Mathematics skills assessment and training in freshman engineering courses

In recent years, the professors who have taught freshman engineering courses at Northern Arizona University have expressed some disappointment regarding the level of students' abilities and their rates of academic success. A major cause, we believe, is the inadequately developed mathematical intuition and skills that students possess when they begin college. To address this issue, we have developed and deployed a pilot program called TIMES: Training Intuition in Math for Engineering Success. Once students are assessed to determine their skill levels in six chosen numeracy areas, guided practice and training is provided to each student who has exhibited difficulty. All students are required to reach a level of mastery as measured by a posttest instrument. The goals have been to increase retention and academic success for these engineering students and to measure the effectiveness of the TIMES approach. Three semesters have been completed and more than 850 students have participated. The majority of the students have shown weakness in one or more of the targeted skill areas. In this paper, we present both quantitative and qualitative results of the first three semesters of this ongoing project.