The Use of Student-Authored Study Guides in a Quantitative Reasoning Course

Linda McGuire, Muhlenberg College

Motivating students in a lower-level mathematics course can be quite a challenge – especially when the students in question proclaim that they are not particularly interested in mathematics. This talk will focus on describing and assessing a semester-long class project that proved to be an effective catalyst for mathematical success in a lower-level Quantitative Methods course. This course was designed to emphasize honing communication skills (both mathematical and verbal) within a cooperative learning paradigm.

Students in this class, working in small groups, wrote and edited chapters in a study guide for the course. Each group had to collaborate to produce a well-written chapter that accurately explained, in both mathematical and common language, the material at hand. They were also required to find and design pertinent examples and to write their own problem sets. These exercises were to include both technology-enhanced problems and questions whose solutions could be found completely by hand.

Each class member would be given a copy of the chapter currently under discussion when it was ready. The entire class participated in the editing process of the document and, in fact, used the problems sets as pre-examination review materials. Group members were responsible for leading the class session(s) devoted to the discussion and editing of their chapter.

The reward reaped by students during the course of this project manifested themselves in several ways. Students needed to exercise critical reading skills when interpreting the textbook and other companion materials. Their understanding of this information was enhanced by the mathematical conversations and debates that they had within their groups and later with the entire class. The study guides required mathematically correct writing as well as interpretive analysis. They wrote interesting and often challenging problem sets. These project components allowed them to focus on mathematics while encouraging them to demonstrate other academic strengths that they possessed.

Students in these classes became highly motivated, mathematically empowered, excited and better informed about topics as they worked on the study guide.

My talk would conclude by addressing nuts and bolts issues like course planning and timing, assessment, and material coverage. Physical examples of student work would also be presented.