Welcome Activity and Opening Remarks from the OCMA Executive Committee
The Sum of Our Errors!

Mathematicians know that progress often begins with a wrong turn. To open the conference, participants will engage in a collaborative challenge that relies on communication, teamwork, and a willingness to try, fail, and try again. Expect confusion, creativity, and plenty of productive failure—because sometimes the best path to insight starts with something that doesn’t quite work…just yet!

Math History Stories to Spark Engagement

Who was the first mathematician?
Where do the arithmetical symbols come from?
Why do we use x to represent the unknown?
Often math is taught without referencing the people that built it. I’d like to focus on mathematics as a thing done by humans. What were the problems they worked on that led to the mathematics that we teach to o ur students today? For this presentation I will focus on arithmetic and algebra. I often tell these stories in my Math for Pre-Health class.
Reg Robson, St. Clair College

Sparking Ideas for Student Success in Foundational Math Courses – Part 2

At the OCMA Conference in 2024, we began a roundtable discussion about some of the challenges we were facing as educators teaching Foundational Math courses at the college level. Some of the topics that came up were reducing textbook costs, incoming student preparation, attendance/participation and various delivery models. We would like to continue this roundtable discussion in 2026, to not only see how these challenges have changed, but also to continue fostering that circle of support that we began building when we shared our struggles and our strategies. Please join us for Part 2, because the root of Math really is community!
Erin Kox, Fanshawe College

Maximize Student Success and Instructor Empowerment: Using WebAssign for Enhanced Course Management and Learning Experiences

College math courses can be challenging for both students, who work hard to keep up with course content, and instructors who balance course management and student support. Join us to explore how WebAssign can help on both fronts. From pre-course remediation to in-question help and robust practice and assessment activities, WebAssign supports students from before classes begin to acing their final exams. For instructors, comprehensive course management tools, student performance insights, and a vast library of diverse content will enable you to deliver the best course experience while saving valuable time.
Scott Brayne and Darcey Pepper Cengage

From Math Anxiety to Math Confidence: AI-Supported Studying Strategies for Today’s Classroom

Many instructors are noticing increased challenges with students’ foundational math skills and confidence in quantitative courses. Research has shown that math anxiety is closely linked to lower performance and persistence. This session highlights practical, AI-supported studying strategies instructors can use to support student preparedness, guide independent practice, and build confidence in math and statistics learning.
Kelly Halliday, Pearson

What’s new at TI?
We have some exciting news to share with you that will be breaking right around the conference!
Tom Steinke, Texas Instrument

Numeracy Without Borders: Creating a Community of Numeracy
Numeracy is more than a set of skills; it is a shared language that opens doors to education, employment, and full participation in society. As institutions confront widening gaps in mathematical readiness, building a community of numeracy, across programs, campuses, and countries, has never been more urgent. In this session, University of Derby Professor Dr. Ovidiu Bagdasar will showcase the Numeracy Without Borders project and its growing impact overseas, illustrating how coordinated efforts can raise confidence, increase access, and support diverse learners. Leveraging tools like Elevate My Math, used for targeted diagnostics, personalized skill-building, and scalable support, he will demonstrate how data-informed, mastery-focused approaches can underpin sustainable numeracy initiatives. Attendees will gain practical insights into how partnerships, technology, and shared pedagogical principles can come together to create a connected numeracy community that transcends borders and transforms student outcomes.
Ovidiu Bagdasar, University of Derby, UK

Beyond the Readiness Gap: Bridging the 2026 Student Success Divide
Math departments are facing a growing gap in student readiness alongside rising faculty workload. Drawing on DigitalEd’s 2026 Higher Ed Trends Report, this session explores what a 90% readiness gap and 70% workload increase mean for math instruction and assessment. Learn how to maintain momentum, support different learning styles, and scale teaching and assessment using Möbius.
Ezekiel Bamigboye and Mano Rupra, DigitalEd

Mathematicians at Play: Sneaking Fun into Serious Math
What if math class felt more like game night? This session explores playful activities that hook students who think math is boring and quietly draw them into deeper reasoning. By centering play and human interaction, familiar concepts become engaging, memorable, and fun, leading students to a deeper understanding of mathematics beneath the surface – often without them even realizing it!
Sean Saunders, Sheridan College

Data to Dialogue: Building Community Through SmartBook Insights
Discover how McGraw Hill SmartBook’s instructor reports and dashboards can support more than just assessment; they can serve as catalysts for connection, dialogue, and community in Business Mathematics and Statistics classrooms. In today’s landscape of AI-assisted learning and growing interest in authentic assessment, SmartBook’s formative, low-stakes question sets give students frequent, meaningful opportunities to engage with course material. At the same time, instructors gain real-time insights into student understanding that can fuel reflection and interaction. By leveraging these insights, educators can create learning experiences that uphold integrity, nurture belonging, and prioritize growth over grades.
Join us in discussing how SmartBook insights can help build community – one data point, one conversation, and one learner at a time.
Anna Wojdylo, Mark Grzeskowiak, McGraw Hill

Student-Centred Stats and Solutions
In today’s continuously changing education landscape, maintaining student engagement and focus is more important than ever. In this session we’ll be focusing on the benefits of adaptive technology with Knewton Alta, and the interactive pedagogy that helps students succeed with zyBooks. We will be highlighting how our platforms approach learning with more activities and less text to help students with different math backgrounds. Join Wiley to learn how these intuitive, learner-first solutions can help you to maximize student success with proven data-insights to guide your course outcomes.
Teagan Biersteker and Giancarlo Candinario, Wiley

Annual General Meeting and Executive Committee Elections

From Research to Reality: Reimagining College Mathematics Through Mathematics Education
College mathematics programs support students across diverse pathways such as nursing, engineering technologies, aviation, and business, while also addressing persistent challenges related to remediation, student confidence, and retention. At the same time, mathematics education research has developed a rich body of theory about mathematical thinking, learning, and classroom interaction. Yet these two domains often operate separately. This session explores how ideas from mathematics education research can help illuminate teaching, tutoring, and learning environments in college mathematics.
Using examples from college mathematics classrooms and support contexts, participants will examine where these ideas already appear within their institutions and where opportunities exist for deeper integration. Small-group discussions will invite participants to reflect on how research on teaching and learning might inform college mathematics systems, pedagogy, and support structures, while also considering what institutional conditions are needed for colleges to more actively engage with and contribute to mathematics education research. The session will foster dialogue across institutions about strengthening the connections between research and practice in college mathematics.
Matthew Cheung, Centennial College

Progress on the Algebra++ Initiative
Algebra++ is a planned series of texts e-published as spreadsheets based on core tenets of computer science (and more broadly cognitive science). Lessons from the evolution of computer programming are used to foster structure and best practices for algebra.
Alg++ is designed to cover Beginning→Intermediate→Advanced sequence using the spreadsheet NOT so much as a calculator but as _medium_ for symbolic and graphical reasoning. No programming or spreadsheet knowledge is assumed from students or faculty (but will be learned as a bonus side-effect). Building on previous AMATYC talks, an overview is followed by sample chapters and exercise sets for review, road-test, and faculty input.
John Chu, Algebra + +

Math Assessments for Humans
Ever finish marking a test and wonder what students actually know? Do your students feel that tests are “inhumane” even though they mirror the problems done in class? This session explores flexible testing options that reduce blank answers by letting students demonstrate understanding of core ideas, even when complex problems feel out of reach. By valuing thinking, sense-making, and partial progress, the approaches we will examine attempt to better humanize our math assessments.
Sean Saunders, Anthony Tavares, Sheridan College

Cultivating Mathematical Belonging: A College-Wide Approach to Assessment and Foundational Skills Remediation
This session introduces a college-wide initiative that reimagines math assessment and remediation by focusing on culture, community, and foundational understanding. The ALSM’s modular approach helps students strengthen the core concepts that support higher-level learning while humanizing algorithms through practical, meaningful applications. Central to this work is the development of a shared math culture across classrooms, supported by collaborative faculty practices that encourage consistency, equity, and student engagement. Participants will explore how coordinated assessment strategies, targeted foundational modules, and a strong educator community can foster belonging and improve outcomes across Ontario college programs
Emily Brown, ALSM Committee

What Is The Most Important Skill Math Students Will Need In The Age of AI?:
Patience and Passion For Irresolution
The “Power of No” is a popular statement currently in our society about humans establishing boundaries in their lives, with many books having this self-help title. That same phrase is going to become rarer as time goes on in math classrooms in reference to students balking at the fast solutions that will be available to every one of their math problems. Irresolution and the human task of cobbling together solutions slowly is the intellectual resilience that has been the lifeblood of the entire history of mathematics. The currency of having those qualities will skyrocket in a society run by AI, and future employers will prioritize people who can demonstrate this academic integrity and discipline. Human curiosity and creativity will become hard to find job prerequisites.
Sunil Singh – Author, International Speaker