An Experimental Study of the Effectiveness of the Developmental Mathematics Course at Lehigh County Community College

• Main Author: Clark, Robert G.
• Format: Others
• Published: ScholarWorks 1972
• Subjects: Curriculum and Instruction; Education; Educational Methods; Science and Mathematics Education
• Online Access: https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/341; https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1343&context=dissertations

The primary purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of the Developmental Mathematics program at the Lehigh county Community College. There was no positive evidence that the existing method of selecting students and/or the material content of the course was affective in achieving its stated objective; that of bringing the skill and ability of weak students needing remedial treatment up to the minimum level required for probable success in first-year college mathematics. The general hypothesis posed was that the students who took the Developmental Mathematics course would perform better in first-year college mathematics than those students whose ACT scores indicated they needed remedial treatment, but who did not take the Developmental Mathematics course. Four null hypotheses were tested to determine how effective the developmental course was in meeting its objective. One was concerned with the gain scores in the pre- and post-Cooperative Mathematics Test, and another with the performance of the students in first-year college mathematics. The results favored the Experimental group in both cases and indicated the MAT-099; Developmental Mathematics course was doing a good job. The findings of the third hypothesis saw little relationship between the ACT and Cooperative Mathematics test scores and success in first-year college mathematics, and the findings of the fourth hypothesis indicated that the content of the Developmental Mathematics course correlated reasonably well with the areas of the students’ mathematical weaknesses, except in several topics such as complex numbers and logarithms. One limitation of the study was the use of intact groups rather than randomly selected samples and the relatively small size of the sample. To compensate for this, the analysis of covariance procedure was used to test the null hypothesis of no difference in performance in freshman mathematics between the experimental and control groups. The findings again favored the experimental group and the null hypothesis was rejected. For testing all hypotheses the alpha value was selected as the .05 level of significance. The pre- and post-Cooperative Mathematics Test scores were analyzed and "t" tests used to determine the significance of the difference. The experimental group performed significantly better than the control group. Multiple correlation techniques were used to examine the relationship between the ACT and Cooperative Mathematics Test scores and success in freshman mathematics; and the test items were analyzed to determine the students' areas of weaknesses. A chi square test was used to analyze the frequency distributions of the final grades made by the experimental and control group students in their first-year college mathematicscourses. They were found to be significant at the .05 level.