by Daniel Javier Berumen
Recently the college’s Environmental Affairs Committee began the task of identifying ways to measure the number of students enrolled in courses that included material focusing on environmental sustainability. After much deliberation they developed these local definitions:
• Sustainability Focused Courses are all courses that have been included in the Environmental Science, Environmental Studies, Solar Photovoltaic Installation, Energy Efficiency, and Resource and Recycling Management Associate Degrees and Certificates of Achievement AND have a Student Learning Outcome (SLO) mapped to Institutional Learning Outcome (ILO) #4: Applied knowledge and valuation of the physical world.
• Sustainability Related courses are any other courses included in the Environmental Science, Environmental Studies, Solar Photovoltaic Installation, Energy Efficiency, and Resource and Recycling Management Associate Degrees and Certificates of Achievement OR all other courses with a SLO mapped to ILO #4.
Institutional Research was asked to collect a snapshot of data using these definitions for the Fall 2011 semester to serve as a baseline measure for future terms. The totals are in the table below:
As more input is gathered, the definition and the data collected will be refined to better encompass all the important efforts the faculty, staff and students are doing in creating a sustainability focused campus.
Earlier this year, the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) released a study on the closing of the California Post-secondary Education Commission (CPEC) entitled “Improving Higher Education Oversight”.
In 2008, CPEC was assigned by the state Legislature four priority functions, which according to the report were:
“(1) reviewing and assessing proposals for new public campuses and facilities, (2) reviewing and assessing proposals to create new programs at the public higher education segments, (3) serving as the designated state educational agency to carry out federal education programs and, (4) collecting and managing higher education data.”
As noted in the report, in recent years CPEC’s most valued function was their data reporting. For researchers, CPEC provided valuable data on student migration from high school to the community college, CSU and UC systems. Many community colleges, including SMC, used CPEC’s query function to report the number of transfers from the college to the CSU and UC system. They also provided data counts of awards and gradates for specific schools, districts and regional areas.
For the 2011-2012 California Budget Bill, the governor’s office eliminated funding for CPEC. The data warehouse that the agency had amassed was transferred to the California Community College Chancellor’s Office (CCC). The old data is still available online, but future collections and analysis are on hold as administrative and privacy concerns are hashed out.
In the meantime, our office was forced to update our online documents using data that was supplied directly by the CSU and UC systems. While we were able to supply our visitors with overall counts of transfers, we could no longer update more detailed data about transfers to the UC system by ethnicity.
For a look at the recommendations that the LAO lays out for moving forward and improving higher education oversight in California, please check out the report here.
by Daniel Berumen
A common request our office recieves is to analyze the number of students that the college “retains”. Stakeholders are interested in measuring the number of students who return and continue their education at the college. There are two different ways in which we categorize the percentage of students that stay enrolled at SMC, the retention rate and the persistence rate.
The retention rate measures the percentage of students who stay enrolled in a specific course through the entire semester. By dividing the number of students that recieved any grade other than a Withdrawal (W), by the total number of enrollments in the course, we get the retention rate.
The persistence rate measures the percentage of students who return and re-enroll at the college in the following semester or academic year. For example, if there are 100 students enrolled in a fall 2010 MATH 84 course, and 65 of them enrolled in a credit course in the spring 2011 semester, the fall to spring persistence rate is 65%.
By Daniel Berumen
Supplemental Instruction (SI) is an academic assistance program that uses peer-assisted collaborative learning strategies in group sessions to help students be successful in specific courses. SI sessions are regularly scheduled, informal review sessions in which students engage in interactive study groups, discuss course content, learn and integrate study skills, participate in learning activities, and take mock exams.
The IR office provided analyses of the impact of supplemental instruction on student success in math and English courses. Course success data reveal that the course success rates of students who participated in at least one SI session were significantly higher (59.2%) than the rates of non-participants (41.0%). The number of SI sessions attended seemed to be positively related to course success; students who attended at least five sessions succeeded at much higher rates (69.4%) when compared with non-participants (41%) and those who attended fewer SI sessions (52.2%). And finally, students who participated in five or more SI sessions in English or math had larger percentages of enrollments in higher level courses (68.2% and 53.0%, respectively) than those that participated in fewer sessions of SI (60.0% and 44.0% ), and those that did not participate in SI (55.7% and 33.9%)
Based on the data and influence of SMC leadership, the college has decided to not only institutionalize the SI program (move from grant funds to general funds), but to expand the program to include science courses.
For which we can only respond:
By Hannah Alford
A federal committee of the Department of Education has been charged with developing a set of measures to assess the success of community colleges. The members of the Committee on Measures of Student Success met earlier this month to pound out an earlier draft of recommendations. While they could not reach a final agreement on a few measures, the following article provides a highlight of the proposed measures:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/09/07/education_department_committee_weighs_in_on_measuring_community_college_success
Because of the diverse missions they have, it is challenging to measure the success of community colleges. We serve a wide range of students who come to the college for various educational purposes, including students who wish to transfer to a four-year institution, students who want to earn a career certificate or update job skills, and those who wish to improve their English and math skills. Therefore, solely relying on measures such as the graduation rate would not accurately assess student success.
Measuring Student Success at SMC: Given the limitations of the current measures of student success, the college has been collecting other types of data to measure student success. For example, over the summer, the Career Technical Education programs administered a survey of its former students to assess gains in employment, wages, and other benefits. By assessing these new measures, the programs will be able to assess the students whose goals were to take a few classes to gain or update employment skills in addition to those with a certificate or degree goal. The office is currently in the process of collecting and analyzing the survey responses so stay tuned for the findings!
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If you have any general questions about the Research Matters blog, please contact Daniel Berumen at berumen_daniel@smc.edu
By Ani Aharonian
Traditional methods of measuring student success include degree and certificate counts, however this method fails to consider students whose goal is not to earn a degree or certificate. The Business department recognized this shortcoming and decided to utilize a different method of measuring success to compliment the more traditional measures. They have surveyed students taking business courses about what goals students were trying to fulfill by enrolling in the course, whether the course helped them to meet that goal, and whether they are satisfied with the course.
A total of 1,572 students were surveyed during the fall 2010 semester from online and on-ground classes in 27 courses. The findings of the survey reveal that students enroll in business courses for a wide variety of reasons, not limited to earning an associate degree or a certificate. About four in ten students reported goals such as obtaining new career skills and self-improvement. Therefore, surveying students about whether the courses they enrolled in met their needs helps to provide a more complete picture of whether the business department is successfully serving its students.
The survey data confirm that the business department is indeed meeting the needs of their students; Nine in ten survey respondents indicated that they were satisfied with the course in which they had enrolled and 87% of respondents reported that the course helped them to achieve their educational goal.
By Daniel Berumen
One of the more valuable tools that the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office (CCCCO) has produced is their Data Mart website and portal. The site offers visitors the ability to query their large databases for a myriad of information on all community colleges in the state. This includes the ability to view a school’s program success rates, award counts and student demographic information. The site is also home to the Transfer Velocity Calculator, which aims to estimate two, three, four, five, and six year transfer rates for first time students enrolled in the California community colleges.
The Data Mart is updated a couple of months after the end of each term, and it currently includes information up to and including the Spring 2011 semester. To access the Data mart, click here.
In the near future, the site will get a complete makeover. A new, more user-friendly interface will be accompanied by access to more data queries. A preview of the new site is available here .
By Ani Aharonian
The Bridging Research, Information, and Culture (BRIC) project is funded by the Hewlett Foundation with the “general goal to help community college faculty, staff, and administrators discover or recapture passionate, thoughtful inquiry, and then use it to help students.” As part of the project, BRIC has created a series of Inquiry Guides to serve as tools for colleges.
The featured BRIC Inquiry Guide - - A Model for Building Information Capacity and Promoting a Culture of Inquiry — outlines how to develop, implement, and evaluate the effectiveness of an evidence-based infrastructure.
An evidence-based infrastructure is necessary to facilitate and encourage the communication, collaboration, and dialogue that is key to the application and usage of data. Broad involvement in the development of such infrastructure allows for a more thorough identification of challenges and gaps in information through cross-departmental/program collaboration which richly rewards the college with an infrastructure that is tailored to the needs, priorities, and culture of the institution.
The model presented consists of five inter-linked components that foster collaborative inquiry opportunities.
To learn more, please click here.
