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Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) is a postbaccalaureate comprehensive university in the Midwest. In 2005, SIUE embarked on a challenging journey of general education reform. A review of the current general education program revealed that it is possible for a student to graduate from SIUE without taking a quantitative course. Hence, one critical component of the new general education program, called the Lincoln Program, is the institution of a quantitative reasoning requirement. This requirement can be fulfilled by completing the course QR 101: Quantitative Reasoning or by passing a proficiency examination within the first thirty semester hours. Since QR 101 is a brand-new course, much skepticism was expressed about its anticipated effectiveness and potential applicability. The most common issues raised included: (1) college students should be numerically literate and therefore do not need QR 101; (2) QR 101 is a "watered-down" math class, and students will be disappointed and bored with its content; and (3) students who are required to take math classes as part of their program should be exempt from taking QR 101. Having had no prior course that addresses quantitative reasoning, it became necessary to undertake an empirical approach to confront the issues. In this essay, the authors present the results of a study that was conducted in an attempt to address the above-mentioned issues. In particular, they examine the claim that students whose degree programs require a significant math component (e.g., calculus) will acquire adequate quantitative reasoning skills as part of their chosen major. The empirical results presented in this essay show that taking one or more traditional math courses does not necessarily develop quantitative reasoning. (Contains 3 tables.)

This article examines the problems that many beginning L2 learners encounter when dealing with the German case system. It isolates three elements that make case usage challenging: understanding the concept of case itself, identifying grammatical gender, and selecting the correct case marker from a set of overlapping forms. Data from an action research study reveal interesting correlations between learners' proficiency with case marking and their understanding of English grammatical metalanguage, their goals regarding accuracy, their reported strategies for determining case, and their self-assessment of their German skills. These results lead to implications for improving learners' accuracy in case assignment and, at the same time, raise the question of how much accuracy is appropriate at the beginning level.

This paper considers a series system of m components such that upon observing the failure of a component, the fault that caused the failure will be removed with a constant probability p. A component's failure process depends on the residual number of faults and the constant failure rate contribution of a fault. The system will be assigned tasks to perform with random completion times. At the end of an initial testing period, the length of the second testing stage is obtained based on observed data and a desired system reliability. Large-sample properties of the stopping time and the system reliability estimator will be established. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the need for a quantitative reasoning course. It examines the claim that students whose degree programs require a significant math component will acquire adequate quantitative reasoning skills. The authors state that taking one or more math courses does not develop quantitative reasoning. They note that quantitative reasoning course focuses on the practical application of mathematics while a traditional math course concentrate on manipulative skills and algorithms.