Northwest Indiana Postsecondary Regional Partnership
Mathematics
The Mathematics Working Group determined particular student traits that are exhibited by college ready students. These could be divided into two classes: those dealing with attitude and study habits, and those dealing with content knowledge and conceptual
understanding. A brief list of these characteristics are:
- Attitude and Study Habits. A student that is college ready exhibits the following characteristics:
- Completes homework assignments and views it as a means to learn material.
- Views attendance as important to success in course.
- Willing to adapt to learning environments not compatible with his or her learning style.
- Self motivated. Seeks needed information without prompting.
- Asks 'when, why and what if' questions.
- Content knowledge and Conceptual Understanding. Students prepared for college mathematics courses have these characteristics:
- They have a confident knowledge of many of the mathematical topics taught in high school.
- They have a B or better average in 8 credits of college bound level math & statistics w/o repeating a course.
- They can view the same topic from several points of view, therefore they can solve a variety of problems related to a topic.
- They can analyze problems and recognize pertinent concepts even when no reference to those concepts are mentioned in the problem.
- They are mathematically autonomous.
- They can clearly explain their solutions to others. Furthermore, they can analyze the mathematical arguments of their peers.