This course is designed to be used as a corequisite solution for schools no longer offering a developmental math series or as a stand-alone Math for Liberal Arts course with plenty of additional support for those students struggling with prerequisite skills. There are three new application-based modules that fulfill additional quantitative reasoning learning outcomes, and give a more functional deep-dive into the content.

Each module begins with a “Review Topics for Success” section in which critical topics from Prealgebra, Beginning Algebra, and Intermediate Algebra are examined. Additionally, just-in-time review of developmental math concepts appear throughout the text to help those students who need further learning support. The course includes embedded algorithmically generated practice questions, worked-example videos, interactive pathway activities, and a complete set of outcome aligned online assessments. The course also comes with a variety of assignments and discussion prompts to increase engagement with and application of the material.

The primary text for this course is Mathematics for the Liberal Arts by Lumen Learning, adapted from Math in Society by David Lippman. Deborah Devlin of Frostburg State University in Maryland was the lead author and editor of this course redesign.

This book is a survey of contemporary mathematical topics, most non-algebraic, appropriate for a college-level quantitative literacy topics course for liberal arts majors. The text is designed so that most chapters are independent, allowing the instructor to choose a selection of topics to be covered. Emphasis is placed on the applicability of the mathematics. Core material for each topic is covered in the main text, with additional depth available through exploration assignments appropriate for in-class, group, or individual investigation.

Course Improvements

We believe in making continuous improvements to our courses in order to enhance and facilitate student learning. This newest version of the course includes a vast number of data-driven improvements to assessment questions and text content in order to better illustrate, clarify, and evaluate concepts.

About Lumen

Lumen Learning courseware is based on open educational resources (OER). When we can find well designed, effective OER that are appropriately licensed, we use them in our courseware. When we can’t find pre-existing OER, we create original content and license it as OER (under a Creative Commons Attribution license).

Lumen’s authoring process doesn’t end when our courseware is released. Our choice to adopt open educational resources means that we have the copyright permissions necessary to engage in continuous improvement of our learning content. Consequently, our courses are continually being revised and updated. Errata reported for our courseware are fixed in a matter of days, as opposed to the traditional model in which errors persist until the next “edition” is printed (often a year or more). Students and faculty can suggest improvements to our courses directly from within the courseware as they use it. And we conduct regular analyses to determine where students are struggling the most in our courseware, and make improvements that specifically target these areas.

Given our unique approach, our list of authors and other contributors may look different than the lists you are used to seeing. We provide both a list of the primary content authors (the people involved in the initial creation of the course) and a list of everyone who has contributed suggestions and other improvements to the course since it was first released. We invite you to join us as we create courseware that supports student learning more effectively each semester.

If you’d like to connect with us to learn more about adopting this course, please Contact Us.

You can also make an appointment for OER Office Hours to connect virtually with a live Lumen expert about any question you may have.