In 1994 we established the Mainstreaming College Mathematics Project to determine if a single ten-week proactive intervention aimed at entering students who had tested into our remedial mathematics program, could activate them mathematically. Surprisingly, almost all of our entering freshmen at this lower level have had at least three years of college preparatory mathematics in high school. Students enrolled in MCM are placed into Math 104, and are required to have concurrent enrollment in the newly created, ten-week intensive Math 103. The format of each class session of Math 103 is one of informal student-centered active learning in small groups of three or four students each. The primary role of the teaching staff is to oversee the activity of the groups, and to facilitate, redirect, and intervene as needed.
Homework is collected regularly and is corrected and returned.
Each section is limited to 32 students meeting twice a week, and is staffed by a graduate teaching associate together with an undergraduate student classroom assistant. The outcomes thus far have been very interesting. Not unexpectedly, MCM students do better in Math 104 than students who start out in Math 050. This is an ongoing project and we are continually reviewing the data on student performance, but by the Spring quarter of 1997, students coming out of MCM were outperforming students coming out of Math 050 in subsequent math courses. Data provided by the university registrar in 1997 indicate that MCM students were more likely to take additional mathematics courses beyond Math 104 than Math 050 students, and that they received grades of at least C- with greater frequency.