Supporting and Sustaining Scholarly Mathematics Teaching

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The Supporting and Sustaining Scholarly Mathematics Teaching (SSSMT) project at the University of Hartford seeks to improve teaching and learning in undergraduate mathematics courses. Recent projections suggest that the United States needs to dramatically increase the annual award rate of STEM degrees by 34% in the next decade to remain competitive internationally. A critical step towards improving the recruitment, retention and success of STEM majors is the adoption of research-based teaching practices in first-year and second-year college mathematics courses. These introductory courses often act as gatekeepers that filter students out of STEM majors. There is mounting evidence that suggests active learning can be much more effective than direct instruction in engaging students. Despite this evidence, there continues to be an overwhelming reliance on lecture as the primary method of delivering content in college mathematics courses. The goals of the Supporting and Sustaining Scholarly Mathematics Teaching (SSSMT) project are: 1) to form a collaborative community of faculty who are committed to implementing active learning and flipping pedagogy in a variety of first-year and second-year mathematics courses with diverse student populations; 2) to studying the effectiveness of this pedagogy; and 3) to sharing the results with the larger mathematics community. Collaboratively and collectively, SSSMT faculty participants will develop a shared understanding of how to best leverage these strategies and processes to support a more widespread adoption of engaged teaching and learning strategies locally, regionally, and nationally.Drawing on existing research on active learning, flipping pedagogy, and faculty development, the SSSMT project seeks to create a multi-institutional network of faculty to implement its goals in these areas. The network is comprised of college mathematics faculty at different stages of their careers, from a variety of institutions, who are interested in implementing active learning and becoming scholarly teachers who conduct and publish research on their own teaching and their students' learning. In the short term, this project promises to identify and disseminate best practices regarding the use of engaged learning strategies in a variety of mathematics courses populated by diverse student populations. The project will produce comprehensive sets of resources for faculty interested in using active learning and flipping pedagogy in courses ranging from college algebra to introduction to proofs and will develop a more robust understanding of the challenges, opportunities and necessary supports for mathematics faculty who have different levels of experience with the scholarship of teaching and learning. Project outcomes will be investigated using a mixed-methods approach involving qualitative and quantitative data collected from participants through surveys, reflective journals, and teaching practice inventories. The longer-term goal of this project is to expand the cross-institutional network, inviting in and involving the departmental colleagues of project participants, as well as faculty at other institutions, thereby broadening and enriching the virtual community of faculty engaged in this work of enhancing the teaching and learning of undergraduate mathematics.