Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Education Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

PDF

Virginia Commonwealth University

Journal

2020

Interdisciplinary

Articles 1 - 5 of 5

Full-Text Articles in Education

Designing A Student Exchange Program: Facilitating Interdisciplinary, Mathematics-Focused Collaboration Among College Students, Bryan D. Poole, Linden Turner, Caroline Maher-Boulis Jan 2020

Designing A Student Exchange Program: Facilitating Interdisciplinary, Mathematics-Focused Collaboration Among College Students, Bryan D. Poole, Linden Turner, Caroline Maher-Boulis

Journal of Mathematics and Science: Collaborative Explorations

Interdisciplinary collaboration is necessary for students’ professional preparation (Laird et al., 2014; Repko, 2014) and may promote effective learning transfer of course content. Such collaborations have resulted in enhanced problem-solving skills and conceptual understanding of statistics content (Dierker et al., 2012; Everett, 2016; Hammersley et al., 2019; Woodzicka et al., 2015). As a result of ongoing collaborations between faculty members in different disciplines and at different universities, we created a “Student Exchange Program” to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration between undergraduate students in mathematics and social sciences. In the current paper, we describe past research that informed the design of this program, …


Using Site Visits To Strengthen Collaboration, Victor Piercey, Rebecca Segal, Afroditi Filippas, Tao Chen, Soloman Kone, Rosalyn Hargraves, Jack Bookman, John Hearn, Debbie Pike, Kathy Williams Phd Jan 2020

Using Site Visits To Strengthen Collaboration, Victor Piercey, Rebecca Segal, Afroditi Filippas, Tao Chen, Soloman Kone, Rosalyn Hargraves, Jack Bookman, John Hearn, Debbie Pike, Kathy Williams Phd

Journal of Mathematics and Science: Collaborative Explorations

The SUMMIT-P project is a multi-institutional endeavor to leverage interdisciplinary collaboration in order to improve the teaching of undergraduate mathematics courses in the first two years of college. One goal of this work is to establish collaborative communities among the institutions involved. As part of the project, institutions visit one another on site visits that are structured according to a common protocol. The site visits have been valuable to the project. Participating institutions report the exchange of actionable ideas and feedback; members of the grant leadership team have used the site visits to direct the overall project, and evaluators have …


Curricular Change In Institutional Context: A Profile Of The Summit-P Institutions, Mary D.R. Beisiegel, Suzanne I. Dorée Jan 2020

Curricular Change In Institutional Context: A Profile Of The Summit-P Institutions, Mary D.R. Beisiegel, Suzanne I. Dorée

Journal of Mathematics and Science: Collaborative Explorations

There is a national call to improve the mathematics curricula in the first two undergraduate years to improve student success and engagement. But curricular change happens in an institutional context: Who are the students, and what do they need to succeed? What is the climate for change? Does the department regularly revise its courses and curriculum? Is it common for different departments to collaborate on curricular change? What supports or obstacles does the department, college, or university have for changing the curriculum? Who are the institutional stakeholders, and what practices build their buy-in? In the SUMMIT-P project, nine different institutions …


Integrative And Contextual Learning In College Algebra -An Interdisciplinary Collaboration With Economics, Choon Shan Lai, Glenn Henshaw, Tao Chen, Soloman Kone Jan 2020

Integrative And Contextual Learning In College Algebra -An Interdisciplinary Collaboration With Economics, Choon Shan Lai, Glenn Henshaw, Tao Chen, Soloman Kone

Journal of Mathematics and Science: Collaborative Explorations

Many students consider mathematics too abstract and useless for their academic and career goals. Meanwhile, instructors in quantitative disciplines such as economics find many students mathematically underprepared for their courses. The disconnect between students’ perceptions of the utility of mathematics and their life and career may have contributed to some of the under-performance in learning mathematics. Addressing this problem requires collaboration across disciplines to develop an understanding of each other’s needs, more specifically to develop an integrative platform that allows students to apply mathematical skills in interdisciplinary contexts (Ganter & Barker, 2004). We collaboratively designed and implemented an integrative platform …


Structured Engagement For A Multi-Institutional Collaborative To Tackle Challenges And Share Best Practices, Rosalyn H. Hargraves, Stella K. Hofrenning, Janet Bowers, Mary D.R. Beisiegel, Victor Piercey, Erica Slate Young Jan 2020

Structured Engagement For A Multi-Institutional Collaborative To Tackle Challenges And Share Best Practices, Rosalyn H. Hargraves, Stella K. Hofrenning, Janet Bowers, Mary D.R. Beisiegel, Victor Piercey, Erica Slate Young

Journal of Mathematics and Science: Collaborative Explorations

A National Consortium for Synergistic Undergraduate Mathematics via Multi-institutional Interdisciplinary Teaching Partnerships (SUMMIT-P), funded by the National Science Foundation, is a multi-institutional consortium with members from twelve institutions. The consortium adapted two protocols developed by the School Reform Initiative to: 1. provide advice on challenges or dilemmas a consortium member is facing and 2. share project successes with consortium members. The two protocols—a Modified Descriptive Consultancy protocol and a Modified Success Analysis with Reflective Questions protocol—provide a structured format for these discussions. This paper provides an in-depth description of the two protocols and how they have been used for this …