Enriquez, Canada College

Tagged Divisions

Mathematics

theirpersistence from one semester to the next. Table 8 is a comparison of the persistence rates ofCañada students and 2009 Math Jam participants. Over the last several years, a study of firsttime fall semester Cañada students shows persistence rates of 55% for the following springsemester, 38% for the fall of the following year and 32% for the spring semester of the secondyear. For the 2009 Math Jam participants, the corresponding persistence rates were 93% forspring 2010, and 76% for fall 2010. At the time of writing this paper, the spring 2011enrollments had not been completed. With much higher persistence rates, the degree-completion and transfer rates for these students are expected to be much higher as well.Two important variables that are commonly