Developmental Courses and Student Success in Education - Research Paper Example

Relationship between Having Taken Developmental s and Success in Education Developmental s and Success in Education Introduction When students enroll in community colleges, they are required to take assessment for skills writing, reading and mathematics(Bailey, 2009). Based on their performance in these tests, they are either allowed to join college or enroll for remedial or developmental courses. Development courses are pre-college studies that are meant to prepare the students for college education(Aycaster, 2001). Most of the students are normally referred to at least one development course. In the development courses, students are taught several skills that are supposed to help them become more successful in their education(Bailey, 2009). Some of the skills taught include; making notes, taking tests, time management, and understanding their learning styles(Bailey & Cho, 2010). Some researchers have questioned the effectiveness of developmental courses on improving the students’ success in education(Bailey & Cho, 2010; Illich, Hagan, & McCallister, 2004). According to Bettinger and Long (2007)less than 25% of the students who enroll in developmental colleges successfully complete their college education. With America striving to increase the number of students who graduate from college by about 5000(Bailey, 2009, p. 46), the number of students who successfully undertake developmental courses must increase. Despite the importance of developmental courses in the success of students, there area limited number of rigorous researches on this field. According to a study conducted by Bailey and Cho (2010), students in Florida and Texas who enrolled directly to college without undertaking developmental courses were found to do better in their studies. In a study in Ohio, Bailey and Cho (2010) found that student who undertook development courses in mathematics were doing better in their studies, but reading and writing courses were found to have little effect on performance. This paper is a sequential explanatory study that seeks to determine whether there is a relationship between having taken development courses and student success in education. Limitations and Delimitations The study is likely to be limited by a number of factors such as use of questionnaires as the primary data collection tool. The use of questionnaire may lead to challenges that may affect the validity of the collected data. The use of closed questionnaires limits the participants to specific options(Mertens, 2010) when expressing their perspectives towards the success of the developmental courses in education. There is no doubt that closed questionnaires have numerous limitations, but they remain to be the most effective way of collecting data from a large population. The limitation of using questionnaires will be de-limited by ensuring the questionnaire is well structured and objective. Sequential exploratory mixed-methods research design adopted for this study is important in providing a comprehensive understanding of the research problem (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011). However, the limitations of this design is that a lot of resources and time is required to effectively collect and analyse both qualitative and quantitative data. This limitation will be de-limited by use of research assistants in the collection of data. The exploratory study is limited in credibility because the findings are based on the opinion of the participants. This limitation is de-limited by encouraging the participants to be honest and ensuring the questions are worded clearly. Non-responses from the participants may also limit the study. In order to mitigate against non-responses, research participants will be briefed on the purpose of the study and assured of confidentiality. The number of questions in the questionnaire shall be limited to only 10 in order to encourage the participants to complete the questionnaires. Use of a few but comprehensive questions in the questionnaires ensures that the filling of the questionnire takes few minutes, and hence encouraging participation. Significance of the Study The government of the United States intends to increase the number of students graduating from college by 5000 before 2020 (Bailey, 2009, p. 46). To achieve this milestone, the success rate of the students undertaking developmental courses must also increase. Despite the importance of the developmental courses in the education system of the country, there lack enough rigorous researches on this field. The few published work in the field seem to lack consensus on the relationship between having taken development courses and the student success in education. Development courses are the most offered courses in colleges (Bailey, 2009). According to Bailey (2009) these courses are undertaken in all colleges before entry into the college. The main aim of offering developmental courses is to allow most of the students to gain entry into college (Michigan Department of Education, 1999). However, the colleges are faced with the challenge of maintaining an open-door policy, while maintaining high academic performance. Colleges spend millions of dollars in offering these courses each year; yet there is no clear evidence on the importance of these courses in the success of the students’ college education (Bailey, 2009). This has led to a nation-wide debate on the importance of the developmental education. Some people have argued that the costs of the developmental courses far outweigh the benefits (Aycaster, 2001; Bettinger & Long, 2007). The findings of this paper will help in evaluating the importance of developmental courses in the student’s success in education. The study will offer the ministry of education and colleges with significant insights on effectiveness of the development course in the success of the students in their education. The study may also identify critical factors that can be used to improve how developmental courses are conducted. This study will also add to the existing knowledge on the importance of developmental courses in the students’ success in education. This knowledge will prove invaluable to future researchers on developmental courses. Conceptual Framework The developmental courses are based on students’ differentiation according to their performance in high school education. Apart from being an institutional strategy, differentiation of students creates an atmosphere of learning that can be enhanced by best practices in teaching and lesson design (Koeze, 2007). Developmental courses allow teachers to differentiate students based on their weaknesses and try to teach them specific skills that can help them in post-secondary education. Students are grouped according to their needs such as mathematics, writing and reading skills. The figure below shows conceptual framework for differentiation. Figure 1: Conceptual Framework of Differentiation (Adapted from Koeze, 2007) The model shows that the curriculum offered in developmental courses can be differentiated in terms of content, process, and product in order to cater for the needs of the specific student. The teacher should develop their teaching plan based on the characteristic of the students in class. The knowledge gain by students in secondary school is dependent on factors such as family characteristics and cultures. Pre-assessment is conducted on the students to determine their skills level when differentiating them into groups. The learning style is also an important factor to consider when grouping students. Grouping students with similar learning styles together enable the teacher to adopt a single strategy that addresses the needs of all the students. Literature Review In the past, the success of developmental education has been based on the performances of individuals in the institution based evaluations; however, recently the success of developmental courses has been scrutinized based on the investments and the students’ success in education (Bettinger & Long, 2007). Developmental courses are offered in college to equip students with skills that enable them to join college level courses (Aycaster, 2001). There have been rising concerns that this objective is not being met (Aycaster, 2001; Bettinger & Long, 2007). In order to investigate the relationship between having taken developmental courses and student success in education, several indicators have been investigated. Some of the indicators include; a) ratio of credits attempted to credit earned (Aycaster, 2001); b) students’ performance in developmental courses (Bailey T. , 2009); 3) grades obtained in college level education; 4) GPA scored by the student; and 5) student’s duration in college (Aycaster, 2001). From such studies, colleges can improve their curriculum to ensure the objectives of the courses are being met. According to the findings by Michigan Department of Education (1999), developmental studies were found to improve the cumulative grades and improved the duration students spent in college. However, the study found that the cumulative GPAs were lower among the students who undertook their developmental studies compared to those who did not. According to Illich, Hagan, and McCallister (2004), students who do not complete their developmental studies perform poorly in their college level academic work when compared to those who undertake their developmental courses to completion. The data relating the student success in college level education and taking developmental studies is positive. Many of the surveys conducted by various researchers indicate that there is a positive correlation between taking developmental courses and the college-level academic success (Michigan Department of Education, 1999; Bailey & Cho, 2010). The findings byMichigan Department of Education (1999) indicate that students who undertake developmental studies also recorded a better ratio in the number of credits attempted to credit earned compared to those who avoided the courses. Research Design The major types of research designs are qualitative and quantitative research designs (Teddlie & Tashakkori, 2009). When these two types of designs are combined together in a study, we have the mixed-methods research design. According to Creswell and Plano Clark (2011), quantitative research design is concerned with quanmtifying phenomena in order to come up with statistical data that can be analysed to determine how the phenomena under study conform to the norm. In quantitative design, the level of correlation between variables is examined to give meaning to the data. On the other hand, qualitative research is concerned with thehuman perceptions and attitudes towards a study phenomena. Therefore, in qualitative research, the researcher is concerned with determining the opinions of the study participants from a neutral standpoint (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011). In this study, a mixed method research design will be adopted. The mixed methods research design best suited for the proposed study is the sequential explanatory design. Quantitative research will first be used to quantify the data collected through questionnaires to enable the researcher to make inferences on the correlation of developmental courses and student success in college education. Qualitative approached will then be adapted to obtain participants opinion regarding developmental courses and their relationship with success in college level education. Qualitative data will be used to explain the quantitative data obtained. Quantitative data will help the researcher have a general view of the research problem (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011). Qualitative research design will then be applied to refine and explain the data generated in quantitative research through perspectives and opinions obtained from the research participants. The main advantage of sequential explanatory mixed design is its clarity in analysis of data. Qualitative research design can be used to explain abnormally in results obtained through quantitaive research design. The main disadvantage of this research design is that it is lengthy and time consuming, because one has to collect both quantitative and qualitative data. Population and Sampling Population Population is the total target subjects in a research (Babbie, 2008). According to Babbie (2008), the subjects must have a certain characteristic that the researcher is interested in investigating. In this study, the subjects shall be fetched from various colleges in New York. All the colleges selected for the study must be offering developmental studies in order to qualify as a subject. The target population shall be college students who have undertaken developmental courses and those who did not. From these students, the researcher will sample an appropriate number for the study purposes. The participants sampled will then be subjected to the research process in order to meet the research objective. Sample and Sampling Procedures Since the researcher cannot undertake a census of the whole college students due to time and resource limitations, the researcher will select a study sample. A sample is a representative of the whole population. The study sample must be carefully selected such that it has majority of characteristics of the population (Mertens, 2010). There many sampling techniques that can be used to draw samples from a population. Sampling techniques can be broadly categorised into probability and non-probability sampling. Where there is a need to obtain a representative sample, probability sampling is adopted. On the other hand, non-probability sampling is adopted where there is less emphasis on representativeness of the sample (Teddlie & Yu, 2007). This study will use a random sample of 120 students from three colleges from Michigan. Random sampling will be adopted in this study in order to achieve representativeness by allowing all the students equal chances of being selected in the sample (Teddlie & Yu, 2007). Instrumentation Survey questionnaire shall be used to collect data from the selected sample. The questionnaire is worded clearly so that the questions are not vague or ambiguous. The questionnaire is structured into three parts. The first part introduces the purpose of the study and reassures the study participants that their responses shall be treated with anonymity. This part also points out the participation by the study participant are voluntary. The second part collects demographic data of the participants such as course, gender, age, and years in college. The third section collects data such as the developmental courses they have taken and so forth. Overall, the questionnaire is brief and can be filled out within fifteen minutes. Most of the questions are closed ended Research Procedure In order to conduct an effective study, the researcher will develop a good research procedure. The researcher will first obtain approval from the three institutions that are going to participate in the study. The three colleges will be selected on the basis that they offer to some of their students developmental studies before college-level education. The schools will be assured that their identity will not be revealed in the study. The students will then be sampled using nominal rolls to ensure that students that have attended developmental courses and those that have not are included in the study. The sampled students will be informed about the purpose of the study and assured that their anonymity will be maintained. The students will be required to sign a consent form before a questionnaire is administered to them. Before the actual study however, a pilot study will be carried. The pilot study will be used to revise the questionnaire in the case that there are vague questions. The students used in the pilot study will be avoided in the final study in order to enhance credibility of the findings. Data Analysis Data analysis is the presentation of the data in such a way that the researcher is able to answer the research question (Hair, Celsi, Money, Samouel, & Page, 2011). According to Hair, Celsi, Money, Samouel, and Page (2011) data analysis is also about drawing inferences about the collected data. In the mixed methods sequential explanatory design, the quantitaive data will be analysed first followed by qualitative data. The data collected will be first be analysed quantitatively in order to determine correlations between developmental courses and success in college education. Ms Excel will be used to present the data in graphical formats for ease of analysis. Student characteristics shall be grouped thematically in order to describe the trends observed. The data analysed will be intepreted to ascertain how the results of both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the study are connected (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011). Quantitative Data Analysis In quantitative analysis, data will be summarised and classified using descriptive statistics. Inferential statistics will be employed to make generalisations in the findings. According to Gall, Gall, and Borg (2007), descriptive statistics a way that is used to described the collected data to allow simpler intepretation. Pearson product-moment correlation (pearson r) will be employed to perform a bivariate correlation cofficient, which will be used to examine the null hypothesis. According to Gall, Gall, and Borg (2007), pearson correlation is used to measure linear association between to study variables. A correlation that is greater than 0.8 is considered to indicate a strong relationship between two variables (Mathbits, 2013). On the other hand, a correlation of less than 0.5 indicates a weak relationship between two variables (Mathbits, 2013). This correlation will be obtained through the use of SPSS software. Qualitative Data Analysis The researcher will conduct a qualitative analysis through a thematic analysis of the collected data. The data will be classified into themes that best address the research objectives. The researcher will examine the themed data to determine trends and patterns. The predominant themes will be used to create theories and draw inferences from the data. Trustworthiness, Validity, and Reliability Research validity is a measure of the credibility of the collected data. Researchers adopt measures that ensure internal and external validity. According to Ellis and Levy (2009) internal validity is highly influenced by the research design and the data analysis methods applied in the study. Thruthfulness of the collected data is influenced by several factors such as errors and bias. Research bias occurs when the researcher manipulates data so that the findings reflects his/her perspectives towards the subject matter. In analysis, bias is introduced when data is manipulated to show the research objectives were met. Errors could occur in research during data synthesis. According to Tasic and Feruh (2012), the availabilty of accurate and valid data influences the validiity of a study. In this study, the researcher will enhance the internal validity by maintaining objectivity in developing the questionnaires and collecting data from the sampled students. The researcher will encourage the participants to be truthful and honest when responding to the study questions. The participants will be informed that their participation is voluntary and assured that anonymity will be maintained when analysising the study findings. The views collected from the participants will be analysed objectively in order to enhance validity. According to Creswell (2009), external validity is the degree to which study findings can be generalised. Use of mixed methods research design will help in enhancing the enhancing external validity. Ethical Considerations in Research Research ethics will be upheld in order to guarantee objectivity, integrity, and protection of intellectual property. Researchers are required to protect their subjects from any harm during the study (Mertens & Ginsberg, 2009). To uphold ehtics, informed consent will be sought from the participants (Fouka & Mantzorou, 2011). The researcher will maintain anonymity and confidentiality in the analysis of the research findings. The researcher will respect the intellectual property of other researchers by avoiding plagiarism and acknowledging where the work of other researchers have been used through proper in-citations and referencing. References Aycaster, P. W. (2001). Factors impacting success in community college developmental mathematics courses and subsequent courses. Community College Journal of Research & Practice, 25(5-6), 403-416. Babbie, E. R. (2008). The basics of social research. Belmont: Thomson/Wadsworth. Bailey, T. (2009). Challenge and opportunity: Rethinking the role and function of developmental education in community college. New Directions for Community Colleges, 2009(145), 11-30. Bailey, T. R., & Cho, S. W. (2010). Developmental education in community colleges. New York, NY: Community College Research Center. Bettinger, E., & Long, B. T. (2007). Institutional responses to reduce inequalities in college outcomes: Remedial and developmental courses in higher education. Economic inequality and higher education: Access, persistence, and success, 69-100. Creswell, J. W. (2009). Qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approaches. (3rd ed.). University of Nebrasaka: SAGE Publications. Creswell, J., & Plano Clark, V. (2011). Designing and conducting mixed methods research (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc. Ellis, T., & Levy, Y. (2009). Towards a guide for novice researchers on research methodology: Review and proposed methods. Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology, 6, 323-337. Fouka, G., & Mantzorou, M. (2011). What are the major ethical issues in conducting research? Is there a conflict between the research ethics and the nature of nursing. Health Science Journal, 5(1), 3-14. Gall, M. D., Gall, J. P., & Borg, W. R. (2007). Educational research: An introduction. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc. Hair, J. F., Celsi, M. W., Money, A. H., Samouel, P., & Page, M. (2011). Essentials of business research methods. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Illich, P. A., Hagan, C., & McCallister, L. (2004). Performance in college-level courses among students concurrently enrolled in remedial courses: Policy implications. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 28(5), 435-453. Koeze, P. A. (2007). Differentiated instruction: The effect on student achievement in an elementary school. Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations. Paper 31. Mathbits. (2013). Correlation coefficient. Retrieved from http://mathbits.com/MathBits/TISection/Statistics2/correlation.htm Mertens, D. M. (2010). Research and evaluation in education and psychology: Integrating diversity with quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods. Los Angeles: Sage. Mertens, D. M., & Ginsberg, E. P. (2009). The handbook of social research ethics . Carlifornia: Sage Publications, Inc. Michigan Department of Education. (1999). An Analysis of Developmental Education at Michigans Associate Degree-Granting Institutions. Michigan: Michigan Developmental Education Consortium. Tasic, S., & Feruh, M. B. (2012). Errors and issues in secondary data used in marketing research. The Scientific Journal of Theory and Practice of Socioeconomic Development, 1(2), 326-335. Teddlie, C., & Yu, F. (2007). Mixed methods sampling: A typology with examples. Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 1 (1), 77-100. Teddlie, C., & Tashakkori, A. (2009). Foundations of mixed methods research: Integrating quantitative and qualitative techniques in the social and behavioral sciences. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc. Appendix A1. Questionnaire This questionnaire collects information on relationship between developmental courses and student success in education. Participants are assured that the information provided will be handled with utmost confidentiality and will only be used for academic purposes. Please indicate the chosen option as accurately as possible by putting a tick on one of the options. For questions that require your own opinion, please fill blanks (….). You are requested to respond to all items. Your cooperation in this survey is highly appreciated. Thank you. Section A: Personal Information 1. Indicate your gender: (a) Male [ ] (b) Female [ ] 2. Indicate your age group: (a) Below 18 [ ] (b) 18-24 [ ] (c) Over 24 [ ] 3. Indicate how long you have been in this college: (a) Less than One year [ ] (b) One Year [ ] (c) Two Years [ ] (d) Three Years [ ] (e) Four Years [ ] (f) Over Four Years [ ] Section B 4. Did you take developmental course before joining the college level education? Yes [ ] No [ ] If YES, which course did you take? Mathematics [ ] Reading [ ] Writing [ ] Learning styles [ ] Others [ ], specify …………………………………………………… 5. Which of the following best describe your performance in your developmental courses assessments? Excellent [ ] Good [ ] Average [ ] Satisfactory [ ] Poor [ ] 6. How many credits have you attempted? ………….. 7. How many credits have you earned? ………….. 8. What GPA did you score in your last academic year? 9. Do you think developmental studies help improve students’ performance in their college level education? Yes [ ] No [ ] 10. What do you think should be done to improve the quality of developmental courses in colleges? ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Read More