Abstract:

Colleges and universities are trying alternative instructional approaches to improve the teaching of developmental mathematics, with the goal of increasing the number of students who have the skills and knowledge, required for college-level math courses, and for the twenty-first century workforce. Computers and the Internet make possible new methods of delivering instruction so students will have choices of when, where, and how they learn math. The purpose of this study was to compare academic performance of students enrolled in three sections of a College Algebra course using traditional, hybrid and online modes of instruction. A quasi-experimental study design was conducted using Repeated-Measures, One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to delineate the difference between mathematics pretest and post-test scores. Students enrolled in the hybrid mode section made significant gains in their math performance, over students enrolled in the other two modes. Surprisingly, same test revealed slightly better performance for online mode students than students from conventional mode of instruction.

Keywords:

Developmental mathematics, computer-assisted instruction, traditional instruction, hybrid instruction, online instruction, technology, mathematics achievement.