Theses and Dissertations

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Hare, R. Dwight

Committee Member

Franz, Dana Pomykal

Committee Member

Miller, Thomas L.

Committee Member

Xu, Jianzhong

Committee Member

Reed, Jerry F.

Other Advisors or Committee Members

Elrod, Frank

Date of Degree

12-10-2005

Document Type

Dissertation - Open Access

Major

Secondary Education

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

College

College of Education

Department

Department of Curriculum and Instruction

Abstract

At Mississippi State University (MSU), students who do not meet full admission requirements may enroll in the Summer Developmental Program (SDP). During this ten-week summer program, students take four developmental courses to prepare them for college-level courses. MA 0003 Developmental Mathematics is the course designed to prepare these students for MA 1313 College Algebra. In addition, the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at MSU offers MA 0103 Intermediate Algebra to prepare students for MA 1313 College Algebra. The purpose of this study was to determine (a) whether there were correlations between student grades in MA 0003, MA 0103, and MA 1313, (b) whether students? grades in MA 0003 and MA 0103 would predict their grades in MA 1313, and (c) whether their grades in MA 0003 would predict their grades in MA 0103. A Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was performed on the data. The results showed that there were statistically significant correlations between grades in MA 0003 and MA 0103, between grades in MA 0003 and MA 1313, as well as between grades in MA 0103 and MA 1313 ( ). Linear regression was used to find the equations to predict students? grades in MA 1313 from their grades in MA 0003 and MA 0103 and predict grades in MA 0103 from grades in MA 0003. An analysis of the results revealed that the higher the grade a student received in the lower-level mathematics courses, MA 0003 and MA 0103, the higher the grade the student received in the college-level mathematics course, MA 1313. Based on this study, further research was recommended to investigate the success of the SDP students in courses above the level of MA 1313 and their success in graduating from MSU. Because the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at MSU has made changes in the college algebra course, MA 1313, since this study, further research should be conducted to investigate the performance of the SDP students in the ?new? college algebra.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/19159

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