A Twenty-Year Look at “Computational Geology,” an Evolving, In-Discipline Course in Quantitative Literacy at the University of South Florida

Ricchezza, Victor J.; Vacher, H. L.

doi:10.5038/1936-4660.10.1.6

Cited by 3 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…But our students are not unemotional automatons. Quite to the contrary, over the 20-plus years that the Computational Geology (CG) course has been offered at the University of South Florida (USF) (Vacher 2000;Ricchezza and Vacher 2017), it has become quite obvious that many (if not most) of our students have an emotional, at times visceral, response to mathematics.…”

Section: Quantitative Literacy In the Affective Domainmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Student emotions regarding mathematics noted in prior interviews with CG alumni reported in Ricchezza (2016) range across a wide variety of attitudes about math education, math practice, and even basic situations where mathematics make unexpected appearances. These attitudes (among CG students) vary from the most positive and enthusiastic to extremely negative and math avoidant.…”

Section: Quantitative Literacy In the Affective Domainmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Computational Geology (CG) is a QL-in-geology course at the University of South Florida (USF) 2 and has been a fixture in the geology (GLY) major there since its initial offering in 1996 (Vacher 2000;Ricchezza and Vacher 2017). The CG course came about because many students -most notably from the ranks of the so-called nontraditional students, i.e., students who were restarting their education after various life experiences -realized that they did not possess the mathematical skills they would need to obtain and perform the jobs they sought (Vacher 2000).…”

Section: Course Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The second author (LV) created the course and was its sole instructor during 1996-2015, and he has taught it in alternation with another professor since 2016, when the course went from a once-per-year offering to twice-per-year. The primary author (VR) has been the graduate teaching assistant (TA) for the course since the fall 2015 semester and completed a qualitative study of the course featuring interviews with alumni spanning the course's history (Ricchezza 2016).…”

Section: Course Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The course has undergone significant changes in instructional methods and content over its two decades (Ricchezza and Vacher 2017). From the beginning, CG has consistently been heavy on using spreadsheets to teach geologicalmathematical problem solving (Vacher 2000;Vacher and Lardner 2010) and is now near obsessively focused on geology-context word problems.…”

Section: Course Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Quantitative Literacy in the Affective Domain: Computational Geology Students’ Reactions to Devlin’s The Math Instinct

Ricchezza¹,

Vacher²

2017

Numeracy

Self Cite

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Building on suggestions from alumni from a recent interview project, students in Computational Geology at the University of South Florida were tasked with reading a popular non-fiction book on mathematics and writing about the book and their feelings about math. The book, The Math Instinct by Keith Devlin, was chosen because we believed it would give the students something interesting to write about and not because we had any expectations in particular about what it might reveal about or do for their math anxiety. The nature of the responses received from the students led to the performance of a post-hoc study on the emotional affect of math in the students' lives and how it changed as they proceeded through the book and reflected back on it at the end. Of the 28 students in the fall 2016 section of the course, 25 had an improved or slightly improved attitude toward math by the end of the semester. The assignment was more successful than we could anticipate at generating thought and getting students to communicate about math -an integral component of quantitative literacy. Although the limited size and post hoc nature of the study make it difficult to generalize, the results are promising and invite further use of the assignment in the course.

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Section: Quantitative Literacy In the Affective Domainmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Quantitative Literacy In the Affective Domainmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Course Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Course Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Course Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Quantitative Literacy in the Affective Domain: Computational Geology Students’ Reactions to Devlin’s The Math Instinct

Ricchezza¹,

Vacher²

2017

Numeracy

Self Cite

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Changing habits of mind: A phenomenological view of how a computational geology course affected students’ geologic numeracy

Cook,

Ricchezza,

Ryan

et al. 2024

Journal of Geoscience Education

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On "Animals", QL Converts, and Transfer - An Interview

Karaali¹,

Vacher²

2020

jhummath

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In March 2017, Gizem Karaali interviewed Len Vacher, at the time the lead editor of Numeracy, the flagship journal of the National Numeracy Network. What follows is the extended transcript of this conversation, which ranges from quantitative literacy to computational geology, from transfer of learned content and skills to interdisciplinary collaboration. The interview was first published in Shifting Contexts Stable Core: Advancing Quantitative Literacy in Higher Education, edited by Luke Tunstall, Gizem Karaali, and Victor Piercey, and published in 2019 as MAA Notes Volume 88. It is reprinted here with the permission of the publisher. 1

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A Twenty-Year Look at “Computational Geology,” an Evolving, In-Discipline Course in Quantitative Literacy at the University of South Florida

Cited by 3 publications

References 16 publications

Quantitative Literacy in the Affective Domain: Computational Geology Students’ Reactions to Devlin’s The Math Instinct

Quantitative Literacy in the Affective Domain: Computational Geology Students’ Reactions to Devlin’s The Math Instinct

Changing habits of mind: A phenomenological view of how a computational geology course affected students’ geologic numeracy

On "Animals", QL Converts, and Transfer - An Interview

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