Week 5 May 1 - May 8

I am still working on collecting my articles that relate to my project. It is time consuming searching for articles and then printing them out, reading them, writing notes on them and they categorizing them according to how useful they may be to my project. I am spending a lot of time working on this literature review and I am only a part of the way there.

I will continue collecting articles and reviewing them this week. I have Tuesday and Thursday night free, so I am planning on spending a majority of these two nights working on finishing up my literature review for next week.

Does anyone know of a good database for articles dealing with remedial mathematics in particular? I am having trouble finding useful articles dealing with basic remedial math like fractions?

Thanks!

James

Week 4 April 24 - May 1

This week I completed the Master's Project Proposal and completed the readings. My project proposal gave me a better understanding of how I want to complete my project and a time line that I will hopefully stick to. If all goes well, I should have everything completed by Spring quarter 2008.

I have looked at a few of my classmates proposals to help me understand exactly what I needed to do to complete this task. This also allowed me to gain a better idea of what other students are working on for their project ideas as well.

Here is a link to my project proposal:

James' Project Proposal

This week I plan to continue my quest for more articles by examining various educational journals. My goal is to collect at least 12-15 articles by Saturday that I can use for my literature review. I know this will not be enough, but it will be at least a start and an attainable goal for myself.

James

Week 3 April 17 - April 24

This week I continued reading Chapters 3 and 10 from our textbook. I haven't quite finished the reading yet, but I hope to finish by tonight.

I have started working on my preliminary thesis. I will post this by Monday night to blackboard.

Here is a link to my preliminary thesis. I have both the short and the long versions of the template.

short version of the template

long version of the template

Here is my outline for my literature review chapter of my thesis. Please provide any suggestions or comments.

Title: Developing a website for improving the understanding of remedial fraction operations.

I. The importance of remedial mathematics in the college level.

A. Assessment scores of new or returning students to the community college.

B. Success rate of students in remedial math courses at the college level.

II. Operations with fractions.

A. What areas students find the most difficult.

B. Examples of uses of technology that help students understand the concept of fractions.

III. Instructional design.

A. Analysis of the problem.

B. Design and development examples that will be used in the instruction of fractions.

This is what I have so far.

James

Week 2 April 10 - April 17

During the past week, I have read Chapters 1 and 2 of the assigned reading. I found the reading interesting in describing the differences between a dissertation and a thesis. I found the reading easy to follow and the authors give good explanations of how to write a successful and winning thesis.

I also have a better understanding of what is expected for the literature review and what I need to get done for my chapter two work. I am not planning on graduating within the next year, so I still have some time, but I don't want to wait for too long.

I am still working on deciding on a topic for my thesis. I will continue to research my choices of topics and have something for next week.

James

Week 1 April 3 - April 10

My name is James Namekata. I am currently working at Riverside Community College as an associate professor of mathematics. I also teach the karate courses at RCC and Crafton Hills College.

This is my 4th ETEC class so I am fairly new to the program. I am interested in learning how to use technology more in my classroom. I am also interested in teaching online math courses at RCC in the future and I thought this program will help me develop my courses.

As far as my topic for my masters project, I don't have a topic already selected. I am actually in no real rush to get through this program. I will probably progress through, one or two classes a quarter.

Some ideas that I have for possible project ideas are developing a web enhanced remedial math course in which the students in the class would attend lecture and take notes during class, but complete all of their homework using an internet based program. I have completed in ETEC 544 five articles for my literature review, but I am not quite sure if this is the area that I want to pursue. I believe that I would have to do a comparison between this newly developed web enhanced course with the traditional remedial course. In order to complete this comparison, I would have to use "common" exams and a "common final exam." My belief is that I would have to design multiple choice exams for this comparison process because free response exams would be difficult to grade.

Another possible idea is to develop a completely online remedial math course which includes homework, exams, and podcasts with instruction. I could use the publishers videos to help explain different topics. As far as homework and the structure of the course, I would probably use WebCT because that is what we use at RCC. But as far as the other issues, I am not quite sure what other details I would need to include.

If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

James