Math Excel Excel provides an opportunity for motivated students to work together cooperatively on challenging problems in a workshop setting. An Excel workshop is noisy - students are actively discussing approaches to problems and critiquing each others' solutions in a supportive atmosphere. The problems students work on in an Excel workshop are chosen to be relevant to the material being covered in the corresponding course, but these problems often have more depth and difficulty. Students working in isolation might get discouraged.
Students working in groups make much more significant progress.
While graduate and undergraduate assistants are on hand to monitor the activities, they are trained to provide assistance sparingly and usually in the form of probing questions. Excel students gain confidence in their own abilities. The bottom line goal for Excel students is for them to Excel in their academic performance. It is not intended as an honors course for high ability students but rather as an experience that honors high motivation. Excel learning is designed around small groups of students working together on problems chosen to enrich and deepen the understanding of their course material.