Math Course Redesign in a Private Four Year Hispanic Serving Institute to Address Diverse Equitable and Inclusive Issues
MMath Course Redesign in a Private Four Year HispanicServing Institute to Address DEI Issues
C. Chang, Z. Chen
Our institution is a private four-year college in the New York metro area, with total student enroll-ment of 10,577 in 2019-2020. The College is a Hispanic Serving Institute with 70% female students.The enrollment of calculus classes has been consistently low despite a relatively large population ofSTEM majors, moreover, the female students ratio in those classes is significantly less than 10%.Compounded by the fact that commuter students in the College made up 60% of the population,students in general do not have a strong sense of community. This lack of inclusiveness is moresignificant for the limited number of women students taking calculus classes.We recently organized a math symposium on redesigning math for student engagement andsuccess, to share experiences among some regional institutions of similar type. In our own case, weidentified three most challenging points related to diverse, equitable, and inclusive (DEI) issues. First,the majority of our students entering the College lack the math skills essential to success in Calculus,as basic as College Algebra, some others have a multi-year gap after graduating high school. Almostall but a few STEM students must start from College Algebra before they can move on to Precalculusand then Calculus. Secondly, we noted that many students who planned to pursue STEM dropped outof their majors because they couldnt obtain the required grade in College Algebra to move forward.This is one of the main reasons that the enrollment of calculus classes is consistently low. Lastly,a large portion of basic math classes are taught by adjunct instructors, the turnover ratio amongadjunct instructors is not small. One such consequence is that many students dont have equitablelearning experiences and some students are still struggling with College Algebra even in the calculusclass.In order to have a robust and successful calculus sequence, we need to redesign our basic mathcurriculum and build a strong foundation for students, so that they can channel through to thecalculus class. Especially for our underrepresented population like first-generation college students orfemale students in the STEM fields, they may not have received the attention, support, and resourcesin their high school education, so the academic preparedness gap for them are detrimental in collegemath courses and could well be the reason for eventual college drop off. a r X i v : . [ m a t h . HO ] J un Smart Math Initiative
The name of our program to solve DEI issues is called Smart Math Initiative and its benefit is intwofold. For one, it is designed to provide a standardized engaging teaching pedagogy across allbasic math classes, diminish the vast differences among adjunct instructors, guarantee the rigor andconsistency of the curriculum, and accommodate each student with an individualized and self-pacedstudy plan. For another, the Smart Math Initiative provides students, especially underrepresentedstudents like women, an abundance of support and encouragement inside and outside of classrooms.There are three main components.
The Embedded Peer Tutors (EPTs) are in-class student teaching assistants who have previouslytaken and received an A in a math class equivalent to or higher than College Algebra. They arecurrently enrolled undergraduate students of any major, as early as second semester in the freshmanyear. Unlike working in tutoring centers, EPTs work directly with students inside classrooms, inconjunction with and complement to the instructors.We usually hire 10 to 20 EPTs each semester, depending on their schedules and availability. Eachsemester, all the EPTs must go through a training before they work inside the classrooms. By thenature of the emporium model which will be elaborated in the next component, a class is usuallydivided up into small groups or even individuals and have separate discussions or learning activitiesfrom time to time. Therefore, EPTs are supervised and directed by instructors to assist students,in the form of mini lecturing a learning topic, facilitating a group discussion, or helping studentsself-reflect learning strategies and form a good working habit.We found, through the end of semester student evaluations, that the emotional support andencouragement provided by EPTs are indispensable to peer students, especially the struggling studentswho have a lot of fear in learning mathematics. The role of EPTs in creating an inclusive learningenvironment is irreplaceable by instructors.An interesting observation from the past, the majority of our EPTs are female, most of them areSTEM major students. Many EPTs eventually enrolled into a 5-year master program in teachingeducation degrees in STEM.
All the Smart Math Initiative classes take place in the designated computer labs, called Smart MathLabs, to create an equitable and regulated classroom environment. These labs have open floor con-cepts, with a maximum capacity of 30 students. The design of the labs is structured to welcome classdiscussions, nurture a support environment, and create bonds among students.In terms of the course contents, they are divided up into modules, delivered through a learning2latform like MyOpenMath or ALEKS. Outside the classrooms, students progress through the pro-gram at their own pace, by a standardized benchmark timeline. With self-paced learning, studentsusually dive into different topics without realizing the connection and the big picture of them, andthis will be addressed inside the classrooms.In a typical 2-hour class meeting, an instructor will motivate and teach between half an hour andan hour, on a specific topic outlined in the benchmark schedule. The lecture will provide additionalexamples as well as connections between different topics. The rest of the class meeting will plan outas individual interactions or small group discussions between the instructor and the students, assistedby EPTs.Following closely the Instructional Practices Guide , the department regularly organizes workshopson best teaching strategies. Some high standard and consistent teaching materials including well-designed group discussion worksheets are developed and updated for all instructors. These efforts aremade to guarantee that students receive maximum support, and instructors, full-time or part-time,have the same standard in delivering the courses. The College designated a full-time faculty within the math department as the Initiative Coordinator,the key responsibility is coordinating with different departments. We meet with the institutionalresearch for data and performance analysis, we work with the center for teaching and learning onworkshops and class observations to support adjunct instructors, and our department also works withthe tutoring center to recruit and supervise EPTs.The textbooks, videos, and other readings for the courses are all available electronically online,conveniently accessible through mobile devices as well as computers. Instructors receive electronicreports on students weekly performances, the coordinator monitors the learning statistics across sec-tions. A typical weekly report includes the topics that the majority of the students are strugglingwith, the total number of hours that students spent on the learning platform, and the average grade ofthe weekly assignment. Through reading the reports prior to class meetings, instructors can identifythe weaker students and help them more efficiently during class discussions.Finally, the coordinator maintains an online forum, to create a virtual community among instruc-tors. A shared site for instructors and EPTs is regularly updated with teaching notes, pedagogicalarticles, extra exercises and detailed solutions, etc.
One of the key metrics in measuring the success of the Smart Math Initiative is by the completion rate.The two courses redesigned are Math115 (Math for Liberal Arts) and Math116 (College Algebra). Abell, M., Braddy, L., Ensley, D., Ludwig, L., & Soto-Johnson, H. (2017). MAA Instructional Practices Guide.
14 cohort F15 cohort F16 cohort F17 cohort F18 cohortTotal Students 619 785 662 659 643Passed within first year 407 584 553 568 532Passed Percentage 65.75% 74.39% 83.53% 86.19% 82.74%Passed within two years 115 116 26 15Passed Percentage ( yr 1,2) 84.33% 89.17% 87.46% 88.47%Passed within 3 years 33 10 1Passed Percentage ( yr 1,2,3) 89.66% 90.45% 87.61%
Table 1: Three-year Math116 completion rates comparison: F14 and F15 cohorts before Smart Math;F16, F17, and F18 cohorts after Smart MathOur focus in this article is on Math116, as it is required by STEM majors and its population is thepotential pool for future calculus students.Table 1 lists the completion rates for five different cohorts. By a cohort, we mean all freshmanstudents enrolled in a fall semester, excluding continuing and transfer students. We track each cohortup to three years, since some students decided not to take Math116 in the first year or second year,some of them waited until the third year or beyond. The passed percentage is based on the numberof students who took and passed Math116 with a grade of C or better, out of the total number ofstudents in a cohort. Figure 1 shows the trending of the first year passed percentage. The Initiative,which began in Spring 2016, is the driving force of the steady increase.
First Year Passed Percentage
Math 116
Figure 1: Math116 First Year Passed PercentageNext, we want to examine how the EPTs help the classes in passing rates. We have a largepercentage of female EPTs, in Spring 2019, we hired 13 EPTs, out of which 10 are female. Thefemale EPTs ratios in Fall 2019 and Spring 2020 are 8 out of 14 and 6 out 8, respectively. Table 2compares the pass rates of Math116 in Spring 2019, categorized by sections with EPTs and without.There is a clear contrast in the DFW rates, and the sections with EPTs significantly outperformed4umbers of students A-C DFW Percentages A-C DFWNot-EPTs 36 58 Not-EPTs 38.30% 61.70%EPTs 198 118 EPTs 62.66% 37.34%Table 2: Spring 2019 Math116 EPTs Analysis
Fall 14 Asian Black Hispanic White Overall Fall 15 Asian Black Hispanic White OverallA-C 96.77% 70.75% 77.58% 90.45% 80.68% A-C 90.32% 66.67% 73.50% 91.37% 78.84%DFW 3.23% 29.25% 22.42% 9.55% 19.32% DFW 9.68% 33.33% 26.50% 8.63% 21.16%Fall 16 Asian Black Hispanic White Overall Fall 17 Asian Black Hispanic White OverallA-C 82.76% 59.54% 69.09% 83.77% 70.41% A-C 87.50% 71.67% 76.20% 83.10% 75.83%DFW 17.24% 40.46% 30.91% 16.23% 29.59% DFW 12.50% 28.33% 23.80% 16.90% 24.17%Fall 18 Asian Black Hispanic White Overall Fall 19 Asian Black Hispanic White OverallA-C 75.00% 66.67% 69.70% 77.56% 70.46% A-C 83.33% 64.68% 67.84% 75.71% 69.41%DFW 25.00% 33.33% 30.30% 22.44% 29.54% DFW 16.67% 35.32% 32.16% 24.29% 30.59%
Table 3: Math116 consolidated grade distribution within ethnicity groupsthose without EPTs.Regarding the performance of different ethnicity groups, Table 3 provides the consolidated gradedistributions within each group for the last six consecutive fall semesters. To make a direct comparison,we normalized the number of students in each group to 1 and focused on the DFW students. In theabsolute ideal scenario, where all ethnicity groups perform equally well, the percentage of each groupamong the DFW students will be 25%. Figure 2 displays the distributions, and it clearly indicatesthat since the Initiative fully implemented in Spring 2016, the disparity among different ethnicitygroups are reducing.
DFW Rates Among Asian/Black/Hispanic/White
Asian Black Hispanic White
Figure 2: Math116 DFW rates among Asian/Black/Hispanic/White5
DFW between genders
Female Male
Figure 3: Math116 DFW rates between gendersSimilarly, Table 4 lists the consolidated grade distributions within each gender over the past sixfall semesters, and Figure 3 displays the direct comparison between genders. For the reference, in anideal situation where male and female students perform equally well, the percentage of male or femaleamong DFW students should be 50%. We observe in Figure 3 that the percentage of females amongDFW students is gradually shrinking below 50%.
Fall 14 Female Male Fall 15 Female MaleA-C 76.52% 78.05% A-C 75.97% 80.90%DFW 23.48% 21.95% DFW 24.03% 19.10%Fall 16 Female Male Fall 17 Female MaleA-C 72.14% 71.12% A-C 23.65% 24.34%DFW 27.86% 28.88% DFW 23.65% 24.34%Fall 18 Female Male Fall 19 Female MaleA-C 74.16% 64.48% A-C 70.80% 68.04%DFW 25.84% 35.52% DFW 29.20% 31.96%
Table 4: Math116 consolidated grade distribution within genders
Since we started the Smart Math Initiative, the EPTs program has always been a core component.For students, they not only look up to the EPTs as role models, but also, they see in themselvesthat they can be as successful as the EPTs. Another unexpected outcome in EPTs is that a largepercentage of them are female students, around 75% in two of the most recent three semesters.From a financial point of view, EPTs receive stipends for their work and relieve their financialpressure at some level. The close involvement of EPTs in the classrooms, as well as their achievements6n helping peer students have strengthened the inclusiveness and community bonds among students,and hence improve the retention rate.The emporium model has been explored for many years across the states, we make some smalltweaks in implementing to fit our unique needs. For instance, a not small portion of our student bodiesare nontraditional college students, some have full-time jobs outside the school while maintaining astudent status. We accommodate these students by not entirely flipping the classroom, instead, weuse a combination of engaging lecturing and self-paced active learning. In order for our controlledemporium model to be successful, we spent a lot of efforts in workshops and training for instructors,especially part-time instructors.Despite the initial success of the Smart Math Initiative, there are areas we are actively seekingto improve in the future. There are ideas about tackling these issues and the prospect of the SmartMath Initiative has become more exciting than it has ever been before.
C. Chang , Assistant Professor, Department of Math & CS, Mercy College.