Mathematics Course Work Distribution and Student Success

Quinn Kudzma Park

Introduction and Hypothesis

Semester after semester students enroll into mathematics course within their university. These
students range from people perusing a degree in the field to those just trying to fulfil required courses.
And every semester the displeasure experienced from a math course grows. Many students struggle and
fail out of these courses because it is a field seen as being hard to approach.

An integral part to all of these classes are the tests. But just how big of a deal these test are
varies from class to class. Some have three midterms and a final, others only have one midterm and a
final. Tests make up a majority of the class grade compared to the rest of assignments within the class,
and can make or break grades even when a student is succeeding on things like homework or projects.
Many students will have stories of being sick or stressed by other classes for an exam and how it
negatively affected them.

Is there a correlation between how a mathematics courses grade is distributed and how much a
student enjoys the course? Does putting less emphasis on tests within a math course increase student
satisfaction for the course itself? We propose to investigate how the assignment structure of a
mathematics course affects student satisfactory and experience with the course itself.

For this study we hypothesize that students are more likely to enjoy and succeed in a
mathematics course in which there is less of an emphasis put on tests and more of an emphasis put on
course work like homework and projects. Having the courses grade distributed more evenly across
various types of assignments (homework, projects, recitation participation and tests) will allow the
student to better represent their knowledge and understanding of a courses material. This will also lead
to a higher level of success and satisfaction amongst the student body. Tests put a large amount of a
grade on the line within a short amount of time, and thus may not be an accurate representation of the
students abilities. This can then lead to loss of morale or the feeling of contempt for a class due to
working hard and not being able to acquire the grade the student thought they deserved.

With this study, we hope to find reasons that students dislike math courses so much, and what
we can do to change this. The public image of mathematics is very negative, and considered one of the
hardest subjects in school. Many times the things taught in classes are called impractical and useless to
the average person. This study would hope to find ways to improve the class experience and thus
hopefully improve overall opinions of the field of study. Informing professors of how a class may better
be structured to improve overall success rates within a class is another goal this project hopes to be able
to fulfill.

Existing Research
 Many studies have been done on how tests and grading methods affect students. Most go
beyond mathematics and reach all over academia. These research studies also cover a much more
extensive amount of time, some starting in elementary school and others covering university. The Case
Against Grades is an extensive article covering how grading is inertly problematic to the process of
learning. It compiles many studies throughout the article and expresses the points of each, while using
them to back up its own narrative. One important point it makes is the idea that when testing is made
too big a part of a class it can lead students to focus solely on doing well on them, not actually actively
learning. As it says in the article the more students are led to focus on how well theyre doing, the less
engaged they tend to be with what theyre doing.(Kohn) This expresses that the more you try to grade
students, the more they think about only getting a good grade. It continues on later with It follows that
all assessment must be done carefully and sparingly lest students become so concerned about their
achievement (how good they are at doing something or, worse, how their performance compares to
others) that theyre no longer thinking about the learning itself. (Kohn) This directly relates to our
topic, as we are investigating how the distribution of a courses grade determines how the students feel
coming out of it.

The medium in which the class is presented also relates to how students feel towards
mathematics. In A Comparison of Student Success in Undergraduate Online Classes and Traditional
Lecture Classes at the University of Missouri the University of Missouri compared face-to-face and online
classes of the same type, and how the students did in each class. There were three categories of classes:
face-to-face classes; semester-based online classes; and self-paced online classes. It found that the
students in the semester-based online classes had the highest average grade of a 3.06 (out of 4) and the
self-paced online classes had the lowest average score of 2.53. It goes on to talk about the methods that
surveyed professors used in each case of the classes, whether it be tests, quizzes or discussion.
Throughout the paper they also mention that the online classes were more likely to include quizzes and
projects. In the conclusion of the paper they summarize their finding that most teachers used a greater
variety of methods in their face-to-face classes than their online classes, and they did this because they
felt it made a richer learning environment. They also conclude that the students in self-paced online
classes earned a lower grade on average because they have to be self-motivated and already have
proper studying habits, amongst a few other factors.

Another study titled Comparing student success between developmental math courses offered
online, blended, and face-to-face mirrors a lot of the research done in the University of Missouris study.
It also looked at how the medium the course is given in (face-to-face, blended or online) affects the
students success, but this time only in mathematics courses. It found that the percent of students
earning a passing grade was highest in the online course, with 85% passing, second in the blended with
69% and lowest in the face-to-face courses at 63%. They go on to state that their findings suggest a
difference in the learning environment of a student and their probability of success. At the time this also
contradicted current research that said the learning environment were equally effective.

Things as far as the grading scale used for college courses have been researched. In The Effect of
Various Grading Scales on Student Grade Point Averages the researchers looked at how the grading
scale effected the mean GPA of courses as well as student and teacher preferences. They found that the
mean GPA was unaffected by the grading scale, and that students favored a plus-only grading scale
while instructors favored a plus-minus grading scale. They concluded that the wider usage of a plus-
minus grading scale was due to faculty feeling that it was a more accurate representation of students
performance, but had no real effect on the mean GPA of the courses.

Methods

To collect information for our research we will rely heavily on surveys aimed towards students.
As this topic is most directed at student opinions we will want accounts from them first hand. This
survey can be distributed in person or given through an online medium like google forms. This could
then be distributed by professors though email lists. We would focus these surveys on the Applied
Mathematics department. Questions on the survey would include questions like: How many classes
have you taken from the APPM department?; Which class did you enjoy the most?; Overall, how
satisfied with the APPM courses? (1-10 scale, ten being the highest and most positive); Which
class/classes did you do best in?; What was one complaint you have about any of these courses (if
any)?

With cooperation from the APPM departments administration, acquiring the class average
grade statistics will also help us to identify if there could be any possible correlation with grades and
assignment type. Such correlations would be hard to make without more justification from the survey,
as that would break proper statistical procedure. With interest from the APPM department we may also
be able to talk to Professors about their thoughts on what assignment types they see help or hinder
students. The APPM department at the University of Colorado is an excellent fit for this study because of
both the amount of students that take their classes, and the opinion of difficulty around the courses
themselves.

Date Item to be finished

10/26 Group meeting to draft survey
10/30 Survey finalized
11/3 Survey distributed, APPM course grade
distributions acquired (If possible)
11/8 Surveys collected
11/12 Group meeting to edit draft
11/15 First Draft
11/17 Group meeting to go over final draft (work to be
done, ect)
11/27 Final Draft
12/1 Presentation Draft
12/2 Group meeting to practice and revise
presentation
12/4 Final Presentation

Working Bibliography
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Hall, J Michael; Ponton, Michael K. Journal of Developmental Education; Boone Vol. 28, Iss. 3, (Spring
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