Testing the Use of Co-requisite Precalculus Instruction to Improve Undergraduate Students' Success in Calculus 1

This project aims to serve the national interest by increasing access to STEM fields for undergraduate students who need additional support to succeed in introductory Calculus courses. Co-requisite instruction can help academically underprepared undergraduate students succeed academically and stay on track to their intended STEM degree. The potential impact of co-requisite courses is particularly relevant for linear course sequences like the Precalculus through Calculus course sequence. This project aims to test an integrated approach to increase success in Calculus 1 through co-requisite Precalculus instruction. The project will rapidly identify students who will likely benefit from precalculus corequisite instruction and provide them with this support. In doing so, the project will test a data-driven, quick-response strategy for helping students succeed in Calculus I and subsequent Calculus courses. If this approach is successful, it could provide Institutions of higher education with a practical and effective strategy to ensure that students have more equitable access to success in college-level mathematics courses. It is expected that this approach will be of particular benefit to undergraduates whose education has been severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. This three-year Engaged Student Learning Level I project at University of Alaska Fairbanks aims to implement an experimental academic intervention that will measure Precalculus content knowledge acquisition, success in Calculus I, and persistence to Calculus II for roughly 500 Calculus I students. A key focus of the project will be the implementation and evaluation of an experimental 2-credit co-requisite Precalculus course over four semesters. Through an experimental design, student cohorts with access to the intervention will be compared to historical cohorts with similar measures of academic preparation. The comparison will provide a multifaceted evaluation of the effectiveness of co-requisite instruction in support of the Calculus sequence and provide a rigorous test of whether co-requisite Precalculus instruction in support of Calculus 1 contributes to increasing student success in Calculus 1. Materials developed from the experiment, including identification protocols, curriculum materials, and statistical methods and analyses, will be publicly shared through a public project webpage. This project is funded by the NSF IUSE: EHR Program, which supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.  This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.