Keywords
motivation, historically black colleges and universities, African-American college students, developmental education, learning communities
Abstract
It is believed that purposefully constructed learning communities can have academic, social, and motivational advantages for its participants. In an effort to improve graduation and retention of students, some HBCUs have sought new ways to construct learning environments that are conducive to the learning styles of students of color. This study sought to investigate the impact of a learning community on pre-college level students standardized test scores and final grades. The Repeated Measures One-Way ANOVA revealed a statistically significant difference in COMPASS score change between groups with the comparison group demonstrating a greater change than did the learning community group. In addition, Analysis of Covariance test was used to answer the research question regarding differences in final grades between the two groups. After adjusting for the COMPASS pre-test, there was no difference in final grades between groups. Using the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ), a Likert-type scale based on the Eccles et al. (1983) expectancy-value motivational model, three components of students motivation were investigated: task value, extrinsic value, and test anxiety. The Independent Samples t-Test was used to compare the means. There was a statistically significant mean difference in extrinsic value with the students enrolled in traditionally taught pre-college level English courses demonstrating more extrinsic motivation. There was a statistically significant mean difference in task value with students enrolled in the learning community demonstrating higher task value than the comparison group. Finally, there was a statistically significant mean difference in affect with students in the learning community group demonstrating more test anxiety. Conclusions and recommendations were presented for future research.
Notes
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Graduation Date
2010
Advisor
Kaplan, Jeffrey
Degree
Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)
College
College of Education
Department
Educational Studies
Degree Program
Education
Format
application/pdf
Identifier
CFE0002992
URL
http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0002992
Language
English
Release Date
April 2011
Length of Campus-only Access
None
Access Status
Doctoral Dissertation (Open Access)
STARS Citation
White, Jontoinette, "The Impact Of Motivation On Pre-college Level Students Enrolled In A Learning Community At An Historically Black College/univers" (2010). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 4311.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/4311