Online in Summer and Face-to-Face in Fall: An Experimental Bridge Course for Quantitative Skills

Streaming Media

Submission Type

20-minute Presentation

Abstract

Incoming students’ varied quantitative skills preparation impacts their experience on campus. Software exists to build these skills, but when we encouraged students to use such software before arriving on campus, few did. This past academic year we offered an on-line credit bearing bridge course in the summer followed by a fall face-to-face course to strengthen quantitative skills and support the transition to college.

We will discuss the summer course which focuses on quantitative skills and data visualization in context, and is supported by synchronous peer sessions, asynchronous faculty feedback, and commercially-available software. Additional community-building activities include discussions with alums and social media exercises. We also will discuss the fall course which includes several elements that build upon the summer activities related to data visualization and career exploration. We will delve into the design, implementation, and evaluation of the course. Our data are gathered from pre-/post tests of quantitative skills, self-reporting on the affective domain, and tracking enrollment patterns and performance in courses that carry a QRE (quantitative reasoning encounter) designation for students with similar profiles who did/did not participate.

We will wrap up with a discussion of our next steps.

Session

Presentation

Location

Thomas 110

Start Date

5-17-2017 4:20 PM

End Date

5-17-2017 5:40 PM

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May 17th, 4:20 PM May 17th, 5:40 PM

Online in Summer and Face-to-Face in Fall: An Experimental Bridge Course for Quantitative Skills

Thomas 110

Incoming students’ varied quantitative skills preparation impacts their experience on campus. Software exists to build these skills, but when we encouraged students to use such software before arriving on campus, few did. This past academic year we offered an on-line credit bearing bridge course in the summer followed by a fall face-to-face course to strengthen quantitative skills and support the transition to college.

We will discuss the summer course which focuses on quantitative skills and data visualization in context, and is supported by synchronous peer sessions, asynchronous faculty feedback, and commercially-available software. Additional community-building activities include discussions with alums and social media exercises. We also will discuss the fall course which includes several elements that build upon the summer activities related to data visualization and career exploration. We will delve into the design, implementation, and evaluation of the course. Our data are gathered from pre-/post tests of quantitative skills, self-reporting on the affective domain, and tracking enrollment patterns and performance in courses that carry a QRE (quantitative reasoning encounter) designation for students with similar profiles who did/did not participate.

We will wrap up with a discussion of our next steps.