| The Mathematics Department administered a survey to all senior mathematics majors. The survey was administered at the beginning of Math 400 Senior Seminar. The purpose of the survey was to assess the state of all mathematics senior theses at the beginning of the school year. As part of our curriculum, mathematics majors should be writing their senior theses in their majors courses. This survey was intended to see how many seniors had the majority of their senior thesis written before starting their senior year. |
| The Mathematics Department also assisted the Quantitative Literacy Task Force in assessing the effectiveness of courses that fulfill the Quantitative Literacy Requirement. A stratified sample of 10-12 sections of quantitative literacy courses was randomly selected. The sample is stratified to ensure that courses at all levels and from all programs, specifically the School of Professional Studies, are included in the assessment regime. In each of the selected sections,10 questions were imbedded in the final exams. These questions address quantitative literacy skills that are part of every quantitative literacy course, including logical inferences, graphical analysis, and careful reading. Most instructors use these questions as “bonus” questions on the final to encourage students to take them seriously. The Chair of the Quantitative Literacy Task Force, in cooperation with the Chair of the Mathematics, tabulated and analyzed the data. The results will be incorporated into the assessment reports of both the Quantitative Literacy Task Force and the Mathematics Department. Results will also be shared and discussed at the Mathematics Department Fall Retreat in August. This retreat is attended by all full-time and adjunct mathematics faculty. At that time, results will be analyzed discussed, and incorporated into all quantitative literacy courses. |
| The Mathematics Department began the practice of posting Department Meeting Minutes so all department members can view agendas and minutes at all times. |
| Raw data from the senior survey is available at this link. A copy of the survey is also available. Results indicate that all students had a good knowledge of and reasonable assessment of the status of their senior thesis. All had started a project that could result in a senior thesis, although some would have taken significant additional work. Five students chose to do new research projects even though they already had reasonable projects underway. |
| The results of the quantitative literacy survey are available at this link. Items of particular concern are highlighted in red. The actual questions are not included in this report so they can be used in future years to gauge improvement. Students clearly struggled with the question involving logical implication, as well as the question that involved noticing the the problem involved two different units of measure. |
The results above will be shared with the entire mathematics department, including adjunct faculty, and the fall mathematics department retreat. Results of the senior seminar survey will be shared with this year's senior seminar class.
At the fall retreat, faculty will discuss ways to address the general education deficiencies discovered through this year's assessment activities. We will compose a list of activities and strategies that can be implemented in all general education courses, and implement them in the 2004-2005 school year. We anticipate that the syllabi of all general education courses will be affected by these results, and in turn, general education courses will be changed to reflect the mutually acceptable recommendations.
This year's assessment activities brought to light a number of important improvements that needed to be made, and we expect to continue to assess our effectiveness in these areas. For the 2004-2005 school year, we will repeat the general education assessment activity to determine whether the strategies we devise at the fall retreat lead to improvement. We will also examine the computer skills of our students, particularly their spreadsheet use skills.
Report Prepared By: Mark Snavely
Date: 7/31/04
Academic Year: 2003-2004