Analysis of the Impact of Participation in a Summer Bridge Program on Mathematics Course Performance by First-Semester Engineering Students

As part of an NSF-supported project, a summer bridge program for incoming engineering and computer science freshmen was conducted each summer between 2009 and 2012. The primary purpose of this program was to improve the mathematics course placement for incoming students whose initial placement as determined by a math placement examination was below Calculus I. The students retake the university's math placement examination at the end of the bridge program to determine if they may enroll into a more advanced mathematics course. The immediate goal of the program is to improve the math placement of the students. However, it is just as important in evaluating the success of the program to consider the performance of the students in their Fall semester math courses. The mathematics portion of the bridge program centers on using the ALEKS software package for targeted, self-guided learning. The program took place exclusively in an on-campus format, and also featured a required residential component and additional engineering activities for the students. The program's duration was 4 weeks, and students were expected to improve their math placement by at least one semester. It is expected that improving their math placement will reduce the student's time-to-graduation, which should in turn improve retention rates and eventually graduation rates. Data from the four cohorts have been collected and analyzed to judge the effectiveness of the program with respect to both improving the students' math placement and the students' performance in future math courses. A lower percentage of students (69%) improved their math course placement in the 2009 cohort, but all categories of bridge program students performed as well as the class average in the Fall 2009 semester. For the 2010-2012 cohorts, students succeeded at improving their math placement at a higher rate (83%-88%). Students who have placed into Calculus I through the bridge program have successfully completed Calculus I at a rate similar to all students in the course in the Fall semester. However, the results for students who placed into College Algebra after the bridge program are more mixed. As a result, while the bridge program is clearly beneficial to many students, it is likely that additional interventions are needed to further help students who do not place into Calculus I even with a bridge program.