Using Spreadsheets and Streaming Video for Developmental, Teacher Education, and General Education Mathematics Courses

Mathematics and Computer Education, Spring 2004 by Shore, Mark, Shore, JoAnna, Boggs, Stacey

A current project for the Allegany College of Maryland Mathematics Department is using spreadsheets in some of their General Education Mathematics courses. It is important to note that one of the key features of this project is that we do not require an introductory computer course as a prerequisite for any of the mathematics courses that will be or are currently using spreadsheets. In the mathematics courses for this project, students are not writing their own spreadsheets, but are using spreadsheets that have been developed for this project by the mathematics instructors at the college. However, students still learn basic functions for spreadsheets such as; how to navigate between spreadsheets, input data and formulas, copy and paste values, use spreadsheet functions such as Goal seek and Solver, and use Macros that have previously been written for this project. The students in the Mathematics for Elementary School Teacher courses will learn additional spreadsheet topics such as; inserting functions, and creating tables and graphs. Importantly, using the spreadsheets that have been developed for this project is not nearly as involved as the keystroke procedures students currently learn to operate graphing calculators.

The goals of this two-year project are:

1. To supplement the instruction in developmental mathematics courses (Beginning and Intermediate Algebra) with spreadsheets;

2. To replace the use of graphing calculators in College Algebra and Statistics with spreadsheets;

3. To supplement the instruction in the Mathematics for Elementary School Teachers courses with spreadsheets and instruction on developing spreadsheets;

4. To complete the work of creating spreadsheets for these mathematics courses that are user friendly;

5. To create a minimum of 10-hours of streaming video for each of these courses for instruction and dissemination showing how to use spreadsheets for these courses;

6. To upload all video to the Internet and copy all video for each course onto CD's for every student enrolled in each course.

Detailed Project Plan

This project is adapted from a previous NSF project, Math Excel Mentor Lab project (MEMLP), from Northeastern University, grant number 9250941. The Math Excel Mentor Lab was a project in 1992, and at that time, computer labs were not used as the primary teaching location. Therefore, spreadsheets were used as "support" for sections that were taught in a traditional classroom. The proposed project will use computers with previously developed user-friendly spreadsheets in the classroom. Therefore, spreadsheets will not merely be support for the course, but will be the main computational tool used in and out of class. For this reason, we will be setting up a computer classroom consisting of 18 desktop computers and a computer projection unit, for classroom demonstrations. The computer classroom will be arranged so that two students will work together at each computer. This will structure the classroom environment so that students will work together and we can accommodate up to 36 students in each class with these 18 computers. All tests for the mathematics courses for this project are on Blackboard (an online platform for classroom instruction and testing). Therefore, students take all tests in the testing lab, where they are individually tested.

The Allegany College of Maryland project will use spreadsheets in Developmental Mathematics, Teacher Education mathematics courses, and lower-level General Education mathematics courses, thus testing the scope of which spreadsheets and streaming video are beneficial to mathematics instruction.

Over a two-year period, this project will convert developmental, teacher education, and first level general education mathematics courses to using spreadsheets as the main instructional tool and streaming video (video help from the computer) to aid in instruction. These courses include the Developmental Mathematics courses (Beginning and Intermediate Algebra), College Algebra, Probability and Statistics, as well as the two Mathematics for Elementary School Teachers courses. Since we assume no prior knowledge of spreadsheets, the worksheets for each course will be written prior to offering the course. This will enable the students to utilize the power of spreadsheets without the need to learn intricate spreadsheet procedures. Formulas for calculations will be incorporated into passwordprotected cells so that typically students will not need to type in formulas. Button enabled macros have also been written so that multi step spreadsheet functions can be performed at the click of a button. Figure 1 shows the layout of a spreadsheet written for this project for College Algebra that will be used for analyzing data modeled by quadratic equations.

Using the spreadsheet above, students can type in their x and y data points in the first two columns. The spreadsheet constantly updates the upper graph in yellow and the equation on the graph. When the student finishes entering their data, they then click the "Yes" button to copy the coefficients from the equation on the chart into cells D4, D5, and D6. If the student is not given data points and is instead given a quadratic equation, they would then type the values for a, b, and c into cells D4, D5, and D6. The x-intercepts and the vertex point (maximum or minimum point) for the model are automatically calculated. The data for the example given in the picture, gives the number of bacteria (in parts per million) in a water supply (y), after it has been treated with antibacterial material for (x) days. Students can then focus their attention on what the x-intercept and vertex point mean in terms of this problem situation and if a quadratic model is appropriate. Students can also determine the time(s) in which the number of bacteria in the water supply will be at a particular level (safe for consumption) by typing the y-value in cell E18.