PCELL: Let me give you a little bit of background on the project, and particularly why I am here at Tri-C. I don’t know how familiar you are with some changes in developmental and first year undergraduate mathematics. It used to be that everyone took courses that were kind of on a calculus track, even though they were never going to take calculous unless that fit unto their major. So, they took classes like college algebra, finite math and trig, just because we have been teaching them for decades. Now there is a shift for students who are not going to major in [inaudible][00:00:40] fields, to take math courses that are more, they use the term relevant, to their everyday lives, or are going to better prepare them for the field that they …show more content…
Then I have them compare those numbers and turn them loose in a discussion forum format to think about, if your goal is this what do you do and if you goal is that what do you do and how you adjust. IN: That makes sense. To what extent to you ask them to think about, if they get a numerical answer for that, is that a reasonable answer. One of the things we struggle with as math teachers is that students will trust whatever comes out of a calculator or a computer. Do you talk with them at all about here is how to know if this is reasonable or you made an error. PCELL: I actually recommend that they do it two ways, that they use the equation that I give them and that they plug that into an online calculator. The equations that I give them are usually reliable estimator and I also tell them that there is an error range of about 10 percent. The online calculators, I give them a couple links to the ones that I know work, but sometimes you get the wrong answers out of it. Last semester, I actually had a typo in one of the equators by a decimal point, which made a huge difference so people were giving me these absurdly low numbers so I brought that to attention and that actually was an important opportunity for