Carmen M. Latterell

ARE PLACEMENT TESTS FOR INCOMING UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS STUDENTS WORTH THE EXPENSE OF ADMINISTRATION

ABSTRACT One of the tasks faced by undergraduate mathematics departments is placing incoming students into the appropriate mathematics classes for their abilities. This is often accomplished through giving a placement test at the time of student orientation. Dissatisfaction with the results of the placement test used at our university prompted us to write a new one. In this paper, we describe the writing of the new placement test and provide detailed results of a validity study on the test. Our results led us to conclude that placement testing does not work very well, and to suggest that undergraduate mathematics departments consider using existing data rather than give a separate placement test. In spite of this conclusion, we do decide to continue with our placement test, and we offer reasons for doing so. *The authors are indebted to David Frisbie, a testing and measurement professor at the University of Iowa, who read early versions of this paper, and gave expert advice. We also thank our colleague, Debbie Wing, who created one of the large data sets used in this study. Finally, we acknowledge our universitys Chancellor Small Grant, which paid for various aspects of this study. Of course, we speak for ourselves only.

A Snapshot Of The Calculus Classroom

ABSTRACT Essentially a focus group to discuss textbook related issues, a meeting of calculus instructors from a wide variety of environments was convened and sponsored by McGraw Hill to provide feedback on the current state of the calculus classroom. This paper provides a description of the groups discussions.