The Numeracy Infusion Course for Higher Education (NICHE)

The materials presented on this website represent one component of our Numeracy Infusion Course for Higher Education (NICHE). In addition, we have developed a series of interactive online modules designed for faculty from across the disciplines that provide instruction for teaching QR to students. Our 8-week online course focuses on the following topics: (1) QR and Making Numbers Meaningful; (2) QR Learning Outcomes; (3) The Brain, Cognition and QR; (4) QR and Writing; (5) Discovery Methods; (6) Representations of Data; (7) QR Assessment; and (8) QR Stereotypes and Culture.

If you have any questions about NICHE and/or are interested in participating in this course, please contact Esther Isabelle Wilder (ewilder@gc.cuny.edu). We also welcome feedback and suggestions for this website!

The CUNY NICHE Development Team

Esther Wilder, Principal Investigator, Lehman College (ewilder@gc.cuny.edu)

Elin Waring, Faculty Liaison and Senior Researcher, Lehman College (elin.waring@gmail.com)

Frank Wang, co-Principal Investigator, LaGuardia Community College (fwang@lagcc.cuny.edu)

Dene Hurley, co-Principal Investigator, Lehman College (dthurley@optonline.net)

Special Thanks

We are especially grateful to the many people who have helped support this project. Special thanks go to William H. Walters, who coordinated the Camtasia presentations and provided the voice over as asll as Steve Castellano, who gave us extensive Blackboard and Camtasia help. Rebecca West has provided extremely helpful feedback and editorial assistance. Robert Whittaker and Judith Duncker have been steadfast in their support of this project. We are also grateful to the many people who provdied technical advice, administrative support, and/or helpful suggestions for improvement of this course including Alyson Vogel, Tzuhao (T) Huang, Hsien-Tseng (Elvin) Wang, and Ruifang (Grace) Xu.

Sample Materials from NICHE

Exercise #1: Graphing your Course along a QR Spectrum. For this brief exercise, we want you to review the definitions of quantitative and reasoning from Merriam-Webster's dictionary (Acrobat (PDF) 53kB May2 13). After studying these definitions, please think about a specific course you teach (it could be anything)! After you have picked your course, please graph where you think it would currently fall based on (a) how quantitative it is, and (b) how much reasoning it involves. Please indicate where your course falls by placing a marking, such as a star (or your initials or some other symbol), on this graph. You can do this very easily by double-clicking on the graph and then inserting a shape (the insert option will automatically appear when you double-click on the graph). Then you will want to move the shape (or your initials) where it belongs (and you will likely want to reduce the size of the shape or the font of your initials). As an example, I have chosen a smiley face and graphed it on this chart. After you graph your course on the chart, please go to the bottom of the graph and identify yourself, indicate the symbol you used, noting what course it represents and why you graphed it where you did.

Exercise #2: Graphing the Three Little Pigs. Please watch the Kurt Vonnegut video which illustrates the use of a line graph to tell a story. After you watch that, please watch the "Three Little Pigs Silly Symphony" (also below). After you finish watching the video of the three little pigs, please graph the story using flockdraw and write about your graph here. You should graph the story in whatever way feels right to you (e.g., choose whatever perspective you want). Please follow the following directions.

(1) When you open up "flockdraw," click on "create your own session." This will open a drawing page and you can draw your graph. The drawing tools are pretty self-explanatory, but please label your graph.

(2) When you are finished with your graph, click on the floppy disk to the right of your graph to save it. When you do that, you get a URL that you will want to note.

(3) When you write about your graph, be sure to provide a link to the URL of the graph that you have drawn so that we can all see it.

(4) After you have graphed your story of "The Three Little Pigs," please explain why you graphed the story the way you did.

Kurt Vonnegut on the Shape of Stories

The Three little Pigs Silly Symphony

Financial Support

Support for this project has been provided by the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Transforming Undergraduate Education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) (TUES) award #1121844. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this web site are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the National Science Foundation.