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Florida Community College at Jacksonville

EFFICACY STUDY: Florida Community College at Jacksonville
The mathematics department at Florida Community College at Jacksonville started using MyMathLab in 2002. Today, more than half of the mathematics faculty use the program to varying degrees.

Faculty report that use of MyMathLab "definitely makes a difference." They note that some students know the program and like it so much, they seek MyMathLab-enabled courses for enrollment. "But both faculty and students need to understand that consistent, required use is necessary in order to achieve optimum student gain," says Joel Rappoport, professor of mathematics. 

Lab- and assessment-based users will find it no surprise that required use of the program, preferably in a controlled environment, for credit toward the final course grade begets the best results. Optional use of the program and use of the program only for homework may offer a benefit but simply do not achieve the maximum benefits for which MyMathLab was designed.

To help illustrate this point, Pearson hired Gatti Evaluation, Inc., to conduct a statistically sound and controlled study of MyMathLab effectiveness at FCCJ. The study was conducted during the spring 2006, spring 2007, and fall 2007 semesters and employed a quasi-experimental two-group baseline to postobservation design, with some course sections using MyMathLab for homework and others relying on paper-based homework assignments.

Students registered for the mathematics section of their choice. Participation was voluntary, and each professor had complete control over instruction for his or her sections, deciding whether or not use the MyMathLab system and if so, to what degree. Most course instruction was delivered via lecture. Students in the MyMathLab sections used MyMathLab to complete outside-of-class assignments, which accounted for significant portions of their final course grades.

Thirteen professors teaching 39 sections (29 of College Algebra and 10 of Intermediate Algebra) contributed 414 students to the final study sample. Students were assessed at the beginning and end of the semester by means of the 30-question multiple-choice ACT Explore test and the ETS Assessment of Algebraic Understanding. At baseline, the MyMathLab and comparison groups were not statistically significantly different in mathematics achievement.

The sample was blocked into thirds (low, medium, high) based on baseline achievement score. Across the entire sample, MyMathLab students outgained the comparison group by 0.14 standard deviation, or 6 percentile points. In Intermediate Algebra, students who scored high on the baseline test and who used MyMathLab outgained the comparison group by 0.6 standard deviation, or 23 percentile points. See Figure 1.

Figure 1. Achievement Gain T-Score for Intermediate Algebra Students by Baseline Achievement Level

The final study reported that "only the differential effect for MyMathLab students with baseline achievement in the upper third is statistically significant (i.e., 0.346 standard deviations, p-value = 0.0235, standard error = 0.175). This effect for the High baseline achievers, is predominately due to the Intermediate Algebra students (i.e., 0.600 standard deviations, p-value = 0.031, standard error = 0.357) rather than the College Algebra students (i.e., 0.084 standard deviations, p-value = 0.299)."

FCCJ faculty were pleased with the study and are hoping to use the experience to craft another that is more closely tailored to their students’ needs and experiences. They suspect more evidence of gain will result. "Although the pretest and a posttest were nationally standardized tests, they don’t necessarily match our course objectives and problems," says Rappoport. "Therefore, we aren’t sure how hard students tried on them, as it wasn’t counted as part of their grade."

Rappoport and the faculty at FCCJ are considering implementing and tracking their own changes in Elementary Algebra by using a statewide exit exam for the pre- and posttests. They would apply the usage and weight of MyMathLab consistently and examine the effect of adding brief quizzes, which contribute to the final course grade.