MAT227 “Discrete Mathematical Structures” MOER Template
Filippo Posta and Marianne Smith
Executive Summary
The project produced a comprehensive OER template course for a discrete mathematics course (e.g., MAT227 at MCCCD). The template satisfies course competencies for MAT227 that were revised by the Maricopa Community Colleges Math Instructional Council in Spring 2024 ( https://aztransmac2.asu.edu/cgi-bin/WebObjects/MCCCD.woa/wa/freeForm2?id=140037). The template is aligned to the 4th edition of Levin (2025) and supplemented by other OER material as needed. In particular, the MCCCD competency “Use Big-O notation to study the growth of a given function” is not covered in the aforementioned book and had to be supplemented with Chapter 1 of Bible et a, (2023), Chapter 7 of Cusak & Santos (2019), and Rohatgi (2015). Overall, we added 200+ problems to the current MOER 227 library and organized the template with the following sections:
- Course Material: it includes space for Instructors to add their personal and institutional information, as well as Syllabus (we provided a template for MCCCD instructors). All resources such as textbook links are also included in this section. There is no resource that is behind a paywall. Everything is OER.
- 7 Modules: one for each of the chapters of Levin’s book as well as an additional module titled “Intro to Algorithms” that is used to cover the growth function competency. Each module begins with a list of covered course competencies and it is divided into sections. Each section corresponds to a book section and has the following components:
- Reading Assignment: a short assignment in which students are asked to read/watch content and then solve simple problems.
- Homework Assignment: a comprehensive homework set that covers the specific section
- Content Link: links to the specific textbook section
- Projects: it consists of three projects addressing different competencies and requiring students to connect the dots between theory and practice. Instructors can choose if they want to include a project element to their curriculum.
- Exams: we provided sample Midterm/Final and study guides for Instructors to adjust to their own pedagogical needs.
- Log: the template includes a log that is used for errata/updates and also contains our contact information so that Instructors can contact us with questions and concerns.
Final Product
We are sharing the template with the Mathematics Instruction Council so that every faculty at MCCCD can take advantage of it.
These are the info to find and copy the course in MOER (https://moer.maricopa.edu):
Course ID: 20068
Course Name: MAT227 Maricopa Million Template
Course Key: mcccd227
We are also creating a MyOpenMath (https://www.myopenmath.com/) version for a world-wide audience. Details to be provided here as soon as the process is complete.
References
Levin, O. (2025). Discrete mathematics: An open introduction. CRC Press.
Bible, P. W., & Moser, L. (2023). An Open Guide to Data Structures and Algorithms.
Rohatgi, O. (2015). Discrete mathematics. Libretexts.
Cusack, C. A., & Santos, D. A. (2019). An Active Introduction to Discrete Mathematics and Algorithms.
Contact Information
Filippo Posta: please address any questions to flippo.posta@phoenixcollege.edu.
Marianne Smith: please address any questions to marianne.smith@southmountaincc.edu.