Case Study: Fresno City College achieves higher pass rates and improved ACS exam performance with McGraw Hill ALEKS

Fresno City College - Customer Case Study

Fresno City College, a large, diverse community college in California, faced a persistent challenge in its Introductory Chemistry course: retention was high (~86%) but student success (C or better) hovered around the low 50% range, and many students were not engaging with the prior online homework system (34% of assignments scored zero). Professor Catherine Uvarov led a pilot of McGraw Hill’s adaptive learning system, ALEKS, to address gaps in mastery and retention across a student body that includes many returning adults and first-generation college students.

McGraw Hill’s ALEKS was implemented as the online homework platform (15% of course grade) with instructor strategies—twice-weekly objectives, periodic catch-up assignments, and required student notebooks—plus use of ALEKS reports for targeted intervention. The result: measurable gains in mastery and assessment performance (overall ACS percentiles rose from a previous average of 45.8 to about 50.9 in Fall 2018 and 54.9 in Spring 2019), a rise in students scoring above the 50th percentile (from 43.2% previously to 56.7% Fall 2018 and 62.5% Spring 2019), and an increase in C-or-better rates from roughly 53.5% pre-ALEKS to 64.2% by Fall 2019—demonstrating McGraw Hill’s ALEKS improved engagement, grades, and retention of learned material.

Fresno City College

Catherine Uvarov

Professor