Collaborative Research: Increasing Student Success in Community College Mathematics through Active Learning and Systemic Instructional Change

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This project aims to serve the national need for increasing the entry and success of community college students in college-level mathematics courses. This work is guided by instructional standards called IMPACT: Improving Mathematical Prowess And College Teaching. The IMPACT standards were developed by the American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges to guide transformation of mathematics instruction at two-year colleges. The standards are intended to promote outcomes such as improving students’ mathematical thinking and increasing instructors’ attention to equitable and inclusive practices. This project will convene IMPACT teams from eight community colleges. Each IMPACT team will include faculty, administrators, and support services staff. These teams will work toward transforming their departments and departmental culture, with the overall goal of increasing active learning in college level mathematics. This collaborative effort has the potential to increase understanding about how sustained faculty development and participation in a researcher-practitioner partnership affects student success rates and retention in community college mathematics. The project can also contribute to understanding how active learning improves students’ engagement, knowledge, and skills.This collaborative project involves partnerships between the American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges, and Chandler-Gilbert Community College, Clackamas Community College, and Oregon State University. The five-year project aims to increase student success rates in gateway and prerequisite mathematics courses through focus on three key activities: (1) development of faculty content and pedagogical knowledge; (2) building of community engagement through AMATYC’s community portal; and (3) investigating the effects of project interventions on student success. Results of these activities will contribute to the project's focus on students and instruction, departments and institutions, and knowledge generation specifically within the context of community college mathematics. Research findings are expected to lead to a framework for systemic transformation of community college mathematics departments. The project's research efforts will be guided by design-based implementation research and will facilitate researcher-practitioner partnerships that support faculty in developing a research perspective to inform their teaching. The project aims to provide new knowledge about: 1) how instructors’ enactment of active learning supports student learning; 2) and how an IMPACT team’s participation in researcher-practitioner partnerships and in communities of transformation lead to department-level change to support student success; and (3) how a professional organization plays a role in convening a community of transformation of mathematics departments and propagating a model of this transformation. A retrospective analysis of data across the project's participating colleges will result in a contextualized theory of change framework for community college mathematics departments. The NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Education and Human Resources program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Institutional and Community Transformation track, the program supports efforts to transform and improve STEM education across institutions of higher education and disciplinary communities.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.