Since August 2009, I have had students come and see me (as division chair) to ask about retaking the placement exam to get into a higher course. During these last 5 years, I have always had the students go to the math videos created by math faculty on the EMCC placement website. I also told these students to go to www.khanacademy.org and use this free online resource to assist them. In every case, students placed higher on the placement exam (unfortunately, I did not keep a tally for the number of students this impacted). Thus, this semester, I decided to use Khan Academy in my MAT091 class to see if it could help students place higher. By the 3rd week, 4/25 students retook the placement exam and were able to transfer to a higher level math class. Three placed into MAT121 and one placed into MAT142.
This information will be shared with the West Valley Think Tank, my division, and the Developmental Education Committee at EMCC. I hope to continue to help students place into the correct courses by helping them study BEFORE they take the placement exam.