Corequisite College Algebra with Tina Ragsdale, James Kimball, and Kathy Almy

Traditionally, college students who don’t have ACT or math placement exam scores high enough to place into college algebra are placed into intermediate algebra, a developmental math course that serves as a perquisite to college algebra for those students. However, this prerequisite approach has chronically low student success rates at many institutions.

Enter the corequisite approach, in which these students take college algebra along with a second, support course concurrently. The idea is that students who aren’t quite ready for college algebra will get the just-in-time support they need in their support course. The coreq approach is so successful that an increasing number of states are mandating that colleges and university at least offer the option and in some cases, do away with the prereq approach altogether.

What does it take to make a successful corequisite college algebra course? I wanted to find out, so I reached out to a few colleagues who have been doing this for a while. On this episode, you’ll hear from Tina Ragsdale, teaching enhancement coordinator at West Kentucky Community and Technical College; James Kimball, master instructor and assistant department head in mathematics at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette; and Kathy Almy, longtime math educator and currently CEO of Almy Education. We have a fantastic conversation about the coreq approach to college algebra, and I think that anyone with an interest in college students success will find it enlightening.

Episode Resources:

·       “Co-requisite Redesign Leads to Increased College Algebra Success and College Completion,” Tina Ragsdale, Renea Akin, and Geelyn Warren, https://digitalcommons.wcupa.edu/jarihe/vol4/iss1/5/ 

·       Almy Education, https://www.almyeducation.com/ 

·       James Kimball’s faculty website, https://math.louisiana.edu/node/122 

·       College Algebra with Corequisite Support, an OpenStax textbook by Jay Abramson and Sharon North, https://openstax.org/details/books/college-algebra-corequisite-support-2e?Book%20details 

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Transcript

Derek Bruff 0:05
Welcome to the Intentional Teaching, a podcast aimed at educators to help them develop foundational teaching skills and explore new ideas in teaching. I’m your host, Derek Bruff. I hope this podcast helps you be more intentional in how you teach and in how you develop as a teacher over time.

Last year I made a move from Vanderbilt University, a highly selective research university, to the University of Mississippi, a large public university that’s essentially open access for the state of Mississippi. It’s been interesting and exciting to see what different teaching challenges there are at Mississippi, and one that became immediately apparent to me as I started my listening tour last fall was the challenge of college algebra. At Mississippi, like at a lot of places, the percentage of students passing college algebra is not great. As I’ve been working with the math department there on this wicked problem, one strategy for increasing student success that keeps coming up is taking a corequisite approach to college algebra.

Traditionally, students who don’t have ACT or math placement exam scores high enough to place into college algebra are placed into intermediate algebra, a development math course that serves as a perquisite to college algebra for those students. This perquisite approach has some problems, however, since it creates multiple failure points in the pipeline. Some students fail intermediate and have to repeat it, some students pass intermediate but don’t enroll in college algebra, and even if everything goes swimmingly, students have to take an extra semester to get the college math credit they need. 

Enter the corequisite approach, in which these students take college algebra along with a second, support course concurrently. The idea is that students who aren’t quite ready for college algebra will get the just-in-time support they need in their support course. Thanks to the structure of this course and the reduction in the number of failure points, coreq college algebra has proved to be hugely success. As you’ll hear from one of our guests, the success rate for students at one institution went from 5% to 70%! The coreq approach is so successful that an increasing number of states are mandating that colleges and university at least offer the option and in some cases, do away with the prereq approach altogether.

What does it take to make a successful corequisite college algebra course? I wanted to find out, so I reached out to a few colleagues who have been doing this for a while. On this episode, you’ll hear from Tina Ragsdale, teaching enhancement coordinator at West Kentucky Community and Technical College; James Kimball, master instructor and assistant department head in mathematics at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette; and Kathy Almy, longtime math educator and currently CEO of Almy Education. We have a fantastic conversation about the coreq approach to college algebra, and I think that anyone with an interest in college students success will find it enlightening.

Thank you all for being on Intentional Teaching. I'm looking forward to our conversation today about corequisite approaches to college algebra. Thanks for being here. 

Kathy Almy 3:07
Thanks for having us.

Derek Bruff 3:10
I'm going to start with my usual opening question, which isn't about college algebra, necessarily. Can you can each of you tell us about a time when you realized you wanted to be an educator? 

Tina Ragsdale 3:21
This is Tina. I can't think of a time I didn't want to be. I think I was always the kid who liked to help the other students and just was always the one who was the little teacher in the room. So I think it was just something I grew up doing. So I think I always wanted to be the one who taught others. So it was something that came natural to me. 

Kathy Almy 3:50
I'm in a very similar situation. My whole family is practically teachers. And my dad was a college math professor, my mom taught kindergarten and we came from a long line of teachers. And so I always knew I wanted to teach. It was just what was I going to teach? And it changed many times. And then it settled on math. 

Derek Bruff 4:08
Yeah. Yeah. What about you, James? 

James Kimball 4:11
Similar to Kathy, I come from a line of educators. My grandmother was a teacher. My both my parents were high school teachers. 

Teaching was not the plan. I just found out even before I was in college I enjoyed explaining things. I did Boy Scouts. And there's a lot of explaining that happens when you're in Boy Scouts just naturally. And a couple other organizations I did just, you know, being a high schooler where I tended to fall into the role of of guiding and explaining how things work to the others.  

I got into mathematics for my undergraduate and I really liked the tutoring, just the constant helping people understand things. And it just kept going from there. Much to the chagrin of my advisors in graduate school, because I would spend time preparing for lecture as opposed to doing my research. But I still finished. 

Derek Bruff 5:14
I get that. I get that, too. Good. Sounds like you guys all knew fairly early that teaching was going to be part of what you did, which is great. Let's talk about this corequisite approach to college algebra and maybe Tina and James, I'll start with you two. What does this look like in practice in terms of a course structure and how does it differ from a more traditional approach to prerequisites for college algebra? 

James Kimball 5:44
I'll go ahead and go first. It's kind of morphed over time, at least for our institution. And without going through all of the detail, we started doing core requisite support around, I would say, almost 20 years ago. We had a handful of forward thinking faculty that essentially took our college algebra and made it five credits. So every day a week it didn't have the "coreq" name attached to it. And the premise was what it is today. The students need to be in class every day. They need extra support, more examples, and then possibly doing more in the classroom, whether it be worksheets, whether it be going to the board, whether it be group work. That model kind of has changed very slightly over the years, but the core has not changed. How we organize the hours, how we organize the lecture in the lab has slightly changed, but that's the core. 

Derek Bruff 6:50
How about you, Tina? 

Tina Ragsdale 6:52
Yes, it's similar at our college. We had a discussion today with our math faculty of when the corequisite actually began on our campus, and we believe it was 2006. So it a it's evolved through the years. But the original was the three credit college algebra with a two hour workshop. So similar to yours. But the idea is that to give students extra time, our original corequisite course amounted to simply a forward thinking professor giving students two extra hours of class time with him and extra just thinking time, working time, time to work problems in class. And it worked really well. The statistics showed success, and at that time it was just ACT of 20 was required to get in. They allowed 18s and 19s to get in. So it was just a little bit coreq. Through the years, we've stretched that and changed the evolution and changed the requirements and changed the structure. So different things have happened through the years. I don't know how involved you want me to get with the descriptions. 

Derek Bruff 8:26
Well, maybe I'll ask Cathy to say what are what do you see as some of the common structures out there for a corequisite approach? And how does that differ from a prerequisite approach? 

Kathy Almy 8:38
Well, this is really interesting hearing Tina and James, because both of them have what I would say probably is my preference, and I'm not just saying that. So it was kind of nice that we're all on the same page. It's like, that's very much the way that you guys are doing it. Some people call it like a college algebra, like enhanced or college algebra with integrated review, where it's like a bigger course. It's like more time to work on college algebra and integrate the review seamlessly. That is what is kind of the ideal. That is not the way it is done everywhere. So because of logistics and because of how staffing works and credentialing with a lot of departments across the U.S. have people in their department who are not credentialed to teach the college level part. There's a lot of schools that have like a 3 to 4 credit hour college algebra, and then they have a 2 to 3 credit hour support class. And if that class is a support class, it really varies. Sometimes it's just really it seems like intermediate algebra at the same time. It's not truly a support, sometimes will be different instructors. If we could just get... the ones I see where the students are the happiest, the instructors the happiest, that it seems like the outcomes are the best are when you have that same instructor and you're blending going back and forth between the intermediate and the college algebra. The level of coordination required with two instructors, that content, that many credit hours. It's it's a lot. 

Derek Bruff 10:08
And just because I had to learn a lot about this so correct me if I'm wrong a lot of places that don't use either any of these models will have a prerequisite approach where there's some type of intermediate algebra or developmental math, some type of course that students might get placed into before they can take college algebra and they would take this in sequence. So they would take like at Mississippi, they typically take the developmental math course, maybe in the fall. And if they pass that and do well enough, they can then take the college algebra class in the spring. James and Tina, do you have an option like that at your at your campuses, or have you kind of done away with the sequencing entirely in favor of this enhanced college algebra course? 

Tina Ragsdale 10:57
This was the primary placement for almost all of our students, and I was developmental coordinator before my current job. So when I looked at our data, we say we're data-informed. Well, I looked at our data. I found out that 5% of our students who were placed in that developmental class were actually passing the developmental class, enrolling in college algebra and passing the college algebra. 5% of our actual students over a ten year period. 

Derek Bruff 11:27
Wow. So out of 20 students who might start that path, only one of them will actually complete it. Wow. 

Tina Ragsdale 11:35
And that was actual real life data. 

Tina Ragsdale 11:38
So I knew that that was not being successful. So that's why we looked at the the college algebra with workshop, which was happening. Those success rates were running around 70% for first-year placement. So that's good. But we're looking for students with a 16 to 18 range. So what can we do? Can we can we get them? So I asked the chief academic officer at our college. Can I can I work with these students? So we created--

Derek Bruff 12:15
So just so I'm following, the 70%, those were students that already that came in with an act of 18 or higher. Is that right? 

Tina Ragsdale 12:23
Well, yes. 18 or 19. So they were borderline They were almost placed in the college algebra. So I'm looking at ones that had 16, 17.

Derek Bruff 12:36
So a little less background coming in. Okay. Right. 

Tina Ragsdale 12:39
And so now now we're looking at the lower end. And so these would have been placed in developmental and only 5% of them are making it in the college. And by their statement, they need college algebra for their degree. 

Derek Bruff 12:54
Right. 

Tina Ragsdale 12:55
So I asked and we had been working with a grant with our technical programs in what we called an AccelerateU program. Through that, we had what we called academic specialists. In a similar to supplemental instruction, they they worked in the classroom and they did some support. So what I did was I took the college algebra with workshop model, brought in... at the time we called them success coaches. That's different now. So we call them academic specialist. So we brought in academic specialists who attend one or two hour of the class time. It depends on scheduling, how much time they can be in the class, but they're at least in the classroom some of the time so that they they become familiar with the students and then they offer a one hour supplement time. In addition to that two hour workshop with the faculty. 

Derek Bruff 13:53
Okay. 

Tina Ragsdale 13:54
And if they are tested in that 16 to 18 range, the students are told they're required to attend it. 

And for those students that are in those sections, the success rates are now, since fall of 16, we've had 762 students in that, and the ABC success is been 70%. ABCD success has been 76% overall. So the only thing we change is we took our workshop, our basically our enhanced college algebra corequisite, but we added a supplemental person into that to give them a little bit more support, a little bit more scaffolding. 

Derek Bruff 14:46
Wow. 

Tina Ragsdale 14:47
And they're actually outperforming the students who tested into the regular workshop. 

Derek Bruff 14:54
Okay. All right. Those are some really promising results. Well, and they're passing in less time, too, right? This is a one semester experience instead of two or more semesters.

Tina Ragsdale 15:07
Absolutely. And I was... I sold it to my chief academic officer with a goal of 30%. I said I can beat 5%. I think I can get a third of them through.

Derek Bruff 15:18
Yes, 5% is a low bar.

But you far exceeded it. How about you, James? What do you do? You have a a prerequisite approach there or or have you been doing this for so long that there's it's a different kind of calculation that you're doing? 

James Kimball 15:36
Well, the I when I came to the institution, I was a new faculty member, so I wasn't directly involved with the faculty who had been here for 30 or 40 years who were in the thick of it. They had come through... As a state, we did have remedial courses that were the prerequisite to our college algebra, and I believe the threshold was a 19 ACT. And so we were teaching remedial courses at the institution that was primarily taught by either instructors, but I would say mostly graduate students, since we do have graduate students teaching. 

Right about the time I came to the university, I believe it was the state that came in and said no more remedial at the institutions, that it goes down to the community colleges now. So that was in place for several years where if students didn't place into their their entry level math, they had to go to the community college, take the remedial, and then come and do their their first math here. And then once again, the state came in and said, okay, no more of that, we're going to do away with remedial altogether. And so y'all need to figure out a way to implement corequisite across the board. That happened, I would say, within maybe two years ago, three years ago. But since we have been doing this corequisite approach, we didn't have much to do like the other institutions in the state. So but yes, we did have and we still have ACT minimums. We can have minimums that are above the state minimum. But as far as remedial, that's that's no longer an option. But we still just like just like Tina, we still see better benefits through the corequisite approach than than remedial. 

Derek Bruff 17:32
And it's my understanding that there are now a number of states that have mandates or requirements to move away from the remedial prerequisite approach. 

Kathy, you've heard Tina and James kind of talk about some of the success that they're seeing with this model. And that kind of gets to my next big question, which is kind of why? Why make this change for institutions that haven't made this change yet? What are what do you see as some of the reasons that institutions are adopting the corequisite model for for college algebra or for other math courses? 

Kathy Almy 18:05
Nearly every college that I'm working with and I have done many states across the U.S. it's usually because of an external mandate or law. Sometimes there's like a state board of Regents, or it might come from the state coordinating board. It's funny, I would as someone who was faculty for a very long time and led initiatives, I know the power of something that's grassroots and it's led by faculty. But with these big these big developmental reforms, most of the time anymore, they're coming top down.

And because and I and I know I think I can see why just because I've been in the in this landscape for so long. We we would see these exactly what James and Tina were talking about. It's like faculty in other states like myself would see this and be like, Oh, that's amazing. But we start categorizing it as like, Oh, that's amazing, but for this group, but for this group. And so we're like, Well, you can't get rid of the traditional prerequisite pathway because how are we going to serve all the rest of the students? And so in our minds, we would be like because like... For my case, I thought co requisites were always for bubble students, students right on the bubble of being in college level, I never could have imagined they were for way, way more than that. And they are.

And I think one of the things that faculty have done a lot of great work, but I feel like we don't always go as far as an administration or a state would because we are careful, were skeptical or worried. Everybody's very, very worried about doing any harm. The great thing is though, you can do corequisites at scale if they're done well. And they can absolutely work. But it's a process for a lot of faculty to hear someone from a you know, a policy level say this is what you're going to do and actually make this happen because they're not necessarily talking about who Tina was talking about who have an 18. They're like, what if they have a 14 on their ACT? Now what am I supposed to do? And that's that's the situations that we're constantly working through. 

Derek Bruff 20:10
Yeah, Yeah. Which is why I appreciate you sharing your story about starting with those bubble students, but then expanding it to kind of the next group of students and also seeing some success there, which was really great.

How do you talk to your students about this, this kind of course? Because I can imagine different responses students would have. It's a lot of it's a big time commitment, right? Five, 6 hours a week maybe. How do you talk to your students about this course and why it's structured the way it is and what they can hope to get out of it? 

Tina Ragsdale 20:41
For me, it's communication from from day one, it's communication. They need to understand what's expected of them. With the co requisite courses, what I have found, the students are so happy to actually be enrolled in the college level course that they just want to know what they have to do. And they're scared because since, especially with the math, they're all terrified of math. They're coming from a history of unsuccessful completion in math. So the first thing they all tell me is I'm not good at math, so they need confidence building.

And so I try to do a lot of confidence building early in the course, and I try to provide a thorough instruction in many, many ways. So videos, announcements, written directions, verbal directions, things in my learning management system day by day, things in my learning management system, whether it's face to face or online, I think clear and consistent communication and reinforcement. We have an administrator says be prepared to repeat yourself often and graciously, and I think that's the key to a corequisite course.

So I think the the thing that happens in a corequisite course is that the message is the students feel valued. They feel that the college values them by providing all these resources to them. They don't see it as something extra they have to do. They see it as a gift from the college. You've provided a coach to me? You provided extra time to help me through this class? I'm so thankful that you've done this for me. This math class is hard for me and I can't tell you how thankful is that you've spent this extra time for me and that you've built this course that's helpful for me.

When I told them they had to do a developmental course that they had to complete before they could even get into the course, they felt devalued. They felt unworthy like I can't even get into a real course. Now they're in the real course, and they feel valued and they feel like the college is doing something special for them. And I think that's how you sell it to the students. You don't have to sell it. They've already sold it. Like, Wow, look what the college is doing for me. 

Derek Bruff 23:36
That's great. What about you, James? How do you talk to your students about this and how do they respond to this course structure? 

James Kimball 23:42
We had a similar experience to Tina's experience, although I think for us, the students have changed a little bit. I would say ten years ago students were grateful that they didn't have to take remedial. 5 to 10 years ago and they looked at it as a bonus. And we were they were thankful that they got to take the credit bearing course. And the pass rates showed they were either equivalent sometimes like Tina, higher than the students who just got into the normal, the regular course with an ACT score. They they listened to the instructor. They did the work that they needed to do to catch up. The resources were provided for them. 

And I don't know if it's just us, but I would say within the last five years and then particularly after COVID, things started to change and what we were seeing was just... trying to think of the best word, just lack of engagement. For example, you would start a class, we're talking so fall 2020, fall 2021 particularly, we would have a corequisite course. It would start with maybe 35 students, give or take 38. By midterm. That instructor or T.A. was talking to a class of 15. 

And that was a big issue that we had to take because at that point, what do you say when administration says you have a very low pass rate other than, well, they're not giving us any options if they don't show up and they don't come to class and don't do anything, maybe they'll take a test. And so for that reason, we had to take the approach of... We don't need to focus, well, we do, but most of our focus now is on helping them become better students. Math is just kind of what we're doing, but they're they're not aware of how to be a good student. What does it mean to be a good student to come to class and actually participate, to actually come up with good questions to ask, to be engaged, not to be playing on your phone during lecture? 

So we did a couple of changes with the structure. That was another change that happened where we we basically... it used to be the lecture and the lab were very separate. You know, this is lecture day, this is lab day. We stopped doing that. Now every day is a lecture day, but it only go for, I would say, 20 to 30 minutes. After that it's a lab time and the students are working, whether it be worksheets, we have worksheets that are created and given out almost like seat work in the in a high school or a middle school setting. They'll do it together. They'll do it in groups, they'll go to the board. But every day in class, they are working on something.

We also instituted a an attendance policy. For most of our courses, probably all of our courses, we don't have an attendance policy unless the professor decides to have one. But for that particular course, it's across the department that that course has an attendance policy and we enforce it. They get so many, so many missed courses and then they they have a conversation about possibly dropping the course.  We really took the approach of they need to be coached now. They need to be not just told what they need to do, but shown what they need to do. So a lot of what we say in classes is to that effect, you know, okay guys, everything I just said makes perfect sense, but it won't in three days if you do nothing. So you will remember zero if you don't go home and reinforce this. So what are you doing to reinforce this? So those type of things. 

Derek Bruff 27:59
Yeah. Kathy, what do you advise departments in terms of how to talk to students about this and how to get them perhaps motivated or engaged to succeed well enough? 

Kathy Almy 28:11
Well, this is where my, my bias comes in in terms of how to best make this work. If and I totally agree with what James and Tina were saying, if the course is a support course, if it's truly like it just almost regardless of the days of week or whatever, but it's just like fully integrated, it is so easy to sell to students because all you're saying is this isn't another book you're going to buy. This isn't more tests, this isn't more assignments, this is more time for learning.

The problem is, is that not everybody's course is set up like that. So that's one of the things that I'm constantly working on is how do we... It's funny because faculty enjoy it more when it is a support course, but there's a lot of we kind of have to change how we think about how students learn college algebra and the path to college algebra. And it's that prerequisite path. I mean, I work with schools that still regularly have pre-algebra, beginning and intermediate before they take college algebra. So in their mind they're like, How do we just get rid of three semesters and then boom, we just go right into this. And so they feel this constant tug. It's like, I know I'd want to just make it more of a support time, but how am I going to do that?

And so that's where I'm making this a part of you have to integrate other things into the college algebra requisite. And our traditional way that we teach math is so instruction heavy and it is not there's not enough time for learning. So to me, that's why I love the idea of coreqs. I feel like it's partly just like, how long is it going to take before we really just get this to be the thing that we do across the board because there really isn't a subject that you would benefit from having a little bit more time just for processing with your teacher and your classmates and not just all by instruction. 

Derek Bruff 29:59
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I have lots of thoughts on that. 

Let's talk about the heavy lifting for a minute, though. So part of this, it sounds like, is doing the kind of just in time instruction in material that students need to know in order to do the college algebra. The prerequisite, what we might think of as prerequisite material, but it's being done in that support course. Maybe you use the language just in time, maybe you don't. But but but can someone share an example or two of what that looks like where you would provide that kind of just in time instruction around a particular topic? 

Tina Ragsdale 30:39
The way I designed my class was I listed the competencies for my college algebra class. So these were the things I had to cover if I was teaching a standard 150 class. That's our number for college algebra. So if I teach in the standard college algebra class, this is what I would cover and the logical order I would teach it.

All right, then I kind of did the same thing for my intermediate algebra. This is the prerequisite. And I line those up like which one of the intermediate topics led right into a college algebra topic? Believe it or not, a lot of those are the same topics because it's a little different level. I threw out anything from intermediate that I knew didn't lead right into college algebra. Those were just different topics I didn't care about, I threw those out, and then I started like I started a real good foundational element of basic linear equations because I don't think you can do anything in college algebra without a really good understanding of linear equations. So I did that as foundational. That's what I spend the first week on. Is that a real true college algebra topic? Probably not, but I start there and then I refer to that through the entire course. Remember how we did this? This is what you do. This was lesson 1.1.

And then I build my course on those topics and then each topic as we go through in college algebra. If there's an intermediate lesson that I need, I pull those in. I keep my lecture minimum. I do pre lessons. My time in class is groups and higher order thinking. I'm filling in the things that I don't think they can figure out the things on their own. So I spend time in class filling in the things that I don't think they can get on their own... short lectures and then reinforcing with formative assessments. The things they're going to do at home are watching videos and definitions and basic learning that they can easily do on their own without filling overwhelmed. The difficult things happen in class rather than in a typical math class [where] the easy things happened in class, the difficult things happened at home.

And by flipping that idea, then we do during the college algebra time, the new difficult things, a little bit of formative assessment. During the workshop time, the reinforcement and if there's something that I need to go back and pick up from the intermediate, we do. But usually that's more word problems, assessments, practice. 

Derek Bruff 33:40
Yeah, yeah. What about you, James? What what's doing the heavy lifting in your course? 

James Kimball 33:48
I don't think it's quite as regimented as what Tina did, which is great. We're more of, you know, over the years you pretty much know what topics tend to cause trouble or give hang ups. And so those are the ones where you still have, you still have the topic, the college algebra topic that you're covering. And then when you would have the one or handful of students that say, okay, but I don't remember how to factor or what have you, or I don't remember how to deal with negative exponents and things like that. Now you have the time and you have the built in exercises ready to go. So okay, let's spend some time in class and here's something for you to work on outside of class to solidify that, that I don't want to call it a detriment, but the the missing pieces, or at least the thing that it's familiar, you're just not seasoned at it. You just need to work at it some more. So let's now we have the time. Let's take the time and work on it so that it's no longer an issue. 

Derek Bruff 34:56
Kathy, you've mentioned some big pieces of advice that you're often giving folks like have it be essentially one course with one instructor. What are some other key elements that you would identify for departments that are thinking of moving in this direction? 

Kathy Almy 35:13
Well, one is to think about there's a difference between credit hours and contact hours and lab hours and this is one that I see like so when I first start with a school and find out sometimes it's seven and eight credit hours for their college algebra with with their coreq. And it's like once you get seven and above, that's really hard for students because if they drop your class, that's over half their load usually and it messes up financial aid and all kinds of other things. So what you have to think about is you have to balance the teaching side with the logistical side. So like I'll work with schools and ask them, okay, how many hours a week do you need with students? How can we get those hours? And then also you have to balance who's paying for them because, you know, you teach compensating someone for lab hours versus lecture hours isn't always the same. And so there's always negotiation involved in all of that. But it's and as a student paying for the hours, are they not? You know, there's all kinds of things like that. But you need to think about they're separate things. Not always do you get the most time through credit hours. You can get it through other ways.

Really digging into how are you advising students? Because what what I find is that, you know, we kind of all have in our mind, you know, like this is what we this is how we think advising works. But then when you really drill down into it, how it works in practice can be very, very different. And one of the easiest ways to find out if you're advising currently right now with your college algebra is working, and anybody that's listening to this, if they are teaching college algebra, I would encourage them to do this the next class period they have. Do a quick do a quick survey. You can just do a piece of paper. If you want to do something fancy, you can make a poll on on a website. But ask them, do they know why they're taking the course and do they actually need it for their program? It's been fascinating how many schools I worked with. They found out, Oh my gosh, more than half our students in college algebra shouldn't have been taking it. They should have been in stats or they should have been in something totally different. 

And in it's like that's that's a big key thing is make sure... cause you're going to do a lot of work to build a corequisite that actually works and it's it's harder to build this coreq because I mean I'm just honest with people it's easier to build a stats corequisite than it is college algebra because stats does not heavily rely on prerequisite content. Where as college algebra... You know it's like you're trying to teach French 2, and French 1 is folded in. You know, it's it's a whole different animal. So you're going to do all this work. Make sure you get the right students in the room. That would that's that's a big thing. And don't ever assume we already had that taken care of. Just make sure because you're going to head off so many issues if you have that.

The other piece that I would tell people is, please don't think you have to compress three courses or even two into one semester. You need to be backwards designing from the college algebra course. So what what we have and I'll be the first I've been guilty of this too. It's like, how am I going to get all these topics in? And I love what Tina said. She's like first off, I just kicked some of those topics right out. That's what you have to do. And it's not just always even kicking some of them out, it's how far deep do we go into some of these topics? Like there are some these problems that we teach in intermediate algebra that are ridiculously complicated. And then and then they okay, so we beat them to death, trying to get (figuratively) we try to get them, you know, to be able to do these problems. And then we have that idea, like maybe say it's like solving a radical equation. And then when you're actually in the college algebra problems, the radical equations are nowhere near as complicated, and then the student can't even do this kind and they're like, What were we doing this kind for? And it's like, they missed the forest for the trees and it's like you have reorient yourself. The goal is the college Algebra, Intermediate is just in service of it. It's the goal is not that we have to hit every topic we ever hit in intermediate. 

Derek Bruff 39:11
Well, thank you much. Thank you, all of you, for coming on today and sharing your experiences and your perspectives on this. This has been a really great conversation. Thanks for being here. 

Kathy Almy 39:19
Thank you. 

James Kimball 39:21
Thank you. 

Tina Ragsdale 39:22
Thank you. 

Derek Bruff 39:24
That was Tina Ragsdale, teaching enhancement coordinator at West Kentucky Community and Technical College; James Kimball, master instructor and assistant department head in mathematics at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette; and Kathy Almy, CEO of Almy Education. Thanks to all three guests for taking the time to talk with me and for sharing their experiences with math education here on the podcast. See the show notes for contact info for our guests, in case you’d like to talk with them about student success in mathematics on your campus. And if you’re not in mathematics, I would love to hear your takeaways from this episode. Please reach out via email or social media.

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association. In the show notes, you’ll find a link to the UPCEA website, where you can find out about their research, networking opportunities, and professional development offerings.

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As always, thanks for listening.