...continuously evolving, ability-based curriculum. The college rejects traditional letter grades favor of an ongoing assessment practice, providing feedback on each learner's progress toward understanding eight context-based ability areas: communication, analysis, problem solving, valuing in decision-making, social interaction, developing a global perspective, effective citizenship, and aesthetic engagement. MT 050, Applying Mathematical Thinking, is our entirely context-based, discussion oriented, entry-level course. Students enrolled in MT 050 are being prepared for further work at the first level of the communication ability, with an emphasis on quantitative literacy.

MT 050 classroom activities currently address a wide range of topics including college enrollment demographics, world gross domestic product, Drug Enforcement Agency seizure and eradication statistics, and women in the workforce trends. Discussions related to the mathematics inherent to these topics frequently cross over into other ability areas, such as developing a global perspective. For example, as students apply place value concepts while completing an activity related to world gross domestic product, they struggle with the correctness of their answers. It is not at all unusual for a student to calculate that the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune have a combined wealth greater than the GDP of many entire nations and believe that they must have made an error in their arithmetic (they haven't).

Facilitating learning experiences which lead to such "Eureka!" moments, where students discover that they are able to use their emerging quantitative literacy to make sense out of new contextual information, is rewarding indeed. These moments are also pedagogically important. This article describes a recently created...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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