Precalc with Derek Owens or CC College Alg/trig

[steppingstonemomma]

My son is getting ready to start 10th grade, wants to go into engineering, and is chomping at the bit to go to the local community college to get ahead. Very self motivated.

Here's my dilemma. I want him to be VERY prepared with his math. He is a semester "Off" schedule, meaning he'll be finishing algebra 2 this fall. I can either have him take Derek Owens' Precalc class online (he's used DO for Geom and Alg 2 and it works great) OR take College Alg in the spring at the community college. The advisor at the college says he should take the college alg, but I also know there are financial gains for bringing in new students so I don't fully trust his advice.

So what advice would you give? (He'll be taking Spanish 1 at the cc in the fall, so by spring he'll be used to the campus/college workload.)

Thanks,

Tiffany

[GoodGrief]

I think either could be fine.  We preferred sticking with homeschool curric as long as we could, because it was more adapable to our crazy schedule.  We did Derek Owens through soph year/Calc AB, then my daughter went into a university math course.  The transition from DO to the university was easy (in fact, she had the highest final grade of all the students at the end :-) )

[TheApprentice]

We are kind of facing that same issue here. My son, via the placement test, placed into the community college's pre-calculus. He will take that this fall. He, too, wants the challenge, and at this level, I think it would be good for him to have a classroom setting where he can feed off others questions to gain more clarity. BUT, if that does not work, we will withdrawal during the accepted period and I'll sign him up for Derek Owen's pre-calculus class. I say give it a try.

[MarkT]

My son is getting ready to start 10th grade, wants to go into engineering, and is chomping at the bit to go to the local community college to get ahead. Very self motivated.

Here's my dilemma. I want him to be VERY prepared with his math. He is a semester "Off" schedule, meaning he'll be finishing algebra 2 this fall. I can either have him take Derek Owens' Precalc class online (he's used DO for Geom and Alg 2 and it works great) OR take College Alg in the spring at the community college. The advisor at the college says he should take the college alg, but I also know there are financial gains for bringing in new students so I don't fully trust his advice.

 

 

Given your son's current math track - I would go for the CC College Algebra in the spring - assuming that he is mature enough to handle the faster pace.  Is he taking the CC math class online ?  Does your son learn more from the text hand-out notes or the live lecture?  If your son is motivated there is an incredible wealth of material available for self-study on math these days. Is the Trig class a separate semester?  It is where I live.

 

Start thinking about Physics if he hasn't taken that yet.

 

 I also find it hard to believe that the CC advisor is paid any kind of commission if your son enrolls or not.

 

Thank you for using the term "PreCalc"  instead of "PreCal"   -  "Cal"  is a nickname for UC Berkley not a math course!

 

[kiana]

Here would be my issue with college algebra: It's usually (not always) taken by students who didn't understand their high school math classes very well. The students in there tend to have a sub-optimal attitude about math, and the course focuses far more on getting them up to the minimum level than on preparing a pre-engineering student to take a rigorous calculus class. The college algebra/precalculus together probably are not going to cover as much as DO precalc. Looking at DO's course outline, I would expect that the CC will omit chapters 10-11 at a minimum.

 

If he were struggling at home and needed an external teacher I'd recommend CC highly. But I think DO is a good course, and if he's doing well with that I'd prefer to finish Precalc there.

 

Furthermore, placement in/out of precalc is usually determined by a placement test -- so it's not like he'll have to take an AP test or something to validate his at-home study.