TEACHING COLLEGE ALGEBRA AND TRIGONOMETRY WITH SUPPLEMENTAL INSTRUCTION AT A COMMUNITY COLLEGE

摘要

During the spring of 2009, using support from a grant obtained by a major university, supplemental instruction (SI) was integrated into one section of College Algebra and Trigonometry at a community college. This course was selected because it was considered a gateway course, a course essential to success in engineering and technology at the community college. In the fall of 2009, the SI section of College Algebra and Trigonometry was repeated with a different instructor and SI was added to two additional sections of other math courses. The paper will discuss the development of the SI section of College Algebra and Trigonometry and the adjustments to the traditional model of SI made necessary by the unique circumstances of a community college where most students spend very limited hours on campus because of heavy outside work schedules and where there are no upper level undergraduates or graduate students available to function as student leaders. An internal evaluator at the community college examined the initial offering of the SI section of College Algebra and Trigonometry and concluded that it demonstrated the clear effectiveness of the SI approach when compared with non-SI sections at the community college. The internal evaluator also conducted an evaluation of another SI section of College Algebra and Trigonometry and two other SI math courses offered during the spring of 2010. Details of these evaluations are included in the paper. The 2010 evaluation was more extensive and includes a student survey, student open-ended responses from the survey, and open-ended responses from an SI Leader. The paper includes a discussion of the diffusion and expansion of the SI model to other courses at the community college along with the attendant problems and solutions and concludes with a look ahead.