Absence of conflict of interest.
Citation
Henderson, T. F. (2017). Impact of the Accelerate You! instructional model on student success. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Murray State University, Murray, KY.
Highlights
- The study’s objective was to examine the effects of the Accelerate You! (AY!) program on academic persistence.
- The study used a nonexperimental design to compare the outcomes of AY! program participants to a comparison group. Using academic records, the author tested for group differences in semester-to-semester persistence.
- The study found no significant relationships between AY! program participation and academic persistence.
- The quality of causal evidence presented in this report is low because the author did not ensure that the groups being compared were similar before the intervention. This means we are not confident that the estimated effects are attributable to Accelerate You!; other factors are likely to have contributed.
Intervention Examined
The Accelerate You! (AY!) program
Features of the Intervention
The Accelerate You! (AY!) program is a model of the Accelerating Opportunities initiative. The goal of the AY! program is to increase academic success for adult community college students in need of developmental education. The program incorporates accelerated learning, moving students into credit courses and eliminating developmental coursework while providing student support structures. Supports include weekly tutoring and online math modules during the first semester to teach and reinforce math skills. Success coaches act as team teachers in the math and technical classes and as tutors in the weekly tutoring sessions. The program also includes a first year experience course in the first semester to support the college transition. Adult community college students who were enrolled in the Applied Technology program and who had not met placement test benchmarks into college level math were eligible for the study.
Features of the Study
This nonexperimental study was conducted at West Kentucky Community and Technical College, a medium-sized community college in Paducah, Kentucky. The author examined academic records from three courses (Industrial Maintenance Electrical Principles, Basic Electricity, and Technical Mathematics) to determine patterns in semester-to-semester persistence. Students who were enrolled in those three courses in the years prior to AY! implementation were used as the comparison group. The author used chi-square statistics to examine differences between the groups.
Findings
Education and skills gain
- The study did not find a significant relationship between participation in the AY! program and semester-to-semester persistence.
Considerations for Interpreting the Findings
The study did not include information on pre-intervention characteristics of treatment and comparison groups and did not include any controls in the analysis. Preexisting differences between the groups could account for the lack of program impact.
The author noted that the comparison groups’ experiences might not have differed from the treatment group. Students who were enrolled in the three courses in the years prior to AY! implementation served as the comparison group. However, some of the comparison group students were participants in a similar program at the time they were enrolled in the courses.
Causal Evidence Rating
The quality of causal evidence presented in this report is low because the author did not ensure that the groups being compared were similar before the intervention. This means we are not confident that the estimated effects are attributable to Accelerate You!; other factors are likely to have contributed.