University of Texas at San Antonio

1. What is the status of Quantitative Reasoning programming on your campus?

The University of Texas at San Antonio has selected a Quantitative Reasoning program as part of its five year re-accreditation efforts. The full program will be implemented in the Fall of 2011. We are currently undertaking a pilot study that integrates quantitative skills in selected courses in the general education curriculum.


2. What are the key learning goals that shape your current programming or that you hope to achieve?

Student Learning Goal I: The program will help undergraduate students acquire basic quantitative literacy and numeracy skills. (Quantitative Literacy)
Student Learning Goal II: The program will help undergraduate students effectively communicate the results of their quantitative analysis in writing or by other means. (Communication)


3. Do you have QR assessment instruments in place? If so; please describe:

We have an assessment of basic QR skills. We have developed an instrument that we administer to all incoming freshmen. The items on the instrument address the reading of graphs and charts, simple probability, interpreting numerical summaries, and ideas of sampling and bias.


4. Considering your campus culture; what challenges or barriers do you anticipate in implementing or extending practices to develop and assess QR programming on your campus?

The program was approved as part of our re-accreditation efforts and has the full support of the administration. Several departments have supported the plan but we anticipate challenges in requiring all students to take quantitatively enhanced courses. We need to work with advising to ensure students understand the importance of QR. The other significant challenge is the large class sizes of our general education classes (200-400)


5. Considering your campus culture; what opportunities or assets will be available to support your QR initiatives?

A budget for implementation has been approved: it includes faculty summer stipends for course redesign, money to support TAs, and graders to assist with the written assessments.