Math Education Gets a Makeover

A nationwide effort is afoot to make undergraduate math courses more engaging for students. In the past, there was often a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching math, and many of the classes were structured as weed-out courses, Shannon Najmabadi writes in a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Now, schools such as Rutgers University are rolling out classes that make math applicable to students. For example,  the class “Topics in Mathematics for Liberal Arts” at Rutgers teaches students how to apply math to loans, repayment, apportionment, and voting. Other schools are taking a similar approach and creating courses with real-world applications. Many classes also integrate active learning as a way to keep students engaged.