QuAC workshops are designed to get faculty, staff, and students from all corners of campus to share their ideas, experiences, and best practices in numeracy education. The handouts on this page may be freely adapted for use in other contexts, so long as attribution is provided.
Click on a workshop name below to access its handouts and resources.
Getting Started with QR
Workshops for Number-Rich Courses
Beyond the Formula
Election 2012 Special
Resources
Engaging Students with Quantitative Reasoning
What classroom practices and assignment designs will best facilitate engagement and learning in your classroom?
The Common Core State Standards: Transitions from Secondary School to College Writing
As new K-12 standards for student writing proficiency take effect, how can writing infuse more quantitative courses, and vice versa, to better prepare students for college and career?
"Writing, Reasoning, and Mathematics" Presentation
Unsure where to begin with numbers in your classroom? Low-stakes writing-to-learn assignments are a terrific way to begin the conversation with your students.
First-year college students have their own unique set of challenges as they begin higher education. Engaging them with numbers across their first-year experience stakes a claim to their importance, and sets the tone for numerate engagement throughout their degree program.
"What if my students don't have the skills needed for quantitative reasoning?" Reinforcing number skills on a just-in-time basis is a proven path to success.
Experienced numberphiles know that numbers tell powerful stories. Writing about numbers is critical to understanding them, and conversely, numbers can provide powerful evidence to improve a written argument. In this workshop, we explore how to design authentic quantitative writing assignments in a variety of courses.
Numeracy from Practice to Theory: Using Interactive Case Studies
To teach for numeracy is to build number sense and statistical reasoning within the context of authentic problems. In this workshop we see how context helps, not hinders, students' ability to solve "story problems," and use an interactive tool to discover why Simpson's Paradox works in context.
Statistics are pervasive in modern political discourse. How can we and our students separate honest interpretations from exaggerations (or lies!) in the political echo chamber?
Quantitative reasoning typically addresses open-ended questions. How these questions are posed to students matters a great deal to whether they feel capable to address them.
Scaffolding quantitative skills into an authentic assignment takes considerable thought. Encouraging students to write — both for their own sake and for others' — is a key piece of the puzzle.
Students arriving at the upper levels of their discipline can be surprised by the oft-sudden quantitative demands of research and capstone experiences. How do you help your students through it?
Spreadsheets are an incredibly powerful tool for the kind of data analysis that quantitative research often requires. Keeping students' spreadsheet skills sharp is a cross-curricular effort.
Formulas should not be a substitute for reasoning. With practice, we can see how each formula tells a story — and choose whether and when to use them.
In the right habit of mind formulas tell stories about their subject. By attending to — or even inventing — contexts, formulas give us and the students we serve meaningful insight into our disciplines.
