Mathematics Bridging Education Using an Online, Adaptive E-Tutorial: Preparing International Students for Higher Education

Introduction

This contribution focuses on a type of education that is referred to in different ways: bridging education, developmental education, or remedial education. Whatever the label, the type of education subject of this contribution is education directed to ease the transition from high school to college and to improve the success rates in the first year of bachelor studies. In the Netherlands, the main advising council for educational affairs, the Educational Council of the Netherlands, has stressed the importance of bridging education in a range of studies and recommendations (Onderwijsraad 2006, 2007, 2008). The dating of these advices makes evident that Dutch interest in bridging education beyond the institute of open education is recent. Nation wide projects, supported by SURF, the Dutch collaborative organisation for higher education institutions and research institutes aimed at innovations in ICT, run from 2004 onwards. Some of these Dutch initiatives have acted as pioneer for European projects, indicating that interest in (continental) Europe is also of very recent date. EU projects M.A.S.T.E.R., S.T.E.P. and MathBridge collect experiences with bridging education with a specific European focus: that of internationalisation of European higher education. This internationalization development is going very fast; for example, some Dutch universities located at short distance of country borders, like the case elaborated in this article, the share of international students in the inflow of new bachelor students has risen to 75% (mostly from continental Europe). Although most of these students are not very international in terms of the geographical distance they have to bridge, there is certainly a huge diversity with respect to high school education they have received. Secondary school systems, even in neighbouring countries as Netherlands, Germany and Belgium, are very different, producing strong heterogeneity in knowledge and skills of prospective students. That heterogeneity brings about a strong need for bridging education in the transfer from secondary to university education, which adds to the more national focused needs for bridging education that have existed for some time: to bridge knowledge and skills deficiencies in areas that are part of the national secondary school program, but are not sufficiently mastered by students transferring to university.