Increasing Success in Mathematics Trailer Sections
The grant was used to help faculty analyze the success of students in selected “trailer” and “non-trailer” general education mathematics courses. Trailer courses are designed to support students who were not successful in sequential courses. The results from the courses will guide implementation of recommendations, policies, and procedures to assist students in becoming more successful in their math courses.
The research team made the following recommendations:
- Teaching Assistants hold one office hour a week in lieu of one hour of grading
- Introduce Learning Assistants into lower level courses deemed "at risk" due to proportion of students in “trailer” courses.
- Add online supplemental or remedial work to be completed for course credit
- Implement group work (with mixed abilities) in the Statistics courses
It is evident that the trailer student sample did not perform at the level of the non-trailer student for three of four learning objectives. Differences in means can be attributed to having had to repeat prerequisite courses, going a semester without a mathematics course from their sequence, or having started with low preliminary skills.
Materials developed for this grant can be found here. Increasing Success in Mathematics Trailer Sections was presented as a poster session at the 2014 ANNY Conference.