Candace,

Thanks for sharing the ideas in your project. It's critical for students to see the bigger picture of how mathematics is applied in careers to justify that why mathematical literacy is important for all. We have situations where even those who use mathematics may not be aware or are hesitant to admit that they are using mathematics.

Your team's choice of algebra is strategic, given the documented challenges in learning if algebra. Ill be keen to learn from your project if there are reports on how the strategies could be deployed to a slightly expanded scope

These are great questions! We try to deal with this problem through lots of scaffolding. We show students examples of how the specific algebra concept they are learning is used in careers their interested in, using different media. Then, students can create any sort of scenario they want about how the algebra concept is used in the career. One thing we rate is students' originality - whether they come up with a brand new application of math to their career, or whether they closely mirror the examples. Most change at least some key elements of the stories to better fit their interest and experiences. However, we have not seen evidence thus far that it is particularly bad to mirror the examples we give them when writing their own story - they can learn from that too! So far, students have a really hard time getting started writing their very first story about their career, but after that, they do really well on the tasks. There seems to be another kind of drop-off when we reach harder functional forms (e.g., e^x functions), as these functions are harder to apply to the real world in a transparent way that makes clear how they work! Anyways, let me know what other things you're wondering about, and I would love to hear more about your dissertation work!

Hi Adem, thank you for the comments! We definitely have found the the secondary math curriculum is NOT well-aligned with the mathematics that STEM professionals actually use. It was really shocking for us in the first two years of the grant to discover this. We are teaching students a large set of somewhat useless skills that lay the groundwork for more skills that they probably won't use. There definitely are a small subset of people in academic, research, and technology development positions that use a lot of advanced mathematics including algebra and calculus - but the "everyday" STEM professional seems to have very different set of needs. I think these are important conversations to have too!

Yes, elaborating a bit on this thread about the potential motivational benefits here. We ask some rather fine grained questions about career interests as a way of probing student interest to inform match and to evaluate (1) whether personalized math learning improves career & math interests (or their convergence) and also (2) whether there are specific career areas or careers in particular for which Personalized Problem Posing is particularly useful. You bring up a third, exciting area where these materials could be agonists for student-generated utility value to promote relevance. We know from achievement motivation research (Hulleman, Kosovich, colleagues, mid 2010s) that self-generating connections is crucial to generating utility value. These problem posing activities implicitly promote relevance generation, and a good match with relevant examples can be a catalyst. We'll soon conduct analyses to look at the relevance students do (/not) perceive when they engage, and how their interest in math may change as a result.  Stay tuned :)  

I like Candace's answer about what she is using for her dependent measures so I will let her answer for that but let me say something about scale.

Because the system is ASSISTments, if it beats the traditional method, it would be very easy to scale to the 500,000 students that use ASSISTments.  I see great value in more researchers using platforms to do their studies so if they work our the scaling can be done more easily.   WPI and the ASSISTments Foundation allow other researchers to propose studies.  See https://www.etrialstestbed.org/  

Thanks for the comments Thomas! Our platform really focuses on students making meaning of symbolic representations in algebra - in understanding the different parameters and variances in a function equation, in terms of a meaningful real world situation. We want students to be able to take equations apart, and them put them back together again as they think through their own stories. We are measuring their learning through the characteristics of the algebra stories they write, their ability to solve their algebra stories and other algebra stories about their career successfully, and their performance on rep-/post- algebra assessments administered before and after the intervention. We are currently working to scale the platform. Our biggest challenge at the moment is getting it to work on any computer in any browser, regardless of the school's settings. Being located in ASSISTments helps a lot with this, but we use some capabilities outside of ASSISTments to make the platform more interactive.

Thanks so much for your question! We are  really interested in connecting with districts, especially those with schools that use "career academy" type models. This is a great way to make math experiences more personalized within such a model. We are currently working with two districts in North Carolina, and are at the beginning stages of forming a partnership with two districts in California and one in Texas to scale up the use of the platform. It took a long time to  build everything, so we are just now starting to focus on scale-up!

Thank you for sharing this amazing project. I'd love to see all my students realizing that math is everywhere. I agree, it would be a great idea to bring this project to schools that use career academy structures. It will benefit both the schools, but most importantly the students. Thank you for sharing!

Thank you so much for your comments Mike! The person who made the comment about log is a practicing mechanical engineer who manages tanks for the military. He said that most of the more advanced math he used was only really relevant when he was taking the professional engineer exam. We are really interested in thinking about what from algebra is useful and compelling in the world of work.

Right now, we are transitioning from small scale use to using the activities at scale. We are planning to develop a new version over the next 6-8 months that is more stable across platforms - but right now, you can access our current version in the free ASSISTments program. Instructions are located at http://bit.ly/algebraforwork. Thanks again!

Hi Rebecca! Thanks for the awesome questions. We recently presented at NCTM and AERA, and have upcoming presentations at NCTM and ASEE. I think a practitioner article would be great for this work too! We spent so long building everything that we haven't been super focused until recently on "getting the word out."

We co-designed with teachers throughout the process - and included middle school high school, community college, and university math teachers. All of these teachers see algebra and its connection to the world of work from different perspectives, so it has been super interesting. We have training materials for teachers that we've used for our studies, but are currently working on putting together videos of the implementation of the activities, and of teachers leading discussions of students' work on these activities, that we will be publicly sharing. I think it's really powerful to see how the teachers are able to support students in overcoming obstacles in understanding the mathematics in the environment!

Candace,

Having videos of teachers in action will be great -- it's something that I think teachers regularly request, and it captures so much more than what can be transmitted in a lesson plan. Good luck, and keep up the great work!

Yes the industry professionals' ideas about how and  when mathematics was useful were SO interesting and unexpected! I really want to dig into this more in the future.

Thank you for this comment! It really gets to the heart of something I have been thinking a lot about. I think we could develop a high school curriculum around the kinds of algebra that are actually useful in the world of STEM careers, and I have thought about building out something to do that. But I don't think anyone would use it, because it would not be aligned to the standards (e.g., I have yet to talk to a STEM professional who uses the quadratic formula), and it would also not cover all the prerequisite knowledge needed for courses like calculus. I have been thinking about who we would need at the table, on a team, if we were going to reimagine the secondary mathematics sequence and how it leads into college level mathematics, as a sequence that is relevant to how math is actually meaningfully applied to the world of work and to social issues. The level of change that this reimagining would require of the system is staggering. But I am interested in thinking through what those first steps are!

Mike,

I couldn't agree with you more.  As a practitioner at a community college, students are always questioning the application of College Algebra.  One of the biggest take-aways for me in this project is that much of the math that is taught is not used in STEM careers' everyday work.  It causes me to think as a practitioner why am I teaching something that does not add to a learner's trajectory?  Would that time spent teaching useless concepts be better utilized if the curriculum's focus shifted to a more in-depth understanding of the tasks that are used in STEM fields?  

She has been such a huge asset to this team!

Thanks for the encouragement! I think we are in a unique moment right now to reimagine what secondary math could be!

And post-secondary math, too. 

Awesome, thanks Susan!

You are definitely on the list ;-) We should be putting together some preliminary results for an AERA submission this summer - I hope. Thank you for your support of our research!