KINGSVILLE (December 8, 2023) — Dr. Michael Wang earned his doctoral degree in educational leadership today during commencement ceremonies at Texas A&M University-Kingsville. His hard work paid off in another way, as his dissertation research was chosen for presentation at the prestigious American Educational Research Association conference in Philadelphia in April.
His paper Meta-Analysis of the Effectiveness of MyMathLab in College Algebra will be presented in a poster session titled Research Syntheses and Meta-Analyses in Education: Exemplar Studies and Methodological Guidance.
“A meta-analysis was used in my research to study how effective MyMathLab (MML), a computer-assisted math software, works overall in college algebra,” Wang said. “Essentially, a meta-analysis is a study of studies. This approach was chosen because it combines different samples from different primary studies in the literature that have already investigated the research topic.
“Conducting a meta-analysis naturally increases the sample size of participants and increases the statistical power of the study, which means more accurate generalizations can be made about the target population,” he added.
“The results of the meta-analysis yielded a significant effect favoring MyMathLab over traditional college algebra instruction with a moderately low amount of heterogeneity in true outcomes. The meta-analysis did reveal a slight advantage when MML was used to teach college algebra compared to using traditional methods alone.” Wang said.
Wang is currently an associate professor of math at Coastal Bend College in Kingsville. He taught for two years at Texas A&M-Kingsville. Before coming to Texas, Wang taught at Cal Poly, Pomona, Chapman University, Riverside City College, University of California, Riverside and Citrus College, all in California.
He earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and his master’s degree in applied mathematics from Cal Poly, Pomona.
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