This dissertation examined how adult learners who took developmental mathematics in a community college and passed the courses, viewed their self-efficacy and the roles they felt self-efficacy had on their successful completion of mathematics. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 adult learners in two U.S. community colleges.…

Throughout the 21st century, the discipline of developmental education has come under fire for low success rates and has created a great deal of controversy. This has especially been the case for developmental math. Over the years, there have been many initiatives to improve student success and completion in developmental math. Some have succeeded…

Beginning in 2019, California community colleges were required to use multiple measures to determine students' placement into initial math courses. Community colleges also created structured BSTEM and liberal arts (SLAM) math pathways beginning in 2017. This contemporaneous implementation could reproduce racialized stratification in math…

Community colleges began as a way to offer higher education to those that wanted it but could not leave home to further their degree. As they evolved, they began allowing students to be admitted with very little admission requirements. The lack of admission requirements led to students being admitted into community colleges that were not prepared…

This study used the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) to assess the motivation and learning strategies of students in a self-paced developmental mathematics class. A total of 194 undergraduate students participated in this study. Descriptive statistics, correlation coefficients, and regression analysis were conducted to assess…

Traditionally, post-secondary developmental mathematics courses aspire to equip students with mathematical content knowledge needed to succeed in calculus and subsequent STEM courses. The literature shows that this goal alone is insufficient, as the emphasis on content acquisition often comes at the expense of developing higher-order skills such…

In the United States, students often graduate from high school unprepared to succeed in college. In Alabama, fewer than 25% of high school graduates are college ready. Frequently, unprepared students enroll in community colleges, which are tasked to help them transfer to a four-year institution or to enter the workforce. However, students who need…

A difficult issue for tutoring programs is low participation, especially at commuter campuses. At the University of Houston-Downtown, this problem seems particularly acute for developmental education (DE) courses. This paper describes the Supplemental Instruction (SI) program at the University of Houston-Downtown (UHD) with focus on the role of…

Developmental mathematics is often a barrier to student progress and success in college. As a result and for this reason, this research study describes the redesign of a developmental mathematics course at a U.S. East Coast university to decrease the amount of time it takes for students to complete their developmental requirement and increase the…

Universities have drawn on an assortment of strategies to address the learning challenges and high attrition rates of developmental mathematics students. One of those strategies has been utilizing computer adaptive instruction (CAI) mathematics software. Reports about the efficacy of CAI vary from glowing to unfavorable. This article presents an…

The purpose of this study was to identify differences in metacognitive and self-regulated learning strategies used by students in a self-paced, computer-based developmental mathematics program (DMP) and how these strategies accounted for differences in persistence and performance observed among the students. Five research questions guided the…

As online education gains popularity among both learners and postsecondary institutions, there is a movement toward identifying ways to promote student success. Over half of all higher education institutions offer online classes, due in part to the ease of offering and scheduling (Hoffman, 2006); educators seek ways to identify any demographic or…

Florida State University researchers spent the last year collecting and analyzing data on corequisite developmental education (DE) models in Texas as part of a four-year study that received a $1.5M grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences. This study was proposed in response to Texas House Bill (HB) 2223, which…

The purpose of this mixed method study is to determine the effectiveness of the corequisite model on collegiate mathematics developmental education. Corequisite models are designed to allow students who place into pre-college level courses to complete the prerequisite material and college-level coursework simultaneously in their first semester.…

Research on developmental education reform has given surprisingly limited attention to what happens inside the classroom between faculty and students. Our qualitative study used interview data from 20 faculty and 20 students in corequisite math and English courses at one of the nation's largest and most racially diverse community college systems.…