The Math You Need, When You Need It 2012:
A workshop for faculty teaching introductory geoscience

July 26-28, 2012, Highline Community College, Seattle, WA

To date, nearly 30 colleges and universities have successfully used the online resources encompassed by The Math You Need, When You Need It (TMYN). Although inclusion of quantitative skills can be difficult for a number of reasons, data suggest that students who engage with TMYN become more proficient in quantitative problem solving. To find out more about how each institution has tailored TMYN to its own needs and situation, please look at the Implementation Plans that each of the participants at TMYN workshops has created.

Workshop description

The workshop was held in Seattle in the summer of 2012 to explore the flexibility afforded you by TMYN and to learn best practices for implementing TMYN into your own introductory geoscience course.

This NSF-funded project is designed to provide resources for both faculty and students to include quantitative skills in the introductory geoscience classroom by:

• providing a supportive learning environment for learning mathematical skills
• allowing students to complete modules on their own time and at their own pace
• requiring no extra classroom time to increase quantitative geoscience content in your course

The workshop began on Thursday evening with a dinner and concluded at lunch on Saturday. Participants in this workshop:

• learned about the inner workings of TMYN and the testing software
• interacted with successful implementers of TMYN
  
• modified course(s) to include appropriate online quantitative content
  
• designed an implementation unique to his/her course and institution
• created a web page with an implementation plan
• discussed student perceptions/fears of quantitative skills
• collaborated with other participants to improve TMYN effectiveness
  

Workshop conveners:

Eric Baer, Highline Community College, Geology
Helen Burn, Highline Community College, Mathematics
Jennifer Wenner, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, Geology

Workshop Leaders:

Gretchen Miller, Wake Technical Community College
Elizabeth Gordon, Fitchburg State University
Kyle Fredrick, California University of Pennsylvania
Brett Dooley, Patrick Henry Community College
Kate Kramer, McHenry County College

Costs

Workshop operational costs as well as room, board and reasonable travel costs for participants are covered by grants from the National Science Foundation [DUE-0920800 (Baer) and DUE-0920583 (Wenner)].

Logistics and Location

The workshop was at Highline Community College, just south of Seattle, Washington. Sea-Tac Airport is just 3 miles from the conference hotel and meeting area, and a shuttle was available to all participants.

Workshop leaders convene on Thursday July 26th in the morning. Participants gather by 5 p.m. on the 26th. The conference adjourned at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, July 28th.

Participant Selection Criteria

Workshop participants were chosen based on expressed interest in using The Math You Need resources and reflected a variety of institutions, introductory geoscience courses, student populations and geographic settings.

For more information

Contact the conveners, Eric Baer (ebaer 'at' highline.edu) or Jennifer Wenner (wenner 'at' uwosh.edu)