Placement policies are intended to match students with appropriate courses in order to improve student success, but how do you evaluate these policies? In this article, we evaluate four placement policies at Towson University by considering three categories of outcomes: long-term outcomes such as graduation and retention rates, short-term or…

Mathematics has a unique and powerful role to play in the teaching of social justice issues. There is substantial quantitative evidence for social injustice, but many citizens lack the quantitative skills to understand that evidence. A course in quantitative literacy is a unique opportunity to provide this quantitative understanding to a wide…

Classroom voting can be an effective way to stimulate student discussions. In this pedagogy, the instructor poses a multiple-choice question to the class, and then allows a few minutes for consideration and small-group discussion before students vote, either with clickers, cell phones, or a non-electronic method. After the vote the instructor…

Every year many students enter college without the math preparation needed to succeed in their desired programs of study. Many of these students struggle to catch up, especially those who are required to take remedial math courses before entering college-level math. Increasing the number of students who begin at the appropriate level of math has…

To support the long-term success of underprepared students, many community colleges are experimenting with accelerated developmental education models, which allow students to complete remediation and enroll in college-level math and English within a shorter time frame. This study examines three developmental acceleration programs, including two in…

The benefits of including the study of the history of mathematics in the education of mathematics majors have been discussed at length elsewhere. Many colleges and universities now offer a History of Mathematics course for mathematics majors, for mathematics education majors, or for general credit. At Hood College, we emphasize our commitment to…

We present a study of classroom voting in linear algebra, in which the instructors posed multiple-choice questions to the class and then allowed a few minutes for consideration and small-group discussion. After each student in the class voted on the correct answer using a classroom response system, a set of clickers, the instructor then guided a…

The purpose of this study was to determine if course format significantly impacted student learning and course completion rates in an introductory statistics course taught at Harford Community College. In addition to the traditional lecture format, the College offers an online, and a hybrid (blend of traditional and online) version of this class.…

The focus of this Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) project was on RNA secondary structure prediction by using a lattice walk approach. The lattice walk approach is a combinatorial and computational biology method used to enumerate possible secondary structures and predict RNA secondary structure from RNA sequences. The method uses…

As a newcomer to the Department of Natural Sciences at University of Maryland-Eastern Shore (UMES) in fall 2007, assistant biochemistry professor Jennifer L. Hearne concluded from teaching "Principles of Chemistry I" that the introductory general education course needed a makeover. In addition to alleviating teaching inefficiencies,…