Help Coming for UNM’s Math Challenged Students

Math pro­fi­ciency has long been a con­cern of UNM aca­d­e­mic lead­er­ship. Approx­i­mately 2,300 stu­dents per year attempt inter­me­di­ate alge­bra (Math 120) with a pass rate of less than 50 per­cent. Since Math 120 is one of the gate­way courses for UNM stu­dents, address­ing the low pass rates is cru­cial for stu­dent success.

Mark Peceny, dean, Col­lege of Arts & Sci­ences, and fac­ulty in the Depart­ment of Math­e­mat­ics, began research­ing and plan­ning a pilot project over the last aca­d­e­mic year to redesign con­tent deliv­ery that replaces lec­tures with time in a learn­ing lab where stu­dents use self-paced, computer-based resources to learn and be assessed. The project is an exper­i­ment that will attempt to improve the low pass rates for Math 120.

“The Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico and the Col­lege of Arts and Sci­ences is com­mit­ted to help­ing the Depart­ment of Math­e­mat­ics and Sta­tis­tics deliver a qual­ity math­e­mat­ics cur­ricu­lum to all under­grad­u­ate stu­dents at UNM,” said Phillip Gan­der­ton, asso­ciate dean, Col­lege of Arts and Sci­ences. “MaLL is a sig­nif­i­cant step in achiev­ing the goal of pro­vid­ing a flag­ship uni­ver­sity edu­ca­tion to the emerg­ing Amer­i­can majority.”

This method is in place at many insti­tu­tions across the U.S. and is prov­ing to be suc­cess­ful in improv­ing stu­dent learn­ing and pass rates for inter­me­di­ate alge­bra, as well as a num­ber of other courses. The Math Learn­ing Lab (MaLL) will be staffed with teach­ers, grad­u­ate stu­dents and select under­grad­u­ates who will assist stu­dents indi­vid­u­ally as they move through the mate­r­ial. The pilot project for the MaLL begins this fall, and involves a rel­a­tively small num­ber of stu­dents uti­liz­ing an exist­ing com­puter classroom.

“Dean Peceny is con­vinced that start­ing with this pilot project, the Col­lege can quickly develop this ini­tia­tive into an inno­v­a­tive model for improv­ing stu­dent suc­cess and grad­u­a­tion,” Gan­der­ton said.

To achieve the goal of hav­ing all Math 120 stu­dents use this new course deliv­ery model com­menc­ing in the spring 2013 semes­ter, the math depart­ment, Arts and Sci­ences, Uni­ver­sity Libraries, cam­pus plan­ning and Infor­ma­tion Tech­nolo­gies con­ducted an exten­sive eval­u­a­tion of cam­pus space and deter­mined that the learn­ing lab will be located on the south­east side of the main level of the Cen­ten­nial Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing Library (CSEL). It will be equipped with 125 com­put­ers for instruc­tional pur­poses and a test­ing lab with 15 addi­tional com­put­ers. When the MaLL com­put­ers are not in use by math stu­dents, they will be avail­able for gen­eral CSEL usage.