Marcus Smith
Lantern Staff
The Math Department developed a new five-week math program in efforts to help students save time and money. The school worked on the program for two years, trying their best to make it as flawless as they could. Of course, it still has its flaws, but being a new program, there is room and time for improvement.
The program allows students to start strong and earn one credit, and then once it gets harder, or the students lose motivation, they may not receive that credit, but they will still have their first credit. This allows students to fall behind, but not so far behind that they have to restart an entire semester. If a student fails one of the modules, they just have to take that one module over, which they can do while the content is still fresh.
The program is beneficial for college students because as we all know, life happens. A lot of people will have a life issue pop up, and with the five-week math program, the students will not have to fall far behind and fail the semester. They will be able to step out and then only retake the five weeks of it that they missed or fell behind in.
“Let’s just say for instance, a student is pregnant, and they give birth early, well they would be out three credit hours,” Developmental Math Program Coordinator Laurie Bruce said. “This way they can finish that five weeks, and they can take time off because of a life event.”
Not only does this program help students save their time and help them earn their credits, the program also helps students save money. It helps them save money because students do not have to pay for the entire semester of math. Students only have to pay for the five weeks of math that they do not pass.
Butler offers a math placement test along with the five-week program. The placement test places students into the module that they test into. With the program being in three separate five week courses, it makes it so that students do not have to take a whole semester of math that they may not need. It places students in the modules that they need. This also gives students the option to test out of math, so they might not have to take it at all.
Math classes are taken on Hawkes, an online math software. With Hawkes, there is a built-in tutor and videos that help students with the content. The tutor can take the students step-by-step through the problems to help the students understand what they are doing. Another advantage with Hawkes is that since it is an online software, it gives students immediate feedback on their answers, so that they do not have to dwell on them in hopes that it is correct.
Overall, the five-week courses are very beneficial to the students. Since they are split up, they saves the students both their time and money.
