A new approach to how developmental mathematics are taught at Barton Community College has raised success rates from mediocre to above average, Barton math instructor Brian Howe told college trustees Wednesday.
Howe gave a presentation on the project to “redesign” math courses. Research began in 2011, the pilot was launched in the fall of 2012, and the math department went “all-in” in the fall of 2013.
“We knew intuitively that students weren’t being successful and the data showed it,” Howe’s report noted. Overall pass rates for Basic Algebra and Intermediate Algebra were 48-49 percent — far below the national average pass rate of about 65 percent. However, in the fall 2013 term, the average pass rate for College Prep Math was 64 percent. “If students who dropped the course are removed from the pass rate calculation (that is, only count students who started and were still enrolled at the end of the course), then the average pass rate was 77 percent.”
Howe was part of a research team that included Developmental Education Coordinator Carol Murphy, and fellow members of the math department: Sarah Bretches, Kristen Hathcock, Joseph Harrington and Jann Sherman. Their goals were to increase success rates, improve retention rates, save students time and money by “shortening the pipeline,” and increase students’ success as they moved on to College Algebra. They studied the award-winning SMART Math program used by Jackson (Tenn.) State Community College.
The educators looked at the competencies taught in developmental arithmetic and algebra courses, eliminated topic overlaps, and created 12 modules. The “College Prep Math” course previously mentioned covered the first three modules. Once a student completes all 12, he or she is eligible to enroll in College Algebra.
The traditional course structure no longer worked, so courses were redesigned, Howe said. One of the biggest achievements with the redesign is that the student to teacher ratio, which was 20-1 in a traditional classroom, is now 7-1, using something called the ACE (Academic Center for Enrichment) Lab.
Students who can’t complete a course the first time can “fail forward.” That is, if they take the course again, they can keep the work they successfully completed and continue, instead of starting over. And while it used to take a year and a half of developmental instruction before a student could take College Algebra, some students can complete all 12 modules and be ready in one year.
“As a teacher, my role changes,” Howe said. “I am no longer on the stage any more. I am a facilitator-instructor.”
“Other schools are talking about us,” Howe said. “Kansas City, Kan., did (a redesign) but kept the original courses. We have been the most radical. We’re going to be able to lead on this, here in the state.”
Trustee Don Learned, a retired educator, called the redesign “exciting.”
“In a typical math class, a student can get lost after two weeks and end up floundering,” Learned said. The redesigned courses don’t allow the students to passively sit through lectures without interacting with the instructor, and students are shown that success is the result of achievement, not luck.
Barton President Dr. Carl Heilman also praised the math reboot.
“We were able to pick up our effectiveness, and prove it,” he said of the measurable results. At the state level, Heilman said he expects continued emphasis on developmental education.
Developmental Education Coordinator Carol Murphy will make a presentation to the Kansas Board of Regents in June. Meanwhile, trustees asked if other remedial courses could undergo a similar redesign.
“Accelerated learning programs are being seen across the county,” Murphy said. However, learning math is sequential, while the process of learning reading and writing is different.