If you have taught a course that involves basic mathematics, statistics, or other forms of quantitative reasoning, you have most likely encountered many students struggling with concepts and procedures that you’d like to be able to assume prerequisite knowledge of.  It is widely understood that remedial math is a huge hurdle for many students attempting to attain degrees that have quantitative requirements.   It’s also easy to feel as if there’s simply not the time to remediate each time a student expresses difficulty applying a formula or making a calculation. Here is a useful link when searching for ideas: NICHE

Quantitative Reasoning Fellows are here to help develop course materials, curriculum, and online tools to support faculty.  If you don’t find what your looking for on this site, we will be happy to curate online materials to fit your specific needs.  Just email us at an inquiry at: qrfellows@sps.cuny.edu and we’ll respond shortly.

If you want to increase your students’ computational power with technology, consider using Wolfram Alpha, http://www.wolframalpha.com/widgets/, to build or use preexisting widgets that can easily be embedded in your course site .  Of course the use of widgets can come at the cost of understanding the underlying concepts, but for those times when the calculations actually detract from the conceptual understanding, these widgets can provide great computational short cuts!

There’s no replacing you, but sometimes you just don’t have time to go over specific remedial math.  Consider assigning topics in Khan Academy, www.khanacademy.org, so that students have opportunities to review prerequisite math on their own time and it doesn’t limit their ability to be successful in your course.

Other videos you might find helpful in flipping the learning environment to give you more opportunities to focus your attention on concepts and less on procedures can be found at www.learner.org.