Lucretia Brown
Published: October 26, 2005
Students who are seeking an education major will want to register for the new Introduction to Education and Statistics courses, according to professor of education, Betsy Werre and professor of mathematics, Jo Sharon Spencer.
The paired classes will begin in the spring. The idea behind the team teaching is to make statistics more pleasurable.
“Many of our students think that they are going to have to teach statistics, and that’s not true. It’s just that they need to know how to gather statistics,” Werre said.
Both Werre and Spencer have been in the teaching profession for 32 years. Spencer has been at PJC for 18 years and Werre has been with the college for 17. Both instructors have taught in other areas as well.
The shared course program will give students a better understanding of how teachers will use statistics. Spencer and Werre have looked at each other’s syllabi and found topics that can be taught in both classes.
“We are actually paring and sharing the two contents back and forth to help the students make the connection,” Spencer said.
Furthermore, the program will give students material that can be used in other courses. One of the nice things about this program is that some of the assignments are exactly the same.
“It’s almost like they can do an assignment for Mrs. Spencer and turn it in for me, and it’s okay,” Werre said.
Even though it is a shared course program, students will need to register for both courses. Unfortunately, the fees will not change.
If students have not yet taken statistics and introduction to education, Spencer and Werre would like to see them take the two courses during the same semester. Classes will be on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Werre will teach introduction to education from 9:30 to 10:45 a.m. and Spencer will teach elementary statistics from 11 to 12:15 a.m.
If the program is successful, other instructors may look into the shared course program for their individual subjects.
“It would be great if we could offer the classes during the evenings or online in the fall of 2006,” Spencer said.