Abstract:

Our communication synthesizes the results of a research conducted by the Human Development and Data Processing Department of the University of Mons (UMONS) aiming at enhancing the basic training in quantitative data processing it organizes in the Psychological and Educational Sciences undergraduate program. In order to support the success of the students who don’t master basic skills in mathematics, an assessment device was integrated into their initial program. The items targeted skills as priority of operations, written calculations, equations, problem-solving, proportionality, operations on absolute values, arithmetic means, coordinate of a point and basic probability. This device allows us to identify lack of competences that can lead to higher difficulties in the students’ academic path. We can thus provide various remedial activities to support them where necessary, and so prevent failures due to a lack of prior knowledge and skills (Galdiolo et al., 2012; Hoffmann et al., 2013; Leclercq, 2011; Vertongen et al., 2015).

Moreover, such supporting pedagogical activities are organized in response to various political recommendations for the organization of activities to help students succeed in higher education in the French-speaking part of Belgium (Decrees of 2013 and 2021). The same process is organized by the Faculty of Psychology and Education (UMONS) for three other fields (English, French, and science). The pedagogical teams organize a diagnostic assessment at the start of the first term of the academic year. Students who pass this dispensatory test are not requested to do it again. In contrast, unsuccessful students can participate in remedial activities before taking the certification assessment at the end of the second or third term.

This paper focuses on the results of the mathematics assessment and their link to participation to remedial activities during the academic year 2022-2023. Our analyses show that 321 students did not pass the diagnostic assessment (51.03% of all the participants). Among them, 105 (32.71%) participated in remedial activities according to their pedagogical needs. A large majority of these involved students passed the certification assessment at the end of the academic year (second or third term): indeed, they were 71.43% to succeed. In contrast, only 52.78% of the students who didn’t participate to the remedial program passed the certification. Our results show that the remedial activities we organized significantly support the success of our students encountering difficulties (chi-square = 9.3953; p-value = .0022). Our paper will provide more details about these results, according to several factors that can influence them (curriculum, participation rate in remedial activities, number of test attempts...).

Keywords:

Higher Education, Diagnostic Assessment, Remediation, Basic Math Skills, Undergraduate Education.