Selected Data from the 2021 CBMS Survey, Part II
By David Bressoud @dbressoud
This month’s column starts a new practice of coming out on the third Tuesday of the month.
Last month I presented data from the 2021 CBMS survey about departments offering four-year undergraduate programs. This month I am presenting some comparable data about two-year colleges, but I am also comparing what has happened to online instruction. It has increased for four-year departments, but not nearly as dramatically as for two-year departments.
Total enrollments (Figure 1) tell an even more dramatic story for 2-year colleges than for 4-year undergraduate programs. Fall 2021 saw the lowest total enrollments for the past 30 years. The most dramatic drop has been in precollege level courses, which is good as more two-year colleges are offering pathways programs. But that drop has not been made up elsewhere.
Figure 1: Fall semester course enrollments (thousands of students) by level of courses in 4-year undergraduate programs in departments of mathematics and statistics. Introductory level includes College Algebra and Precalculus. Calculus level includes linear algebra and differential equations.
In addition, there has been an astounding change in student preference for online, as opposed to on-campus, instruction (Figure 2). In the fall of 2015, 11–12% of two-year college instruction was online, with lower percentages for Calculus I (8%), Calculus II (5%), and Differential Equations/Linear Algebra (3%). In 2021, online instruction accounted for 60–65% of instruction, with Differential Equations/Linear Algebra climbing to 69%.
In comparison, online instruction did go up for four-year undergraduate programs, but not nearly as sharply. It grew from 3–5% in 2015, with Intro Stats topping at 7%, to 11–13% in 2021, with introductory level and introductory statistics courses rising to 19–20%.
Figure 2:
The 2021 survey asked several new questions including the use of both online and hybrid instruction (Figure 3). Before COVID, only 9% of four-year programs offered hybrid courses (courses offered simultaneously to both on-campus and online students). During COVID, this rose to 69%, but by Fall 2021 had fallen back to 34%. In two-year departments, 30% offered hybrid course before COVID. This grew to 37% during COVID but continued growing, reaching 60% by 2021. The slower uptake in hybrid courses among two-year departments can probably be attributed to the fact that before COVID 72% of them were already offering online only courses.
Figure 3: The percentage of departments offering remote courses (students expected to attend most classes remotely) and the percentage offering hybrid courses (courses taught to a combination of on-campus and remote students).
The survey also explored the challenges of online learning. It found that these were similar for all departments. Most departments found the following somewhat or very challenging (first percentage is of four-year programs that found this challenging, second percentage is for two-year programs):
Designing assessments of students learning: 87% – 81%
Maintaining academic integrity on assessments: 94% – 92%
Grade inflation: 66% – 69%
Building/maintaining community among faculty and students: 97% – 100%
Maintaining academic quality of instruction: 86% – 76%
Engaging students online: 98% – 99%
Replicating active learning in a virtual environment: 98% – 98%
Availability of equipment and technical support for faculty/students: 70% – 80%.
Approaches to assessment of online instruction differed between four-year and two-year departments. For four-year programs, online monitoring technology was the predominant method in 40% of departments while it was predominant in only 21% of two-year colleges. The use of proctored testing sites was predominant in 18% of two-year departments but only 9% of four-year departments. However, 28% of four-year programs and 37% of two-year programs reported using some combination of these two approaches. Roughly a quarter of both four-year and two-year departments reported they usually do not monitor online assessment.
It is clear that COVID had a profound impact on undergraduate instruction in mathematics that was far more dramatic—and disturbing—for two-year colleges than for four-year undergraduate programs. It seems doubtful that we will ever return to the halcyon days pre-2020. The 2025 survey will be particularly important in determining which trends are permanent and which may moderate over time.
David Bressoud is DeWitt Wallace Professor Emeritus at Macalester College and former Director of the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences. davidbressoud.org