When I first arrived at WOU, I was involved in a project examining how effective a Biology Placement Test was a improving success in BI 211 Principles of Biology, the first course in our 3-course introductory sequence for Biology majors. We found that the placement test was good at predicting success in BI 211. We used our research to change the prerequisite requirements for BI 211, but it got me thinking…do students who pass the BI 211 prerequisites succeed in BI 211 because the prerequisite helped or because students who do well in one class tend to do well in other classes?

I did some preliminary work that showed that grades in BI 102 were good predictors of grades in BI 211, and grades in BI 211 were good predictors of grades in BI 212, etc. I reviewed a bunch of published literature that had similar findings. That all seems to support the idea that prerequisites matter. However, what was missing from the literature–and my first analysis–was the question “How well does the grade in any class predict the grade in another class?” When I added that element to my analysis, it turned out that randomly selected classes often were as predictive as prerequisites.

Peer-reviewed Publications

Boomer SM, Baltzley MJ, Poole AZ, Latham-Scott KL, Poole JP. 2017. An in-house biology placement test improves success in majors introductory biology. American Biology Teacher. 79 (9): 720-727. https://doi.org/10.1525/abt.2017.79.9.720 PDF

Manuscripts in Prep

Baltzley MJ. Most prerequisites have minimal, if any, impact on student performance in subsequent courses.