Assessing the Allegheny College precalculus course offerings

 

 

Ronald Harrell and Tamara Lakins

Allegheny College

 

 

Background and goals

 

1. Describe Allegheny as a college:  the size of its student body, size/makeup of the math department, mention natural science inclinations of students.
2. Describe the current precalculus course offerings at Allegheny:  the type, content, and original intent (i.e., original department goals for offering) of each course (intermediate algebra, and a sequence of two courses consisting of Calculus I together with a precalculus, algebra, and trigonometry review).
3. Describe the goal of our assessment project:  wanted to determine whether our current offerings addressed the needs of the mathematics department, its client departments, and our students, as well investigate how other institutions in our comparison group handle precalculus and intro calculus, in an effort to decide whether our current offerings needed to be modified, replaced, or eliminated.

 

Description:  What did we do?

 

1. Describe the questions and data that the department suggested for review:  student performance in these courses and subsequent courses, conversations with client departments about their needs, information about course offerings of schools in our comparison group.
2. Briefly describe how the data/answers were obtained.
3. Note that a plan to also review the high school backgrounds of a small sample of students was abandoned as too ambitious.

 

Insights:  What did we learn?

 

1. Briefly describe the conclusions drawn from the data analysis.
2. Discussion in department ultimately resulted in a proposal to
1. replace current intermediate algebra course by two courses: one a terminal, algebra-based elementary modeling course, and a traditional precalculus course;
2. replace current calculus/precalculus sequence by a terminal calculus sequence which is less theoretical than our traditional calculus and still incorporates a review of appropriate concepts from algebra and precalculus.
3. Describe our next steps.
1. Complete discussion of learning goals and objectives for the new courses, to be accomplished by the end of the Fall 2002 semester.
2. Discuss and finalize methods for assessing whether the learning goals and objectives for the new courses are being met, to be accomplished by the end of the 2002-03 academic year.
3. Discuss and finalize methods for assessing the ongoing success of the new courses, to be accomplished by the end of the 2002-03 academic year.
4. Give recommendations regarding the practicality of the type of extensive grade analysis that we conducted.

 

Acknowledgements

 

Acknowledge the assistance of the Allegheny College Associate Dean and our PREP team leader (Bonnie Gold).