Teaching Mathematics and Programming Foundations Early in Curriculum Using Real-Life Multicultural Examples

摘要

This paper is about teaching mathematics and programming early in and throughout the college curriculum to provide students a solid foundation that is enforced in many classes and via multiple means. Introducing concepts early and having constant repetition enforces the retention and mastery of the material. The solutions we propose in this paper are to be introduced in basic digital literacy classes for all majors, all the way up to classes for majors in STEM fields. Since brain research shows that we learn best based on what we already know, we have tied our methods into daily situations that students from many diverse backgrounds can relate to. We have tried these approaches in basic mathematics and programming classes and they seem to work.