Parkland College is a community college in Champaign, Illinois, with approximately 18,000 students.
Parkland College’s Mathematics Department undertook a developmental mathematics redesign project in the Fall of 2011, as a response to retention issues in College Algebra and Precalculus. By the Fall of 2012, we had committed to a two-track design, keeping the traditional Beginning and Intermediate Algebra track (redesigned to be more rigorous) for students headed to College Algebra and Calculus, and creating a new Mathematical Literacy course (also rigorous, but with different content) for students headed to Gen Ed Statistics or Liberal Arts Mathematics. In addition to adding a new track, we also split all of our courses into half-courses, allowing students to start over at midterm if they were not passing after the first half of the course, and to only have to repeat the second half of the course is they were successful in the first half but not the second. For Fall 2015 (pending Curriculum Committee approval), we will be discontinuing the half-courses and replacing Beginning Algebra with Mathematical Literacy as the prerequisite to Intermediate Algebra. See Overlapping Tracks/Turning Dev Math Upside-Down.
More on this process and our new two-track design:
- Parkland College’s Developmental Mathematics Redesign, AMATYC Developmental Mathematics Committee Newsletter, Fall 2012, p. 7
- Two Paths Through Developmental Mathematics?, AMATYC Conference Presentation, Fall 2013
- Parkland College Developmental Mathematics Redesign: What Have We Learned? (Update after first semester of implementation), IMACC Conference Presentation, Spring 2014
Other resources related to our two-track redesign:
- AMATYC Developmental Mathematics New Life Project – LOTS of resources and links here
- Jack Rotman’s Developmental Mathematics Revival! blog
In the (local) press:
- Parkland Part of National Push to Rethink Math Requirements, The News-Gazette, July 8, 2013