| The Texas Academic Skills Program (TASP) was created by the Texas Legislature in 1987 as an early assessment and academic support program for all students who wished to enter Texas public institutions of higher education. It was mandated that students must take the TASP test to determine if their reading, writing, and mathematics skills indicate that they will be successful in college. Students must pass all three sections of the TASP test before proceeding to upper-level courses (Texas Academic Skills Program Test, 1996).; In order to manage this State-mandated remediation, institutions of higher education attempted to institute in-house programs that would not only fulfill the State requirements but also insure student success. This has led to the formation of course-based as well as non course-based remediation programs. Few of these programs have been assessed to any large degree (Stahl, Simpson and Hayes, 1991).; The purpose of this study was to describe the comparative effect of three different types of reading skills development instruction-computer-based instruction, print-based instruction, and both computer-based and print-based instruction-on the reading achievement of developmental reading college students as measured by their performance on the TASP test. The study was designed to test the following non-directional research hypothesis: There is a statistically significant difference between the reading achievement of developmental reading college students who have participated in computer-based reading skills development instruction, the reading achievement of developmental reading college students who have participated in print-based reading skills development instruction, and the reading achievement of developmental reading college students who have participated in both computer-based and print-based reading skills development instruction.; A quasi-experimental research design, a convenience sample of 429 developmental reading college students, archival data, and analysis of covariance procedures were used to test the research hypothesis. The ninety-five percent confidence level (p < .05) was used as the criterion level for determining statistical significance, the Tukey gap test was used to make pairwise comparisons when a statistically significant F ratio was obtained, and an effect size of one-third of a standard deviation (Delta = 0.33) was used as the criterion for determining educational significance.; The non-directional research hypothesis was accepted indicating that the reading achievement of developmental reading college students who have participated in both computer-based and print-based reading skills development instruction is statistically significantly higher than the reading achievement of developmental reading college students who have participated in print-based reading skills development instruction. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
