Date of Conferral

2015

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Education

Advisor

Jennifer Smolka

Abstract

Many students entering college in the United States need assistance in at least one academic area, causing remedial courses to be commonplace in higher education. This study evaluated the impact of video instruction in learning the content found in an online remedial math course. The instructional videos were created using the guidelines of Universal Design and cognitive load theory. A quantitative, quasi-experimental method was used to evaluate a dataset made available by a regionally accredited private New England college's online division. The online division offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs and certifications, and the students are located all over the world. The dataset started with 203 participants, with 78 completing the first module, 36 completing the second module, and 17 completing the third module. Paired t tests revealed that while both text and video instruction improved the scores between the pre- and posttests, there was no statistically significant difference between those two groups. However, the end sample size was small, with many students not completing all three modules. This limited the interpretation to the results of the pre- and posttest scores of the first module only. These findings inform faculty teaching remedial online math courses, as well as course designers, seeking to improve these courses and increase the success rate for students passing the course. This has implications for social change because student success in these remedial math courses may in turn increase persistence, retention and graduation.

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