Math courses test online method
Students who struggle with traditional-style math courses may have a better alternative their next time around. At the recommendation of a special committee of instructors, the math department has begun offering electronic math classes, which allow students to do their homework and quizzes online.
According to senior math lecturer and coordinator Claudia Mora Bornholdt, students can get online tutoring 24 hours a day, while still attending class four days a week to get instruction.
“We’re trying to figure out a more effective way of getting the students through 1010 so they can get through 1050,” Bornholdt said. “We’re hoping that more students, of course, do well in these classes. That’s our goal, is to help students out. We thought this was one way that we can achieve that.”
Bornholdt, who has been teaching math at USU since 2003, said there has been an influx of students taking math 0990 and math 1010 since the university implemented the math placement exam, five years ago.
“When there was no math placement exam, a lot of people would go in and try to take math 1050 right away,” she said. “And what happened was a lot of those people were not ready to be taking 1050, so they would end up taking 1050 two or three times.”
Bornholdt said while less students jumping into 1050 is a good thing, it has put strain on the system, because so many students are trying to get through 1010 now. She also said despite the best efforts of math instructors, a large percentage of students continue to fail the class. She said she hopes the new math software will help students succeed in the class.
“The reason we chose this software is every night students would get assigned homework, they go home, they do their work, then they give it back to the instructor,” she said. “Then the instructor took it home, graded it and then gave it to the students. So, it usually takes like four days for the whole process to get through.
“But,” she added, “what we’re finding with these softwares is the student can go home, and they can actually be told whether (they) got this wrong. They have help menus available to the student, so if the student gets a question wrong they can go in there and say, ‘OK, what did I do wrong, and how can I fix it?'”
Austin Smith, a freshman who is majoring in equestrian science, said, “I like doing the assignments online, because you have the tutor — like the tutor button you can press and it will step you through the problem. But it is kind of frustrating, like if you don’t put a negative on the number, you have to do the whole thing again.”
Kristina Kalian, a junior majoring in business, said, “I think that it makes you have to learn it and understand it, but it takes five times longer because you have to re-do it, and re-do it until you get 100 percent. I don’t like it, because it takes so much more time, but I like it because it makes me learn it and know it.”
Bornholdt said the program is deliberately set up to require perfect notation in order to help the students learn.
“It’s not the program is being picky,” she said. “It’s that it’s showing them the proper notation.”
Notation, she said, is one of the critical parts of doing well in math.
The Statesman did a straw poll of a class that has been using the new online system. Of 20 students polled, 11 said they liked the electronic course style better than the tradition style, while nine preferred the traditional style. However, of the 11 who preferred the online style, 10 said they were the type of people who do not enjoy math. Of the nine who prefer the traditional style, six said they generally enjoy math.
Bornholt said she and the other professors were looking forward to the end of the week when they will get scores back from the first midterm. At that point, she said, they will be able to tell if the new course structure is working.
– robmjepson@gmail.com