Stepping It Up: Foundations for Success in Math = College Readiness

New Digital/Print Program from Pearson Canada Bridges Gap Between High School Math and Skills Needed for College Success

TORONTO, March 25 /CNW/ - One third of all students taking math in the first semester of their Ontario college program are failing or barely passing, according to the College Mathematics Project (CMP). Many of the students identified as being at risk are those who have not mastered basic math skills prior to entering college, and are therefore not adequately prepared to complete their chosen program of study.

Stepping It Up: Foundations for Success in Math, a new program from Pearson Canada, is designed specifically to help bridge the gap between high school and college mathematics, providing solutions to the challenges that many students face in this difficult academic transition.

Pearson Canada's math team worked closely with Ontario college math educators to identify a list of fundamental topics essential for college success and to determine the best approach to help at-risk students. These topics include math study skills; whole numbers; fractions; decimals; ratio and proportions; percent; measurement; geometry; statistics; signed numbers; and introduction to algebra and trigonometry.

Stepping It Up: Foundations for Success in Math is available exclusively through MyMathLab and the Pearson Custom Library. These programs allow instructors to pick only the topic modules they need and arrange them in any order to build their own customized electronic or print textbook. MyMathLab, Pearson's online math learning system, helps students improve their math skills by providing a personalized interactive learning environment where they can learn at their own pace and measure their progress. Tutorial exercises link back to an eText and additional study aids.

"Colleges need flexible resources to help students learn the math required to succeed in their courses, and Stepping It Up can be tailored specifically to the needs of any learning environment," said Steve O'Hearn, President, Pearson Canada Higher Education. "The program is designed to meet the recommendations of the College Mathematics Project, the ongoing research program funded by the province of Ontario to examine student math skills at the college level."

Throughout the program, students are given many opportunities to practice and review core concepts. Each of the twelve modules contains Practice Problems, Quick Quizzes, Module Review Problems, and two How Am I Doing? tests, and is bookended by a diagnostic pretest and a practice final exam.

"As authors, we were committed to producing a textbook that emphasizes mathematical reasoning and problem-solving techniques. The problems included in Stepping It Up are built on a wealth of real-life and real-data applications and include a mixture of SI and Imperial units to reflect everyday life in Canada. By using realistic Canadian examples, our aim is to engage students and help them understand the relevance of the material to their own lives," said co-author Trish Byers PhD. "We have developed and incorporated these into the exercise sets to teach students in data interpretation, mental mathematics, estimation, geometry and graphing, number sense, critical thinking, and decision making. The program was designed to help educators recognize and respond to the difficult issues students encounter in first semester college mathematics courses."

NOTE TO EDITORS:

The author team for Stepping It Up includes Mike Delgaty (Algonquin College), Michael Nauth (Algonquin), Lisa Hayden (Algonquin), Trish Byers (Georgian College), John Tobey (North Shore Community College), Jeffrey Slater (North Shore), Jamie Blair (North Shore), and Bob Blitzer (Miami-Dade College).

For further information: please visit www.pearsoncanada.ca/steppingitup; Contact: Rod Granger, [email protected], 1-800-745-8489