Student success in first year general education courses has historically been a challenge at our university. This presentation will introduce the strategic initiatives and specific approaches we have used that have led to increased student success in general education courses throughout the last year.
We will first discuss the process that the general education leadership team uses to impact student performance in courses. The process begins with a data review to identify high risk courses and to look at potential areas for improvement. Once the data is reviewed, we present our findings to key stakeholders to discuss potential initiatives to improve various success rate metrics. Following the stakeholder meeting, we identify initiative leaders to execute the initiative and identify success metrics, both in collaboration with all of the necessary stakeholders. During the implementation of the initiatives, we review data and elicit feedback from key stakeholders, affording us the opportunity to formatively evaluate the initiative to make changes and/or determine future iterations of the initiative. The concepts of collaboration and feedback are important element of a successful execution of this process. To illustrate, we will review the approaches we used for four high-risk courses 1) Student Success 2) English Composition, 3) Introductory Science, and 4) Introductory Science Lab. For Student Success and English Composition, we established collaborative initiatives with the Student Success team and faculty. For the Introductory science course and its accompanying lab course, we had collaboration among full-time faculty, adjunct faculty (serving as subject matter experts) and the course development team. We will provide details of these initiatives and share the results, including specific metrics related to pass rate and retention rate across all four courses. The increases in both pass rate and retention rate over a one year period are included below:
Increased Pass Rate over 12 months:
Student Success: 18.2%
English Composition: 9.8%
Introductory Science: 9.75%
Introductory Science Lab: 10.6%
Increased Retention Rate over 12 months:
Student Success: 6.4%
English Composition: 4.9%
Introductory Science: 2.5%
Introductory Science Lab: 6.1%
Following the review of the collaborative initiatives across these four courses, we will explain how the approach we created for high stake general education courses is also being utilized in other areas within our institution. In addition, we will present how the approach we used in the General Education department can be adopted and implemented at other institutions. This presentation intends to offer insight into how we have worked to lead change through specific initiatives. These initiatives are considered innovative for our institution, and the results have shown the positive impact that this targeted work has had on student success.