Andre Freeman is a professor of mathematics at Capital Community College in Hartford, Connecticut and a Faculty Mentor in the Carnegie Math Pathways Network. As an experienced Statway College Virtual instructor and course designer, we asked him for advice on how faculty can establish and maintain connection with students remotely, and for general best practices for online instruction. Here is some of what he shared:

What best practices would you share with someone teaching Quantway or Statway for the first time?

I think doing a robust, thorough orientation is really important and also getting information on when students can meet for collaboration sessions with other students. Getting that information about a week before the semester begins is critically important (because) building those collaboration groups quicker, I think, will enable a smoother launch for students.

Then in week one, sitting in on collaboration sessions and being there as a support if not for the entire hour, but maybe for the first half an hour. I think really having a strong instructor presence in week one makes a big difference and can lead to the groups working efficiently and effectively for much of the term.

The other thing that I would say is ensuring that the collaboration groups are working well by reaching out to students individually to just check in on how things are going.

What strategies helped you support student retention during your Statway College Virtual course?

Email was huge. I would email students and ask them how they were doing, (if they had any) questions, concerns. Just reaching out.

Unfortunately, a lot of students dropped the class after COVID and I would reach out and try to get them to continue. And it wasn’t just in this course, but in all of my classes at Capital. Our campus was hit pretty hard due to the disruption.

For those that did receive additional flexibility and support, I tried to use my office hours to connect with students and tried to meet on Zoom. Those who did take advantage of that expressed their appreciation and said that that made a big difference.

Pathways Pointer: Pathways educators have learned a lot from their spring 2020 experience with our virtual courses, particularly amid the Covid-19 outbreak, and have helpful tips to share. Register for our free, two-part mini-webinar series for community-building and general instructional strategies that can help support student retention.

How did you initially introduce the virtual Collaboration sessions to your students?

The class orientation was a really important way of introducing the entire course, including the collaboration structure and the requirements for collaborations. In addition to that, I sent out a lot of emails that described that requirement. I emphasized the benefits to students of studying in groups and also emphasized how Carnegie Math Pathways has shown that students in many situations learned better when studying with other students and learning from other students’ perspectives. I really used those two messages to motivate students and to understand why studying mathematics in a collaborative fashion is important and something that they should be open-minded about doing.

Pathways Pointer: “Collaboration sessions” refer to the student group meetings, usually independent of an instructor, held via built-in Zoom rooms in Quantway and Statway Virtual. Holding a full-class orientation at the start of the term is a helpful way to introduce the instructor, students, and the features and structure of the course.

This course allows students to work synchronously via Zoom video conferencing independent of an instructor. How do you stay connected with your students when they meet without you?

I established connection with students by orienting them through a Zoom session (at the start of the term) which allows students to meet me, for me to introduce the course and structure, and to introduce the requirements. I also had the ability to pop in on students’ collaboration sessions. I was then able to stay connected with students through frequent video communication. I would email, post videos of (my feedback), and hold office hours. I found that through constant communication, I was connected with students.

 

George Hurlburt is a mathematics instructor at SUNY Corning Community College in Corning, New York. We recently chatted with him about Quantway College Virtual—his experience, what sets the course apart from others, and how it can help educators amid a global pandemic. Here’s what he had to say.

How did you feel about teaching Quantway College Virtual?

Going into the class I was really worried that students wouldn’t be able to get through the material without a teacher there to guide them. You know, in a traditional class the instructor would be there to prod them along, give them little hints. I was worried without being there, students wouldn’t be as successful, but I think they’re actually more successful.

We talked about (productive) struggle with the Quantway materials, all the time. And you can really see it in this class because the teacher’s not there to give them that quick little hint. They really have to work through (the material together in their online groups).

The other thing I really liked about teaching Quantway College Virtual was watching the groups come together. Some of my students have become very close and very good friends.

How would you say you connect with students if you’re not there present with them all the time?

In Quantway College Virtual, you connect with the students through responses to their collaborations. After watching group collaborations, I would make a short video and send that to them trying to help them understand where their struggles were and show them how to move forward. Sometimes I would just type up things—I didn’t always make a video.

This class offers more flexibility if faculty want to be more involved. You could set this up so that you are leading some of the collaborations, if you wish. I wasn’t able to do that because my students’ schedules didn’t work with my schedule.

How is Quantway College Virtual different from other online classes you’ve taught in the past?

In my other classes, the students are very much on their own—they work individually, do the questions individually, they watch the lectures individually. In Quantway College Virtual, they see each other twice a week, and I get to see them twice a week through watching the videos. With my other (online) classes, I don’t usually see the students very often, except when I give exams. I can look at their homework scores, but I need the students to reach out to me to tell me where they’re struggling. Through watching the videos, I know where the students are struggling and that allows me to be a lot more proactive rather than reactive.

How does Quantway College Virtual help you track your students’ progress?

I’m able to track my students’ progress primarily through the videos. I know I’ve mentioned those several times already but I think they are key to this course and what really makes a difference. The videos allow me to understand what the students are thinking and how they’re attacking problems. I can see exactly where their issues are and I can address them in a timely manner before they’re developing bad habits and making the same mistakes over and over again. The system also gives you a lot of other information about student progress.

How has teaching this class impacted your online teaching style?

This class has not only impacted my online teaching style, it’s also impacted my traditional classroom style. I find I’m trying to do a lot more discussions in my other online classes that I teach. I’m trying to get more student involvement that way—trying to get them to feel more of a community. When students are directing their own learning, they learn much better than when I’m standing in front of the classroom or in talking or if I’m just posting a video for an online class.

What, if anything, surprised you about teaching this course?

The thing that surprised me the most about teaching this course is how successful the students could be without the teacher being in the room. I really thought it would be a problem and that I would have to regularly join the collaborations to help the students get through.

The productive struggle was real. I could really see it when I watched the videos—how the students talk to each other, work through things, try different things until they finally came upon something that seemed right. I could also see their frustration sometimes when they typed in the answer, and it wasn’t right after they’ve worked on one problem for five or 10 minutes. But they didn’t quit and that’s what impressed me the most. And they did get through—my success rate overall has been very high.

You’ve mentioned productive struggle a couple of times and seeing that play out in the collaboration videos. Can you explain what productive struggle is for those unfamiliar?

We know that students struggle in math. What we hope here is to not have them just struggle (and quit) but to have them struggle in a good way. We want them to not immediately know the answer but we want them to have the tools and the ability to try different things and develop the right answer.

So often, students will see a problem that they don’t know how to do and they will just quit. That’s not productive struggle. That’s struggle and quitting. And that’s a very bad thing. And that’s not what we want to have happen here. So we try to give the students a toolbox of different items they can try—different techniques—and work on something, recognize they get an answer and say, well, that can’t possibly be correct. And then they look at their toolbox and pull out a different technique and try that and work through it.

We started developing these online courses long before the pandemic was even a thought. How would you say these classes are meeting the moment?

Right now we’re sitting in an unprecedented moment in time. And I think this virtual class is very, very helpful. I think it gives a means for instructors to teach this course and maintain the group work feel, which is so important to the whole core of this course. I think it would be very, very difficult to teach this course without the collaborations built the way they are, without the built-in Zoom meetings.

I know my college is most likely going to be virtual in the fall so I’m scheduled to teach two sections of this course and I think it’ll make a big difference for my students’ success.

Over the last two and a half weeks we have watched the necessary and important actions taking place across the country in response to the recent cruel deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and so many others before them.

We believe that educated citizens are key to a just and equitable society. Yet we are keenly aware of the historic and ongoing educational inequities faced by students of color in our schools, colleges, and universities, and even how our own positions of privilege may play a role in perpetuating this.

We stand against racism, bigotry, and senseless violence against the Black community, and are fiercely committed to doing our part to build a more just and equitable education system that honors and elevates the experiences and intelligence of Black students and all students marginalized by the status quo.

We see math as a tool for empowerment and transformation. In partnership with our network, we have developed and continually improve upon a pedagogy and curricula that value each student’s contributions to the learning process, making each student feel that they belong inside our classes and schools, and having students see themselves and their communities reflected in what they learn.

We are indebted to you, the many educators, who everyday bring these opportunities to life for students in your classrooms. Your experiences with your students, your knowledge of your communities, and your willingness to critically examine, test, and enhance our tools and approaches are what enables our network to improve.

We are a network based on continuous improvement. We will continue to learn, listen, and improve side by side with each of you to better serve our current and future generations of students.

“We’re All In This Together”: Carnegie Math Pathways Helps Educators Transition to Distance Learning Amid COVID-19

Early signs are promising — students’ results in pilot testing of the online courses were slightly higher than students’ results in the face-to-face Pathways courses. Those results are no small feat, given the high bar of success of the in-person Pathways courses.

Peering into their computer screens from the safety of their respective homes, a group of math instructors from the State University of New York (SUNY) system gathered virtually to share details about their abrupt coronavirus-driven shift into the world of distance learning.

The videoconference began with teachers discussing a range of concerns — from how to ensure they are addressing students’ mental states to how to proctor quizzes and tests online. One teacher recalled grappling with a technical issue in her school’s online learning platform. Heartened after a helpful student emailed her guidance on how to troubleshoot the issue, the teacher realized, “I just have to let the students know that we’re all in this together.”

These teachers are part of a weekly virtual convening set up by Carnegie Math Pathways (Pathways) to help math educators in the SUNY system collaboratively navigate their unplanned transition to distance learning. Carnegie Math Pathways is a research-based, holistic approach to developmental math, delivered through two programs, Statway and Quantway, that accelerate college math completion and redesign coursework to make it relevant to students’ lives and areas of study. The programs are taught in 90 colleges in 16 states, including 24 SUNY colleges. In addition to working with the SUNY group, Pathways staff have been helping the broader network of Statway and Quantway teachers across the country with this pivot to virtual learning.

“We wanted to leverage the Pathways network in order to help teachers move online quickly,” says Karon Klipple, executive director of Carnegie Math Pathways. Pathways staff have been offering a range of support to the national network of Statway and Quantway teachers, including facilitating weekly Faculty Sharing Sessions for teachers to collaborate and problem-solve in real time; developing a suite of distance learning resources, and creating an asynchronous online forum for teachers to share ideas and resources.

“Because the move to online learning was so sudden and unplanned for teachers, a lot of the support up front has been triage,” says Klipple. In addition to facilitating collaboration and offering resources and guidance, Klipple and her colleagues have “helped with setting expectations — what are some realistic goals for transitioning to distance learning on a dime in the midst of a crisis.”

To continue reading this article, visit WestEd’s website, where this post written by Joan McRobbie first appeared and is partially re-published here with permission.

Scott Guth was skeptical when he first learned in 2010 of the Carnegie Math Pathways’ efforts to remove the remedial math barrier for students.

“The notion of removing prerequisites to college level classes was outside of what I thought was possible,” he said.

Today, Guth has roughly a decade—and counting—of experience in teaching, creating, and improving Statway lessons together with educators in the Carnegie Math Pathways Networked Improvement Community (the network of educators and staff at institutions nationwide that teach Statway and or Quantway).

One of his earliest collaborations with the Pathways network was a project in which he was filmed teaching Statway for the Pathways Faculty Improvement Team (FIT). This project helped the FIT team develop guidance for educators teaching the Pathways.

“It taught me the discipline of allowing students to struggle and posing things in a way that gives them what they need (to solve problems),” he said.

Guth is a member of the PathwaysCurriculum Committee, where he creates Statway lessons with other members of the NIC. As a committee member, he has designed countless images, tables, and interactive activities to help improve the Statway experience for students.

He’s also seen a lot change since the days when he thought the Pathways mission was impossible and throughout his 30-year career as a professor at Mount San Antonio College. In 2018, the system that long enabled non-credit bearing remedial math courses to flourish was dramatically transformed by the passing of California’s AB 705.

The bill says that a college or community college district must maximize the probability that a student complete transfer-level coursework in English and math within a year. It also requires that these institutions consider high school coursework, high school grades, and high school grade point average when placing students into English and math courses.

“AB 705 made it illegal to require prerequisites for math and English without validating that they substantially improved the chance of success in the college-level course,” he said.

As the remedial math landscape has changed, Guth has innovated with the NIC on new ways to help students succeed in math, including helping create the Statway College and Statway Corequisite course offerings. He is now helping the NIC transform those materials into an online course.

Despite his mark on many Statway lessons, he doesn’t highlight any one lesson as his own, crediting instead the collective work of the Curriculum Committee.

Despite his initial skepticism, Guth has become an advocate for Statway, even penning an op-ed in LA School Report in 2017 in support of the program.

“I think there are people that (think) we’ve made the curriculum easier,” he said.

“Actually, we’ve made it relevant to people who never saw any purpose for the (math) that they were being asked to do in college.”

When he faces skepticism in his department about disrupting the status quo with Statway, Guth says he shares a group photo of the faculty in the NIC who continually work together to develop the program’s curriculum.

“The NIC is a group of teachers—just like you.”

Each year, Kelly Kohlmetz, math literacy pathway coordinator and senior lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, sorts through hundreds of freshmen student transcripts to make sure students are placed in the math course that best suits their needs.

If she finds that students are in the wrong course, she emails them and their advisor. It’s a task she undertakes independently to help advisors set students up for success.

“I want the advisors involved because they’re the first line of communication with the students. And a lot of times, the advisors know things that are happening in the students’ lives that I don’t,” she said.

Her engagement with advisors in the 10 colleges at UWM is one of the many ways she ensures that students can benefit from Quantway, the quantitative reasoning course solution from Carnegie Math Pathways.

UWM serves about 25,000 undergraduate students each year, 40% of which require remedial education. To address a very low pass rate in UWM’s former developmental math sequence—just 55%—she and her colleagues implemented Quantway in the fall of 2015.

“We implemented what is now Quantway Core and we were so pleased with it and saw such great results…I love the idea of the problem situations and not having a prescriptive textbook,” she said.

Since then, Kohlmetz’s involvement with Carnegie Math Pathways has been instrumental in helping develop and refine Quantway course options that are being offered to the Carnegie Math Pathways Networked Improvement Community (the network of educators and staff at institutions nationwide that teach Statway and or Quantway).

Kohlmetz became an Administrative Coach for the Carnegie Math Pathways in 2016, helping administrators at other institutions to implement and scale the pathways at their campus.

In the spring semesters of 2018 and 2019, she piloted Quantway Corequisite courses, which saw 83% and 82% success rates at UWM, respectively.

She is an active member of the Pathways Curriculum Committee, which develops and improves Statway and Quantway curricula. The committee is comprised of Pathways staff and educators in the network.

Throughout her involvement with Pathways, she has also continued to innovate on her own campus, even creating an online version of Quantway before Pathways partnered with the adaptive learning provider, RealizeIt, last year to create fully-online versions of Statway and Quantway.

Kohlmetz piloted the fully-online version of Quantway Core this past fall and will be piloting the Quantway College version this spring.

While Kohlmetz wears many hats with the Carnegie Math Pathways, it’s her commitment to placement and advising that sets her apart. On top of checking student transcripts, she maintains strong relationships with advisors and meets with them regularly to keep them informed about math offerings.

“I guess I feel that, yes, it’s over and beyond but, it’s something that I think needs to be done, so I do it,” she said.

At the time of this interview, Kohlmetz was getting ready to schedule another round of meetings with advisors.

It’s unusual to see yourself represented in a math problem. It’s even more unusual if you’re a Native student in one of the more than 500 tribes dotted across the United States. That’s why Jennifer Morris likes to teach Quantway, which contains new lessons adapted to Native community contexts.

“Students know that they’re not represented in the textbooks, and they’ve known it all along,” Morris said, “but until they see themselves represented, they don’t realize what an impact that has.”

Morris has taught Quantway at the College of Menominee Nation in Wisconsin since 2017. In any given semester, 12 to 16 tribes are represented among the school’s approximately 250 students.

She said it’s a big step forward for her students to see culturally relevant situations in the math, even if it’s not specific to the tribe with which they identify.

“It’s kind of like if you live in a city, you would appreciate word problems about an urban area, whether it’s about your specific city or not,” she said.

One example of how students connect to Quantway instruction is with the student contract, required of every student at the beginning of the course to commit to giving their best efforts to the class and to each other.

“Rather than going with the standard normal looking contract, we use the Grandfather Teachings, which is Pan-Indian (not specific to a particular tribe),” she said.

The Grandfather Teachings, according to Morris, are a set of values, such as humility and bravery, common among many tribes. These values are incorporated in the student contract.

“Students will say, we need to be humble enough to give help to other students when they need it,’” she said. “But then more difficult is being humble enough to ask for help when we need it.”

She said it’s because of Carnegie Math Pathways that she’s been able to connect with other tribal colleges and universities to adapt math lessons specifically for their students.

Morris participates in the Pathways Curriculum Committee, working with other TCU faculty to create culturally relevant lessons adapted to Native community contexts. This group has so far developed 12 lessons which will be available for use this fall to the entire NIC.

Morris has been at the College of Menominee Nation since 2010 and is currently the Dean of Retention as well as an adjunct faculty member. She looks forward to the school year ahead as her campus will also begin teaching Statway.

I have always been decent at math. Not phenomenal. But I know that 2+2 will always equal 4. So maybe average is a better word to describe my math abilities. But before last semester, I hadn’t taken a math class in, oh, the better of fifteen years. So, when my college advisor advised me to take this new math class offered through Carnegie, mentioning it was fast-paced and stuffed full of things I had surely forgotten how to do, I tried to talk her out of letting me join. I failed.

And let me tell you, she wasn’t wrong about the amount of work. There’s homework every, single day. Sometimes two to three hours’ worth. And you attend class four days a week. Every day is a new lesson, and if you miss a day, it can be difficult to get caught back up. You will get frustrated. You will want to throw your book AND break your pencil. (Heaven knows I did!)

I attended math tutoring almost every day. You will also be forced to work in groups, which I absolutely hated for about the first two weeks of class. But now that class is over, I am sad I won’t get to spend as much time with my classmates, who are now my friends.

I have always been the type of person who hates being wrong and I definitely hated struggling to figure something out. But the way this course is set up and laid out, I’ve learned it’s okay to not know what’s going on or not know how to solve a problem. It’s totally okay to struggle and it’s totally okay to get the answer wrong.

In order to succeed, you must be willing to fail. It will build character. Don’t give up and keep pushing yourself. Ask questions, and if you’re lucky enough to have an amazing math Professor like I did, (SHOUT OUT to Jan Miller at Bay Mills Community College ), there will never be a silly or wrong question to ask. Plus, it will force you to take a different approach to a problem, to think outside of the box.

This class has taught me a lot, and not just about math. I know it sounds cliché, but this class changed my life. And after finding new ways to grow my brain and access problems with a new set of skills, I feel my next math courses will be, if just a tiny bit, easier to manage.

You don’t have to be a math person to figure out how to do math, you just need to keep an open mind. Remember, it’s okay to struggle. I just hope you can find it within yourself to stick with it. Take the leap and have faith. I’m glad I did.

Stephanne Johnson took Quantway this past spring at Bay Mills Community College in Michigan. She identifies with the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians. Her instructor was Jan Miller.

Meet this month’s featured NIC member, Greg Koscik, nominated by his Faculty Mentor for his exceptional commitment to improving Quantway curriculum and pedagogy.

A Quantway instructor of two years at Nicolet Area Technical College in Wisconsin, Koscik, is playing an important role in one of the Pathways network’s biggest milestones: the development of new, fully-online courses.

With the Pathways online design team, Koscik is helping develop an online Quantway Core course scheduled to roll out in the spring of 2020. He has been heavily involved in the content transformation process, testing, and design of the new virtual course.

As part of the Pathwyas Curriculum Committee, Koscik also reviews assessment items and works on Item Bank improvement. Over the past year, he has systematically organized all items in the Quantway College Item Bank and ensured that all lessons had a sufficient number of items. This revamped Item Bank will be released for use in the fall. He regularly teaches Quantway Core and College both in-person and online.

He said one big draw to teaching and developing Quantway courses is that the curriculum places math in meaningful context for students, which leads to higher retention and success rates.

“The way it is now in most one-size-fits-all (algebra) classes, there’s little to no authentic context. In most traditional classes there’s only solving for X for the sake of solving for X,” Koscik said, adding that Quantway content is something that students genuinely want to learn.

His Faculty Mentor, Aaron Altose of Cuyahoga Community College in Ohio, reaffirmed Koscik’s commitment to creating engaging contextualized lessons.

“Greg is a frequent contributor to the Pathways network, sharing ideas for new Quantitative Reasoning contexts and ways to strengthen the pedagogy and assessments of Quantway College,” Altose said.

“He truly aspires for Quantway College to be the best possible course for his students and also for the health and growth of the Carnegie Math Pathways as a whole.”

Altose added that Koscik continuously seeks ways to both improve the course and increase its rigor.

Koscik also plays a central role in training newly hired adjuncts to teach Quantway at Nicolet as a Faculty Facilitator on his campus.

Beyond his involvement with Carnegie Math Pathways, Koscik is an active member of WisMATYC–the Wisconsin Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges.

Koscik graduated from Oakland University in Michigan with a master’s degree in Mathematics in 2010. He began teaching at Nicolet in 2013 after teaching at College of the Albemarle in North Carolina from 2010 to 2013.

A newly released WestEd study examines the challenges and successes of the Pathways’ corequisite implementation at six institutions in six different states. Across these institutions, 65% of students—students who would have otherwise been placed into traditional developmental courses—earned college math credit in a single semester. That’s more than three times the success rate of the traditional remedial approach, saving students time and money on their path to a degree.

On March 13th, we hosted a webinar to share these promising findings alongside the Pathways faculty who piloted the corequisite offerings:

• • Ellen Mulqueeny, Math Faculty, Kent State University
  • Yolanda Manzano, Math Faculty, Richland College
  • Thales Georgiou, Instructional Dean, Richland College
  • Kelly Kohlmetz, Math Faculty, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

You can view answers here to questions posed during the webinar that our panelists could not answer in the allotted time.