Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2000 20:37:24 -0500 (CDT) From: Mike Sullivan To: aearnest (at) math.siu.edu, parker (at) cos.siu.edu Subject: PBL Jack and Andy, As you may recall Randy H and I had lunch with Jim Allen to discuss PBL. R & I stressed that different students have different needs in math and science, and that a lot of basic material has to be mastered in many majors. Jim said it is very unlikely that PBL we be able to expand much. I suspect it will fade away. My biggest complaint is what we are not doing: placing students in the right courses and admitting only students who have a chance of doing college level work. The push for programs like PBL comes from the Boyer Commission Report. See: http://galileo.math.siu.edu/~msulliva/boyer.txt . I do not know if you are familiar with this report. I had heard of it but had not read it until now. It is where the slogan "student centered research university" comes from. But it seems to me that the administration and the Faculty Senate have ignored a key provision of the report. Begin quote: Remediation Before Admission ... Entering students should be required to have satisfactory mathematics and oral and written language skills before taking any credit courses. Remediation should not be a function of a research university; for a research university to devote a large portion of its faculty time and its facilities to prepare students for university study represents a dissipation of increasingly scarce resources. Students should acquire the skills they need before entering credit-bearing courses. Intensive summer programs in mathematics and English may in many circumstances provide the necessary skills; students with serious deficits should attend other kinds of institutions prepared to handle their educational needs before enrolling in research universities. ... End Quote. While I like some of the curricular and pedagogical ideas in the report, and in PBL (though on a more modest scale), they are pipe dreams as long as we ignore the cited passage. Here are my ideas to move us in the right direction. 1) SIUC registration computers should enforce course prerequisites. Over riding the prerequisites should only by allowed with the written premission of the instructor. This is the only campus I have seen where this is not done. I had a student who failed College Algebra 3 times sign up for Calculus because he decided he didn't really like algebra and wanted to try something different! Crazy as it sounds, such cases are far from uncommon. 2) All incoming students, (including transfers), should take a placement test in math (and probably English). As a stopgap measure ACT math scores could be used, with placement enforced by the computers. [Exceptions could be made only with the instructor's written consent.] This would mean requiring transfer students to take the ACT. (Science and Engineering have informal placement tests, administered haphazardly by advisors who have likely never taken math beyond algebra.) 3) Down the road, I would like to see transfer students meet the same ACT entrance requirements as incoming freshman. Currently, they only need a 2.0 at a Community College to be automatically admitted, an easy end-run around standards. 4) While I was at UT-Austin, they had a program to have remedial courses taught by the local CC on the UT campus at night. They did the remediation, we taught only university level courses. I'd like to see this done with Logan, but given their track record, we should insist that the students pass final exams set by us. Most of this comes under the FS rather they the administration. Still it is likely that administrative leadership in these areas could help. I have talked to people on the FS, mostly Randy, and feel that even point 1 is an uphill struggle. Mike Sullivan Math PS: Feel free to share this with anyone you think might be interested.