The University of Idaho Argonaut

UI’s Polya Math Center is working to overcome traditional methods of teaching mathematics

Ask junior Susie Douglas what she thinks about the Polya Math Center and you’ll get the response most University of Idaho students would expect.
“I hate it, it’s horrible,” she said. “Everyone I talk to hates it.”

Douglas is just one of the hundreds of UI students who have been required to use the Polya Math Center since its fall 2001 inception. It all started with current math department chair Monte Boisen.

“I was at Virginia Tech in the mid-’90s when they created the Math Emporium, which was a created computer lab in a warehouse,” Boisen said. “It was a better way to teach basic mathematics to students. It was very successful.”

While Boisen still worked at Virginia Tech, several people from UI’s math department visited the campus to check out the Emporium. But the trip was more than just a meet-and-greet.

“Idaho had been seeing less success reaching students coming with basic math,” Boisen said. “And they saw the Math Emporium was devised to address those learning needs.”
Soon after, Boisen was hired as the math department chair to created a lab similar to Virginia Tech’s. His main problem with teaching math by lecturing is students would either get bored or confused, depending on their abilities.

Kirk Trigsted, math lecturer and current director of the Polya Math Center, can back up Boisen’s complaints.
“Basic introduction algebra courses, lectures don’t work for them,” Trigsted said, recalling his experiences teaching Math 108.
“The students in that class have vastly different backgrounds. You have students who haven’t had a math class in 20 years. Others are fresh out of high school who just graduated with Algebra 2 or calculus. And here I am trying to find a one-size-fits-all lecture, which is flat out impossible.”

Boisen agrees with Trigsted, saying a lecture will either go too slow or fast for most students. Lecturers also compete with distractions that affect everyone regardless of ability.

“When you’re in college, you’re thinking about other things, like parties and girls,” Boisen said. “I would have loved a rewind button on lectures back then. You can’t tell your professor a pretty girl walked by and ask ‘Could you repeat the last five minutes?’ ”

In 2001, Boisen and Trigsted created and implemented the Polya Math Center, named after George Polya, a renowned mathematician at Stanford University. The men remember the arduous and long process costing them many nights’ sleep. But their eyes glow when they talk about their brainchild.

The center is located on the first floor of Brink Hall. An attendant at the front desk scans a student’s Vandal card to grant access. Every Math 108 or 143 student is familiar with this process, as they are required to spend at least 150 minutes in the center per week.

Students can rack up minutes by completing homework and taking quizzes. A less math-inclined person could spend the entire required time fulfilling that week’s assignments. But some could whiz through the work and end up just warming a seat.

“Some weeks are hard so I spend a lot of time here (in Polya),” said Dean Mosman, a freshman range management major enrolled in Math 143. “But some weeks, I’m in here just because of the hours so I’ll surf the Internet and check sports scores or something.”

Trigsted said the time rule is not meant to bully good students but to help those in need. Online homework and quizzes are far from the only resource the Polya offers. Students also have access to one-on-one tutoring from trained coaches, live lectures by professors twice a day (3:30 p.m. and 7 p.m.), and full access to white boards.

“There was one student, I can’t remember his name, but he’d bring his laptop to do all his homework and write everything on the white board,” Trigsted said. “I always made sure we had lots of blue pens in stock. For some reason, he really liked blue.”

Whenever the students need them, Boisen said these resources are there for them all 82 hours per week the lab is open. The biggest misconception about Polya, Boisen said, is students will be dumped in front of a computer monitor and left to fend for themselves. This is the perception Douglas has.
“For people who are teacher learners, it really sucks,” she said. “When you ask a coach for help, they tell you to watch a video you already have access to. … To me, it’s just a cheap way for the school to put people through math and get their degrees.”

Trigsted and Boisen said they’ve heard all the negative comments before and have consistently “tweaked” the lab’s workings over the years to fit students’ demands. It doesn’t matter if students enjoy Polya but rather they learn something, they said.
“Students have said to me, ‘I hate Polya but I got my first A in math,’” Boisen said. Trigsted chimed in, saying “That’s what we love.”
It’s still a challenge, though, to get their butts in the seats.

Polya’s standard for trying has four aspects: attending a one-hour weekly focus group (class time); fulfilling their 150-minute time requirement; attempting their weekly homework and quiz; and taking the weekly quiz three times, unless they earn 90 percent or better.

“The hard part is motivating them,” Boisen said. “We know if they give it a try, we can help them be successful.”
As a coach in the Polya Center, junior Tim Karr has regular face-to-face interactions with students, from the bookworms to students wanting answers given to them.

If someone wants a free answer, he tells them to watch the online lecture and actually try. But if a student is legitimately stuck, he sits next to them and breaks the problem down step by step.

“I take them back to the beginning and guide them along so they can see their mistake,” Karr said. “It seems like I’m holding their hand and giving them the answer but they’re doing it themselves. … This works every time and they end up getting it.”
Trigsted and Boisen say if students put in the effort, their grades justify the effort.

Over the past five fall semesters, the pass rate (C or above for Math 108, D or above or Math 143) for “students who try,” as Trigsted put it, has never dipped below 95 percent. In fall 2006, 99.5 percent of those students passed Math 143.

Boisen thinks the do-it-yourself aspect of Polya is what eases the most pressure centering math courses.
“There’s no social price to pay to ask a question but in a classroom, there is,” he said.
Trigsted agrees and added another aspect of why learning by computer can be helpful: “There’s instant feedback. If students get something wrong, they can regenerate the question. They can do homework infinitely as much as they need to.”

And as a lecturer himself, Trigsted thinks Polya can also cut down on the stress and work load of teachers.
“I would grade a stack of homework this big,” Trigsted said with his hands holding an invisible object the height of a loaf of bread. He then said, “Then I’d watch students go like this” mimicking crumbling a piece of paper and tossing it in a nearby garbage can, continuing, “Some would leave the room without knowing what they did wrong or where they needed help.”