Tomorrow I’m meeting w/ 2 folks from our Adult Ed program at the community college. I work in the library doing tutoring, as I have for the past 20+ years, helping folks get from visual and concrete to algebra and statistics 
I’ve also done some small projects curating and creating OER for students trying to figure out the fundamentals of math.
Our esteemed college has some funds (I don’t know howmuch) to put together a “bridge curriculum for students to complete outside of the academic process to prepare students for the required assessments in the classroom.” Things need to be spent by 12/23. THe adult ed folks know this has been my passion for decades, so we’re getting together tomorrow…
In the Vast Overreach category: I would love to be on a design team to create this curriculum and creatively define “outside of the academic process” and actually spend the time and resources that could do that!
but in the meantime, I have oh, 19 hours to explore that idea. The funds are to be spent on the likes of texts and software and teaching materials, and student stipends for students to try those materials. I know there’s OER stuff out there but I’m thinking other factors will matter as much as the content.
The world doesn’t need another MOOC for these folks. I’m thinking that “Outside of the academic process” means it’s Not A Formal Course At The College, but it could be a course in the community, so it could be a website with printable materials , visuals, activities to do with manipulatives, geogebra.org… Hmmm. What can we create to make math less of a barrier?
Hello Maybe I can help, we have an OER based math/stats learning platform which is already used by 115k users. Grasple has an Open business model where individual teachers and learners can learn math/stats. See https://www.grasple.com/
I myself are trying to better understand the community college structure better and aspecially the learning content buying process and OER opportunities, would this be something you are willing to help me with.
Sincerly Elisabeth
What a fantastic / challenge opportunity, Sue!
This “bridge curriculum” is then something self-paced students would be referred to so they can improve and practice the math skills needed? Would it be one curriculum, or something where students could have som options to choose? Are there wishes for some show of completion, or just as something to send students? Do they desire to customize it?
I am sure you do not need everyone’s suggested OER, but would guess there’s an near infinite supply of math foundations OER. Are you looking for suggestions for what might make up the curriculum or perhaps ideas on how such a Not A Formal Course would operate/function?
Making math less of a barrier, no small task.
Both/and.
There are many materials – but most of them are procedural and very textbooky. (Khan Academy is open source but as math pedagogy it’s horrible.) Alas, the adult ed folks decided to take a different angle on that grant, entirely.
I suspect that the Not a Formal Course operates would be the most important part of things. I imagine something a community group could tap into… where learners set goals and it was set up like Duolingo to nudge, remind, encourage…
The trend continues to be to remove remedial/foundations in college and provide “college levle with support,” when a close look at such programs show they only work for the “almost there” folks – and most folks aren’t almost there. Alas, the foundatiosn courses don’t do much better for the folks wo are further behind, often behind because of assorted inequities in the system. I see on reddit at least one person a week posting thatthey want to go to college but they can’t do any math – closer to 5 per week who can’t do math well enough for what theywant.
So I wonder if theres a way to do Moodle …
Seems to be a huge challenge to design one fixed course (even not a formal) one to meet such a wide range of needs – a fixed course or content.
Reading this
Suggests a fixed course format is going to be a huge struggle for basic learners.
This is part of my wild wondering about fixed content if, if, (huge ifs) can be built ethically/responsibly, doesn’t the chat like conversation experience with a friendly generative AI offer a possibility?
Not a solution by any means, but could a guided set of tasks through something like https://thetawise.ai/? I have no idea how to do this, but the interaction of asking questions seems intriguing
Right! THere was one that helped a lot called Modumath from 1999 or so. It started w/ number sense – assumed you didn’t know anything yet but just hadn’t had opportunity; not lack of ability to think numerically/ mathematically.
We had lots of success with it. It had a short conceptual video (short b/c videos took up TONS of digital real estate, not because they knew as we do now that short is better), then examples, then a quiz. Very old school. IMHO they should have included facts practice instead of stating half a dozen times that You Just Need To Memorize These…
… but it didn’t have funding to upgrade and it was in Flash
What made it unique was the conceptual foundation that didn’t also assume background knowledge. Just about everything for adults is too fast and too procedural. I remember a student placing into Calc b/c “there were questions I hadn’t learned about, but I knew how to think about it” (and that wasn’t the man who’d been raised in Amish community and started out with NO knowledge but also in 2 yrs between driving the truck placed into Calculus).
Please have a look at our Math/Stats platform - it has a teacher account option which is open to use. You can invite students to a course based on OER for Maths and Stats. The content is made by other educators and it licences are open. Grasple | Teacher Account
When you like to use it and sign up you can request service via the tool to help you with ready made courses (Such as the openstax calculus 1).
I’m working with many, many, many students who are missing the foundations.
Yesterday one came in … oh, they’re supposed to come in tomorrow and get started and I’m going to talk about telling their story as they go, because so many people actually believe “they just need a little support!” when … they’ve been handed a calculator and … oh, they’reon a team, we have to pass them!