A New Venture: Almy Education

I've made some big changes in the last year, particularly in the last few months. Check out my new website, www.almyeducation.com to learn more. On my new blog, In the Weeds, there are posts from November that explain more about the changes and next steps. I'm taking my love of math and making it work for students to the next level by providing schools, colleges, and states with the support they need to improve their math programs for students.

I hope you'll join me over at Almy Education,

Kathy

Upcoming AMATYC webinar on transitional math

Hello!

As usual, it's been a while since I've posted. The position I have now directing the statewide rollout of transitional math in Illinois keeps me hopping. If you'd like to learn more about this approach to college readiness and placement that's being used around the country, not just in Illinois, please join me for an AMATYC webinar I'll be doing next week. The information is below. I hope to see you there!

AMATYC Webinar

Transitional Math: The Next Frontier in Developmental Math Pathways 

Speaker:  Kathleen Almy

Sponsoring Network:  Mathematics for Liberal Arts

Date:  Wednesday, August 15th

Time:  12:00 pm EDT / 11:00 am CDT / 10:00 am MDT / 9:00 am PDT

Description:  Transitional math courses, which are high school courses that provide seniors the preparation and placement for college level math, are taking off around the country. Illinois is scaling them using the approach and content of pathways courses like Math Literacy. Transitional math courses complement corequisite remediation and developmental math pathways to form a successful approach to developmental education. Attendees will learn about the course content and approach as well as the implementation model being used in Illinois, a local control state with significant numbers of community colleges and high schools.

Click here to register.

Making changes big and small

Happy New Year!

There have been many changes in my work in the last several months that I'd like to share. The biggest is that I'm no longer a full-time math professor at Rock Valley College. After a lot of thought, I've changed positions to being a mathematics research associate at Northern Illinois University. This change has happened slowly over time. For years, I've been involved at the state level on developmental math initiatives through committee and task force work. In 2016, Illinois signed into legislation the Postsecondary and Workforce Readiness Act (PWR Act). This law has major impacts on high school to college transitions, one of which is transitional math. These are high school courses for seniors that upon successful completion guarantee the student placement into certain college-level math courses at any IL community college and some IL universities. That placement comes without a placement test. Without question, this is a huge change.

The State is committed to putting this legislation into place correctly and at scale. With 48 community colleges and almost 800 high schools, this is undoubtedly a huge project. I had been leading one of the statewide subcommittees related to the PWR Act in the first half of 2017, which evolved into me leading the work as part of a new position through NIU. I began full time at NIU in September. While I am adjunct math faculty at Rock Valley College, for the time being, my focus in not in the classroom, but instead on policy and practices that support the classroom. I still write for Pearson and soon I will begin working on my doctorate. So while my position has changed, the level of busyness continues. As my husband will tell you, I wouldn't have it any other way.

I'm very passionate about the transitional math project, its purpose, and its philosophy. It aligns with my work and goals completely. For years, I've been working to create ways for students to get to their college-level math courses more quickly but without compromising rigor or program integrity. That work has involved a lot of content and policy creation, with an emphasis on contextualized learning, often done actively in the classroom. Developmental math pathways and Math Lit were my major focus for years in that respect. But that work evolved after years of leading dev math reform of the traditional math courses in my department and then helping schools around the state and country do so as well. I've been consulting with colleges and universities for years as well as speaking and leading workshops on how to make effective changes. Doing so led to the creation of my business, Almy Educational Consulting, a few years ago. This work I'm involved in now marries all my previous experience in and out of the classroom into one position where I can support the goals of the State but also of colleges, administrators, and faculty alike. In short, it's work I love and believe in.

The approach Illinois is taking is unlike some other states' approaches. It's not a one-size-fits-all solution, but instead offers three transitional math courses, each of which is aligned to a meta major (STEM, quantitative literacy & statistics, or technical math). Non-STEM dev math pathways courses like math literacy are in that QL/stats transitional math frame in that their goal is college readiness with an emphasis on contextualized learning related to a student's outcome courses and fields. The STEM and technical math transitional math courses will also have that contextualized approach and align with college and careers. None of the transitional math courses is a re-purposed high school or traditional dev math college course like beginning or intermediate algebra. They all embody the goals of dev math pathways with active learning through problem solving as well as embedded emphasis on college knowledge. It's not about skill acquisition, but the ability to understand and use all the skills students learn.

While the largest component of my position is leading the transitional math work, I also work with co-requisite remediation efforts in IL. This is another approach that the State is committed to scaling. The efforts work together. In short, this is the approach IL wants to get to:

1.  Transitional math courses for high school students who would be candidates for dev math
2.  Co-requisite remediation for most college students, if appropriate
3.  Dev math pathways and other accelerated options for students who are not best served by co-req courses

The idea is to have students in as few semesters of dev math when they come to colleges in IL as possible. To make this happen, a lot of policy, professional development, and support have to happen. Asking schools to make this happen without that is not feasible. The State is committed to scaling all these efforts in a way that works. I'm working on this daily but I'm not alone. There are many people throughout my state at agencies, colleges and universities, and in policy-making groups supporting the work. It's exciting to see so many people work together for a common goal that will make real change in a positive way. Will it be perfect and without issues? No. But everyone working on this knows that and is committed to hearing where there are issues and addressing them as well as respecting existing work, since there is so much good work already going on.

For more information on the transitional math work, please check out this article I was interviewed for as well as our public commenting website. It contains documents, webinars, and more on the project. Additionally, here is my new contact information:

Kathleen Almy

Research Associate, Mathematics

Illinois Director for Transitional Math

Northern Illinois University

Center for P-20 Engagement  |  Division of Outreach, Engagement, and Regional Development

Rockford Campus  |  8500 E State Street Rockford, IL  61108

815-753-8803  |  kalmy@niu.edu

Here's to an exciting and hopeful 2018!

AMATYC 2017 Presentation

Heather and I spoke at this year's AMATYC conference on teaching Math Lit online. I'm in my second semester of teaching it and have seen huge improvement in student and my satisfaction with the course. We're both experiences online teachers and have taught Math Lit face to face for 7 years, so it was important to us to take this pathways course to more course delivery models. Here are the slides.

Amatyc 2017 Math Lit Online from kathleenalmy

Teaching Math Lit online: Part 2

Earlier this year, I wrote about teaching the content in an online Math Lit course. In this post, I'll talk about homework, focus problems, tests, communication, making the content cohesive, challenges, and some thoughts about going forward with this course.

Homework

I had students do all of their homework in MML and not part in MML and part in the book the way I do with the face-to-face version of the course. I did this for simplicity and so that I could see all of their homework without needing more pages to be scanned and emailed to me. They could get feedback on all their homework problems immediately as well.

MML has plenty of skill-type problems to learn the skills. It also has the textbook homework's Skills problems (#1 and 2 of each book homework assignment). In the book, those are done to see if students can do a few of the skill-type problems without help aids. So in MML, those two problems don't have help aids. In the second edition of Math Lit, there were book Concepts and Applications problems added to MML for each section. Not all of those book problems are in MML yet. If there was a particular problem I really wanted students to do that wasn't in MML, I would make it into a custom question and hand grade them.

Students did the homework and scores were very good. Having frequent deadlines got students to work on the content each day. However, they didn't have as challenging homework as the
F2F students because they didn't have as many book homework problems. I figure that the online students had more of a challenge learning the content, giving them plenty of problem solving practice. In the end, I felt it evened out.

Focus Problems

I created a video to introduce the cycle and focus problem. It also included tips on the focus problem and information on how I wanted them to work on the problem with their groups. We used the groups feature of Canvas. Students could choose their own groups of 3 to 4 students. Each group had its own discussion board and way of talking to each other that only they and I could see (not the rest of the class). I encouraged them to use Collaborate (within Canvas) or Google Hangouts to meet synchronously at least once during the cycle. Within Canvas, I posted information every week about a work session they should do on the problem with their group. In class, I have multiple work sessions and have students try to make progress on the focus problem. I tried to do the same online but posting instructions relies on the students to read them and do those parts on their own.

Solving these problems in groups on top of all the other work they had became to be too much. Students didn't use the discussion boards as much as I hoped and most didn't use an online means of meeting. However, some did meet physically to work, which is just as good. The same F2F problems of someone slacking and groups waiting too long to start still occurred. One positive is that students got to know each other much more so through this part of the course than any other.

Tests

The course's assessments included focus problems (one per cycle - group grade), daily MML homework, discussions for the Explores, book pages to submit to show how they're working on the content, quizzes in MML, and tests in MML.

In MML, I provided them a practice test and the real test (which was taken proctored to ensure test integrity). The test included a skill problem and concepts & applications problem from each section of the cycle we covered. There was also a free response custom question on the focus problem to promote individual accountability. Tests were online so students could review their results easily. I added partial credit to their problems when possible since there wasn't a lot of partial credit in MML.

The outcome is that the tests may have been somewhat easier than a paper test my F2F students took. Although the tests were a little easier, other parts of the course were much more challenging than the F2F version. Again, in the end, I figured it evened out.

Communication

There was a tremendous amount of communication. I emailed and posted announcements almost daily to keep them on track and aware of what they should be doing. I also made short videos to explain how to do some tough Explores or challenging problems. There were videos to close the focus problems too so that students could have a debriefing experience like the F2F class has.

Making the content cohesive

Making a cohesive experience was a big challenge. I made videos to open each cycle to explain how the content they were going to learn fit together. I also regularly posted information explaining what the goal of content was that they were working on. In the future, I think having a short video for every section covered would help me make the points I need to so that they see how things fit together. 

Challenges

There were a lot of challenges, many of which I've mentioned. The biggest is that the course had a lot going on, a lot to do, and a lot to keep track of. Keeping things manageable for students was a constant challenge. As I mentioned, some things were easier in the online version than the F2F version while others were harder. I figure it balances out. The offerings don't have to be identical, but I feel they should be equivalent.

I lost a few students to withdrawals sooner than I do in the F2F version but once we got to our core group (which was most of the students who started), they all stayed till the end. And almost all of them passed. 

Going forward

I have lists of changes to make to simplify and streamline the course for me and students. One big suggestion I received was to have a synchronous session once a week, perhaps on each Monday night. There are online platforms that allow you to put students in online rooms where they can talk live to each other and the instructor can monitor the groups (just like in a F2F class). Sessions can count for attendance or participation points. If I use this approach, I'll have students do the Explores in the synchronous session and I'll talk about the goals of the week's content to make it more cohesive. I could also show how to do some troublesome problems. I think this step alone would make the course much better for everyone.

Using this approach, I would change the discussions to be on the Connects and not the Explores. Instead of fighting them on using the content of the section to solve the Explore problems, they could do that (which they're supposed to anyway) with the Connect problems. Also, I wouldn't do every Connect as a discussion. Just 1 or 2 a week would be enough.

If I don't use a synchronous session approach in the future, I'll make short videos for each section to build that cohesiveness in the content and guide them with the Explores. Again, they could do the Connects for the discussions.

The other main change I will make is to have them solve the focus problems on their own. It's so difficult doing those in groups in an online course on top of all the other components of the course. Doing them alone would ease a lot of stress on students. I might have an open discussion board where they could talk as a class on different points of the problem and get hints from each other.

Ultimately, it was a challenging but incredibly rewarding online class. I felt really connected to my students and they were connected to each other. That's something I rarely feel in an online algebra class. Yes, there are many tweaks to make but the main thing I learned is that the course can absolutely be offered successfully in an online environment.

Webinar recording now available

Recently I gave a webinar for Pearson about where we've come in the five years of teaching Math Lit. Please check out the recording if you'd like to see the webinar.

Math Lit and Pathways: 5 Years Later

After you enter some basic info, you'll have access to the recording.

Upcoming webinar: Pathways after 5 years

At the 2016 AMATYC conference, Heather and I gave a talk about where pathways and specifically the math lit course have gotten to in 5 years. We weren't able to get through all of our slides due to the discussion that occurred, which is a good problem to have. The attendees had lots of good questions and anecdotes to share. So if you attended our session and wanted to hear the rest of story or weren't able to attend and would like to see this talk, please go to this link to register for a webinar.

Webinar info:

Thursday February 23
2 - 3 pm CST

Math Lit & Pathways: 5 Years Later

Pathways courses in developmental math have evolved in the 5 years since their inception. In this webinar, lessons learned, problems, solutions, and data will be shared about Rock Valley College’s Math Lit course. Additionally, updates on how pathways are changing developmental math nationwide will be discussed. 

Teaching a section of Math Lit: a video rundown

Since we're at the beginning of the semester, some instructors may be new to teaching a math literacy course. So I've made the following video walking through one specific section that I taught recently. There are tips throughout it. If you'd like to talk more about the video with questions or suggestions, please join the Math Lit instructor forum.

To enlarge the video, press Play and then click on the "full screen" icon in the lower right-hand corner of the screen.




Also, the next part in the series on teaching the course online is coming. I wanted to post this blog post before it because I thought it might be more timely and helpful.

Teaching Math Lit online: Part 1

As I start the new spring semester, I've been thinking about my fall semester in which I taught Math Lit online for the first time. I've taught online for years and I've taught Math Lit for years, but online Math Lit seemed like a daunting task. I had talked to some instructors around the country to get ideas, but it was really a step off a cliff. And unlike other online courses I've taught for the first time, I didn't get everything figured out before we started. It made for a lot of challenges until we got into a routine. This post is provided to prevent you from having to be a guinea pig and instead benefit from my mistakes.

My goals were to incorporate the special traits of the face-to-face experience but in an online environment. What I found was that every single thing I was used to doing face-to-face had to be adapted. This was by far the most challenging online course I've ever made or taught, but it was also the most rewarding one. I really knew all my students and they knew each other. I felt very connected to them and their work and the best news is that the pass rate was phenomenal at 83%.

In this series of posts I want to share what I tried, what worked, and what needs work. My method is by no means the only way to go about this type of offering. I welcome any suggestions and ideas. Please check out the Math Lit instructor forum and join it so that we can discuss this course offering more.

Let's look at each component of the course one at a time. In this post, I'll look at the aspects of a section (Explore, Discover, Connect, Reflect). In the next post, I'll talk about doing homework, using the focus problems, and some other miscellaneous issues.

1. Explore

Each section of Math Lit starts with an Explore that has a problem that students have to try without necessarily having very much machinery to do so. It motivates the content for the section and helps students improve their problem solving skills, especially because it's a problem and not an exercise.

In the classroom, I always have students get in groups, read the Explore, and then start working on it together. We discuss the results and how it will set a framework for what we're going to work on.

The challenge was making these problems accessible to online developmental students, which I've found to be a set of students that tend to not interact as much in online math classes. They tend to keep to themselves. My solution was to use the Discussions feature of MyMathLab. It was great to have a use for a discussion that was not contrived, as they sometimes are in my other online math classes. Each Explore had its own discussion thread where students could work on the problem together until they reached an answer. Some instructors use wikis such as Google docs to do this and have students work in groups to add to the wiki with their work on the problem. I was struggling to keep my students in as few online platforms as possible, so I used the discussion feature. I used the "post first" feature so that one person didn't post the answer and everyone go, "yep, that's it" or "yep, that's what I got too." Students had to post a reply before they could see anyone else's response. I went through them and replied to each student on what they needed to adjust or try, sometimes suggesting they look at another student's response for ideas. After the due date, I posted a complete solution or referred them to look at a particular student's solution if it was correct and complete.

The problem was that it was basically an individual interaction between me and each student, not a group collaboration. What I'm going to try the next time I teach it online, this fall, is that students have to respond a certain number of times to each other. Keeping track of that and keeping it manageable is another challenge. Because it takes time to do these problems and get feedback to students and them work more on the problems, I made each week's Explores all due on Sunday nights. That gave them a week to work through them.

An additional problem we had is that students would wait until learning the content of the section to do the Explore. In that case, they would use what they had learned from the section, making each Explore basically like the Connect instead of its own exploration. I'm still pondering ways to improve that issue but give them enough time to finish them.

Since our course is large at 6 credits, we cover 4 to 5 sections each week. To make the workload more manageable, I made a few Explore discussions extra credit each cycle. This reduced the number of required weekly discussions to a more reasonable amount.

2. Discover

The main part of each section is the Discover in which skills and concepts are developed and practiced. In the classroom, I do some of the Discover as whole class and some in groups. While I wanted to students to work with each other to learn the content, it just wasn't feasible for time reasons. All these students were logging on at different times and trying to get the content done. There was no synchronous component to the course. Having to wait for other students to discuss each problem would take forever. We already had that challenge with the Explores.

So my solution was to have students work on the problems in the Discover on their own. I made a video showing them what I wanted them to do. They were supposed to open the ebook while they worked in the textbook. They were to read any exposition or examples, work any numbered problems, and watch any videos that accompanied the ebook. I tried to think what I would want if I was a student and one thing was the answers, to know that I was on the right track. So for each cycle, I made a document that had all the answers to the Discover problems that were numbered. They were supposed to work problems in the book and then check them, but I'm sure some students just worked backwards from the answers. Not ideal, but it's not something that can be controlled. Ultimately I concluded they were adults and would go through the learning process in a way that worked for them.

But, doing those pages in the book was essential. In some of my other online classes, students have seen the content and will just skim the book and do the homework. But this course is problem-based, not skill based, so the process of understanding the goals of the problems and sitting with them cannot be skipped. I kept telling students throughout the first week to do the book pages first, but they weren't. I received tons of questions on homework and there was confusion.

So my solution was to collect pages from each week of work. I thought this would be really time-consuming, but it was one of the best components of the course. It was so positive that I'd like to do it with other courses, online or face-to-face. I had to use our campus LMS, which is Canvas, to have the capability to easily grade their papers. Each Friday, I would post an assignment in Canvas with a list of 5 page numbers I had chosen from the sections they had worked on that week. They were to scan or take a picture of the pages with their phone and upload them as PDFs or JPGs. Canvas has a feature called SpeedGrader that allows me to click on their assignment and see each page they upload. I can comment on the page and explain how I got their score. I scored each page as 2 points (0 points for not turning it in, 1 point for doing anything on it, 2 points for doing everything on it as stated in the page's directions). To get full credit, they could not copy answers from the answer document. They had to show their own work.

I was able to grade their papers quickly and the benefits were immediate. They started doing the book pages as they went, which made the content make sense, and reduced the questions on homework considerably. I could get them some feedback without having to look through every page they did. It made me feel more connected to them and their progress. Everyone's frustration lifted.


3. Connect

In a classroom, I do the Connects like the Explores in groups. I give students time to work while I mill around giving hints and then we go over the answers. Having a whole other set of discussions for the Connects in addition to the Explores would have been too much. So I had students do these on their own after they did the Discover portion and provided them with answers to check (in the same document I mentioned above). It's not ideal, but it was the best I could come up with. Time was really something I was fighting all the time.

4. Reflect

I had students read the Reflect boxes on their own. Like in the face-to-face class, some students always read them and some never do. I tried to post comments on discussions and use announcements that regularly had information on why we were working on certain topics and how they fit together.

In the next post, I'll talk about homework, focus problems, tests, communication, making the content cohesive, and dealing with challenges.

AMATYC Keynote Connects to Pathways

Maria Andersen gave a terrific keynote address at AMATYC's conference this year. The video is available below. Her talk starts at the 44 minute mark.

The presentation resonated with me because the suggestions she gave are what we aim for in pathways courses like Math Lit. She talked about how we need to have real interaction in our classes, that we learn from experience, not just lecture, and how challenge and curiosity matter. She talked about the importance of varied practice, a key component of the content development in Math Lit, which is different from the mass practice concept used so commonly. That explanations are useful when students need them, after they've been working on something and there is confusion. And that students being stuck sometimes is important. All of her assertions are backed by research.

Her style is engaging and her message is timely and meaningful. Please take a look.

AMATYC Presentation Slides

Here is our presentation from today's AMATYC talk. After the slides are direct links to the articles shown in case any hyperlinks in the slides do not load correctly.

Math Lit and Pathways 5 Years Later AMATYC 2016 v2 from kathleenalmy

Articles referenced are as follows. Each includes data and information regarding pathways.

CCCSE report

California Acceleration Project report

Colorado Developmental Math report

Florida Developmental Math report

Montana Math Pathways report

New Mexico Math Pathways report

Going to AMATYC?

Heather and I will be presenting next week at the AMATYC conference in Denver. We will be talking about where pathways are 5 years after their inception. We'll give our latest data, national updates, and many lessons we've learned through teaching the course for 5 years. We'd love to see you there!

Math Lit and Pathways: Five Years Later
Thursday November 17
10:20 - 11:10 am

What's new?

Long time no blog! I've finally dug out of all the Math Lit 2nd edition items and got my classes to a good place for the fall. I've been doing lots of new things that I'll be blogging about. Using the second edition has been a lot of fun and has opened up the possibility of teaching the course online (which is going outstanding). I'll be blogging about the face-to-face and online versions and how those are going.

One big addition is a new Math Lit forum. There is a link above or to the right. To join, please request permission to join and tell me a little about yourself. I'll approve membership requests of faculty using or planning to use Math Lit to teach their math literacy course. Once approved, you can talk with other users about things that have been working for you, questions you have, and more. I'm excited to have this option to interact with other instructors of math literacy. Sharing ideas can benefit everyone.

In the upcoming weeks and months, I'll blogging on the following topics. I'll also add to the Math Lit forum.

• Teaching Math Lit online
• Using Learning Catalytics in course
• How is the second edition of Math Lit different
• Testing options
• Focus problems

and more!

Ready-to-go Course ID Available for MML Homework Use (no text homework)

I've made an additional RTG course if you want to use MML only for homework and not the book in addition to MML. I took the other RTG course I made (see yesterday's blog post for more info) and added in the text homework Skills problems and text homework Concepts and Applications problems that are available. Not all of the C&Apps problems from the text are available but there are some of those problems in MML for every section. I'm thinking of making the ones that aren't in MML now as free response custom questions for my fall online Math Lit class. If that pans out and works well, I'll provide the course ID after the fall semester for those who want to copy that course.

The text Skills problems in the book are meant to test students on the MML problems without the use of help aids. To achieve this while still in MML, I removed Help Me Solve This and View an Example from each of the text Skills problems. You can add them back easily if you want.

To allow students to review for the test only inside of MML, I took the existing Cycle Wrap-Ups and added some Concepts and Applications problems (at least one from each section of the cycle). The vocabulary component is not included, so you may want to have students use the Wrap-Up in the book at the end of each cycle along with the MML assignment.

MML Only (No Book homework) RTG Course ID:  almy53543

Ready-to-go Course ID Available for MML + Book Homework Use

Since a ready-to-go (RTG) course is not available for the book, I've created one by copying each sample homework and quiz within the course. They only need to be assigned to be used. To see the assignments, choose the Assignment Manager within the Course Tools tab.

The approach I took with this course is that of the way homework was used with the first edition: students start with skill-based exercises in MML and then finish their homework by doing all of the book homework problems for a section.

Each homework assignment in the RTG course has a selection of MML only problems for the section. We worked to make each sample assignment a reasonable length and not have any too long or too short. MML only problems are not in the printed book homework. They contain skill-based exercises for the section. With this approach to homework, students need to do the book homework after the MML homework so that they can work on the concepts and applications component of the section.

The RTG course has this construction for each cycle:

• Homework for each section in the first half of the cycle with MML only problems
• Mid-cycle quiz with one MML only problem and one Concepts & Applications problem for each section in the first half
• Homework for each section in the second half of the cycle with MML only problems
• Cycle Wrap-Up homework with MML only problems from the entire cycle to accompany the 5 step test review wrap-up in the book

Additionally, a prerequisite quiz (Getting Ready for Math Lit) is included to open the course.

I have not customized the tabs in the left navigation bar. The default is the book homework answers are hidden, but you can reveal that tab for students if you like. You can hide any tabs you don't want to use, organize tabs together, and add additional tabs if desired.

Please use any, all, or none of the homeworks and quizzes. Customize them to work for your needs. For most sections, there are additional MML only problems to choose if you want more practice. If you feel you do not have enough problems, consider adding testbank problems (available on 8/17/16) and/or adding problems from other texts. There are additional problems available in the Getting Ready for Math Lit appendix that can be used for prerequisite topics.

Also, you may want to copy the sample tests to provide students a practice test for studying purposes, even if you give paper tests in class.

MML + Book homework RTG Course ID:  almy04103


I'm also working on a RTG course that does not rely on book homework. It's taking me a little longer to do, so that course ID will be posted on this blog tomorrow.

MyMathLab for Math Lit 2e Now Available! (updated)

The MyMathLab (MML) course for the 2nd edition of Math Lit is now available. There are many improvements and additions to the first editions MML course.

Homework/quiz/test creation

• More MML problems to choose from including some Concepts and Applications problems from the book homework for each book section (see Tip below)
• Each section name includes its topic for ease of selecting problems when creating homeworks/quizzes/tests
• Problems are clearly labeled for ease of use
• MML only (for exercises that are only in MML and not in the book)
• TextSkills (first two skill exercises of each book homework)
• TextC&Apps (concepts and applications problems in the book)
• Sample tests available for instructors who want to test online or have practice tests online
• A Getting Ready for Math Lit appendix to provide additional prerequisite content questions above the included Getting Ready prereq quiz

8/3 Update:

An improved TestGen testbank was created for this edition of the text. You can download it from this page. Choose the Resources tab and scroll down. Although it says it's not available yet, it is there and available for download.

The testbank questions are also going to be converted to MML questions and will be available in the MML assignment manager as additional testbank questions on 8/17/16. For those wanting even more problems to use, this should help a lot.

Student resources

• ebook has many more videos to support students (and all videos in the text were made for Math Lit)
• Answers to book homework only available in MML so that you can choose to reveal or hide them
• Updated Excel appendix with additional functions included

Instructor resources

• Printable homework masters if you want to collect book homework but don't want to disrupt the next section's pages
• All new instructor videos to support training needs
• Focus problem packages (problem, solution, template, rubric) with 3 problem options per cycle as follows:
• Focus problem in the second edition
• Focus problem from the first edition
• One new focus problem per cycle
• A new Instructor's Resource Manual** (available in Word and PDF formats for ease of editing items)
• A new Instructor's Solution Manual
• PowerPoints available for each section

You can use Learning Catalytics with the text now, but only the standard set of questions are available. We are having questions specific to Math Lit that will be included in the near future. I will update the blog with that info as I have it.

*The Instructor's Resource Manual is being completed and will be available in MML at the end of this week.

A ready-to-go course option is not available for this edition. Because it's so close to the fall semester and some instructors were counting on a ready-to-go course, I will be creating some ready-to-go versions this week. By the end of the day Wednesday of this week, I'll post course IDs that you can copy if you like of two different kinds of ready-to-go courses. One will be with the traditional use of homework (MML + book) and the other will be MML only. I'm teaching a face-to-face version of the course and an online one this fall. These types of MML courses can support each type of offering.

Tip:  If you would like to have all the Concepts and Applications problems from the homework in your MML course, you can create custom questions for the ones that aren't in MML and make the questions static and free response that you hand grade. Some questions aren't suited to being algorithmically regenerated. This option allows you to have all the problems from the text but in an online format, something that would support online course offerings more easily.

Math Lit 2e is now available!

The second edition of Math Lit is now available. Both instructor's and student editions are available now. The MyMathLab course will post the first week of August. In the MML course will be a new Instructor's Resource Manual, Instructor's Solutions Manual, PowerPoints, Learning Catalytics questions, additional videos, new instructor videos, and much more. The MML course will be ready for use in the fall semester.

I will be posting more on the new book soon. In the meantime, please contact your Pearson rep or check out this site if you'd like to see a copy.

Upcoming webinar on second edition of Math Lit

I'll be giving a webinar tomorrow about the lessons we've learned in 5 years of teaching a math literacy course and how those changes have been incorporated into the second edition of Math Lit. The new edition is in print on June 6 and the MyMathLab course will be available the first week of August. If you will be teaching out of the new edition or you're considering using it, this webinar is for you.

To register, click here.

Webinar info:

Math Lit: Looking Forward, Looking Back

Thursday April 28, 3 pm EST

ORMATYC/WAMATYC presentation slides

Here are the slides for my talk at at the joint ORMATYC/WAMATYC conference.

Math Lit & Pathways: 5 yrs later ORMATYC 2016 from kathleenalmy

ORMATYC/WAMATYC next week

Are you going to the combined ORMATYC/WAMATYC meeting next week? If so, I'm doing a talk on lessons learned from 5 years of teaching Math Lit. The session is from 2:45 to 3:45 pm on Friday April 22. I hope to see you there.