Improving Project Success in an Online Mathematics Course

Abstract

With more mathematics courses migrating to online environments, it is important to know whether these courses are comparable to their face-to-face counterparts.To that end, in two different years, I taught an online and a face-to-face section of the same finite mathematics course. After analyzing the data regarding differences in the two sections for the first year, I incorporated changes intended to improve the consistency of project success between the two sections as well as the overall success of the class projects in the online section. My main tool was mimicking the interaction of group members and providing immediate instructor feedback in the early stages of project completion. Happily, I saw an increase in the success of the class projects in the online section.