Norwich University, the oldest Senior Military College in the nation and the first private U.S.
institution to teach engineering, has a residential program for approximately 2,100 primarily
undergraduate students in both the Corps of Cadets and civilian lifestyles. Norwich secured a
National Science Foundation S-STEM award in the beginning of 2020 to develop a program to
attract and retain highly talented, low-income students in STEM. One of the aims of the project
was to support students who enter college with less experience in mathematics as these students
were significantly less likely to graduate with a STEM degree.
In the fall of 2020, as a result of the S-STEM award, the mathematics department offered a pilot
corequisite calculus course to STEM majors requiring calculus their first semester but placed
into precalculus by the mathematics departmental placement test. The corequisite calculus course
includes content from precalculus into a one semester calculus course that meets daily for 6
contact hours rather than a standard 4 credit hour calculus course. The Norwich University Civil,
Electrical and Computer, and Mechanical Engineering programs are accredited by the
Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET, placing restrictions on the 8-semester
engineering degree pathway. The added credits to the first semester corequisite calculus course
fit the constraints of the first semester engineering course load and this course has enabled
engineering students that place into precalculus to complete an on-time degree plan without
taking summer courses. The corequisite course has been approved by the university curriculum
committee and is a regular offering at the institution.
The initial offering of the corequisite course occurred during the COVID pandemic necessitating
the use of additional instructional technology. There was also an increase in low stakes
assessments to encourage students to engage in the material. The added credits also increased the
regularity of student interacting with calculus. Since the implementation of this pilot course,
there have been several similar changes in other courses required by engineering majors. The
pilot corequisite course has become institutionalized and even is now scaling, with the
engineering department requesting the course to be offered each semester to benefit students who
are out of sync with the intended curriculum pathway.
This project examines how the corequisite calculus course may have influenced changes in the
general education courses and engineering first year sequence. Outcome harvesting as well as
process tracing are used to determine the strength of evidence linking the corequisite course to
institutional change. Qualitative and quantitative data will be examined as well to understand
how the S-STEM award contributed to breakdown of the resistance to curriculum change and the
readiness to implement and scale corequisite courses in other areas. It is important to understand
the mechanisms used for building capacity at the institution to transform STEM education in
higher education
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SCALE-UP Instructional Redesign of a Calculus Course at an HBCU
It is now generally accepted that many students enter college severely underprepared for their mathematics college courses in terms of basic skills and study habits, and that intervention is expected to overcome these deficiencies. As a result, many mathematics departments nationwide have over the last two decades redesigned their algebra and calculus courses to incorporate technology and active learning in various combinations, some of which have utilized extensive learning space designs. This article is a preliminary report of one Historically Black College or University’s (HBCU) experience with its redesign of the first semester of Calculus for STEM Majors that resulted in a course-wide partial implementation of the Student-Centered Active Learning Environments with Upside-down Pedagogies (SCALE-UP) method. Preliminary results show that the redesign, enabled by institutional and external resource coordination, has led to moderate improvements in course pass rates, from a normal of 40% and below to a new normal of above 50%. The pass/fail student profile suggests that weakness in pre-requisite skills is a major cause of failure.
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- PAR ID:
- 10165857
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- International Journal for Innovation Education and Research
- Volume:
- 7
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2411-3123
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 31 to 44
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.31686/ijier.Vol7.Iss1.1279
