About the Numeracy Infusion Course for Higher Education (NICHE)/Numeracy Infusion for College Educators (NICE) Program and Our New Data Analysis Research Experience (DARE) Project.
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The Faculty Development Program to Improve Students' Quantitative Reasoning/Data Analysis Research Experience (DARE) Project
Our new faculty development program (2018-2023) to improve students' quantitative reasoning (QR) skills will do so by the implementation of a Data Analysis Research Experience (DARE). The abstract of the project is here. If you are a faculty member here to learn more about faculty involvement in the DARE Project and/or are interested in possibly participating, you can learn more about our initiative here. Further information may be obtained from Esther Isabelle Wilder, the PI on the project.
The Faculty Development Program to Improve Students' Quantitative Reasoning/Data Analysis Research Experience (DARE) Team
- Esther Wilder, Principal Investigator, Lehman College (Esther.Wilder@lehman.cuny.edu)
- Eduardo Vianna, co-Principal Investigator, LaGuardia Community College (evianna@lagcc.cuny.edu)
- Rebecca West, co-Principal Investigator, Lehman College (Rebecca.West@lehman.cuny.edu)
An Overview of the NICHE/NICE Project
The materials presented on this website represent one component of our Numeracy Infusion Course for Higher Education (NICHE) Program. The reach of this program was later extended with additional support from NSF through the Numeracy Infusion for College Educators (NICE) Project. For the NICHE Program, we developed a series of interactive online modules designed for faculty from across the disciplines that provide instruction for teaching quantitative reasoning (QR) to students. Our 8-unit online course focuses on the following topics:
- QR and Making Numbers Meaningful
- QR Learning Outcomes
- The Brain, Cognition and QR
- QR and Writing
- Discovery Methods
- Representations of Data
- QR Assessment
- QR Stereotypes and Culture
Whether called numeracy, Quantitative Literacy (QL) or Quantitative Reasoning (QR), the importance of infusing quantitative material throughout the curriculum is an imperative of higher education. This website is intended to provide a repository of resources and information for faculty from across the disciplines who are seeking to infuse numeracy/QL/QR in their course instruction.
More specifically, the materials on this website provide guidance for faculty to
- apply QL/QR within a disciplinary context,
- articulate QL/QR learning goals/objectives that reflect best practices for teaching quantitative literacy,
- identify and implement best practices for teaching QL/QR: active learning, collaborative student learning, writing with numerical information, etc.,
- develop and/or adapt exercises and instructional tools that incorporate quantitative reasoning, and
- assess the effectiveness of QL/QR instructional efforts and use the assessment results to further improve teaching.
If you have any questions about NICHE/NICE and/or are interested in participating in this course, please contact Esther Isabelle Wilder (Esther.wilder@lehman.cuny.edu). We also welcome feedback and suggestions for this website!
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Source: Mark Anderson (www.andertoons.com). Permission provided.
The CUNY NICHE PI/co-PI Team
- Esther Wilder, Principal Investigator, Lehman College (Esther.Wilder@lehman.cuny.edu). Website: https://www.lehman.edu/academics/sociology/faculty-wilder.php
- Frank Wang, co-Principal Investigator, LaGuardia Community College (fwang@lagcc.cuny.edu)
- Dene Hurley, co-Principal Investigator, Lehman College (Dene.Hurley@lehman.cuny.edu)
Special Thanks
Special thanks to Rebecca West (Lehman College) and Corrine Taylor (Wellesley College) for their support! I also thank Stephen Castellano and Alyson Vogel at Lehman College for their technical support and enthusiasm for this project. We also acknowledge the extremely helpful feedback and support provided by Elin Waring and Judith Duncker, as well as the Lehman College Quantitative Reasoning (QR) fellows including Tzuhao (T) Huang, Joshua Rutter, Hsien-Tseng (Elvin) Wang, and Ruifang (Grace) Xu. Their assistance has been greatly appreciated!
Special thanks to Sarooh and Toerat, who provide celestial inspiration.
Contact Us
Esther Isabelle Wilder, Principal Investigator
Lehman College
250 Bedford Park Boulevard West
Bronx, NY 10468
Esther.wilder@lehman.cuny.eduPersonal webpage: http://www.lehman.edu/academics/sociology/faculty-wilder.php
Authorship and Terms of Use
Unless otherwise indicated, all pages are authored by Esther Isabelle Wilder. Please provide attribution when using any materials from this website.
Images on the webpages have been credited and/or clipart images have been purchased for use from clipart.com or shutterstock.com.
This site is covered by the SERC Terms of Use
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: The Monty Hall Problem.
The Monty Hall Problem gets its name from the TV game show "Let's Make a Deal," which was hosted by Monty Hall. In this problem/scenario, you are a contestant who is seeking to win a prize. There are three doors and there is a prize behind just one of them. You are given the opportunity to select one of the closed doors. The two doors that do not have the prize hide goats or some other item that is not desired. Once you have chosen the door you want, Monty Hall will always open one of the doors that is not the prize and ask you if you'd like to switch. The problem then is whether you should switch. To prepare for this exercise, please watch a clip of a video about the problem here:
(1) first, write down what you think you should do (before you start!), given this problem, i.e., should you stay or should you switch?
(2) Next, let's do the Monty Hall problem!
We watch you to switch a total of at least 10 times and stay a total of at least 10 times. So you need to try this at least 20 times. Don't worry: It doesn't take long!
When you are done, you should have a table like this:
Switching
Number of times switched:
Number of times winning when switching:
Number of times losing when switching:
Staying
Number of times stayed:
Number of times winning when staying:
Number of times losing when staying:
Let's transfer the data to this spreadsheet: If you select the tab "summary and chart," we'll see the results from all the groups!
Exercise #3: 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 Symphony." 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.
Financial Support
Support for the NICHE and NICE projects has been provided by the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Transforming Undergraduate Education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) (TUES) award #1121844 and the National Science Foundation (NSF) Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) awards #1644948 and #1644975. We gratefully acknowledge the support of NSF for these projects! 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. Please email Esther Wilder (Esther.Wilder@lehman.cuny.edu) if you have any questions about this project.
