Mathematical Sciences (21) To provide an additional path to student involvement in learning mathematics, the mathematics department at Montgomery College Takoma Park Campus is implementing the writing software program, Calibrated Peer Review (CPR), developed at UCLA (NSF DUE#:95-55605). Students using this program demonstrate their understanding of mathematical concepts by writing related expository essays. Therefore, the students are actively involved in the learning process.
The outcomes of adding this component to the curriculum are that more students are seeing the relevance of the mathematics learned, retaining the mathematical and quantitative problem solving skills, improving their writing skills and improving their critical thinking skills. Each student is individually involved in a critical thinking situation related to a particular topic being taught by the instructor. The use of skills not generally tapped in a mathematics class provides another way to make the topics more accessible and more meaningful to those students who are not natural quantitative thinkers. The CPR software concentrates on critical literacy and communication skills. Students write expository essays that focus on both the understanding of a mathematical concept as well as meaningful examples of the concept.
