We wish to divide a cake among some collection of people (who may have very different notions of the comparative value of pieces of cake) in a way that is both "fair" and "efficient." We explore the meaning of these terms, introduce two geometric tools to aid our analysis, and present a proof (due to Dietrich Weller) that establishes the existence…

This article illustrates the power of Bloom's revised taxonomy for teaching, learning, and assessing in aligning our curriculum expectations and our assessment tools in multivariable calculus. The particular assessment tool considered involves a common matching problem to evaluate students' abilities to think about functions from graphical and…

In this article, ambiguous street and park signs are analysed and deciphered using symbolic logic. These examples showcase the ways in which instructors of undergraduate mathematics courses can blend their students' everyday exposure to logical reasoning with classroom experiences. (Contains 4 tables and 6 figures.)

In keeping with the national mandate of increasing graduates in the sciences in South Africa, a concerted effort in improving the first year experience becomes imperative. First year mathematics courses commonly provide the base knowledge necessary for progression in different degree programmes at university. Success in mathematics courses…

National studies reveal that 50 percent to 70 percent of community college students are required to take developmental, or remedial, math courses upon enrollment, and only 20 percent of developmental math students ever successfully complete a college-level math course. Taking up the challenge is the "New Mathways Project" (NMP),…

This article describes a quantitative and qualitative assessment from a study done on the possible effectiveness of including an online homework component in first-semester calculus. Two instructors, each teaching two sections of Calculus I, agreed to treat one of their sections as an experimental group and the other as a control group. Students…

In this paper I discussed an episode of inside-out approach of learning mathematics that started from my deeply held values, feelings, thoughts, and experiences making them starting point of learning process. I was engaged in a brief learning session with a geometrical problem as context within the session. Data from video record of the learning…

This article presents an exploratory study that gives account of some students' perceptions of the completeness property of the set of real numbers. Students taking three undergraduate correlative courses in Calculus and Analysis answered a written questionnaire; their scripts are analysed trying to understand how operational is the notion of…

In this article, we examined the extant literature regarding college-readiness in math for students entering community colleges. Included in this review are the following topics: (a) the role of community colleges between secondary and postsecondary institutions; (b) national initiatives for college-readiness standards in math; (c) Texas…

This is the fifth annual Governing Board Monitoring Report that utilizes the Board outcome metrics adopted in 2010 to gauge institutional effectiveness. The Executive Summary focuses primarily on the 11 "Key Metrics." Some general highlights of the report include the following: (1) More students are successfully completing college-level…

In the mid-1990s, Mercer University's undergraduate schools placed incoming freshmen in their first mathematics course, using only their scores on the mathematics portion of the SAT (SATM). This placement policy was strongly supported by the admissions office because it did not require additional testing of the freshmen in their on-campus summer…

We present a comparative study of a literature review of 326 selected contributions (Buteau, Marshall, Jarvis & Lavicza, 2010) to an international (US, UK, Hungary) survey of mathematicians (Lavicza, 2008) regarding the use of Computer Algebra Systems (CAS) in post-secondary mathematics education. The comparison results are organized with respect…

There is a paucity of information surrounding maths anxiety levels in the British undergraduate student population, and, due to terminological issues, existing measures of maths anxiety may not be appropriate measures to use with this population. The current study, therefore, reports on the development and validation of a new maths anxiety scale.…

Failure rates in first year calculus courses are high in most post-secondary institutions across North America and other parts of the world. This Inukshuk-funded open education project involved the development of five stand-alone pre-calculus learning modules. The design and revision phases of this project occurred between the fall of 2007 and…

This study investigated the use of text messaging as an educational tool in a pre-algebra course at a community college in the central region of North Carolina. The research was conducted in two pre-algebra classes with thirty-three students and one instructor. Data were gathered using qualitative and quantitative methods. A mixed method design…