As part of our continuing assessment program, the Mathematics Department undertook two major initiatives in the school year 1997-1998. We assessed the computer literacy of our graduating seniors, and continued to evaluate the effectiveness of our mathematics placement exam. In the future, the department wishes to evaluate quantitative literacy on a broad scale.
We sought to evaluate the computer literacy of our graduating senior mathematics majors in a number of areas including general literacy, graphing, internet use and e-mail. We expected to find that students were quite computer literate.
The Mathematics Department administered a computer literacy exam to nine of the fifteen graduating senior mathematics majors. A copy of the exam is attached. The results were tabulated by the department chair and will be discussed by the department in the fall of 1998. The results will also be presented to senior mathematics majors in senior seminar in the fall of 1998.
General: The table below summarizes the results of the exam by question. The numbers indicate the number of excellent responses except as noted.
|
1 |
1c |
2a |
2b |
3ab |
3c |
4a |
4b |
4c |
5 |
|
9 |
9 |
9 |
9 |
9 |
9 |
5 |
9 |
9 |
9 |
Below is a question-by-question analysis of the data.
1: No students had any problem starting the computer and locating appropriate software. This is not surprising, as the students have been using computers in their mathematics classes for four years. All students were able to name the folder appropriately.
2: For part a, four students used Mathematica, and the other five used Excel. All 9 had the right answer, which was good to see given the length of the list of numbers. For part b, eight students used Mathematica. One student used BestGrapher. All obtained accurate graphs over the proper interval.
3: All students performed the e-mail and browsing assignment well.
4: Students had no problem copying graphs into the word processing document. However, three chose not to format the document at all. Some students did have problems copying the picture. Two of the four who did not copy the picture had performed that kind of task before, but the computer kept crashing every time they tried to copy the picture. The proctor reported that the students did know how to do this. One student did not know how to do this, and didn't figure it out. The other gave no oral report. One of the successful students wrote that s/he had never copied a picture from a web page, but was able to complete the task.
5: All students turned in floppy disks with the proper information. Most also named the floppy disk appropriately, although this was not requested.
The department was disappointed that we were not able to administer the test to all 15 seniors. However, six seniors did not make appointments to take the exam. In the future, the exam will be given as part of senior seminar.
All students were judged to be computer literate by the readers. However, the exam results indicate that our students are not as proficient using the internet as we supposed. For this reason, in the coming year the department will study and implement measures to increase the internet abilities of our graduates. Including internet projects as part of first semester calculus or discrete structures has been suggested, and other ideas will be explored.
The exam will be altered and administered to all graduating seniors again next year, and we plan to administer a similar exam for the foreseeable future. The act of discussing and writing the exam helped the department articulate policies and goals with respect to computer literacy.
The assessment of the placement exam is still in the data-collection phase. However, preliminary results indicate that the exam is reasonably effective in placing student in an appropriate course. In general, students who take a course above the course recommended by the placement exam tend to receive lower grades that those who follow their placement recommendation. In addition, students who take a course below that recommended by the placement exam tend to receive higher grades that those who follow their placement recommendation.
In 1998-1999, the mathematics department plans to assess teaching effectiveness in general education courses, specifically Math 103 Applied Mathematics, through the use of imbedded questions. Specific questions will be written and included as part of the final exam in every section of Math 103 throughout the college. The responses to this question will be evaluated and shared.