100% Math Project: The Massachusetts Community College Developmental Math Initiative Funded by FIPSE – U. S. Department of Education
The Massachusetts Community Colleges 100% Math Project targets what is arguably the single most difficult problem facing American higher education, the failure rates in developmental mathematics. The Community Colleges have been awarded a $680,400 FIPSE (Fund for the Improvement of Post Secondary Education) grant from the U. S. Department of Education for 3 years beginning in January 2003. Enablearning, Inc. is the key technology partner in the project.
Today approximately three-quarters of all entering students in community colleges nationwide are required to take development mathematics. The failure rates in these courses are typically around 50%, creating what has been termed an "impenetrable barrier" to a higher education for large segments of our population. The goal of the 100% Math Project is to significantly increase the success rates of developmental math students.
Enablearning worked with the Massachusetts Community Colleges, Lesley University and Wellesley College to develop the grant proposal. It will be supporting the goals of the project by providing software, materials and training in its new instructional technology.
Enablearning’s "Instructional Toolkit" supports teaching and learning with three products.
Faraday will enable the faculty to develop highly interactive, visual, and dynamic content that makes it easier for students to "see", understand, and use mathematical concepts. The faculty will be able to share lessons and create content for a wide range of student learning styles, interests, and abilities.
Maxwell employs new web-based student assignment and assessment technology to enable faculty to continuously monitor and analyze both individual and group performance and provide students with problems that are appropriate for rapid and optimal learning.
Dewey makes enhanced learning communities easy to build by connecting communication and content to support peer to peer instruction and distance learning.
The 100% Math Project will create a Community College Developmental Math Institute that will oversee a continuous process of data-driven decision-making and will initiate, monitor, test and disseminate best practices among the colleges. The Institute will employ the latest in pedagogical research on assessment and student learning. It will work with Enablearning’s new Web-based technology that supports learning by actually placing the control of that technology in the hands of faculty and students. And, it will develop a new, state of the art, training program, geared primarily toward part-time faculty, that will ensure a consistently high quality of instruction. |
