Two-year college educators worked through technical workplace scenarios developed by the Needed Math Project at a workshop before the start of the 2024 Advanced Technological Education Principal Investigators’ Conference on Wednesday.
The project, funded by the National Science Foundation, has identified the most important math skills for manufacturing technicians to know. Its 40-point list based on the project’s survey of technicians, industrialists and instructors of math and industrial technology.
Based on these data from 313 complete survey responses, the project has created scenarios that can be accessed for free on its website. Needed Math’s leaders also invite faculty to create their own scenarios using an artificial intelligence-based tool the project has developed.
Tips on using the tool
“Three years ago when we started this project, we had no idea we would be here,” said Rodney Null, a Needed Math project co-principal investigator professor emeritus of mathematics at Rhodes State College (Ohio).
As the pre-conference participants entered details for their scenarios into the tool, Null noted: “It is not perfect, but it gets you farther down the road.”
For optimal results from the tool, the Needed Math team recommends the following:
- Be clear and specific about the scenario details.
- Use real-world contexts.
- Focus on technician tasks.
- Encourage problem-solving and critical thinking that technicians need to do.
- Incorporate common challenges that technicians face.
Nancy Louwagie, who teaches vacuum technology at Normandale Community College (Minnesota), said there were errors in her first draft of a scenario but that they were fixable.
“You can start manipulating the detail from a draft so much faster,” she said, adding that meant there was plenty of time to make corrections and other modifications.
“I believe this contextualized math is extremely important in technician education. Technician audience [members] oftentimes really need assurances that the kind of math skills you are trying to teach them are something they are going to use. Because if they don’t see that connection right away, they tend not to engage in it,” Louwagie said.
Already in use
Allen Shockley, a mathematics instructor at Independence Community College, has already been using the concepts identified by the Needed Math project to help him develop a college credit “contemporary algebra” course for technical and general education degree programs in Kansas. This new course is the key deliverable of his ATE project, “Success in Mathematics through Project-Based Learning.”
“Identifying the math that technicians actually need to have, for me that is the most important,” he said.
The Needed Math team requests that people who use the AI tool share their scenarios through a link to the project so that the team of researchers can learn from them.
