Abstract
Objectives: This research brief explores literature addressing developmental education to identify successful interventions in first-year math courses in higher education. Our goal is to describe the relationship between students’ academic practices and their final course grade in their first-year math courses.
 Method: Data on 3,249 students have been gathered and analyzed using descriptive statistics and predicative analytics. We describe the Math program, which includes a supplemental support component, and the environment under which it was created. We then examine the behavior between students’ participation in supplemental support and their academic performance.
 Results: We used classification and regression tree algorithms to obtain a model that gave us data-driven guidelines to aid with future student interventions and success in their first-year math courses.
 Conclusions: Students’ fulfillment of the supplemental support requirements by specified deadlines is a key predictor of students’ midterm and final course grades. 
 Implications for Theory and/or Practice: This work provides a roadmap for student interventions and increasing student success with first-year mathematics courses.
 Keywords: First-year mathematics courses, supplemental support, higher education
Highlights
Introduction and Literature ReviewResearch shows that the vast majority of college drop-out occurs within the first two years of collegiate experience (Kwenda, 2014)
Our investigation revealed that students who met or exceeded the midterm supplemental support target, earned a midterm course grade of at least D, and continued to receive supplemental support in the Mathematics Achievement Center had a 99% chance of passing their first-year math course
Implication for Theory and/or Practice: This work provides a roadmap for student interventions and increasing student success with first-year mathematics courses
Summary
Research shows that the vast majority of college drop-out occurs within the first two years of collegiate experience (Kwenda, 2014). With the passage of Connecticut Public Act 12-40 in 2012, an act concerning college readiness and completion, which limited developmental mathematics courses to at most one remedial course, embedded courses (college-level courses with embedded remediation) and college-level courses, it became necessary to transform our elementary and intermediate algebra mathematics program (Brakoniecki, Fitzgerald, & Pritchard, 2013; ConnSCU, 2014). Commencing with the start of the Fall 2014 semester, a new tiered system of instruction, known as the Math Foundations Program, was developed. Two important new features of the Math Foundations Program curriculum include distinguishing between STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and non-STEM disciplines and refining. Assessing and modeling student academic practices and performance in first-year mathematics courses in higher education. Higher Learning Research Communications, 9(2), Online Version.
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