Assessing Quantitative Reasoning Across Ohio

Quantitative Reasoning (QR) is gaining in popularity across the United States as a gateway postsecondary mathematics course. In particular, enrollment in QR at public institutions of higher (IHEs) in Ohio increased from 251 students in 2016–2017 to 6,923 students in 2020–2021. Moreover, QR addresses topics in quantitative literacy that have been linked to aspects of human flourishings, such as health and financial well-being (Peters, 2020). These QR topics include (a) proportional reasoning, (b) probability, including conditional probability, (c) statistical thinking, and (d) mathematical modeling. We wish to discover whether and to what extent QR students are making measurable pre–post gains in these four content areas while enrolled in QR. In this talk, we will report on the development and pilot testing of a multiple-choice QR assessment instrument. Initially, we wrote 96 items, distributed equally across both the four listed content areas and three sets of QR core competencies: (i) interpretation and representation, (ii) calculation, and (iii) reasoning and analysis. We confirmed the content validity by inviting QR instructors from multiple Ohio IHEs to check the content and wording of the items. We refined the items based on this feedback. Then, we pilot-tested the 96 revised items with QR students at a limited number of Ohio IHEs. Using the resulting data, we conducted item analysis and factor analysis on the instrument, and measured the reliability of the instrument and its conent and competency subscales. We will share our results and plans for further refinement of the instrument and its use as a postest–posttest assessment for QR courses in Ohio. We will also share the prospects and plans for extending this QR assessment development and implementation across a wider collection of Ohio's IHEs and the possibility of extending this work to a national level.