The effect of a supplemental multiple modalities learning program on the academic success of student-athletes at Florida Atlantic University

The purpose of this study was to determine if student athletes at an urban university who participated in a supplemental multiple modalities sensitive instructional program experienced greater academic success at the end of their first semester than a control group of student athletes who received traditional instruction in Introduction to Academic Skills (SLS 1501). The subjects were drawn from the 1997 Summer Orientation and Academic review (S.O.A.R.) enrollment at Florida Atlantic University. The researcher randomly assigned 23 at-risk student athletes to the control group and 27 at-risk student athletes to the treatment group. The treatment group received academic skills instruction supplemented with multiple modalities sensitive instructional techniques congruent with the methodologies and philosophies of accelerated learning. All subjects completed a demographic survey on the first day of class. On the second day of class, the treatment group completed the Learning Style Inventory (LSI)/Productivity Environmental Preferences Survey (PEPS), a comprehensive assessment of an individual's learning style. The results of these surveys, in conjunction with the students' daily program evaluations, were used to determine the best, most conducive plan for classroom activities and teaching techniques. A 2 x 2 factorial ANOVA was performed to determine the existence of a main effect for instructional method on retention, GPA, and fall enrollment. ANCOVA was performed to determine the effect of the variables above the extraneous covariates. Neither procedure resulted in any statistical significance. The discriminant analysis of 50 unweighted cases revealed that the model is overall 86% accurate for both the original grouped cases and the cross-validated cases. The model is 90.7% accurate for predicting group membership for retention and 51.7% accurate for predicting group membership for no retention. This is an initial study which provides adult educators with data and reproducible methodology in order to further explore and improve teaching techniques for student athletes.