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Volunteer State Community College

Course Implementation

Course Design

This College Algebra course is taught solely online. The majority of students complete their work on personal or work computers. Computers are available on campus for those students who need them. The instructor offers individual tutoring via online office hours.

Assessments

Use of Trigsted MyMathLab

Homework, quizzes, nonproctored tests, and the midterm are created using Trigsted MyMathLab’s Homework Manager and are taken in Trigsted MyMathLab. Students are encouraged to use the program’s discussion board to ask questions, which are answered by the instructor via e-mail or phone or in the online classroom.

According to Rita Sowell, professor, the Trigsted eBook “is the main focus of instruction.” Students are encouraged to read and interact, take a reading assessment, practice, and then attempt the homework. For additional homework support, students use Trigsted MyMathLab’s View an Example and Help Me Solve This features.

Use of Trigsted MyMathLab contributes 70 percent to a student’s final course grade.

Results and Data

Figure 1 shows that College Algebra students who used Trigsted MyMathLab (spring 2010) achieved a significantly higher average final exam score than did students who used another online courseware (spring 2009). The average final exam score improved from 38 out of 100 points to 72.7 out of 100 points—a difference of 34.7 points, or 91 percent. The same final exam was used both semesters.

Figure 2 compares the percentage of students earning a grade of A, B, or C; D; and F before and after Trigsted MyMathLab adoption. Again, the increased student success is significant: 89 percent of the Trigsted MyMathLab students earned an A, B, or C compared with only 68 percent of the students who used the other program. Conversely, before Trigsted MyMathLab was adopted, 11 percent of the students failed. After adopting Trigsted MyMathLab, the fail rate dropped to 4 percent.

The Student Experience

Sowell’s students appreciate the breadth of interactive features and multimedia learning tools found in both the Trigsted eBook and MyMathLab.

• “This text and this course are perfect. I particularly liked the animations in the text. They helped me understand the lessons.”
• “I haven’t done any math since 2004. I really expected to fail this class—but I didn’t. The eBook’s videos showed everything step-by-step.”
• “Trigsted MyMathLab was the shining star of the course—next to the professor, of course. It was easy to navigate and easy to learn from mistakes.”
• “I really enjoyed using Trigsted MyMathLab. The animations were very helpful, as was the Help Me Solve This feature. It was user-friendly and gave me many useful tools to help me learn. I hope to take more online classes using this format.”
• “The item I found most useful was the Help Me Solve This feature. It not only walked me through a problem step-by-step but also gave me the basic rules pertaining to the problem itself.”