A trial of adaptive (ALEKS) and traditional (Sapling/MasteringChemistry) online homework was undertaken by preparatory chemistry students to increase scores on a cumulative departmental final exam (FE). A custom textbook is used in this course to address topics deemed important for General Chemistry I. The FE is worth 45% of students’ course grade. This course has a 39% DFW rate. Over 9 semesters, 610 students prepared for the FE using Moodle Quizzes (MQ) administered through our Learning Management System. The correlation coefficient between the MQ scores and FE score is 0.1718. We are concerned with keeping costs down since 53% of our undergraduates are low income students. Biology, biochemistry, and health sciences majors are listed as impacted for Fall 2017. We must find a way to lower the DFW rate for preparatory chemistry to keep students flowing through the prerequisites for their major. Preliminary data (N = 42) shows a correlation of 0.2604 for adaptive (ALEKS) and a correlation coefficient of 0.4413 (N = 49) for traditional (Sapling) with Exam 1. The effect of ALEKS and MasteringChemistry on Exam 2 and the FE will help our department decide which online homework to assign in future semesters. Other interventions tested previously included POGIL in place of lecture (N = 37) with a slightly positive effect and correlation coefficient of 0.0444. Chemical demonstrations in place of lectures did not increase FE scores, in fact a negative effect was observed as the number of demonstrations increased, with a correlation coefficient of 0.0823. A cohort (N = 32) of students coenrolled in College Algebra and Preparatory Chemistry in Fall 2014 significantly outperformed other classes (p = 0.000543), but the same effect was not observed in Fall 2015 (p = 0.64).

Comparison of adaptive and traditional online homework systems in a preparatory chemistry course

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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