Abstract
The inclusivity of all students in the University Economics programme is in danger due to a high failure rate in the first-year mathematics course. This study investigates whether participation in a bridging course, and what aspects of it, can contribute to equal opportunities and increased inclusivity in the Mathematics for Economists course, and henceforth reduce the failure rate. It adds to the meager European literature on remedial course effectiveness. Through the use of ordinary least square regression analyses, a significant positive effect of participation in the bridging course was found for the student group as a whole. Furthermore, the results indicated that participation was particularly valuable for the least mathematically prepared students.
Highlights
It is generally assumed that remediation courses have a positive effect on students’ mathematics skills and mitigate the heterogeneity of students’ mathematics background on entry
1 INTRODUCTION It is a general international problem that many economics students lack the mathematics background needed for successful studies at the Business School (Laging and Voßkamp 2017, Opstad and Årethun 2019, Büchele 2020a)
Building on the pedagogical philosophy of Carroll (1989 p.30), which is that "we should seek mainly to achieve equality of opportunity for students,” the intention was to ensure that less prepared students would be aware of what mathematics was required, and especially to give them the opportunity to study basic mathematics skills relevant for economics studies, before embarking on the Mathematics for Economists course
Summary
It is generally assumed that remediation courses have a positive effect on students’ mathematics skills and mitigate the heterogeneity of students’ mathematics background on entry. The few European studies show no greater consensus about the effectiveness of remedial mathematics courses for raising student performance within the study of Economics. To the best of our knowledge, there is no European study investigating the key pedagogical issue of what aspects of remedial courses are important in enhancing student achievement. The purpose of this study is to gain an understanding of what aspects of the bridging course can contribute to equal opportunities and increased inclusivity in the Mathematics for Economists course, and reduce the failure rate. We investigate what process variables (derived from data about participation in workshops and learning analytics records from the online course platform) predict student achievement on the bridging course post-test and on the Mathematics for Economists course exam
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