Design of an International Bridge Program for Engineering Calculus

Sandra B. Nite; Brady Creel; Jim Morgan; Jowaher E. Almarri

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Conference: 2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Salt Lake City, Utah
Publication Date: June 23, 2018
Start Date: June 23, 2018
End Date: July 27, 2018
Conference Session: Mathematics Division Technical Session 4
Tagged Division: Mathematics
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Page Count: 9
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--30268
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/30268
Download Count: 439

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Paper Authors

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Sandra B. Nite Texas A&M University orcid.org/0000-0002-0181-1150

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Sandra Nite, Ph.D., is a Research Scientist in the Department of Mathematics at Texas A&M University, where she has taught 10 different courses in mathematics and mathematics education. She has served on several committees in the mathematics department, including course development for teacher education in mathematics. Her research agenda includes engineering calculus success, including high school preparation for college. Previously, she taught 8 additional courses at the college level and 13 different high school courses in mathematics and science. She has worked with teacher professional development for over 20 years, and served as mathematics curriculum coordinator for 7 years. She works with teachers from all corners of Texas with teacher quality grants, including a number of teachers in the juvenile justice schools.

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Brady Creel Texas A&M University at Qatar

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Dr. Brady Creel is director of the Office of Development, Engagement and Outreach at Texas A&M University's branch campus in Doha, Qatar. This office offers an array of K-12 and pre-college STEM enrichment programs, in addition to teacher professional development, strategic school partnerships and continuing education.

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Jim Morgan Charles Sturt University

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Jim Morgan is the father of two daughters and the spouse of an engineer. Before joining Charles Sturt University as Professor of Engineering and Inaugural Course Director in 2015, he was on the faculty in civil engineering at Texas A&M for over 30 years. Jim has been active in the freshman engineering program at A&M for nearly 20 years; was an active participant in the NSF Foundation Coalition from 1993 to 2003; also has received funding for his engineering education research from the Department of Education FIPSE program and from the National Science Foundation CCLI program.
He is active in the American Society for Engineering Education, is past chair of the Freshman Programs Division, currently serves on the steering committee. In addition to his teaching in engineering, Jim served several years as Co-Director of the Eisenhower Leadership Development Program in the Center for Public Leadership at the George Bush School of Government and Public Service; and also served as director of Aggie STEM with funding from the Texas Education Agency and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

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Jowaher E. Almarri

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Jowaher Almarri is working in the Office of Development, Engagement, and Outreach as the Manager of Development and Outreach for the STEM Development at Texas A&M University at Qatar. She received her MBA from HEC- Paris.
In her job, Jowaher is implementing several outreach activities for middle and high school students to help raise awareness of the importance of math and science and promote engineering as a field of study. Jowaher has also collaborated in offering and teaching an undergraduate first year seminar at Texas A&M University at Qatar.
Jowaher also leads development and cultivation of philanthropic relationships with external stakeholders and partners to identify and prioritize University fundraising and development goals.

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Abstract

A large university in the southwest U.S. established a bridge program for incoming freshmen to increase success in engineering calculus and retention in engineering majors. The program was initially grant-funded but became institutionalized because of continued success. Participants in the program who were at high risk of failure in mathematics, based on the mathematics placement exam (MPE), performed as well in their first semester as their peers who had scored higher on the (MPE). The program was fully online, consisting of practice problems, quizzes, example videos, textbook, and required time with a live tutor (online). The original program spread the 36 hours of tutoring over six weeks, and the revised program compressed it into three weeks. The content of the program was used as a basis of a face-to-face bridge program at an engineering school in the western Asia. The same MPE and cut score were used at both campuses. However, the program was adapted from a fully online to a fully face-to-face program. In addition, different educational experiences for the students in the western Asia were taken into account in the teaching strategies implemented. Students in the western Asia campus were somewhat stronger in symbolic manipulation and use of formulas to solve standard problems. However, they had little experience with problems in a real-life context. The instruction on the same mathematics content involved hands-on activities designed to deepen understanding of mathematics concepts, laying a stronger foundation on which to build calculus knowledge and skills. Students were presented with real-life data and asked to work collaboratively to analyze and find a function to model the data. They learned how to utilize a graphing calculator to aid their understanding of the relationship between graphs and their equations and find solutions to problems that did not lend themselves to traditional algebraic manipulation. In the second year of the program, additional time was allotted to the program, making room to add another small component. Because spatial visualization is so important in engineering, activities were added to support improvement in this area. Students explored spatial relationships of 3-D objects through a drawing task, paper models, and computer simulations. Through the development of these two bridge programs that addressed primarily the same mathematics content to support engineering calculus concepts and skills, we can see the possibilities to adapt a program to different groups of students to achieve greater success. This paper describes the design, similarities, and differences of these programs along with quantitative data results.

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Nite, S. B., & Creel, B., & Morgan, J., & Almarri, J. E. (2018, June), Design of an International Bridge Program for Engineering Calculus Paper presented at 2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--30268

TY - CPAPER
AB - A large university in the southwest U.S. established a bridge program for incoming freshmen to increase success in engineering calculus and retention in engineering majors. The program was initially grant-funded but became institutionalized because of continued success. Participants in the program who were at high risk of failure in mathematics, based on the mathematics placement exam (MPE), performed as well in their first semester as their peers who had scored higher on the (MPE). The program was fully online, consisting of practice problems, quizzes, example videos, textbook, and required time with a live tutor (online). The original program spread the 36 hours of tutoring over six weeks, and the revised program compressed it into three weeks. The content of the program was used as a basis of a face-to-face bridge program at an engineering school in the western Asia. The same MPE and cut score were used at both campuses. However, the program was adapted from a fully online to a fully face-to-face program. In addition, different educational experiences for the students in the western Asia were taken into account in the teaching strategies implemented. Students in the western Asia campus were somewhat stronger in symbolic manipulation and use of formulas to solve standard problems. However, they had little experience with problems in a real-life context. The instruction on the same mathematics content involved hands-on activities designed to deepen understanding of mathematics concepts, laying a stronger foundation on which to build calculus knowledge and skills. Students were presented with real-life data and asked to work collaboratively to analyze and find a function to model the data. They learned how to utilize a graphing calculator to aid their understanding of the relationship between graphs and their equations and find solutions to problems that did not lend themselves to traditional algebraic manipulation. In the second year of the program, additional time was allotted to the program, making room to add another small component. Because spatial visualization is so important in engineering, activities were added to support improvement in this area. Students explored spatial relationships of 3-D objects through a drawing task, paper models, and computer simulations. Through the development of these two bridge programs that addressed primarily the same mathematics content to support engineering calculus concepts and skills, we can see the possibilities to adapt a program to different groups of students to achieve greater success. This paper describes the design, similarities, and differences of these programs along with quantitative data results.
AU - Sandra B. Nite
AU - Brady Creel
AU - Jim Morgan
AU - Jowaher E. Almarri
CY - Salt Lake City, Utah
DA - 2018/06/23
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Design of an International Bridge Program for Engineering Calculus
UR - https://peer.asee.org/30268
DO - 10.18260/1-2--30268
ER -