With the help of a $200,000 grant, Iowa State’s largest-enrollment math course will soon make a transition from traditional to modern.

Discrete Mathematics for Business and Social Sciences, better known as Math 150, is being redesigned from a lecture/recitation format to a small-group, web-based design. Fritz Keinert, associate professor of mathematics, is leading the interdisciplinary team that has redesigned the course, which is taken by thousands of students each year.

Keinert said having students solve long math problems by hand is impractical when they can be done more efficiently on the computer.

“We’re changing the tools of the course,” he said. “The problems will not be solved by hand any more.”

Max Gunzburger, distinguished professor of mathematics, is the principal investigator on the project and has worked on several course redesigns in the past. He said a two-year, $200,000 grant from the Pew Grant Program in Course Redesign made the new program possible.

Gunzburger said the modernized course offers many advantages, one of which is “a big support structure.”

“Students have to be much more actively involved,” he said. “The traditional lecture is a very passive learning style. As many as 200 students may be in one lecture, which makes it really passive. There will be more interaction with the new format.”

The new Math 150 will replace the lectures with the Internet and smaller groups. Keinert said the Department of Mathematics has tried complete web-based courses in the past and they have failed.

“Students were lost,” he said.

A pilot version of the course will be offered spring semester with “no more than 80 students,” Keinert said.

The students will read lecture materials over the Internet, but they also will meet in a computer lab twice a week for recitation and once a week for a quiz, he said. This will ensure that students are actively involved and can get help when necessary, Keinert said.

Another advantage of the redesign is Web-based testing, Gunzburger said. The current format makes it difficult to grade 150-200 hand-written tests, whereas Web-based testing allows professors to test much more often, he said. Professors can then evaluate students’ learning along the way.

The third advantage is allowing students to do everything but tests from home.

“Students must come in and take tests in the labs, which are monitored at all times,” Gunzburger said. “They will show their student ID to the monitor and the test is timed by the computer.”

The at-home advantage also allows students to work at their own pace. They may go through as quickly as they want, Gunzburger said.

Nic Lyon, senior in management, took Math 150 as a sophomore and said he was glad he took the old format.

“I think eliminating lectures would make the course much more difficult without the instruction of a professor,” he said. “I would have been lost without having someone explain the concepts to me.”

Lyon also said he feels the traditional lecture is a much better way of learning, but he said solving problems on the computer rather than “long-hand” does sound like a good idea.

By fall semester 2003, team developers hope to offer five sections of the newly designed course, each with about 40 students.

Keinert said it will be difficult to offer any more than that due to a lack of space in computer labs. Creating more labs at this point is not feasible due to recent budget cuts, he said.