FOCUS: Sustainable Mathematics Successes.

Researchers have shown that college students who place three levels below their first credit-bearing mathematics course have a 10% pass rate (Bailey, 2009). Myra Snell showed, at Los Medanos in California, only 18% of the students starting two levels below credit-bearing mathematics passed (Hern, 2010). Snell helped to redefine this attrition problem by identifying its cause as the length of the DE course sequence. Using the "multiplication principle," (Hern, 2010, p. 2) Snell reasoned that even if course success rates increased to 75% and of those who succeeded 75% enrolled in the next course there would still be an attrition problem for students needing to take three DE mathematics courses. This is because by the time students advanced through their first credit-bearing mathematics course only 13% of the original group would have passed the course. Designed to address this attrition problem, the FOCUS Intervention provides students with more opportunity to succeed by providing them with an alternative route to enrolling in developmental and credit-bearing mathematics courses.The FOCUS ModelThe FOCUS (Fundamentals of Conceptual Understanding and Success) model is best represented by a three-legged stool as a way to visualize the interdependent relationship of the program components (see Figure 1). The seat of the stool, the credit-bearing course, is supported equally by Developmental Mathematics, Learning Support, and Academic Support Services and the rim of the stool showcases the use of research-based best practices, such as the Concrete-RepresentationalAbstract (CRA; The Access Center, 2004) model, deconstruct/reconstruct (Mireles, 2010) and cooperative learning groups. The credit-bearing course has been developed via a backwards design utilizing state and local mandatory objectives. Subsequently, a developmental mathematics course comprised of just-in-time curriculum is offered in tandem with the credit-bearing course. Perhaps the most novel aspect of the FOCUS model is the introduction of learning support-a three-part approach (realworld problems, hot topics, and QA they engaged in learning support in addition to mandatory participation in Academic Support Services or "wraparound services." Wrap-around services included weekly/monthly seminars, mentoring, and tutoring. To provide a holistic educational experience for the students, the curriculum and instruction were carefully coordinated and developed.Curriculum DesignFirst, the credit-bearing mathematics' scope and sequence was designed. The organization of the concepts provided an organizational structure to the ideas for the students and was a critical aspect to students' understanding of the mathematics. Another noteworthy point is that some ideas such as that of continuity were discussed from an intuitive notion since those concepts are not normally in College Algebra. The logistic function also exceeded traditional expectations for College Algebra. However, when the students gained a deeper understanding of a function they were able to organize the functional ideas accordingly, including additional families of functions. More recent iterations of the program include sequences and series and the binomial distribution function.Next, the developmental mathematics concepts and sequencing were chosen to support the content taught in the credit-bearing mathematics course. For example, prior to teaching solving systems of equations with matrices in College Algebra, the students were taught how to solve systems of equations using graphing, addition, and substitution methods in the developmental mathematics course. …