Lessons learned from an NSF pilot project on minority student retention

This paper is based on the results gathered from a pilot project on student retention funded by National Science Foundation (NSF) under its Instrumentation and Laboratory Improvement (ILI) program. Under this pilot project a Multimedia based Computer Assisted Learning Laboratory (MCALL) was developed at The University of Texas at Brownsville to study the effects of Multimedia based Computer Assisted Learning (CAL) on the existing low student retention rate in science and engineering technology for a predominantly minority student population. In order to achieve its goal, the project called for employing CAL software in a variety of science subjects including computer science. The author conducted a study on the effects of implementing CAL in a freshman level course and a junior level course. These two courses were selected because they attracted totally different types of students. This was done to investigate if CAL effects are general, or focused conductive only to a certain type of student population. This paper starts by describing the NSF pilot project, the focus of the author's research, and the CAL experiment. It then comprehensively presents the results of the pilot project, and the lessons learned thereof based on the performance of the students exposed to GAL.