Student Success: Faculty Make a Difference

As faculty members, how can we in the classroom help to increase postsecondary student success and to lower student dropout rates? Needless to say, it’s a difficult objective with almost endless obstacles. But it’s a worthy and essential resolve that many argue is necessary to ensure our nation’s economic health and vitality. Among the facts commonly cited by organizations ranging from the Association of American Colleges & Universities to the American Association of Community Colleges (Pathways to College Network, 2007) are these:

• “Approximately 54% of all new job openings in the 2004-2014 decade are projected to be filled by workers with education beyond high school.”

• “The U.S. still has the largest percentage of college-educated persons in the 55 to 64 year old age group among developed countries. But this group is nearing retirement. For the younger age group, aged 25 to 34, the United States has slipped to seventh place, having been surpassed by countries that include Korea, Sweden, Belgium, and Ireland.”

In 1985, then-AACC-President Dale Parnell wrote that 70 percent of high school graduates did not plan to attain baccalaureate degrees (Risley, 2007). Today, there is essentially no change in the ‘neglected majority’ figures! In 2005, the portion of the adult U.S. population that has not completed a baccalaureate degree was at 65-75 percent (Beebe & Walleri, 2005). So how can we help our students succeed—whether they’re from low-income backgrounds, or from underrepresented minority groups, or from the returning older adults, or from the ‘neglected majority’?

There are many efforts geared toward the goals of increasing student success and graduation rates, but this article concentrates on a couple of approaches where faculty members are the keys to making a difference. The first approach focuses on learning strategies for identified difficult courses; the second approach focuses on strategies for identified students at risk.

IDENTIFIED DIFFICULT COURSES

Programs that identify difficult courses often use peer cooperative learning pedagogies like collaborative learning, cooperative learning or learning communities. Within these programs, two course models predominate: one model provides adjunct support through outside-of-class activities; and a second model shares a common, transformed learning environment for all enrolled students in a course (Arendale, 2004). These programs tend to avoid the remedial stigma often attached to traditional developmental or assistance programs since they identify high-risk courses rather than identifying high-risk students. The learning strategies used in these programs are based on considerable research, and they have demonstrated significant student outcomes, including increasing student persistence towards graduation. While not all-inclusive, the following is a list of peer cooperative learning program models that warrant further investigation by interested faculty affairs committees. These are listed in order of likelihood of improved student outcomes, with ESP, PLTL, and VSI ranked “High”; and ALG, SLA, and SI ranked “Above Average” (Arendale, 2004):

- Emerging Scholars Program (ESP)

- Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL)

- Video-based Supplemental Instruction (VSI)

- Accelerated Learning Groups (ALGs)

- Structured Learning Assistance ( SLA)

- Supplemental Instruction (SI)

IDENTIFIED STUDENTS AT RISK

One approach used to work with students identified as at-risk is intrusive faculty advising that takes individual student needs into consideration and focuses on matching interventions and services to those needs. It typically involves faculty initiating contact with students at risk of not succeeding, by making a minimum of one contact per semester, usually during the first few weeks of a semester, documenting contact details, and continuing to study the data about possible students at risk. Finally, a series of focus-group discussions are held to elicit additional perceptions and experiences of the at-risk students. The data from these activities can be used to help retain students through graduation.

An excellent study of intrusive faculty advising is described by Joshua S. Smith from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. This study concluded that “Faculty advisors play an important role in the transition to college for nontraditional students, and both could benefit greatly from additional training in developmental and intrusive advising approaches” (Smith, 2007).

The common thread between the above two strategies is faculty. As faculty, we want our students to succeed; and if they are to succeed, we must be involved. There is much evidence about students benefitting from engagement with faculty—inside and outside of the classroom (Wasley, 2006). Regardless of the strategies or programs we choose to help students succeed, they will require funding and significant support from administration, student affairs, staff and faculty members; and one approach isn’t going to fit all. Today’s students are diverse; and diverse approaches by faculty can make a difference in their success.

- Yvonne L. Shafer

For more information on how learning communities are being used in our system, check out the session Teaching across Disciplines: The Benefits of Learning Communities at the Realizing Student Potential/ITeach conference!

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CTL Resources for Faculty

Teaching in the Disciplines

Crossroads in Developmental Math at Normandale

Normandale Community College faculty members Christopher Ennis and Thomas Sundquist received an Initiative to Promote Excellence Student Learning (IPESL) grant to conduct this project. The following is adapted by Christopher Ennis from the IPESL project final report.

The Mathematics department at Normandale Community College was the recipient of an Initiative to Promote Excellence in Student Learning (IPESL) grant during the spring semester 2007. The grant provided over $80,000 of faculty release time to analyze, brainstorm and develop specific procedures and materials for use in our curriculum. Our project, “Crossroads - Improving Access to College-level Mathematics” consisted of four components, called “Goals” tackled by four teams of two faculty members per team

Goal 1: Better serve entry level students in developmental mathematics and shorten the sequence of developmental mathematics courses students have to take. This was accomplished by partnering with Bloomington Adult Education to transfer much of our lowest level course (Basic Math) to their SHAPE program, and redesigning our Pre Algebra course to accommodate students who previously would have just barely missed placement into Pre Algebra. Preliminary results from this redesigned course have been encouraging.

Goal 2: Improve student success and retention in Elementary and Intermediate Algebra classes taught in our math center. A math center approach offers a great deal of flexibility and support for students. But the very flexibility that is so attractive to students often allows them to withdraw or disappear too easily. An extensive analysis of data over the preceding seven years was undertaken to identify procedural changes (e.g. increased student-faculty interaction) that could improve specific benchmarks of success (e.g. test and course completion rates, course success rate). These changes, implemented fall 2007, have produced modest, but significant improvements.

Goal 3: Prepare students for certain college-level courses ( Introductory Statistics, Mathematics for Liberal Arts, Mathematics for Education, and Finite Mathematics), by providing a single pre-requisite developmental mathematics course. Prior to the creation of this course, Survey of Algebra, which will be first offered summer 2008, students heading into these courses had to satisfy the same multi-sequence menu of developmental courses as those heading for calculus. With a relatively low prerequisite of Pre Algebra, this course is expected to provide a one semester fast track to college level mathematics for a significant number of students.

Goal 4: Increase the number of students placing into college-level mathematics and decrease the number of developmental mathematics classes that students must take. Currently more than 70% of students place below college-level mathematics. But some of these, who have a substantial part of the requisite skill set, just barely miss! A two week “modularized” summer bridge course, addressing specific shortcomings and permitting participants to re-take the placement exam, and possibly place into college level, has been developed to reduce the percentage. Exactly such a course will be implemented summer of 2008.

For more information about Normandale’s IPESL project contact Christopher.Ennis or attend their session at the upcoming RSP/ITeach conference.

-Martin Springborg