Objective
#4 To
meet with mathematics instructors who have developed and are teaching unique
courses and to share ideas on pedagogy and content.
Kevin
LoPresto has developed several courses for the Uteach program,
which trains teachers for public schools. These courses are
taught from a computer lab. Students use a discovery method,
without the actual written equation, to develop the ideas of how
functions and formulas work. Samples from two of his courses,
one in Functions and Modeling and the other in Geometry, were
presented and his worksheets and research were shared with the
group. At the most recent International Conference on Technology
in Collegiate Mathematics, this approach of letting students discover
with the aid of prompting questions was presented by several researchers
in the area of freshman mathematics instruction. Dr. LoPresto
uses Geometers Sketchpad as well as Statistics software called
Fathom. Fathom is dynamic statistics software, which comes
with data sets on which the student can perform analyses.
At North Harris Community College engineering and mathematics are in the
same department.
Recommendation:
The
focus group recommends that Computer Science, Engineering and Mathematics
be in the same department at TCC due to course content. Classes in Computer
Science should be offered on the Portsmouth Campus. Efforts should be made
to offer mathematics courses for teacher recertification. Consideration
should be given to devoting one hour per week of the college calculus course
to a lab. Fathom should be reviewed as a possible replacement for Minitab
in the statistics courses.
Go to [1]
- [2] - [3] - [4]
- [5] - [6]
...visit six
page
Mathematics Focus
Group Report
submitted by:
Stan Barto
Marilyn
Peacock
Al
Pearce
Mary
Jane Naismith
