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Mathematics instructor Emily Atchley (right) helps Wintersession students in the department’s new CALM lab. |
A new mathematics laboratory is getting high marks from both students and professors.
Aptly named Computer Aided Learning in Mathematics (CALM), the lab features 70 computer stations that run the Hawkes Learning Systems software. Approximately 1,800 students enrolled in special sections of Elementary Statistics and College Algebra had access to CALM during the fall semester.
“The Hawkes software helped me learn by trial and error,” said Jennifer Grigsby, a sophomore linguistics major from St. Mary’s, Ga. “It would show me the problems I got wrong, and instead of letting me get away with that, I would have to do them over, understand why I got them wrong and fix them.”
Tristan Denley, chair and associate professor of mathematics, said, “The software allows mathematics to become more than a spectator sport. The lab provides a learning environment in which students can practice the new skills they are learning until they really have them mastered. Our students get immediate feedback on the mistakes they make and ultimately learn more mathematics.”
Funded by the Office of the Provost, the lab is one more way UM is keeping pace with students’ changing needs, said Tim Hall, associate provost. “I think we’re all realizing that students are becoming increasingly at home in the world of computers, and we see the mathematics department striving to augment instruction to meet their needs,” he said.
CALM is open 30 hours a week. Students enrolled in the special sections are required to spend at least 75 minutes per week working on the Hawkes tutorial in addition to their regular classroom sessions. Students choose the level of difficulty for practice problems and receive one-on-one help from on-site tutors.
Incorrect answers offer the options of “try again” or “explain error,” giving students a chance to overcome any deficiency and learn from their mistakes. A tutor cannot assist students once they move to the program’s “certify” mode because this opens up homework that will be turned in to be graded, with students’ scores automatically recorded in a professor’s online record book. To certify, or successfully complete a lesson, a student must achieve at least 80 percent accuracy.
Ninety-seven percent of students who certified in at least 75 percent of the lessons completed the semester with a passing grade. Sixty percent of students who certified in 90 percent of the lessons received an A or a B in the class.
“The lab is a great benefit to students who use it wisely,” said Marlow Dorrough, instructor and director of freshman mathematics. “That means they must be patient enough to practice the problems before attempting to certify, study the explanations offered by Hawkes for incorrect answers and take the time to work through a Web test to simulate a real test situation.”
Carrie Reed, a sophomore pre-pharmacy major from Greenwood, said, “The most helpful aspect of Hawkes for me was that it provides step-by-step help for every problem if you need it, and it tells you if you have the correct answer at every step.”
“What we’ve found is exactly what we had hoped,” said Denley. “By consistently practicing their mathematics skills, a larger number of students are really understanding mathematics at the end of the semester.”