Review Assessment Report

The Mathematical Sciences Degree continues to have good numbers of declared majors, meeting or exceeding 130 for AY2021/22 and the preceding two academic years. Annual average class retention rates were strong, exceeding 80%. The average class fill rate of 65% was good, but showed a drop of 6% from the previous year. The C-pass rate was right at our target mark of 60% for all three years. The summary statistics, however, processed for this SAAC report do seem to be flawed, at least when it comes to the full-time faculty coverage. The statistics claim only 36% full-time faculty coverage and this is clearly an error. When such discrepancies occur in the data they tend to be small, so this is of note. For AY2021/22, assessment of MATH 1510 – Calculus I yielded encouraging results, suggesting student strength in the degree’s Graduate Learning Outcome Construct mathematical strategies using calculus techniques to solve applied problems from a variety of disciplines utilizing appropriate terminology and symbols.

For the current AY2021/22 and the last two academic years, our annual number of graduate awards far exceed the target of 10 (49 for AY2021/22) and, while the number of declared Mathematical Sciences Degree majors has been strong, we have seen a slight dip with 132 declared major this AY. The average class size was 20.3 and while this number still reflects a decrease from previous trends of averages close to 24, we only saw a drop of about 1 student compared directly with AY2020/21. We believe this drop is due to COVID and are curious to know if we will see an up-tick in class size or if things have already leveled out. The annual average class retention rate exceeded 80%, which is a huge improvement from the previous AY (up 5%) and with this we also saw a slight increase in the C-Pass rate (up 1%) just making the target of 60%. This is encouraging as less students are dropping but our pass rates are holding steady.

Math 1510 – Calculus I was assessed during AY2021/22 through the use of three assessment questions embedded in the final exam. Each question was scored on the scale {0, 1, 2, 3} with rubric 0 = “Not answered or non-mathematical ‘attempt’”; 1 = “Mathematical attempt but major conceptual or calculational error”; 2 = “Mathematical attempt with minor conceptual or calculational error”; 3 = “correctly answered”. All three assessment questions had mean rubric scores exceeding the target of 2.00, indicating student success in the following MATH 1510 course-level student learning outcomes: solve related rates problems using differentiation (mean 2.22), solve optimization problems using differentiation (mean 2.30), and solve motion problems involving position, velocity, and acceleration using integration (mean 2.04). Across the board student success in these learning outcomes is strong supporting evidence of achievement in the Mathematical Sciences Degree Graduate Learning Outcome.

[Please note, the upcoming year is 2022-2023] Assessment of MATH 1520 – Calculus II will be a combination of proctored work from courses taught face-to-face and online. Our rubric scale {0, 1, 2, 3} considers the correctness of the mathematical steps taken to reach an answer and not just the final answer. Previously, online sections of Math 1520 used Respondus Lockdown Browser + Respondus Monitor as their proctoring software with student work submitted electronically. For the upcoming AY, however, all online sections of Math 1520 are considered blended and require exams to be proctored at a CNM Testing Center or via an alternative approved in-person proctoring environment. It is the hope that having a more traditionally secure testing environment for our degree level program courses will ensure the integrity of the assessment.

Implementation of Respondus Lockdown Browser + Respondus Monitor in higher level math courses was conducted out of necessity due to the COVID pandemic. However, when assessing the work submitted electronically many faculty members witnessed instances of suspected or confirmed academic dishonesty taking place. We hope to eliminate this concern by requiring a more traditionaly secure testing environment for our students taking program level courses.