Exploring the Varying Impacts of Four Accelerated Developmental Education Instructional Strategies on College Course-Taking Trajectories

• In Event: Continuing Evolutions of Community College Developmental Education

Abstract

Accelerated instructional strategies for developmental education have been promoted to help underprepared students progress more quickly to college-level coursework. Yet, are certain accelerated strategies more effective than others and does this initial acceleration lead to longer-term success? Florida’s 2013 developmental education reform required all 28 institutions in the Florida College System to offer developmental education using compressed, corequisite, modularized, and contextualized courses strategies. We use inverse-probability-weighted regression adjustment to compare success rates in completion of a three-year sequence of math and English requirements for Florida students in these strategies. We find that corequisite courses tended to lead to greater long-term gains in math and, to an extent, in reading, while contextualized tended to be most effective in writing.

Authors

• Christine Mokher, Florida State University

• Toby Park-Gaghan, Florida State University

• Shouping Hu, Florida State University