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0 pointsHarryHirsch7y ago0 comments

The OP is talking about teaching community college mathematics. That's not introductory university mathematics; if you are lucky it's Pythagoras' Theorem and quadratic equations. The purpose of community college is to provide the students with a degree certificate that they can use for another degree.

My current institution's nursing school has a set text called "Calculate with Confidence", which teaches the kids to calculate concentrations, unit conversions, measurement uncertainty and similar things. Someone might say that these are essential skills in nursing, and they are, but the incoming students are supposed to have learned these things from their college science courses, from their degree that got them admitted into nursing school. Yet here it is again because all previous education didn't take.

60 % of incoming students at my institution must take remedial math, up from 50 % a few years ago.

That's community college. If you think that's cynical or exaggerated you are insufficiently cynical.

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krn7y ago· 2 in thread

> The OP is talking about teaching community college mathematics. That's not introductory university mathematics; if you are lucky it's Pythagoras' Theorem and quadratic equations.

W. W. Sawyer's books, such as Mathematician's Delight[1] and Vision in Elementary Mathematics[2], seem to be exactly for this audience.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/0486462404/

[2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/048642555X/

skh7y ago

I looked at the books. They seem really nice but are not feasible for use in the classroom for the courses that we teach.

HarryHirschOP7y ago

I would agree with that statement.

keithpeter7y ago

UK: GCSE Maths for adults who missed out at school. A typical year of evening classes looks like this...

http://www.maths91.uk/2017/

This is the baseline for most progression to university and to what we call level 3 courses (the course that gets you into university)

Textbooks: Pearson, Collins, Stanley Thornes all sell 500 page tomes with lots of exercises in them - widely available in local bookshops for about £20 to £25. More popular are the revision guide/workbook sets for about £10. A popular example of a revision guide...

https://www.cgpbooks.co.uk/Student/books-gcse-maths-range.bo...

(CGP Books is actually quite an interesting company who started as a group of teachers self-publishing.)

Many teachers in the UK provide guides, videos and worksheets. There are a couple of web sites providing curated indexes of resources aimed at teachers...

http://www.skillsworkshop.org/

https://www.tes.com/teaching-resources

and the BBC has got involved (and does some nice quality stuff)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/0/

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