Targeted Intervention for Developmental Education Students (T.I.D.E.S.).

Abstract

Each year over 2,000,000 students enroll in developmental education courses in U.S. colleges and universities (Saxon, Sullivan, Boylan, & Forrest, 2005). Most of these students are placed in developmental courses as a result of their scores on a single cognitive assessment instrument which is used as the basis for academic advising (Gerlaugh, Thompson, Boylan, & Davis, 2007). According to a recent report from the National Center for Education Statistics (2003), most colleges report that it takes students about a year to complete their developmental education requirements.This means that at a time when the costs of participating in postsecondary education are increasing, a very large number of undergraduates must stay in school longer and pay more in order to complete developmental course requirements. Time in developmental education is well spent for many of these students. They complete their developmental courses quickly, and their participation enables them to develop the skills necessary for success in later college-level courses. For others, their time in developmental education is fraught with the frustration of either taking courses they do not really need or failing these courses and having to repeat them. It is possible, however, that an unknown number of the students taking these courses might either bypass them entirely or require more than coursework alone to be successful.Students who score just under the cut score in a particular skill area might be able to bypass the developmental course in that subject, go directly into the college-level course in that subject, and be successful if they had the right kind of learning assistance services. Others at the lower end of the score distribution might need not only one or more developmental courses but also require a variety of additional learning assistance services in order to be successful. Unfortunately, conclusive research is not available regarding which students might profit from any particular combination of courses and services. A contributing factor is the lack of sufficient assessment data from enough sources to provide adequate advising information and appropriate placement for developmental students.In U.S. colleges and universities, the assessment instruments used most widely to gather information for placement in developmental courses are and COMPASS* (Gerlaugh, Thompson, Boylan, & Davis, 2007). ACCUPLACER is published by the College Board and COMPASS is published by ACT. Both are computer-adaptive instruments which adjust the difficulty of follow-up questions based on students' responses to the previous question. This assessment technology is designed to provide an accurate measure of how much a given student knows about a particular area such as reading, English, or mathematics. Because such assessment instruments measure students' cognitive abilities, they are referred to as cognitive instruments.As accurate as these instruments may be in assessing cognitive skills, however, they do not measure other factors that are equally important to student success. These factors include such things as attitude toward learning, motivation, autonomy, willingness to seek and accept help, desire to affiliate with peers or instructors, or willingness to expend effort on academic tasks (Sedlacek, 2004). These factors are generally referred to as noncognitive or affective characteristics because they measure how students feel or what they believe about themselves and learning (Bloom, 1976). Most college and university instructors would agree that these factors are as essential to success in college as are cognitive skills. In fact, Bloom (1976) estimates that at least 25% of how well a student performs in a particular course is related to affective factors. Sedlacek (2004) argues that the weaker a student's cognitive skills, the more important other affective factors in student success.In addition to cognitive and affective factors, a variety of personal factors also influence students' likelihood of success in college. …

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 62 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.