Building Capacity for Interdisciplinary Quantitative Reasoning Instruction

Ripon College, Ripon WI

Investigators

Abstract

Developing student?s quantitative reasoning skills is essential for training numerically literate citizens who can flourish in an increasingly data-driven world. A growing body of literature suggests that including quantitative reasoning courses in different disciplines throughout a curriculum may help students to better learn quantitative reasoning. As a part of the Catalyst general education curriculum at Ripon College, all first-year students enroll in Catalyst 120: Quantitative Reasoning. By design, this course has a common set of learning outcomes and assignments, but is taught by faculty in different disciplines, including Biology, Theatre, Psychology, and Communication. This project aims to further examine the effectiveness of a multidisciplinary approach to teaching quantitative reasoning. Specifically, the project will examine the role of specific faculty professional development strategies for improving the ability of faculty at a small liberal arts college to teach quantitative reasoning. Project leaders will corporate professional development activities for faculty members and study the effectiveness of these activities for helping faculty teach quantitative reasoning. Thus, the project may develop an evidence-based model that other institutions could use to implement robust quantitative reasoning across disciplines. This project is designed to develop and study the effectiveness of an interdisciplinary approach to teaching quantitative reasoning as well as the impact of increasing institutional capacity to provide this instruction through communities of practice. During the first two years, project leaders will initiate a series of Faculty Learning Communities to further develop faculty expertise in teaching quantitative reasoning using evidence-based pedagogies, to create innovative quantitative reasoning materials in a variety of disciplines, and to put these materials into practice in their Catalyst curriculum. In the third year, the project team will work with several faculty members in non-quantitative disciplines to create quantitatively focused courses within their fields. A validated quantitative reasoning instrument will be used to measure student learning gains, and members of the project team will create a new tool for evaluating interdisciplinary quantitative skills. The project team expects that comprehensive institutional change will result from this project and will study this change through faculty surveys, interviews, and review of curricular materials. 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.