SACSCOC Fifth Year Interim Report
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Assessment : 2013 - 2014 : Educational Programs :
Mathematics BA
Mathematics BA
2 Goals 2 Objectives 2 Indicators 4 Criteria 4 Findings 2 Actions
| GOAL: Deliver A Lower-Level Curriculum With Appropriate Discipline Specific Skill Sets |
| Objective |
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| Mth142 (Calculus I): Students will demonstrate the following knowledge and skills: differentiation of standard mathematical functions, apply the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus to evaluate integrals, and use calculus techniques to solve optimization problems. |
| Indicator |
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All students in the program are required to complete Math1420. Students will be administered a final exam containing some common questions developed and approved by the faculty teaching Math1420. The exam will require the students to demonstrate the knowledge and skills mentioned in the objective. |
| Criterion |
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| On the final exam, 70% of the students will provide the correct derivative for a given mathematical function. |
| Finding |
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Of 176 final exam problems concerning optimization, 129 ( or 73%) received a passing grade on that problem. |
| Criterion |
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| On the final exam, 70% of the students will use the appropriate calculus techniques to solve an optimization problem. |
| Finding |
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Of 176 final exam problems concerning optimization, only 72 ( or 41%) received a passing grade on that problem. |
| Criterion |
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| On the final exam, 70% of the students will correctly evaluate a definite integral using the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus |
| Finding |
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Of 176 final exam problems concerning optimization, 127 (or 72%) received a passing grade on that problem. |
Actions for Objective:
| Action |
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We clearly need to pay more attention to the performance of our students pertaining to applications of the derivative, particularly optimization problems. Difficulty often arises not only whe applying calculus, but earlier, in the setup of the problem. Our new precalculus course, MATH 1410, is designed to help with some of these deficiencies. It's too early to tell whether or not this new course is helping the performance of our calculus students. |
| GOAL: Deliver An Upper-Level Curriculum With Appropriate Discipline Specific Knowledge |
| Objective |
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| Students preparing to graduate will demonstrate advanced mathematics knowledge and skills. |
| Indicator |
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| Students will complete a project requiring them to use technology to create conjectures and then provide a proof of their conjecture. |
| Criterion |
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| At the end of the semester, 85% of the students submitting their project will receive a rating of 8 out of 10 or better according to the attached rubric. |
| Finding |
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Of the 25 students that participated in the project, 20 received a score above 80%. The mean grade on the assignment was an 88%. This is better than we had hoped for in the objective. |
Actions for Objective:
| Action |
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We will continue to monitor the progress of our students in this course. While it is a required course for future secondary teachers, enrollment is not that high (25 in 2014). more monitoring is therefore necessary. |
| Previous Cycle's "Plan for Continuous Improvement" |
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We will implement a new placement exam for MATH 1420/1410.
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| Update on Previous Cycle's "Plan for Continuous Improvement" |
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The placement exam for 1410/1420 has been in place since Summer 2014, in hopes fo correctly placing Fall 2014 students. Upon completion of the semester, we will compare the performance of those students that took the placement exam with their grade in either 1410 or 1420. The results of this comparison will begin to tell us the value of the placement exam. Although, few students took the exam; several semesters will be needed in order to assess the value of the placement exam.
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| Plan for Continuous Improvement |
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We have plans to apply for 3 different NSF grants: two interdisciplinary STEM-centered projects that will improve our STEM course offerings, and one research grant (PI: J. Wang).
We will hire two new faculty members, in the hopes of increasing our breadth of our graduate and advanced undergraduate course and research offerings. We also hope to find new colleagues that have interests in community outreach and the development of a STEM center on our campus (one of the goals of the NSF grants mentioned above). |