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CATSBusters

Faculty conducting the workshop (background) with TA in foreground

Insufficient access to and expertise in mathematics negatively impacts the lives, careers, and incomes of many Kentuckians. It’s not uncommon for talented high school students to reach the limits of their schools’ mathematics program by the end of their junior year. While students living near colleges and universities may have the opportunity to take advanced courses, rural students are typically excluded by cost and logistics. The lifetime costs to these students are enormous. They enter college less prepared than they were at the end of their junior year. The complement of this problem is that UK typically provides calculus instruction to about 600 students per year and projects bachelor’s degree graduates in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) of about 500 annually. The absence of more mathematically well prepared Kentucky students means that Kentucky will not have the scientists, engineers, technologists, and mathematicians needed to move our economy forward. We will remain at a competitive disadvantage nationally and globally in the 21st century.

High School-College Math Improvement Program

Paul Eakin, Ken Kubota and Carl Eberhart in the UK College of Arts and Sciences Mathematics Department, aim at improving the advanced math skills of Kentucky's entering college freshmen. Without this intervention, these students will fall behind schedule for STEM careers. More frequently, their inability to compete with better prepared students will mean that they will move away from STEM disciplines.

The project partners UK with the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Kentucky Department of Education to develop specific mathematics courses to prepare students for business calculus and scientific calculus. This program provides professional development currently to teachers in rural counties via weekly two-hour online sessions.

Objectives

The project focuses on development of new instructional technologies and the application of new approaches to local and distance learning with particular emphasis on teacher support and professional development.

Future Plan

Teaching assistants working directly with 'breakout' groups of teachers (note video cameras on monitors)

In 2006 the program began the transition from the pilot phase to moderate implementation. By the end of summer 2006 approximately 250 Eastern Kentucky math and science teachers had received the equipment and training to allow long-term participation in the project instructional and communications environment. This was followed in the 2006-2007 school year by programs of courses, seminars, and workshops, through UK and other institutions, which included access to college-level mathematics for advanced students of these teachers.

The current research and development program includes experiments in direct technology-based classroom assistance for teachers (remote teaching assistants) and web-based homework interfaces that "understand" student responses using geometric vocabularies.

Actions and Outcomes to Date

CATSbusters, now renamed as Access to Algebra, has made great strides since its inception. Working in conjunction with and drawing support from the National Science Foundation funded Appalachian Math Science Partnership (AMSP) and the UK Appalachian Minority Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Majors (AMSTEMM) programs, Access to Algebra has created and successively refined a successful professional development program for high school mathematics teachers, a college algebra textbook, and a distance learning delivery, interaction, response, and secure testing system. These advances have resulted in multiple semesters in which selected high school students, working with their high school teachers and UK mathematics faculty by distance learning, have taken and completed an essentially identical UK college algebra course as that experienced by on-campus UK students and have done so with A – B course grade percentages essentially the same as on-campus UK students.

The technical components leading to this success are many and important. They include: creating partnerships with schools; selecting high school mathematics faculty for inclusion in the project, collaborating with them on an ongoing basis, and providing a year-long professional development experience to increase their grounding in mathematics; creating and refining distance learning systems capable of working with mathematical symbols and making these available to participating high school students and faculty; writing and refining a textbook for use in the course; securing UK course scholarships for participating high schools; and piloting and revising the program in successive semesters to enhance benefits.

The systems developed for this course have led to the creation of a statewide mathematics placement program under the auspices of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education. The partnership is developing, testing, and implementing a set of common statewide mathematics placement tests. The initial instruments for college algebra and developmental mathematics are installed in the new Kentucky Mathematics Placement Exam system. The system is in pilot use at AMSP partners Eastern Kentucky University and Kentucky State University and will be tested throughout the 2007-2008 school year, with final implementation scheduled for summer 2008.