Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

A popular new instructional model designed to deliver instruction to students, the Emporium Model, replaces traditional lectures with interactive, instructional software and on-demand personalized assistance. Students spend much of their class time in a computer lab learning the course content online at their own pace, with faculty serving more as tutors who deliver individualized instruction as opposed to lecturers.

This study evaluates the adoption of the Emporium Model in developmental and gateway college-level math courses at public two-year and four-year colleges in Tennessee. Using six years of student-level enrollment and transcript data provided by the Tennessee Board of Regents combined with institutional IPEDS data, I examine whether the use of technology-centered instruction in lower-level developmental math courses results in higher course pass rates and persistence rates for students than the traditional lecture-based version of these courses. While much of the prior research on the effects of technology-centered instruction has applied to students from a wide range of academic backgrounds, the primary objective of this paper is to discern whether technology-centered instruction is helpful (or harmful) for academically underprepared students.

Using a difference-in-differences analytic model, I find that, for students attending a two-year college, enrolling in a developmental math course taught via instructional technology appears to lead to lower grades in their first college-level math course, as compared to students whose developmental math instruction was more traditional in format. Students who experienced the Emporium Model also report earning fewer total credits in their early years of enrollment. Among students attending four-year colleges, the adoption of the Emporium Model resulted in more college-level credits completed in the first, second, and third year, as well as higher rates of degree attainment.

These findings suggest that students at four-year institutions may benefit more from the “work-at-your-own-pace”, technology-centered teaching than those with a more traditional instructional format. The findings from this research are particularly relevant in education policy circles today, as increasing numbers of states and systems move to technology-centered curricular for their lowest-level courses.