Atlanta, Georgia
June 23, 2013
June 23, 2013
June 26, 2013
2153-5965
Mathematics
11
23.111.1 - 23.111.11
10.18260/1-2--19125
https://peer.asee.org/19125
1183
Jennifer Vandenbussche is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Southern Polytechnic State University. In addition to her research in the scholarship of teaching and learning, she does mathematics research in in the area of combinatorics, especially extremal graph theory. Her primary interest lies in coloring and matching problems in graphs.
William Griffiths is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at Southern Polytechnic State University. His research interests include enumerative combinatorics, permutation pattern avoidance, and the scholarship of teaching and learning.
Christina Scherrer is an Associate Professor of industrial engineering technology at Southern Polytechnic State University. Her research interests are in the application of operations research and economic decision analysis to the public sector and in assessing education innovation. She teaches primarily statistics and logistics courses, at both the undergraduate and graduate level. She received her Ph.D. in industrial engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
A Study of Students’ Perceptions of Mathematics Homework Policies, with Emphasis on Engineering UndergraduatesAmong members of the post-secondary mathematics community, it is an almost universallyaccepted axiom that completing homework is essential to student success in mathematics. Withentry-level mathematics courses serving as a stumbling block to the successful completion of adegree in engineering and engineering technology, encouraging students to complete morehomework in these courses seems to be essential. Unfortunately, there is little rigorous researchto guide a mathematics instructor toward achieving this goal. It would be helpful to know whatkey factors tend to prevent students from completing their mathematics homework and whatpolicies are effective in encouraging a high completion rate. It would also be helpful to know ifthere seem to be certain aspects that are more important for different genders, ages, or otherdemographics.We surveyed more than 1,000 undergraduates in mathematics courses ranging from CollegeAlgebra to Calculus III, asking them questions about their homework completion habits and whattheir instructors could do to encourage more homework completion. The survey uncovered someinteresting variations in responses across demographics, including major, gender, race, andcourse level.In this paper we provide a review of the previous research in this area, describe the details behindthe administration of the survey, and present numerous results. We focus on engineering andengineering technology students, which was approximately 60% of our sample. In addition toproviding insights toward possible effective classroom policies, the results of this survey caninform future rigorous research, helping mathematics education researchers to focus on the mostpertinent variables in their experiments.
Vandenbussche, J., & Griffiths, W. G., & Scherrer, C. R. (2013, June), A Study of Students’ Perceptions of Mathematics Homework Policies, with Emphasis on Engineering Undergraduates Paper presented at 2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Atlanta, Georgia. 10.18260/1-2--19125
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