Comparative performance standards and retention rates of students taking developmental mathematics courses

The purpose of this study was to determine if developmental mathematics students at Middle Tennessee State University attending classes meeting twice a performed the same as those attending classes meeting three times a week. The population sampled was drawn from students enrolled in Basic Mathematics, Elementary Algebra, and Intermediate Algebra in the Spring and Fall semesters of 1998. The groups compared in the three-way ANOVA were class meeting times (twice versus three times a week), gender, and age classification (traditional versus non-traditional). The groups compared in the one-way ANOVA were the three classes and their retention rates. The Pearson Correlation Moments were calculated to compare the interdependence between the number of class meeting times per week, type of class, and the score differences. The hypothesis of this study was that there was no statistically significant differences in academic performance and retention rates for students taking developmental mathematics classes that met three times a week as opposed to those meeting twice a week. The performance of each student was measured using the normalized difference between pretest and posttest scores. The retention rates were determined by comparing the number of students that took the final exam to the total number of students registered on the final roll document. An alpha level of .05 was used to test each aspect of the hypothesis. There were no statistically significant differences found in either of the ANOVA or Pearson Correlation Moments. These results imply that there were no performance or retention differences for developmental mathematics students based upon class meeting times, gender, or age classification