Assessing and Modeling Student Academic Practices and Performance in First-Year Mathematics Courses in Higher Education

• Ward, Kim ^[1] ; Larose, Chantal
  1. [1] Eastern Connecticut State University

     Eastern Connecticut State University

     Town of Windham, Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: Higher learning research communications: HLRC, ISSN-e 2157-6254, Vol. 9, Nº. 2, 2019, págs. 19-33
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
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• Resumen

  • Objectives: This research brief explores literature addressing developmental education to identify successful interventions in first-year math courses in higher education. Our goal is to describe the relationship between students’ academic practices and their final course grade in their first-year math courses.

    Method: Data on 3,249 students have been gathered and analyzed using descriptive statistics and predicative analytics. We describe the Math program, which includes a supplemental support component, and the environment under which it was created. We then examine the behavior between students’ participation in supplemental support and their academic performance.

    Results: We used classification and regression tree algorithms to obtain a model that gave us data-driven guidelines to aid with future student interventions and success in their first-year math courses.

    Conclusions: Students’ fulfillment of the supplemental support requirements by specified deadlines is a key predictor of students’ midterm and final course grades.  Implications for Theory and/or Practice: This work provides a roadmap for student interventions and increasing student success with first-year mathematics courses.

    Keywords: First-year mathematics courses, supplemental support, higher education