The Effects of an Online Math Intervention on the Math Anxiety Levels of Community College Students

Finding an inexpensive, timely, and effective intervention to reduce math anxiety in community college students is a worthwhile endeavor. Math anxiety left unattended can lead to the conscious and deliberate avoidance of math-heavy educational programs and careers. Previous investigations in math anxiety interventions have overlooked the potential for mastery learning-based online modules to reduce math anxiety. The purpose of this two-factor quasi-experimental posttest-only control group study is to investigate whether participation in Let’s Go Racing, a mastery learning-inspired intervention designed to prepare students for gateway math courses, affects math anxiety levels and whether the potential effect differs for male and female students. This study also seeks to determine if Strawderman’s Math Anxiety Model and the reciprocal theory, both supporting the notion that student math success and math anxiety are inversely and bidirectionally associated, are plausible explanations of the phenomenon. A treatment group of Math 171 – Precalculus Algebra students at a small North Carolina community college was given the Math Anxiety Scale-Revised after completing Let’s Go Racing, while a control group of Math 171 students from another North Carolina community college completed only the Math Anxiety Scale-Revised assessment. Data were collected electronically and analyzed using two-way ANOVA statistical analyses. Results support the notion that female college students experience higher math anxiety levels than their male counterparts. However, the impact of Let’s Go Racing on math anxiety was inconclusive. The resulting recommendations are to replicate this study with a larger sample size and to investigate the effects of the Let’s Go Racing math intervention in other math courses and with younger students