West Kentucky Community & Technical College

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WKCTC's Success Highlighted in Publisher's Promotional Materials

Paducah, KY (02/01/2021) — A West Kentucky Community and Technical College faculty member will be highlighted in upcoming promotional materials for a text and video notebook to be released by Pearson, the world's learning company, college officials said today.

Associate Professor Tina Ragsdale, WKCTC's developmental math coordinator, said the college's mathematics department piloted the Beecher Blend MyLab course when she designed a co-requisite college Algebra course at WKCTC in Fall 2017. Ragsdale's experience with the material was highlighted in promotional material for the 2ndedition of a video notebook and text titled, "College Algebra with Intermediate Algebra: A Blended Course."

"The author spoke to WKCTC's Mathematics Department the previous spring and when I began designing the course, I realized that the book she described seemed to be an excellent fit for the course I was trying to design," said Ragsdale, a Karnak, Ill. resident. "I contacted the publisher, and they provided the text to our students at no costs for the first semester. It turned out to be a great success for our students and we have continued to use it."

A video notebook is provided with this text that coordinates with videos that are provided through the online platform. "Students watch a video, fill in the notebook, then attempt problems on their own, before coming to class," Ragsdale said. "Then we are able to build on this basic learning and supplement with active learning strategies in the classroom."

But most importantly, Ragsdale said the course design has led to a closing of success rates between under-represented minorities and non-under-represented students and improved success rates for under-prepared students.

"Students who have entered our co-requisite courses are now completing their college level math course within one semester rather than taking 2 or 3 courses as they were before," Ragsdale said. "I'm pretty proud of what we have accomplished. Being published in this text promotional material allows me to share our story at WKCTC with more schools and more instructors and hopefully allow more students the opportunity to succeed in their pursuit of a college degree."

WKCTC offers college level general education courses which transfer to four-year bachelor's degrees. For more information, contact the college at 270-534-3435.

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Tina Ragsdale, associate professor and developmental mathematics coordinator, at west Kentucky Community and Technical College

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