Many students enter college underprepared to reason quantitatively. Even those students with strong backgrounds in mathematics have difficulty applying the mathematical ideas they have learned to situations in other disciplines. The dearth of quantitative resources in the curricula and textbooks of other disciplines exacerbate this dilemma.
Our objectives are to assist students in establishing the connections between mathematics and other fields of study enable faculty members to effectively integrate quantitative reasoning into their courses, and enrich the curriculum with useful educational materials.
In order to achieve these objectives, we propose to gather a group of faculty members who will create textbook supplements to be used in introductory courses in Business, Criminal Justice, Economics, and Visual Arts. The supplements will be keyed to the most popular textbooks in each discipline.
Each writing team will include at least one disciplinary specialist and one mathematician. As they develop the material, the authors will collaborate closely with site testers at approximately 10 colleges. The site testers will provide developmental feedback on the supplements. In turn, the authors will act as mentors, assisting the site testers with appropriate pedagogies.
We expect that the supplements will be commercially published and disseminated to a national audience. In addition, we will create a Web page containing information regarding the integration of quantitative reasoning and these disciplines.
