Abstract

The number of undergraduate students enrolled in non-credit earned mathematical courses such as Beginning Algebra and Intermediate Algebra has increased in recent decades. Students who have unresolved algebra learning from high school face significant difficulties in college mathematics courses. Organizations such as The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics' (NCTM) published mathematics education standards based on the constructivist approach and encouraged the development of constructivist curricula. New technologies, such as adaptive learning systems, Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS), Intelligent Computer Assisted Instruction System (ICAI) or Computerized Adaptive Testing (CAT) are released and new teaching practices have been developed and adopted to help students gain conceptual understanding of mathematics and build their procedural fluency. The purpose of this study was to explore student learning outcomes and compare student attitudes, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness of two adaptive learning systems used alongside the work-and-walk-by orchestration to teach Intermediate Algebra at a large metropolitan research university. The participants of the study were all students enrolled in the only two sections of Intermediate Algebra in the semester in which the study occurred and who consented to have their data analyzed in the study. This dissertation study was a quantitative in nature and included two research questions. To answer the first research question, a repeated measure ANCOVA was conducted and found no statistically significant results between the control and the intervention group when controlling for the amount of time students spent in the work-and-walk-by orchestration (time in class), the time students spent working on the adaptive learning system (time on online platform), attitudes (AT), perceived ease of use (PE), perceived usefulness (PU), gender and ethnicity group. To answer the second research question, a MANCOVA was used as a statistical procedure and when controlling for the pre-test, it was found a positive statistical significance for students who used ALEKS compared to students who used Knewton Alta. Recommendations were made for future research when work-and-walk-by orchestration is used as well as different adaptive learning platforms.

Notes

If this is your thesis or dissertation, and want to learn how to access it or for more information about readership statistics, contact us at STARS@ucf.edu

Graduation Date

2022

Semester

Summer

Advisor

Safi, Farshid

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

College

College of Community Innovation and Education

Department

School of Teacher Education

Degree Program

Education; Math Education

Identifier

CFE0009267; DP0026871

URL

https://purls.library.ucf.edu/go/DP0026871

Language

English

Release Date

August 2025

Length of Campus-only Access

3 years

Access Status

Doctoral Dissertation (Campus-only Access)

Download

Restricted to the UCF community until August 2025; it will then be open access.

Share

COinS