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This paper describes the implementation of a STEM scholarship program which utilized a holistic approach to providing a multi-dimensional student support system. The program has been successful in encouraging and supporting women in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science by offering a diverse suite of extracurricular opportunities, actively engaging them in organized events, research projects, and participation in STEM communities, and helping them achieve higher GPAs and shorter times to graduation. The supported women also benefitted from close mentoring relationships with the faculty mentors. The program emphasized the development of empowering settings for women's engagement and achievement, which act to sustain and expand interest in mathematics and computing, and thereby help them to see themselves as future professionals in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Mathematical Sciences Department at Shenandoah University focused on increasing the participation of women in the mathematics program by fostering a welcoming learning community and promoting double majors. Data from the past decade is presented. During this time, the program saw an increase in women undergraduate mathematics majors from 11% to as high as 71%. This paper describes the initiatives taken to make these changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The University of Minnesota Talented Youth Mathematics Program (UMTYMP) is a selective, five-year accelerated mathematics program for students in grades 6–12. During the program, students take college mathematics courses on University of Minnesota campuses, starting with algebra and continuing through logic and proofs, linear algebra, and multivariable calculus. The majority of UMTYMP students come from two demographic groups: White and Asian/Asian American. In 2020, we surveyed UMTYMP students to understand the impact of model minority stereotypes (MMS) on Asian/Asian American students, particularly girls, who are labeled as "gifted" and/or "talented." In this paper, we reveal the preliminary results of this study, discuss their implications, and provide recommendations for addressing the MMS in mathematics programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the outcomes of a faculty partnership between a math professor and a composition professor to improve the final paper in a research-focused senior capstone math course. Much attention has been paid in recent years to the importance of undergraduate research experiences and how to best create and support such endeavors. However, little space has been dedicated to helping math faculty design and scaffold writing assignments to support their students' development as scholars. We describe how our partnership took place, the changes we made to existing assignments and the creation of new ones, and an assessment of our efforts completed by an interdisciplinary group of faculty and students, which showed marked improvement in the areas of information literacy, critical thinking, and quality of writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses several linear algebra activities designed to help enhance students' skills in collaborating, exploring mathematics, and linking together abstract and visual ways of approaching mathematics. Most of these activities are short, accessible, engaging, and easy to incorporate into any classroom. In addition, we discuss some questions instructors can ask themselves to design novel and engaging activities when constrained to teaching from a particular curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With this paper, we share an activity for the undergraduate mathematics classroom called The Harp Project that leverages the aesthetic nature of both the mathematical and the musical arts. This project was conceived as a STEAM/PBL project with the added feature that it was carried out in pieces by an entire class. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the uncommonly high level of students' interest and engagement in the experience and the communal feel of their participation can be attributed to this collective quality of the project's design. For this reason, we invite others to consider this curricular experience as it appears viable for supporting efforts to cultivate a broader population of students with an affinity for mathematics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a series of basic computational problems that are mathematically and/or graphically appealing, and provides an idea of places one might go in trying to understand what is happening, integrating mathematics, computation, and graphics. The real point of this paper is to make a case, through those examples, for computation as an early and integral part in the undergraduate mathematics curriculum. By computation we mean the ability to rapidly and easily program exploratory calculations, and as well display the results with a versatile suite of graphics capabilities. The problems used here, and the philosophy behind them, derive from a MATLAB-based course in computation, programming, and mathematical applications that the author has taught for over 10 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents ideas for constructing mathematics homework assignments based on lessons from the cognitive science of learning and memory. In particular, we focus on two popular techniques from the field: spaced practice and mixed practice. The paper describes the techniques and supporting research, and then discusses various straightforward ways to incorporate them into mathematics instruction via homework assignments. The ideas presented can be applied at virtually any level of instruction and may be of interest to educators looking to implement research-based practices from cognitive science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I share an activity that reinforces students' understanding of translations, reflections, and rotations via body movement. As a result of this activity, students gain a different perspective compared to previous explorations on paper, communicate mathematics, and visualize transformations as rigid motions on the plane. Furthermore, the combination of sensation and perception helped some students assess whether their work was correct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we briefly introduce three theoretical frameworks for mathematical identity and why they matter to practitioners teaching undergraduate mathematics courses. These frameworks are narrative identities, communities of practice, and figured worlds. After briefly describing each theory, we provide examples of how each framework can be used to interpret or inform classroom discourses by applying the framework to a selected transcript from a student-centered mathematics project called the Catwalk problem. We summarize how an awareness of students' forming mathematical identities can be used positively in the undergraduate classroom to help educators support students to form productive mathematical identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we assess the pedagogical approaches we employ in our US-based undergraduate mathematics courses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our goal is to share anecdotal evidence on the use of math journals, oral exams, and learning portfolios in the synchronous online mathematics classroom. We reflect on our experience using artifacts of student materials, feedback, and dialogues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We now know how best to teach our students – student-centered learning. Yet many of us face challenges when trying to design courses that are student-centered. In this paper, we present our experience with a Web 2.0 technology, VoiceThread, that has helped us address some of the challenges we have encountered when designing student-centered classrooms. We share our VoiceThread activities, and we discuss how mathematics educators and mathematicians can continue studying how to effectively use VoiceThread in face-to-face, blended, and online math courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mathematics is not just the queen of the sciences; it permeates through art, commerce, and in fact, every aspect of modern life. However, while we as mathematicians see beauty in the mathematical way of thinking and problem-solving, our students tend to think of mathematics as a set of rules and abstract computations. Our pleasure of doing mathematics usually does not transfer over to our students. In this paper, we describe two liberal arts general education courses which seek to develop a broad appreciation of mathematics for students who may not require any technical mathematics course for their academic major or chosen career path. We present mathematics as it relates to everyday life, with the goal of improving student appreciation of mathematics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we invite the reader to think deeply about professional development opportunities for faculty. The focus of this professional development is to improve teaching and learning by including more inquiry in the mathematics classroom. Building on theories of teaching and learning, we develop the idea of "teaching procedures" and "teaching concepts" and think about implications for professional development. We then use our personal stories to illustrate that our beliefs and attitudes matter when we want to improve our teaching. Bringing both of these perspectives together, we showcase activities we created for inquiry-based learning (IBL) workshops for faculty. Finally we discuss feedback received from workshop participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In summer 2013, Manhattan College introduced an online summer "bridge to calculus" course for incoming first-year students in science, engineering, and mathematics education who marginally did not receive a calculus recommendation based on a mathematics placement test. In this paper, we describe the development of the bridge course and demonstrate statistically that this course continues to prepare its students for Calculus at a level comparable to those who took a full semester of Precalculus, yet at a significantly lower cost in terms of both time and money. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is written to provide ideas and guide faculty who want to design a mathematical modeling course for undergraduate mathematics majors and minors. We discuss course goals, assignments, and projects that can be used to help students gain experience relevant for careers and mathematical modeling opportunities. The authors designed this course to build students' mathematical thought processes and toolbox, ability to analyze and evaluate mathematical models, mathematical modeling skills, and teamwork skills. The course described is intended as an upper division undergraduate course with a prerequisite of differential equations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This editorial provides an introduction to the special issue, Infusing active learning into precalculus and calculus courses: Insights and lessons learned from mathematics departments in the process of change. We begin with providing the background for the special issue, including an overview of the current status of active learning in precalculus through calculus, what many of the papers in this issue mean by the term "active learning" (inquiry based mathematics education), and a brief overview of the literature on institutional change. We then offer an overview of each of the three issues, explaining how various papers relate to each other within each issue. We conclude the editorial with some reflections on the institutional changes efforts in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces lessons designed to incorporate applications to teaching high school mathematics in an undergraduate Discrete Mathematics course. Because many prospective high school teachers do not take courses that are specifically designed for teachers, providing materials aimed at teacher preparation that can be easily integrated into courses that serve a general mathematics major is one strategy for addressing mathematics teacher preparation. We developed lessons using four guiding features: choosing appropriate content; making school mathematics connections; incorporating active learning; and providing robust lesson notes. Our interview-based findings document how the lessons were used by instructors and analyze the mathematical ideas and understandings that arose from the use of the lessons at two different sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teaching Mathematics to tertiary students can be a challenge to educators, mainly because they must deal with learners' varying levels of readiness. Some of the factors attributing to the variability are learners' perceptions of mathematics, their previous learning experiences, and fear of failure. We implemented a teaching approach to facilitate student ownership through active peer involvement and flexibility with assessments. In this paper, we analyze students' perceptions of learning mathematics when using the new approach for three consecutive semesters. We discuss the results of our study and the factors that helped students overcome their inhibitions and appreciate mathematical concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mathematics education faculty working in mathematics departments are commonly involved in teaching undergraduate mathematics courses, teaching and supervising postgraduate students of mathematics education, and developing mathematics teachers (pre-service and/or in-service). This paper proposes a new elective course that can be taken by either undergraduate mathematics majors or by graduate teaching assistants pursuing degrees in mathematics and teaching undergraduates themselves. Twenty-eight topics are suggested, and the rationale for each is briefly described. Offering such a course provides different opportunities for students; for example, familiarizing them with effective ways to teach and learn mathematics, which has the potential to improve their effectiveness as tutors within the department. A similar course has been successfully taught to undergraduate students majoring in mathematics at an Iranian university for nearly two decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Finite Mathematics has become an enormously rich and productive area of contemporary mathematical biology. Fortunately, educators have developed educational modules based upon many of the models that have used Finite Mathematics in mathematical biology research. A sufficient variety of computer modules that employ graph theory (phylogenetic trees, food webs, networks), cellular automata (pattern formation, diffusion limited aggregation), fractals (both measurement and generation of self-similar structures), finite difference equations and deterministic chaos (logistic growth, predator–prey, SIR epidemiology), combinatorics and probability (genetics and evolution), information theory (biodiversity, sequence logos), and Boolean logic (operons) are available to adopt, adapt, and implement. An emphasis has been placed on modules that are freely available, that have been educationally vetted, and that run on a variety of operating systems. Most modules are easy to use, graphically visual, and amenable to modification. In this paper, two different approaches are stressed: (1) "glass box models" that allow students to see equations associated with each cell in a spreadsheet and to modify/extend those models with minimal effort; and (2) agent-based models that emphasize "bottom-up" modeling and that instantiate the power of massively parallel simulation and address the misconceptions of a "centralized mind-set." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the fall of 2009 and in the spring of 2012, supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) in the National Institutes of Health (NIH), we designed a course "Phylogenetic Analysis and Molecular Evolution" (PAME), the first cross-listed course across three different colleges (College of Arts and Sciences, College of Engineering, and College of Agriculture). This course was the first at the author's university. The course will be made available to graduate students and advanced undergraduate students in biology and computer science, and undergraduate student in statistics and mathematics at regional universities and colleges. The graduate students will learn how to gather sequence data, use bioinformatics tools, and analyze biological data using mathematics and statistics throughout the project. In this paper, we propose an online course on PAME facilitated with the statistical software RStudio on Amazon Web Service (AWS). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Preparing students placing into developmental mathematics for success in undergraduate mathematics and preparing future teachers for the increasing demands of K–12 school settings are both persistent, yet seemingly divergent, problems facing higher education. In this paper, we shed light on a model that attempts to address aspects of each problem and share preliminary evidence of success in a multi-year application of this model. The paper highlights the benefits of implementing the model, particularly to support collaboration between faculty in mathematics and teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce a ruler and compass activity designed around Islamic Geometry and provide a detailed description of the various components of the activity along with ideas for students exhibitions in both digital and print form. In our experience, this activity helps students to "buy into" actively doing mathematics, making it an ideal choice for an introduction to inquiry-based learning practices. Our hope is that this paper serves as a resource to both new and experienced facilitators of an inquiry-based classroom to help make their ruler and compass activities more joyful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mastery-grading techniques such as mastery-based grading, specifications grading, and standards-based grading are assessment techniques professors are implementing in order to support a growth mindset of learning, decrease test anxiety, and help students develop a deeper understanding of course objectives. In this paper, we provide an analysis of research conducted in a variety of courses which used mastery-based testing (MBT). Some of the questions we explore include whether the students' attitudes about mathematics and learning changed throughout the course in addition to whether MBT impacted test anxiety and growth mindset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nationwide, many students fail to complete the key mathematics courses that are required for most STEM majors, including Precalculus. This paper describes the rationale, implementation, and impact of the redesign of Precalculus at one regional west coast institution. Prior to the redesign, pass rates in Precalculus were modest (75.8% of all students, calendar years 2009–2014). The redesigned course emphasizes active learning including group work based on conceptual questions and utilizes standards-based grading with a supporting emphasis on growth mindset. In the first three semesters of implementation, 88% of students passed the redesigned course. While the authors focus on the redesign of a Precalculus course, it is our hope that instructors of other core mathematics courses for STEM majors may find information of value in this work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on mathematics remediation efforts at a public 4-year institution. Specifically, it describes redesign efforts that led to the implementation of co-requisite mathematics remediation. Data on this program were collected and analyzed with respect to completion rates, length of time to earn college mathematics credit, and factors contributing to student success. Results include that, even with the co-requisite model, many students are still getting lost in the pipeline to earning college-level mathematics credit. Results also suggest high school GPA as being a significant factor between passing and non-passing students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The percentage of college students receiving unproductive grades in introductory mathematics courses is a concern for post-secondary institutions across the country. Many factors can be targeted as potential explanations for this lack of success, yet none of these issues are more noteworthy than the fact that many students enter college mathematics courses with significant gaps in their fundamental mathematical background. In this paper, the authors discuss a way to implement an online remedial program to help students overcome their deficiencies following a "just-in-time teaching" model. Relevant data are presented supporting a positive outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teaching introductory statistics is a service requirement for many mathematics faculty, and the audience is often anxious about the subject and not always excited about the material. Making class fun, relevant, and visually stimulating is key to keeping students engaged in the material and also in promoting student learning. Collecting data from the students, be it demographic information or experimental data, can achieve this, and immediately invites the students to be interested in the data and motivated to answer-related research questions. To facilitate and speed up this process, we developed the free data collection and analysis platform Classroom Stats which is designed to make class more fun and to improve student learning through straightforward visual analysis of the data. In this paper, we will discuss the importance of using student generated data in class and how to use Classroom Stats to make the process easy and efficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Standards-based grading (SBG) is an assessment/grading system that attaches scores to the mastery level of specific learning objectives. This methodology is gaining momentum in the K-12 environment but has been largely overlooked at the post-secondary level. In this paper, I will discuss the implementation of this practice in a College Algebra course. I will also discuss the motivation in attempting an alternative assessment system, the development and implementation process and describe the resulting system. Comparisons will be made between a College Algebra course utilizing the traditional points-based system and the same course in which SBG was incorporated. These comparisons will include observed student behaviors, student perception, the administrative efforts required of the instructor, and student performance in subsequent courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Mathematics Department Chair plays many roles within the department and within the university as a whole. Facilitating the development and teaching of mathematics services courses requires working with mathematics faculty as well as members of other departments on campus. In this paper, we discuss many issues related to the Department Chair's role in mathematics service courses such as determining course content needs, placing students in appropriate courses, scheduling classes, assessing service courses, and looking to the future of mathematics services courses. Central to all of these issues is ongoing communication with colleagues in and out of the department. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introductory and remedial courses in college mathematics often serve as a gateway to student success. However, these university courses have seen little innovation despite historically low success rates. We sought to address deficits of the traditional lecture model and enhance student learning in an introductory college algebra course through the implementation of a flipped classroom. In this paper, we fully describe the course design, and discuss the interplay between online and in-class activities. We then present data regarding student self-efficacy and success rates in subsequent quantitative courses from our work across five semesters of implementing and researching the course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The activity described in this paper is based on the idea that reading an introductory undergraduate mathematics text is similar to reading instructions. I want my students to think about how to read when the goal is to learn to complete a task. I give them written instructions for doing a card trick and ask them to complete the trick. The subsequent discussion helps the students identify the reading strategies they used to complete the card trick; for example, reread the step to make sure you got it right. I point out the connections to reading their mathematics textbooks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mastery-based testing is an assessment scheme that challenges students to provide complete solutions to problems derived from clear course concepts. Students are allowed multiple attempts to demonstrate mastery, which helps create a classroom environment where students value persistence toward thorough understanding. In this paper, we describe in detail the benefits and implementation of mastery-based testing in college mathematics courses. We also summarize student response data that show positive reactions to this testing method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an interdisciplinary team, we set out to create an applied statistics course that would cover the traditional introductory statistics topics in a consistent framework of social justice. The goal was to motivate students to understand and learn math while deepening their understanding of the interplay, at local and global levels, between social and economic issues: for example, crime, victimization, political access, wealth, education, health, gender, and race. This paper describes the process of creating the course, the pedagogical decisions, the intentionality in topic presentation, samples of classwork, and student impressions of the semester-long course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My goal in crafting homework in calculus is twofold: to provide scaffolding for students to develop a theoretical understanding of calculus concepts and to incorporate good mathematical exposition, including justification and proof when appropriate. I achieve these goals by creating weekly homework sets that students work on in groups of three or four, beginning in class and finishing outside of class. In this paper, we explore examples of homework questions that promote abstract thought and the details necessary to implement this system in a calculus class. We discuss the ways in which group assignments invalidate solutions found online and ease the grading burden for the instructor. We mention possible pitfalls of this approach as well as ways in which to avoid them. Finally, we discuss student attitudes and feedback on this particular method of homework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contains a description of my experiences flipping undergraduate mathematics and statistics courses for the first time with some advice for any fellow novice flippers. This paper discusses ways to start small and build up to a completely flipped class over the span of a few terms with advice on what technology to use including software and hardware. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Teaching teachers to participate in mathematical inquiry has the potential to both transform belief systems about mathematics and to transform teachers from consumers of mathematics to producers of mathematics. The focus of this paper is to describe the use of a problem, based on a non-traditional binary operation, to encourage and teach pre-service and in-service teachers inquiry and problem-posing. We present a brief mathematical solution for the problem and we then discuss problem-posing activities and discussions of connections to the Standards of Mathematical Practice from the Common Core State Standards. We discuss several key aspects of the problem that make it well-suited for the purposes of teaching inquiry and problem-posing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Inquiry-based pedagogies have a strong presence in proof-based undergraduate mathematics courses, but can be difficult to implement in courses that are large, procedural, or highly computational. An introductory course in statistics would thus seem an unlikely candidate for an inquiry-based approach, as these courses typically steer well clear of proof, have a list of required topics, and depend critically on computational software. On the other hand, the American Statistical Association (ASA) has long advocated the sort of active and exploratory class design that in many respects parallels traditional inquiry-based learning (IBL). This paper reports on the author’s recent attempt to implement an inquiry-based course in introductory statistics that fuses established IBL techniques with the specific pedagogical recommendations of the ASA. A signature feature of this course is that many of the inquiry-based activities are explicitly tied to computer work in the open source language R. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This issue is the second of a special PRIMUS two-part issue collecting articles on undergraduate research from experienced faculty mentors. We offer it as a valuable resource for faculty leading undergraduate research programs. This issue presents a collection of papers offering advice on a variety of specific topics important for leaders of undergraduate research programs. Issues of finding and designing appropriate and accessible research projects, assessing undergraduate research, and publicizing it in the media are addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Undergraduate research has become the centerpiece of many institutions of higher education’s efforts to attract and recruit high school graduates. Since 1987, throughout my tenure at Bloomsburg University, I have involved over 20 students in my research. In my experience, there is clear evidence that students of mathematics substantially benefit if they engage in research during their undergraduate studies. Whether the student plans to apply for employment after graduation or continue with graduate studies, the undergraduate research experience has a tremendous effect on the student’s success. In this paper, I will provide some personal insight on my experience in working with undergraduate students. In most cases, my experience has been in working with one student on a long term (one semester or mostly year-long) research problems. I will discuss my approach to identifying students, the type of projects, providing guidance, and finally the challenges that we face in supervising undergraduate research. To exemplify, emphasis will be placed on the status of a recent 1-year research project, which was funded by the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, and a senior undergraduate student worked on it for one year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This issue is the first of a specialPRIMUStwo-part issue collecting articles from experienced faculty mentors. We offer it as a valuable resource for faculty leading undergraduate research programs. It is inspired by the “Regional Faculty Workshop on REU Issues” in 2013 and the Joint Mathematics Meeting 2015 Mathematical Association of America’s “Themed Session on Perspectives and Experiences on Mentoring Undergraduate Students in Research.” This issue consists of seven papers focusing on the larger issues involved in creating, running, and sustaining an undergraduate research program in mathematics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students’ abilities and interests vary dramatically in the college mathematics classroom. How do we teach all of these students effectively? In this paper, we present the Point Reward System (PRS), a new method of assessment that addresses this problem. We designed the PRS with three main goals in mind: to increase the retention rates; to keep all students actively engaged in the learning process; and to enhance the students’ learning experience. At the same time, we wanted to keep implementation of the PRS practical while not diminishing its potential to facilitate the learning process. We compared PRS to the traditional assessment method that currently prevails at the universities and colleges. The data showed that use of the PRS significantly lowered WFD rates compared with the traditional assessment method. PRS was also more successful in keeping students engaged in the course throughout the semester and it had more impact on students’ learning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Three years ago our mathematics department rearranged the topics in second and third semester calculus, moving multivariable calculus to the second semester and series to the third semester. This paper describes the new arrangement of topics, and how it could be adapted to calculus curricula at different schools. It also explains the benefits we have seen both for our math majors and for majors in other departments, and how we have dealt with the challenges that we have encountered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Metacognition as a dimension of learning ranks highest in the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy of cognitive tasks. In this paper we illustrate how it can be incorporated into a repeated exercise in the mathematics classroom, through a specific case study in the context of a liberal arts mathematics course. Through the semester, students were asked weekly to evaluate their own progress and review their development in light of their personal goals. We observed positive affective changes (including engagement levels) in the students through the course of the semester. We argue that the weekly metacognitive and self-reflective activities helped students keep their focus on learning deeply and allowed them to remain engaged and motivated through the semester. A brief theoretical discussion is included, and other possible contexts suitable for the described activities are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Providing audio files in lieu of written remarks on graded assignments is arguably a more effective means of feedback, allowing students to better process and understand the critique and improve their future work. With emerging technologies and software, this audio feedback alternative to the traditional paradigm of providing written comments seems a natural progression to improve student learning. Its utility is especially significant for feedback on writing in mathematics, when it becomes easier for instructor corrections to not only point to deficiencies, but also offer more in depth explanations on the root causes of error in student formulations or mathematical modeling. This paper details the benefits of implementing an audio feedback technique for writing in mathematics, and provides results of a case study performed during four semesters of a collegiate freshman mathematics course. Given instructor initiative and startup time to acclimate to this new way of assessment, the benefits of the audio feedback alternative towards student learning appear substantial. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]