Engaging College and Middle School Math Students through SL and Football

Presentation Format

Individual Presentation

Intended Audience

All Audiences

Program Abstract

This presentation examines the benefits of an SL fantasy football competition between college freshmen in a non-majors math course and middle school students in an afterschool program. Continuing on prior research, we compare the results of an SL section of this course with a traditional section. Differences in retention and overall mathematical understanding are noted. Delving into a new aspect of this project is an examination of benefits and outcomes for the middle school students.

Presentation Description

RATIONALE: In Georgia, non-STEM majors may take Quantitative Skills & Reasoning (QSR) as opposed to the traditional College Algebra course. As a result, students who enroll in QSR are often those students who either believe their brains “aren’t wired” for mathematics or that they will never use mathematics in their lives. For professors, this creates a large hurdle for teaching – one that we constantly seek to overcome. At CCGA, this course has low retention rates (students officially withdraw or unofficially stop attending) and low grades. In the past, I’ve attempted to engage students by creating group projects for each of the chapters covered that delve a bit deeper into the subject while applying the concepts directly to their lives. The goal of these projects has been to help students understand the harder concepts by providing further practice and also to improve interest in the material as students can see how it directly relates to their lives. While the DFW and retention rates have improved through my use of these projects, they are still very poor compared to other math courses.

In an attempt to further improve success rates in QSR, I decided in fall 2014 to replace the group projects with a Service-Learning experience. Partnering with the local middle school chapters of the Boys and Girls Club of Southeast Georgia, I created a project that ties all of the concepts of QSR together with football. The QSR students met weekly with local middle school students to conduct a Fantasy Football league and discuss how various mathematics topics relate to football through a set of “math sheets” that I developed. The specific mathematics topics are chosen to align QSR content with current middle school math content. I have now taught this service-learning version of the course twice: fall 2014 and fall 2015. In 2014, I only outcomes for my college students. In 2015, I continued analyzing data on college students but also added in metrics to measure the benefits for the middle school students.

Through this experience, QSR students develop a firmer grasp of course content, an interesting perspective of the applicability of mathematics, improved communication skills, and a sense of comradery with their fellow students and middle school students. The middle school students also develop a firmer grasp of their own coursework and an interesting perspective of the applicability of mathematics, as well as develop their understanding of college. Teaching two section of the SL version and two sections of the group work version of QSR, a number of very interesting statistics have emerged in regard to improved retention rates and course averages.

GOALS AND ENGAGED PARTICIPANTS: The presenter will describe the course, the results of student outcomes, and the impact of the SL experience. The presenter will then hold a discussion on how this project may be implemented in other places, what improvement may be made to this project, and other potential future strategies.

Location

Room - 210

Start Date

4-14-2016 1:45 PM

End Date

4-14-2016 3:00 PM

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Apr 14th, 1:45 PM Apr 14th, 3:00 PM

Engaging College and Middle School Math Students through SL and Football

Room - 210

RATIONALE: In Georgia, non-STEM majors may take Quantitative Skills & Reasoning (QSR) as opposed to the traditional College Algebra course. As a result, students who enroll in QSR are often those students who either believe their brains “aren’t wired” for mathematics or that they will never use mathematics in their lives. For professors, this creates a large hurdle for teaching – one that we constantly seek to overcome. At CCGA, this course has low retention rates (students officially withdraw or unofficially stop attending) and low grades. In the past, I’ve attempted to engage students by creating group projects for each of the chapters covered that delve a bit deeper into the subject while applying the concepts directly to their lives. The goal of these projects has been to help students understand the harder concepts by providing further practice and also to improve interest in the material as students can see how it directly relates to their lives. While the DFW and retention rates have improved through my use of these projects, they are still very poor compared to other math courses.

In an attempt to further improve success rates in QSR, I decided in fall 2014 to replace the group projects with a Service-Learning experience. Partnering with the local middle school chapters of the Boys and Girls Club of Southeast Georgia, I created a project that ties all of the concepts of QSR together with football. The QSR students met weekly with local middle school students to conduct a Fantasy Football league and discuss how various mathematics topics relate to football through a set of “math sheets” that I developed. The specific mathematics topics are chosen to align QSR content with current middle school math content. I have now taught this service-learning version of the course twice: fall 2014 and fall 2015. In 2014, I only outcomes for my college students. In 2015, I continued analyzing data on college students but also added in metrics to measure the benefits for the middle school students.

Through this experience, QSR students develop a firmer grasp of course content, an interesting perspective of the applicability of mathematics, improved communication skills, and a sense of comradery with their fellow students and middle school students. The middle school students also develop a firmer grasp of their own coursework and an interesting perspective of the applicability of mathematics, as well as develop their understanding of college. Teaching two section of the SL version and two sections of the group work version of QSR, a number of very interesting statistics have emerged in regard to improved retention rates and course averages.

GOALS AND ENGAGED PARTICIPANTS: The presenter will describe the course, the results of student outcomes, and the impact of the SL experience. The presenter will then hold a discussion on how this project may be implemented in other places, what improvement may be made to this project, and other potential future strategies.