Daniel Konicek Staff Writer

The math department hopes to use data provided from the exams to improve math education

Early this quarter, math students across the campus took a short, six question quiz during their class time. This small assessment is an effort by the math department to track how students improve core skills through the math sequences offered on campus.

“Basically what we are looking for is quantitative and symbolic reasoning skills, which is one of our core abilities, and this helps us show the college that we deserve to be accredited as a college.” Math Department Coordinator Melonie Rasmussen said. “The math department decided that rather than give individual assessments to each class that we would come up with one assessment that was for all classes, and that it was testing critical thinking skills…”

This is the second year that this test has been administered to math students at this college and further tests are planned in the future to monitor how effective the math sequences are at covering these core abilities.

“The expectation is that by the time students get to college level math, like [Math] 131 for elementary [education] majors, or Math 107 for regional transfers, Math 147 for business students, at those hundred level classes, we expect to see more critical thinking than we would in their developmental sequences,” Rasmussen said. “In the higher level classes like the calculus sequences or the 200 level sequences we expect to see even more than our 100 level students with the thought that as students progress through mathematics that their critical thinking skills and their quantitative and symbolic reasoning would actually increase.”

Students thinking that this is a test to dread need not worry. The data will be used as a small part of the math department’s ongoing mission to provide the best possible education for the students, and will not affect grades.

“This one little thing does not make or break our accreditation. It is really just another way to say ‘Hey, we are trying to look at the big picture of our students growing as they go through the math sequences.’” Rasmussen said. “It was not as if someone asked us for evidence, it was just a matter of ‘We would like to show you what we think is going on.”’