A Comparison of Performance and Attitudes between Students Enrolled in College Algebra vs. Quantitative Literacy

INTRODUCTION In the 2006-2007 academic year, the University of South Dakota formed a mathematics task force to evaluate student success in introductory mathematics courses and to investigate the question of quantitative literacy and its meaning for graduates of a liberal arts institution. Questions about this paper or study may be directed to Dan Van Peursem at dpuersem@usd.edu. The need for Quantitative Literacy courses was established in reports from the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) [21], American Mathematical Association of Two- Year Colleges (AMATYC) [2, 4], and the College Board [25]. National focus groups have been formed around this topic including the Special Interest Group of the MAA on Quantitative Literacy (SIGMAA-QL) and the National Numeracy Network (NNN), both formed in 2004. In the ensuing years, numerous reports and courses have been developed centering on the topic of Quantitative Literacy [8, 14, 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27]. As recently as 2010, a fair amount of discussion continues about the assessment of a Quantitative Literacy course and the specific learning goals that such a course may include [6]. This paper does not resolve the difficulty of assessing Quantitative Literacy course outcomes, but evaluates the effectiveness of a Quantitative Literacy course in preparing students for outcomes typically expected from a traditional College Algebra course. One of the main goals stemming from our mathematics task force for the newly created Quantitative Literacy course was to have students from this course use and understand the mathematics that they would encounter in everyday situations such as evaluating data presented in newspaper articles, understanding different voting procedures, and using basic mathematics to understand implications of interest rates in personal finance decisions. In developing the course, we received advice from Dr. Bernie Madison (University of Arkansas), who had developed a similar course on his campus. It was a challenge to find an appropriate Quantitative Literacy textbook to include a variety of course material emphasizing realistic and meaningful problem solving investigations, included topics of mathematics in art and in music, and which did not duplicate Finite mathematics course material. As a result, some supplementary course material was developed by the department. Another goal in developing this course was to provide students with an alternative to college algebra as a terminal mathematics course. To satisfy that purpose, the course must fulfill the Board of Regents requirements for mathematical competency in the system general education core, with an expectation that students completing courses in the core have sufficient understanding to be successful on the Collegiate Assessment of Academic Proficiency (CAAP) exam which is published by American College Testing (ACT) and is designed to assess students' proficiency in solving mathematical problems encountered in postsecondary curricula. In the South Dakota BOR system, all students seeking a four year degree are required to take and pass the exam after completing forty-eight hours and students seeking a two year degree are required to take and pass the exam after completing thirty-two hours of course work. The traditional CAAP exam is weighted much more toward the algebraic manipulation of a College Algebra course rather than the many application problems that one would find in a Quantitative Literacy course. This could be problematic for both institution and students, as data for the institutional performance on the proficiency exams is reported to the public and passing the proficiency exam is a required component for continued enrollment for students. Thus, we needed assurance that our institutional CAAP scores would not suffer as a result of this newly created course, and that students completing the course would not be disadvantaged in progression toward a degree. Several other institutions within the system also requested permission to offer the course, but only Black Hills State University followed the study guidelines which would allow us to make meaningful comparisons between the College Algebra and Quantitative Literacy courses. …