Abstract
BackgroundSubstantial research has been conducted focusing on student outcomes in mathematics courses in order to better understand the ways in which these outcomes depend on the underlying instructional methodologies found in the courses. From 2009 to 2014, the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) studied Calculus I instruction in United States (US) colleges and universities in the Characteristics of Successful Programs of College Calculus (CSPCC). One aspect of this study attempted to understand the impact of these courses on student experience.ResultsIn this paper, we describe results from an examination of the effect of course structure on students’ attitudes and beliefs across different versions of Calculus I at a large research university in the USA. To do this, we implemented a follow-up study of the national MAA study of calculus programs in part to identify potential relationships between various course structures and changes in attitudes and beliefs during the course. We compare our results both internally across these course structures and to the national data set.ConclusionsWe find that the statistically significant changes measured in confidence and enjoyment exhibit differences across the different calculus implementations and that these changes are statistically independent of the underlying student academic backgrounds as shown by standardized test scores and high school GPA. This suggests that these observed changes in attitudes and beliefs relate to the experience in our varied course structures and not to the academic characteristics of students as they enter the course. In addition to our findings, we show how this national study can be used locally to study effects of courses on student affective traits.
Highlights
From 2009 to 2014, a project led under the auspices of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) investigated Calculus I instruction in United States (US) colleges and universities under the title Characteristics of Successful Programs of College Calculus (CSPCC)
Given the Calculus I impact on student experience in STEM programs, many large-scale efforts across the USA have focused on various aspects of calculus instruction and their impact on student persistence
Changes in surveyed student attributes As stated previously, we seek to answer the following research question: Do different learning experiences in Calculus I influence students’ attitudes and beliefs? The data revealed that a large number of students in all three versions tend to understand that trying to make sense of
Summary
From 2009 to 2014, a project led under the auspices of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) investigated Calculus I instruction in United States (US) colleges and universities under the title Characteristics of Successful Programs of College Calculus (CSPCC). According to Tinto’s (1975) framework of persistence, satisfaction in the integration of social and academic life in a community has a significant impact on persistence, and later, he asserted that this model can be employed in the analysis of students’ learning and persistence in classrooms as communities (Tinto 1997) He highlights that this satisfaction is of critical importance to students during their freshman year because it is a time when their “membership in the communities of ... We hypothesize that the Calculus I experiences of students in various versions of the course at our institution differ significantly and have the potential to affect their attitudes and beliefs towards mathematics as well as decisions about continuing to pursue a STEM major in different ways during this critical time
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