Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

I’m so excited that you’re considering this on-campus MTH 199U + MTH 199V pair of courses!  

As a math teacher, I'm confident that everyone can learn to understand the math and algebra we will cover in our class. You're here as part of your academic journey and I hope that we can work together to deepen and expand your mathematical understanding this term.

Contrary to popular belief, no person is bad at math. I do know that plenty of people have had bad experiences with math and the good news is that everyone can have new and better experiences learning math. I'll do the best I can to help you do so, and I expect you to spend as much time and effort as needed for you to have a good learning experience this quarter.

Please know that I am here to support you and I appreciate you reaching out anytime you have any questions, be it a question related to our class, to you being a student at PCC, or anything else I can help and support you with.

MTH 199U is a new course that we’re developing and the main goal of this course is to prepare you for MTH 111Z.  

This course is paired with a “corequisite support” course, MTH 199V.  The support course will be used to supplement your learning, both in terms of math and general studentship skills, to give you a better chance of success in the MTH 199U course.

You must register for both CRNs (25801 and 25802) to be able to take either course.  And you will earn separate grades in each course.

This pair of classes will take a lot of time.  Between the two classes, you are registering for 5 credits of math coursework (4 credits for this class and 1 credit for the corequisite support class).  This means you should expect to put in 15 hours per week between the two classes. The 15 hours will be split as:

• 7 hours in class working on course materials, including both lecture and a lot of group work.
• 8 hours outside of class completing assignments, preparing for class, studying, going to the tutoring center, etc.

While we will not have a fully flipped class, you may need to watch videos and complete an assignment in advance of each class meeting to lay the foundations for what we will cover in class and in your groups.

Class time will be split between a cooperative lecture (with an "I do one, now you try one" style) and in small groups to work on exercises with your fellow classmates.  About half of every class meeting will be spent in group work, also referred to as "lab time."

Attendance in both classes is expected for every class meeting, so you can ask questions, get immediate feedback, and work cooperatively with your group.  

I look forward to getting to know everyone and please email if you have any questions.

To participate in our class, you'll need:

• a dependable internet access,
• a device with web browser, and
• an ability to watch YouTube videos before all class meetings.

We will be using an online homework and learning system.  While I haven’t decided on the exact system we’ll be using, it will be free.

A graphing calculator is not required for the course.  Instead, we will use one of two free apps, Desmos or GeoGebra, for graphing when a graphing utility is appropriate.

If you have any questions, let me know!