Thank you for your relevant remarks. As an adjunct faculty member, I don't
often get the chance to teach a class even as high as College Algebra.
That's the domain of the full time instructors. However I do prepare
students for those classes. Gateway Community College in Phoenix, where I
teach, is fortunate. Each college in our district develops partnerships with
different areas of the marketplace. All include transfer programs to the 4
year universities, to a varying degree. Ours has developed major programs in
the areas of industrial technology and health services. Since I teach
students in both of those areas, I have been able to pull in a great many
practical problems from both areas. It also is aimed more strongly at the
working adult than some of the other colleges in the district. I have found
that, in general, my students learn more when I include problems that are
found in a variety of these areas. A machine technology student, a future
nurse, a future social worker, and a physics student have different reasons
for learning how to convert measurements. They may call it converting
compound measurements, dimensional analysis, using the unit fraction method
of conversion or something else. Even the students who hate or fear math
seem to learn it better when they see that there are practical uses for what
they are learning. They may not anticipate using them but appear to enter
into the whole learning process with a more open frame of mind.
A basic criteria of all of our lower level classes that include arithmetic is
that students learn to do basic calculations both by hand and with a
calculator. Despite the prevalence of calculators, I am amazed at the number
of students I get who resist their use. Those who resist the most appear to
be those who have little or no understanding of the theory involved. They
want to memorize a series of steps that will work, without regard to the
content of the problem. Those who do start to use them seem to start looking
for the "why" in a lesson and gain greater understanding of the process than
those who don't. Their emphasis changes. I do test both basic calculation
skills and calculator use. If an arithmetic student can do a fairly
complicated problem using the order of operations by hand, then s/he has the
calculation skills to survive and is ready to focus much more on the theory
or applications. Even when several students enter my classroom with the same
apparent skill level, those who try to learn to use the calculator seem to
also learn how to do the calculations more accurately. If they only use it to
check their hand work, it is an excellent learning tool. And, yes, I do
include problems like the bus one which ask them to think about the answer.
Again, thank you for your comments.
MaryLiz Pierce
****************************************************************************
* To post to the list: email mathedcc@archives.math.utk.edu *
* To unsubscribe, send mail to: majordomo@archives.math.utk.edu *
* In the mail message, enter ONLY the words: unsubscribe mathedcc *
* Words in the Subject: line are NOT processed! *
* Archives at http://archives.math.utk.edu/hypermail/mathedcc/ *
****************************************************************************