Adding It Up

In yesterday’s Community College Week, Paul Bradley’s cover story was all about developmental math. Bradley highlights a number of Achieving the Dream colleges that are working hard to solve the developmental math puzzle—and seeing promising results. Of particular interest is the description of the Montgomery County Community College redesign of the lowest-level developmental math course curriculum. Rather than the traditional topical approach to arithmetic instruction, MCCC’s new course, “Concepts of Numbers,” begins with an introduction to the history of math; students then focus more on understanding concepts (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division), rather than memorizing and doing drills (the dreaded “plug and chug!”) Students solve problems together—and they’re succeeding at much higher rates. In spring 2010, seven faculty taught the new course; their students’ success rate was 60 percent, compared with 40 percent in the traditional course. This year at MCCC all introductory courses are using the new curriculum. While there are still challenges, like aligning the new curriculum with subsequent courses, it looks like this new approach to instruction is going to stick at MCCC.

GSCC Says Pedagogy Matters

Are you a developmental education instructor interested in improving pedagogy? Global Skills for College Completion (GSCC) wants you to get involved:

• Join the GSCC Adjunct Faculty Community. We invite adjunct faculty to launch the community, and connect with the GSCC project. You will help advance and build upon GSCC's approach to improving developmental education pedagogy by connecting with adjunct faculty from across the country. This summer, GSCC is offering a stipend to developmental math and English adjunct instructors who will design and launch the online community. For details and to apply to the GSCC Adjunct Community workgroup, click here.
• GSCC is preparing for the fall launch of the Pedagogy Matters Campaign Community.  GSCC will hire and pay a stipend to ten 10 developmental education Math and English faculty to plan the Pedagogy Matters Campaign. This community will use crowd sourcing to build a viral campaign of faculty advocates to raise national awareness about pedagogy and advance a Pedagogy Matters Manifesto. If you want to help the country improve developmental education pedagogy to achieve better student outcomes, click here to apply to the Pedagogy Matters Campaign community workgroup.