This project at Chief Dull Knife Memorial College (CDKC) is founded on a desire to expand participation of undergraduate students in research at an early stage of their mathematical development. However, existing developmental mathematics courses provide students with computational skills but little expertise with problem solving, representation, data handling, or graphical interpretation. To acquaint all developmental students with the utility of mathematics and science, and promote the acquisition of applicable research skills, this project is developing six contextual research skills modules. The development of these modules is guided by an advisory board of nationally recognized researchers and two development teams, each consisting of university faculty, instructors, and an advanced student. Each module is embedded in an authentic and locally relevant research context, with effectiveness established through a cyclic and collaborative process of development, implementation, evaluation, and revision. Simultaneously, evaluation efforts examine the factors that influence developmental students' career and educational choices. Overall, the project is part of an effort to restructure developmental mathematics at CDKC while retaining the focus on core skills, yet infusing developmental courses with contextual experiences that are applicable to undergraduate research in a variety of academic areas.
(R2R) grant was founded on a desire to expand participation in undergraduate research at Chief Dull Knife College (CDKC) in Lame Deer, MT. Traditionally a large portion of its students (approximately 95%) test into developmental math where the majority of their time has been spent developing basic skills with little time spent on topics that show the applicability of the mathematics. Therefore many of these students never see the usefulness of the math they are learning and often times try to avoid areas where mathematics is actually used in a problem solving or research type setting. To address this issue R2R was developed to change this perception and to prepare students for active involvement in undergraduate research. The accomplishment of this goal is an ongoing process that implements contextual research modules in the developmental math courses along with allowing developmental math students opportunities to work with undergraduate research interns. Funding was received academic year 2011/2012 and two formal meetings along with numerous informal meetings were held to plan for the summer of 2012 and the beginning of module development. The summer of 2012 was an exciting and busy time for the development teams as this was the first time students were brought on board as active development team members. These teams spent the summer in the development of modules along with the implementaion of these modules into classes. The students from the development teams were also involved in field work along with CDKC science interns and paraprofessionals giving them the luxury of seeing active research being put into practice. The development teams gained valuable insight by observing the math and science students working hand in hand and from that insight are looking at ways to implement more of these opportunities in the modules and in all of the mathematics courses at CDKC. Academic year 2012-2013 was used to test modules and parts of modules in courses at CDKC. This module implementaion included students from the develpmental math courses being involved in active research with science interns as this had proven to be successful during the past summer. Summer of 2013 was used to finalize the development of the modules after having piloted them in classes during the previous year. Based on information from faculty and insight gained from student interviews conducted by the evaluation team, it was decided that some of the modules had too broad of an approach. Students failed to see the relevance when faced with such a large overview. This led to the development of mini-modules to be contained within the modules and to also be used as a kind of activity in the corner of the CDKC Math Lab. It is important to note that in conjunction with the R2R grant the Math Lab at CDKC has been going through a transformation. The lab now operates as a Modified Emporium Model. Students in the developmental math series progress at their own rate with the assistance of instructors. There are always two and sometimes three mathematics instructors in the lab to assist students. This allows for small breakout groups without taking away from the progression of students who are working independently and it also opens the door to introductory experiences in scientific research. Academic year 2013-2014 was used to conduct final piloting of the materials in classes and led to an expansion of the mini-modules and the activities in the corner. A corner of the Math Lab has now become a type of research introduction center where activities change on a weekly basis with students working on topics ranging from tree ring aging, to energy generating bicycles, to experiments with density of sodas, and virtually everything in between. This combined with developmental math students having the opportunity to work hand in hand with research interns has led to a substatnial increase in the students applying to be involved in active research at CDKC. Historically CDKC has supported 5-6 summer research interns. In the summer of 2013 that number had increased to 17 and by the summer of 2014 it is expected to involve more than 30. In addition the number of faculty working with these students has expanded from two to seven. To sustain this increase in undergraduate research the faculty and staff at CDKC have had to become extremely active in seeking research opportunities for these interns. Currently CDKC is invovled in projects with NASA, INBRE, and has just has just started another project with NSF (ICE-TI) which all assisit in providing opportunities for this growing group of research interns.
