Many students at the University are familiar with the trek to the off-campus Jackson Center Mathematics Lab to take online tests and quizzes for various courses.
The inconvenience of this method has long been a grievance for students. Due to a lack of capacity, staffing issues and budget cuts, taking quizzes at home may become an option for a variety of math courses in the future.
“In our current situation, I hope (students will be able to take their quizzes at home),” mathematics professor and math lab administrator Robert Hunt said. “I don’t see the need for them to be exactly here to do the quiz.”
The math lab at the university was initially established for the purpose of tutoring. Students could come to the lab and receive help from tutors employed by the math lab or hired privately by the student.
Although the lab still offers this service to the students, budget cuts from the mathematics department forced the lab to take on a new role. Many of the university math courses switched to a hybrid format, meeting for two 50-minute lectures throughout the week instead of the traditional three sessions.
According to the requirements set by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, which is responsible for the accreditation of all courses at the university, these 50 minutes per week needed to be made up in order to maintain its accreditation. The math lab offered courses as a way to make up for the lost class time through regular online homework and quizzes in a controlled classroom environment.
“We always felt that we wanted people to come to the lab because that was still like they were sitting in a classroom, just they were in front of a computer instead of in front of a teacher,” Hunt said.
Earlier this semester, however, the lab experienced an influx of attendees, posing capacity and staffing concerns for the lab, sometimes resulting in lines that forced students to wait over an hour to take required quizzes.
Junior Hannah Michlink said getting to the lab and taking quizzes on time is tough to fit into her schedule.
“It’s just kind of frustrating because I have to plan everything out,” Michlink said. “I have to work around their schedule. I should be able to take my quiz at home on my time and on my terms.”
During the third week of class, lines were out the door, wrapped around the lobby and down the street, according to Hunt.
“We’re just overloaded. We are past capacity,” Hunt said. “Something had to give at that point.”
The department of mathematics began to experiment with the idea of allowing students to take quizzes at home. This policy has already taken effect in Business Calculus courses.
Hunt spoke to the university modern languages department and modeled the new approach after Spanish 121 courses. Language courses with online components had no problems meeting the accreditation standards set by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, Hunt said.
Ever since the change, lines have gone down at the lab. But, the success of the transition for business calculus students does not guarantee similar results with other courses.
Although there are no definite plans in place yet, it is likely that college algebra students will start taking their online quizzes at home next semester, according to Hunt.
Hunt has not talked to any other course coordinators yet about taking quizzes at home. He fully supports the idea, though.
“Let’s face it. It’s not exactly easy to get over here,” Hunt said. Half of the students using the math lab are freshmen, and many have trouble getting to the lab. “I wish we were on campus, but we’re not.”
With this gradual transition for the math courses here at the University, one major concern is cheating. Given the lack of supervision that is currently present in the lab and the fact that all quizzes allow open use of notes, however, Hunt said he feels the amount of cheating would change very little.
“We don’t have the people to patrol looking for cheating,” Hunt said. “Homework has always been done at home anyways. So, I guess you could cheat in any class doing homework. I guess the quizzes would be the same way in that regard. We just don’t want people sitting down and taking quizzes for others.”
Casey Vaughn, a student employee at the Math Lab, said he supports leaving the quizzes to students on their own time.
“I think it’s a common occurrence one way or the other,” Vaughn said. “Kids that are cheating are hurting themselves by not getting the material and not being able to function in a quiz and test environment anyways.”
