Video with transcript
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Farahad Dastoor: We really focused on first-year students and where they are going to be placed in the courses they’re taking. We focused on the math placement test that most first-year students have to take.
We tried to explore what the goal of the math placement test was, how it was used to put the students into physics, biology, chemistry, and discovered that it might be not appropriately applied.
We think that the math placement test is being used to put students into, maybe, the incorrect level of chemistry and biology because we were not using it the way it should be used.
The placement test is good for placing students in math. We should come up with a different mechanism to put students in chemistry, physics, math, biology.
I’ve been teaching first-year students for 20 years now, almost. I started exploring ways to help first-year students way before this. Anything that has to do with helping first-year students do better, I’m really excited about.
I just want to make sure that students in the state of Maine can get the best education they can. That all starts with getting into the right courses at the beginning.