The Math You Need, When You Need It (TMYN): Leveling the Playing Field
The Math You Need, When You Need It (TMYN) is a set of online tutorials designed to help students develop and review mathematical skills that are applied in undergraduate geoscience courses. We present results of a three-year study of more than 4000 students in 106 geoscience courses at a variety of...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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National Numeracy Network
2015-07-01
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| Series: | Numeracy |
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| Online Access: | http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/numeracy/vol8/iss2/art5/ |
| Summary: | The Math You Need, When You Need It (TMYN) is a set of online tutorials designed to help students develop and review mathematical skills that are applied in undergraduate geoscience courses. We present results of a three-year study of more than 4000 students in 106 geoscience courses at a variety of post-secondary schools who were assigned TMYN tutorials as supplemental mathematics instruction. Changes in student scores from pre- to post-test suggest that the support provided by programs such as TMYN can begin to reduce the gap between mathematically well-prepared and underprepared students; in essence, TMYN levels the quantitative playing field for all geoscience students. On average, both high- and low-performing students who fully participated in the use of TMYN as a part of their course showed learning gains, although gains were larger for students who performed poorly on the pre-test. Our findings emphasize the conclusion that students who interact with context-specific quantitative problems can potentially improve their mathematical skills, regardless of initial level of mathematical preparation. We suggest that this type of support could generalize to other science courses.
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| ISSN: | 1936-4660 1936-4660 |