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Follow-up ? in OP - Calculus at home suggestions


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DS is withdrawing from his dual enrolled calculus class today :( The professor took a whole week off before giving the midterm exam - classes were just cancelled rather than having a substitute. The high grade was a low 80s and the majority of the class failed the exam. The day after handing the exams back, 1/2 of the class didn't come back leaving just 7 students enrolled. The professor scheduled a re-do exam today. Ds studied like he's never studied before, he went to the profs office hours, did all sorts of extra problems and felt confident. He called me this morning after the exam and asked how to drop the class. He's so discouraged, but it's better to drop now than get a bad grade. He understands that.

 

ETA: He was doing great on the homeworks with a high 90s average. I think that the timed aspect might be part of the problem. He does have a documented LD but we haven't asked for any accommodations because I would need to get it re-documented (done in 8th grade) and ds wasn't all that keen on doing it.

 

I have two options:

1. Have him continue calculus at home and start with a text that is do-able at home (CD based?, DVD based?)

 

2. Have him take a statistics class that will be offered at the CC that is a condensed 8 week course. The maths at the CC are considerably easier than the maths at the 4 year university where my son is dual enrolled.

 

Any advice? He's a senior this year. He will be taking a gap year in England before starting at the university.

 

Next question - If he withdraws now and gets a W on the transcript, could we make that W look better by having him take an AP level Calculus class at home and take the AP test?

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My two who did Calc at home used Chalkdust and Thinkwell respectively. Between the two, they liked Thinkwell better, but it's not a course for everyone. You might want to try a search to come up with other threads talking about Calc.

 

Both did well in Calc, so either option gets a thumbs up from me. The prof was more engaging with Thinkwell, but some of the quiz/test problems required a bit more thought/connections made - sometimes ahead of when they are taught. Middle son enjoyed the challenge. Others might not. In any event, he's found Calc at his 4 year school to be super easy. (Oldest only had to take Business Calc and ended up bored at his 4 year, but it was a "lesser" course than true Calc. In hindsight, I should have had him take the AP test and get credits that way. Middle didn't want to (could have), due to going pre-med.)

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Can he still switch to Hearer (audit) status?

That way, he could simply continue with the class and learn it there, but not have to take the exam and get a grade.

You could then administer some final exam of your choice and assign him a homeschool grade, just not college credit.

 

I don't think he can do that this late in the semester. I think all those changes had to be made before February from what I saw on the Academic Calendar. He hasn't been thrilled with the professor and finds that he skips a lot of steps. He assumes the students understand where he skipped. I think that ds needs a very step-by-step course and this might be some of his problem. He often doesn't see where the professor got an intermediate answer. When doing homework, ds has plenty of time to go step by step to arrive at the answer. I think the week off really threw the class off as well.

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Thanks for the tip. It took a while for me to figure out how to do that in the new site :)

 

 

Yes, hopefully they'll figure out a way that others can tag as in the old days...I forget to tag my own threads even now...Thankfully it's possible to go back and edit the original post like you just did :-). J

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2. Have him take a statistics class that will be offered at the CC that is a condensed 8 week course. The maths at the CC are considerably easier than the maths at the 4 year university where my son is dual enrolled.

 

Any advice? He's a senior this year. He will be taking a gap year in England before starting at the university.

 

 

I would not recommend taking a mini-mester stats class if he's having trouble with a different math course.

If he's taking a calculus course that requires trig, then the stats course may be easier. If he's taking a business calc course with only college algebra as a prereq, then stats will likely be at a similar difficulty level.

 

I don't think he can do that this late in the semester. I think all those changes had to be made before February from what I saw on the Academic Calendar. He hasn't been thrilled with the professor and finds that he skips a lot of steps. He assumes the students understand where he skipped. I think that ds needs a very step-by-step course and this might be some of his problem. He often doesn't see where the professor got an intermediate answer. When doing homework, ds has plenty of time to go step by step to arrive at the answer. I think the week off really threw the class off as well.

 

 

At our cc, students can only change status in the first 3 days of class. I have allowed students to officially drop the course, taking a W, but still attend class to see the material so they have a better chance of passing in a later semester. This definitely varies according to college policy as to whether it's even an option.

 

A lot of steps will be skipped in the higher level courses. That's just the expectation and what is needed with the material. For instance, once you're at a linear equation, you may jump to the answer without showing any of the steps of solving the linear equation. This would be true in stats as well.

 

There are also just some bad instructors, so that could be an issue as well.

 

The InterAct software is available for some calculus texts. That can be a useful tool for additional practice no matter what program you choose to go with.

I would strongly recommend against the mini-mester stats course though. Seems to be setting your son up for failure. (Speed of course in particular.)

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I would not recommend taking a mini-mester stats class if he's having trouble with a different math course.

If he's taking a calculus course that requires trig, then the stats course may be easier. If he's taking a business calc course with only college algebra as a prereq, then stats will likely be at a similar difficulty level.

 

A lot of steps will be skipped in the higher level courses. That's just the expectation and what is needed with the material. For instance, once you're at a linear equation, you may jump to the answer without showing any of the steps of solving the linear equation. This would be true in stats as well.

 

There are also just some bad instructors, so that could be an issue as well.

 

The InterAct software is available for some calculus texts. That can be a useful tool for additional practice no matter what program you choose to go with.

I would strongly recommend against the mini-mester stats course though. Seems to be setting your son up for failure. (Speed of course in particular.)

 

 

This is a calculus course that required a semester of college algebra and a semester of trig. He did well in both of those classes as a dual enrolled student. My 2nd son took the statistics as a condensed semester course and did well, but he's also my really excellent math student. The other draw back to the statistics class is that he will have to drive to the "big city" to take the class - not a huge problem.

 

I would love to stay with the text he has (Thompson), but would need to get a teacher manual/answer key/solution manual somehow so that I could help him. The class did a lot with the interactive software - all their homework and quizzes were online.

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Does he know what his major will likely be? If it's math/science, I'd suggest you urge him to go through with getting the LD updated as the time issue will likely come into play in his future math/sciences classes. I would leave the decision of whether to sign up for Statistics up to your son, but as you other son knows, the condensed classes move very quickly and require more time each week. Needless to say, a second W would be much harder to explain or attribute to a less than ideal class situation.

 

I would ask him to talk with both his calculus professor and his advisor for suggestions on how to proceed. He may be able to get approval for auditing even if the official deadline has passed. It's also possible that he didn't do as badly on the test as he thinks as the professor may curve the grade in his favor and he's likely aware that the week off was a huge problem for the class. The only reason I would consider continuing is that your son has been getting 90's on his homework, so he must be understanding the material rather well. Even if the professor's teaching style isn't great for him, he may be able to compensate by asking for a tutor and spending time not only in office hours, but at the learning center. IOW I would first see if there's any way to continue and come out with a decent grade - A or B. Since he's going to have a year off before going to university, I would encourage him to repeat Calc I then anyway, but it will be much easier if he's already completed this course, or studied on his own.

 

If he does decide to drop his calculus class, I would think that he could still access all the online material as he's already paid to be able to do that. That's something he could ask his professor as well.

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I can't imagine not having a W on his transcript dropping it at this point. From my experience, there is always a W on the transcript when you drop a class after the survey period (12th day of classes for the semester). You are fortunate if the school just marks it as W instead of WP or WF because a WF looks pretty bad (not as bad as an actual F though).

 

You might possibly be able to still do an AP test. I know the late registration for AP tests ends tomorrow in my area, so you really have to jump on it if you want to do an AP test.

 

I don't see a problem with just dropping it and studying the same material at home.

 

My 17yo is using Thinkwell for calculus right now. Some of the exercises are FAR more difficult than what is taught in the lesson. The problems can get pretty hairy at times. Often she has the right answer, just in a different format. Then we need to see if her answer is equivalent to any of the multiple choice answers. These are often pretty involved, so it isn't at all obvious that they are equivalent until you actually try to manipulate the answer to put it in another format.

 

I really like Calculus the Easy Way. I tried to get my dd to try the book, but she wanted something with a video tutor. She does enjoy the lessons on Thinkwell. She just wishes that the exercises were closer to the level of the examples used in the program.

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I can't imagine not having a W on his transcript dropping it at this point. From my experience, there is always a W on the transcript when you drop a class after the survey period (12th day of classes for the semester).

 

It really depends on the school and the length of the semesters. At our university, the deadline for dropping a course without a W showing on the transcript is the end of the 6th week of classes, just coming up.

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I can't imagine not having a W on his transcript dropping it at this point. From my experience, there is always a W on the transcript when you drop a class after the survey period (12th day of classes for the semester). You are fortunate if the school just marks it as W instead of WP or WF because a WF looks pretty bad (not as bad as an actual F though).

 

You might possibly be able to still do an AP test. I know the late registration for AP tests ends tomorrow in my area, so you really have to jump on it if you want to do an AP test.

 

I don't see a problem with just dropping it and studying the same material at home.

 

My 17yo is using Thinkwell for calculus right now. Some of the exercises are FAR more difficult than what is taught in the lesson. The problems can get pretty hairy at times. Often she has the right answer, just in a different format. Then we need to see if her answer is equivalent to any of the multiple choice answers. These are often pretty involved, so it isn't at all obvious that they are equivalent until you actually try to manipulate the answer to put it in another format.

 

I really like Calculus the Easy Way. I tried to get my dd to try the book, but she wanted something with a video tutor. She does enjoy the lessons on Thinkwell. She just wishes that the exercises were closer to the level of the examples used in the program.

It really depends on the school and the length of the semesters. At our university, the deadline for dropping a course without a W showing on the transcript is the end of the 6th week of classes, just coming up.

 

This will be a W - straight withdraw. It is GPA neutral according to the school website.

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This will be a W - straight withdraw. It is GPA neutral according to the school website.

 

 

The biggest question though is how the school he's going to go to will view it.

W doesn't affect GPA at your current school, but it may be looked at differently by the transferring school. There's not much you can do at this point, but it is worth considering for future classes. Too many W's can look bad. And with financial aid changes, W's do count for satisfactory progress at our cc.

 

More as a heads-up for others...each school has very different policies. Our cc records W's after the third day of the semester! So a student from regentrude's school would be very surprised at my school if they expected to drop a course now without it appearing on the transcript. Read college policies very very carefully.

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The biggest question though is how the school he's going to go to will view it.

W doesn't affect GPA at your current school, but it may be looked at differently by the transferring school. There's not much you can do at this point, but it is worth considering for future classes. Too many W's can look bad. And with financial aid changes, W's do count for satisfactory progress at our cc.

 

More as a heads-up for others...each school has very different policies. Our cc records W's after the third day of the semester! So a student from regentrude's school would be very surprised at my school if they expected to drop a course now without it appearing on the transcript. Read college policies very very carefully.

 

 

I agree - definitely find out the drop/withdraw policy. I knew ahead of time what that policy was since this is a school we've used for about 6 years now. In fact, we considered it when he took the first test but he decided he wanted to try the re-do test. I really don't know about the school he'll attend later because he hasn't heard back from the state school to which he applied. However, if he is admitted, he will be asking for a deferment so he can do a year in England.

 

I was hoping that maybe he could finish out the year doing an AP level calculus - he should be able to catch up quickly since he has already done about 1/2 of the course already. I thought that might make the W look a bit better. What do you think?

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If you end up doing Calc at home, we had very good luck with Dr. Callahan's materials. It uses the older Stewart book (which I love) and the lectures are very good. The company is also quite responsive - I got same day responses to technical problems. When dd emailed about a math problem where both she and I got different answers from what was in the book, they sent her a step-by-step solution and offered to let her call them and do a phone walk-thru if she was still confused.

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How many courses has he successfully completed at the college level? Or is this his first? If it's his first, I would just be afraid of the impression that "traditional" classroom learning didn't work, so he went with homeschooling. I'm sure a good AP grade would give proof of content mastery, but it wouldn't address the issue of classroom learning. I'd still have him talk with his professor and then with his advisor. If he's done well in several other college classes, then I wouldn't worry about one W on his transcript.

 

ETA: I forgot that he had algebra and trigonometry - the more good grades the less the W will matter.

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How many courses has he successfully completed at the college level? Or is this his first? If it's his first, I would just be afraid of the impression that "traditional" classroom learning didn't work, so he went with homeschooling. I'm sure a good AP grade would give proof of content mastery, but it wouldn't address the issue of classroom learning. I'd still have him talk with his professor and then with his advisor. If he's done well in several other college classes, then I wouldn't worry about one W on his transcript.

 

ETA: I forgot that he had algebra and trigonometry - the more good grades the less the W will matter.

 

He has 27 hours after this class is dropped (he would have had 31). He has mostly A's

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Thank you for all the suggestions. I'll look at Thinkwell and Ask Dr. Callahan and check out some of the old posts now that I have the tag :) I believe my oldest used Dr. Callahan for some level...it's so long ago I don't remember right off hand. But I have a positive impression of it so it must have worked well :)

 

Honestly, I think a year of maturity in his gap year will be very helpful. He knows his LD plays a role in his learning and he can get very uptight before exams. I know he was really worried about this re-do because his first experience was so bad, although he felt he had prepped well. He is concerned that he won't have calculus on his high school transcript, but I told him not to worry because the majority of students don't have calculus on their transcripts and he is still doing very well. He has a hard time not comparing himself to his brothers...and I'm sad for him, too, because he works so hard. But he is encouraged that he can continue at home so at least he's willing to work with me :)

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