The Project

This project embodies the study of course completion and persistence beyond basic skills mathematics. The project has two prongs.

  1. Recently CSM's basic skills mathematics course, Math 811, Arithmetic Review, was redesigned as a mastery-based course that supports student -student and student-teacher contact with much collaborative activity in the classroom. One prong of this project is to test the efficacy of the new course design by comparing outcomes of the new course with the outcomes of the previous, mastery learning, self-paced version of the course.

  2. The second prong of this project is to test the impact of student services and instructional support services on the basic skills mathematics course completion and persistence.
This project evolved out of the imperative to improve the academic success of students enrolled in basic skills mathematics both locally and statewide and to expand further curriculum reform efforts already underway at CSM. Our data indicate that mathematics basic skills students are significantly less likely to successfully complete their course of study than the overall CSM student population: 38.6% vs 70.3%. This differential in course completion rates becomes even greater when the data are examined by age, gender, and ethnicity.