Background and approvals:
In the spring of 2024 the OCMC worked on getting approval to conduct a survey of college faculty teaching mathematics and math-related courses. To do so we worked with the Expert Panel for research ethics in Ontario Colleges and received their support that this project was not research as far as the TCPS2 was concerned. We also received support from the CCVPA, but had to apply for institutional approval at each college and notify their REB of the work we were conducting nonetheless. This took much more time than we anticipated.
The survey was set up in two parts, one part for Faculty, and one for administrators (click on the links to see the questions we posed). Part 1 will provide details of the responses from faculty survey, and Part 2 will provide information from admin.
We received valid responses from about 500 faculty members (see response rates by college chart below) and from 23 out of 24 college administrators (Sheridan was the only college to not respond to the admin survey). Surveys took place starting in the spring of 2024, and were completed in January, 2025. A big thank you to faculty at Mohawk College (especially Frosina Stojanovska-Pocuca and Karen Lawrence, along with Cameron Redsell-Montgomerie and Kathryn Vrhovnik) for setting up the survey design onto the Qualtrix platform, providing logistical support and the many preliminary reports generated along the way. Other members of the research sub-committee contributed to the research design: Raquel Glavish (Confederation) Reg Robson (St Clair) and Tracy Finlay (Fleming).
Part 1: Faculty survey report
Unfortunately the survey collection period coincided with the beginning of the austerity approach taken by the colleges in the wake of chronic provincial underfunding and collapse of international student population. This meant that members of the sub-committee had to pull back on their activities. Data collection proved to be much more difficult than expected as finding faculty teaching math and math-related subjects was not so easy. The best approach it seems was to have VPAs provide explicit support for the project within their college. When that happened the number of responses went up dramatically.
Response numbers and rates by college:
| College Name | FTE 2023 | final response N | response rate per 1000 FTE |
| Algonquin | 18673 | 15 | 0.80 |
| Boréal | 1040 | 6 | 5.77 |
| Cambrian | 3240 | 11 | 3.40 |
| Canadore | 2599 | 7 | 2.69 |
| Centennial | 11279 | 45 | 3.99 |
| Conestoga | 9563 | 28 | 2.93 |
| Confederation | 2281 | 5 | 2.19 |
| Durham | 9792 | 19 | 1.94 |
| Fanshawe | 12363 | 14 | 1.13 |
| Fleming | 4171 | 10 | 2.40 |
| George Brown | 15506 | 73 | 4.71 |
| Georgian | 6572 | 37 | 5.63 |
| Humber | 16408 | 37 | 2.25 |
| La Cité | 3374 | 12 | 3.56 |
| Lambton | 1991 | 8 | 4.02 |
| Loyalist | 2059 | 6 | 2.91 |
| Mohawk | 10265 | 19 | 1.85 |
| Niagara | 5994 | 8 | 1.33 |
| Northern | 703 | 4 | 5.69 |
| Sault | 1251 | 5 | 4.00 |
| Seneca | 16706 | 54 | 3.23 |
| Sheridan | 13679 | 26 | 1.90 |
| St. Clair | 6800 | 31 | 4.56 |
| St. Lawrence | 4232 | 15 | 3.54 |
Limitations:
Unfortunately, there is no information about the number of math and math-related courses in the colleges, thus it is hard go gauge whether the responses captured three fourths, one half, or one third of all faculty teaching mathematics or math related courses. Furthermore, our survey also did not reach the many mathematics educators working in tutoring and learning centres, which was an oversight on our part.
Findings:
The survey was meant to be descriptive in nature – here are a few results that are worthy of note:
Math departments by college. The OCMC has tried for years to get a sense of the way math courses are organized in the college system.
Though the consensus is not absolute, we can say with some certainty that over 75% of faculty respondents at Fleming, Humber, Lambton, Mohawk, Sault, and St. Lawrence indicated the presence of a distinct math department. Meanwhile, over 75% of faculty respondents at Boréal, Cambrian, Conestoga, Confederation, Durham, Fanshawe, George Brown, Georgian, La Cité, Loyalist, Northern, Seneca, Sheridan, and St. Clair indicated there was no math department. Thus 6 strong yes, and 14 strong no.
Sort of Yes:
In other colleges, like Canadore (4/6 said yes) the two who said no were from Centre for Access, which is typically not connected to other college programs and thus disconnected from the math department.
At Centennial (28/42 said no) the descriptive commentary contradicts the votes leaning to no as we learn about the presence of distinct math departments in each school.
Unclear:
For Algonquin (10/15 said no) and Niagara (5/8 said yes) the commentaries describing structure of math education did not provide clarity.
Summary: Yes (6 strong + 2 weak), No (14 strong + 0 weak), unclear (2)
There are may ways to examine data we collected broken down by college, we won’t present all of those here, but will produce a document with that in the near future.
Employment status by college:
It is interesting to note that some colleges use rate of non-full time faculty is much higher than others. Furthermore, there are very few sessional positions in the system.
It is also interesting that in general 69/444 = 15.5% of all respondents teaching math and math-related courses are part-time or sessional, 55% are full time and about 30% are Partial Load. It is likely that these numbers will look much different next year after all the cutbacks taking place in the system.
Employment status (Full time/ Partial Load/Part time and Sessional) and number of years of college teaching.
In the chart to the left we first would like to point out that just over 50% of respondents (247/447) who answered the question are full time. If the sample is representative of all faculty, then it seems that almost half of faculty teaching math and math related courses are not full time.
Full time faculty have been teaching at a college for more years (when comparing means or medians) than those without Full time status, but we can see that there are those among Partial Load, and Part Time, who have been teaching for well over 30 years.
Employment status (Full time/ Partial Load/Part time and Sessional) and number of years in industry.
This boxplot shows that many faculty have many years in industry. In fact 350 of the respondents indicated at least one year of time in industry, with a median of 10, and mean 12.9 years.
Formal Education level by employment status:
Though we didn’t capture this level perfectly (e.g. we coded M.Ed. as higher than MA/MSc) the picture is still revealing: Over 50% of faculty in each employment status teaching mathematics and math-related courses have MA/MSc or PhDs. 55 of the 87 PhDs indicated the focus of their doctoral work, with only two in education and the rest spread through mathematics, science, engineering and economics related fields. It may be argued that colleges prefer non education degrees in their hiring across all employment categories with B. Ed. (13.2%) and M. Ed. (11.2%) combining for less than 25 % of all faculty positions among respondents to our survey.
Teaching Focus by employment status:
It seems that a fairly large majority (282/440 = 64%) of respondents have a wide focus in their teaching involving math/statistics and/or math-related courses in areas like physics, computer science, finance, hospitality, fashion and graphic arts. Note that 105 of the 282 classified as ‘combination’ includes those teaching math & stats only and 77/282 included all three possibilities.
Furthermore, it is worth noting the high number of respondents in five colleges (Centennial, George Brown, and Seneca along with Georgian and St. Clair) that teach courses exclusively not titled as mathematics or statistics, but considered it appropriate to answer our survey. We suspect that the inclusive framing of the request allowed them to feel included, and that other colleges may not have communicated those details.
Long text questions summary according to Claude software.
Q12. Describe one issue specific to math education that a faculty led organization like OCMC can do to help teaching and learning of mathematics at your college.
Key Themes (according to Claude):
(90 out of 450 responded to this question) percentages are from that subset.
- Curriculum Development and Alignment emerged as the most prevalent concern (23.3% of responses), with faculty highlighting the need for standardized materials, course alignment, and addressing the gap between high school preparation and college-level expectations.
- Technology Integration (16.8%) was the second most mentioned issue, with particular emphasis on handling AI in education, online assessment integrity, and digital learning tools.
- Pedagogy (16.4%) and Student Support (15.8%) follow closely, showing faculty interest in effective teaching strategies and additional resources to help struggling students.
- Resource Sharing (14.4%) and Assessment Methods (14.0%) were also significant themes, with faculty requesting more shared materials and guidance on evaluation practices.
- Most responses (73.3%) included at least one identifiable theme, with 42.8% mentioning multiple themes, indicating the complex, interconnected nature of math education challenges.
- The sentiment analysis shows most responses were neutral (81.8%), suggesting faculty were providing objective observations rather than emotional reactions.
In a separate run Claude found the following themes
Resource Development and Sharing:
- “Provide robust fictional datasets for students to use in practice”
- “More tools. Automated test and learning tools for students using AI”
- “Tips to teaching mathematics to other business disciplines”
- “Get Excel taught as part of basic math”
- “Develop more open access resources like free texts”
- “Make sure those teaching math at all levels not only teach concepts and steps but critical thinking”
Curriculum and Assessment Improvement:
- “Give professors question banks & premade tests”
- “More focus on practical and applied math and stats”
- “Context – rote memorization often results in learning and forgetting”
- “Academic Integrity” (mentioned multiple times)
- “Common entrance testing”
- “Reduce number of students per class”
Professional Development
- “I would like to attend workshops/seminars where we share and discuss teaching techniques”
- “Promoting the participation of faculty members in workshops, conferences (PD activities), and sharing best practices”
- “Being able to use Excel within lockdown browser”
Addressing Math Anxiety
- “OCMC can help improve math education by offering training courses for faculty on using AI tools to personalize learning and provide targeted support to students, helping them overcomemath anxiety”
- “The math is not hard for them, it is why financial mathematics is important to them that is hard to teach”
Quality of Instruction
- “Too many unqualified part-time teachers are teaching mathematics and statistics in our college”
- “To assign mathematicians ‘only’ to teach any math course”
- “Math, Accounting courses should ONLY be taught in-person instead of online/hybrid”
Q13. What useful resources or tools does your employer have within the organization to support your teaching?
not ready yet
Q14. List community partners that enrich your curriculum. Please elaborate.
not ready yet
Q15. What aspect of mathematical reasoning do you think your students find the most difficult, and what would it take to improve it?
(309 out of 450 responded to this question)
The results of a longer report generated by Claude can be read on this separate page. A shorter separate Claude report (with different prompt) is below
- Abstract thinking and conceptual reasoning is the most commonly cited challenge area, with faculty noting students struggle to think beyond formulas and procedures.
- Algebra fundamentals remain a significant challenge for many students according to faculty responses.
- Application and context issues are frequently mentioned – students often struggle to connect mathematical concepts to real-world situations.
- Faculty sentiment tends to be more neutral or negative than positive when discussing student mathematical reasoning abilities.
- Many suggestions for improvement focus on:
- More practice with feedback
- Better foundation building in prerequisite skills
- More real-world context and application examples
- Improved study habits and student engagement
Additional comments (non-AI review)
Recommendations for OCMC
Based on the Claude’s analysis, the OCMC should consider:
- Curriculum Initiatives: Develop standardized materials and resources that bridge the high school to college transition, particularly for foundational mathematics courses.
- Technology Support: Provide guidance on AI in education, including both integrity concerns and productive integration of AI tools in math teaching.
- Faculty Development: Organize workshops and professional development opportunities focused on effective pedagogical approaches for mathematics.
- Resource Repository: Create a centralized platform for sharing teaching materials, assessment tools, and best practices across Ontario colleges.
- Cross-Institution Collaboration: Facilitate connections between math faculty facing similar challenges to share solutions and innovations.
Admin Survey report:
23 out of 24 colleges responded after many many reminders (Sheridan did not send a response as of May 2025)
The admin responses mostly corroborated the faculty responses in the question about math departments.
8 Strong yes: Canadore, Fleming, Humber, Lambton, Loyalist, Mohawk, Sault and St. Lawrence
Loyalist was the surprise here as the admin answer contradicted faculty perceptions
2 Weak yes: Confederation, Niagara
10 Strong no: Boréal Cambrian, Conestoga, Durham, Fanshawe, George Brown, Georgian, La Cité, Northern, Seneca
3 Weak no: Algonquin, Centennial, St Clair
Concerns and Opportunities:
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning