Fig 1.
Change in student retention (%DFW grades) and student success (%ABC grades) as a function of the academic year.
Left panel: The DFW rates in the Fall (red circle) and Spring (green diamond) semesters. Right panel: The %ABC in the Fall (red circle) and Spring (green diamond) semesters. Different placement methodologies are shown with double-headed arrows, such as the ACS Toledo Exam, ALEKS, and Chemistry Placement Exam with ALEKS. The dotted lines represent the linear regression for each data set, red for Fall and green for Spring semesters; the equations are %DFW = −1.13 × year + 45.33 with R2 = 0.6672 for the Fall semesters and %DFW = −1.27 × year + 52.69 with R2 = 0.6969 for the Spring semester. The equations are %ABC = 0.39 × year + 77.06 with R2 = 0.2747 for the Fall semesters %ABC = 0.58 × year + 69.46 with R2 = 0.4109 for Spring semester. In semesters where PLTL was not used are shown with filled squares.
Fig 2.
Progression of exam scores in each year within the cohorts.
Bar diagrams displaying the change in the slopes of the scatter plots of exams taken by early (left panel) and late (right panel) cohorts. In each case, the errors in the slopes are also included. The diagram demonstrates that continued engagement in PLTL improved exam performance.
Fig 3.
Progression of %DFW and %ABC grades separated by URM and non-URM students.
The %ABC (filled triangle) and %DFW (filled circles) grades for each semester for URM (blue) and non-URM (orange) students. The data were fitted with a linear regression model in each category. For the Spring semesters, %ABC of URM students = 0.0104 × year + 0.5494 with R2 = 0.4604; %ABC of non-URM students = 0.0060 × year + 0.708 with R2 = 0.4832; %DFW of URM students = −0.0177 × year + 0.6998 with R2 = 0.6489; %DFW of non-URM students = −0.0126 × year + 0.05002 with R2 = 0.7344. For the Fall semesters, %ABC grades of URM students = 0.0070 × year + 65.42 with R2 = 0.2334; %ABC grades of non-URM students = 0.0043 × year + 0.7772 with R2 = 0.3222; %DFW of URM students = −0.0167 × year + 0.6277 with R2 = 0.5513; %DFW of non-URM students = −0.0112 × year + 0.4344 with R2 = 0.6886.
Table 1.
URM/non-URM and Gender performance gaps in selected metrics.
Table 2.
URM/non-URM Gap changes in student success and completion metrics.
Fig 4.
Student success and retention separated by gender and URM status.
Comparison of %ABC and %DFW disaggregated by self-reported binary gender (female and male) for non-URM (left panel) and URM (right panel) students.