Getting to the Heart of Student Success: New CCSSE Report Released - November 15th, 2010

College completion matters - but, while 84 percent of community college students indicate that their goal is to complete an associate degree, fewer than half have attained one six years after entering college.  Addressing that issue, a new University of Texas at Austin report argues that the escalating national push for more college degrees will produce the desired impacts on America’s economy and society only if college completion reflects real and lasting learning.

The quality of teaching in community colleges is a critical component of a college completion campaign, but as education budgets are slashed across the country and more students enroll at community colleges, the institutions and their faculties are facing larger class sizes, increased numbers of part-time instructors, reduced resources for professional development, and in some places, furlough days or lower pay.  In these circumstances, what can community colleges do to promote effective teaching, use of evidence-based effective educational practices — and consequently, meaningful learning? 

Responses to that question are set forth in the report released by the Center for Community College Student Engagement, part of the Community College Leadership Program at The University of Texas at Austin. Entitled “The Heart of Student Success: Teaching, Learning and College Completion,” the report highlights key findings from the 2010 cohort of the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE), the 2010 Community College Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (CCFSSE) and the Survey of Entering Student Engagement (SENSE). 

Center Director Kay McClenney says that, “While summits are clearly important, policy papers are critical, and changes in institutional culture are fundamental, graduation rates simply will not increase unless we attend with equal urgency to what goes on between teachers and their students.”

The new report offers data about the quality of community college students’ educational experiences, often contrasted with the perceptions of faculty, and describes how institutions across the country are enacting strategies that strengthen learning and, consequently, improve students’ chances for earning high-quality college degrees. 

“It’s really a straightforward proposition,” says McClenney.  “We have to invest in faculty work to invent or learn about effective educational practices, deploy them in classrooms of all kinds — whether virtual or face-to-face — and then bring them to scale.”

FOUR STRATEGIES TO PROMOTE LEARNING AND COLLEGE COMPLETION

Community colleges typically serve a diverse student population with varying levels of academic preparation.  While not all community college students aim to complete a certificate or degree, the data show a sizeable gap between the percentage of those who want to and those who actually do.  Among CCSSE respondents, 52 percent report that completing a certificate is a goal, and 84 percent say obtaining an associate degree is a goal.  With many students attending part-time (60 percent), working more than 30 hours per week (32 percent), and/or caring for dependents (22 percent), the goal of college completion is daunting but not impossible. 

The report describes four strategies that are likely to improve students’ chances for college completion: strengthening classroom engagement, integrating student support in the learning experience, expanding professional development for full-time and adjunct faculty alike, and focusing institutional policy on creating the conditions for learning. 

Strengthen Classroom Engagement

The Heart of Student Success is to be found in teaching and learning; but the report defines “classroom experiences” broadly, as “any activity that takes place as part of a regularly scheduled course.”  Recommendations encourage colleges to think beyond traditional classroom boundaries and require that students engage with their classmates and their studies beyond those walls.  Among the data presented are results that the Center hopes will prompt colleges to raise expectations for students; promote active, engaged learning as the norm; emphasize deep learning; build and encourage relationships among students, faculty and staff; and ensure that students know where they stand.

The 2010 CCSSE survey included a special focus on deep learning, defined in the report as “broadly applicable thinking, reasoning, and judgment skills—abilities that allow individuals to apply information, develop a coherent world view, and interact in more meaningful ways.”   Results suggest that there is room for improvement in the extent to which students engage in activities which would enhance deep learning, as illustrated by the percentages of students who often or very often:

Put together ideas or concepts from different courses when completing assignments or during class discussions	56 percent
Included diverse perspectives (different races, religions, genders, political beliefs, etc.) in class discussions or assignments	43 percent
Examined the strengths or weaknesses of your own views on a topic or issue	56 percent
Tried to better understand someone else’s views by imagining how an issues looks from his or her perspective	57 percent
Learned something that changed your viewpoint about an issue or concept	45 percent

Integrate Student Support into Learning Experiences

Typically offering a wide array of student and academic support services, community colleges act on the understanding that high expectations of students must be accompanied by high support.  Unfortunately, though, CCSSE and SENSE survey data, as well as findings from student focus groups, indicate that students often are not aware of available services, don’t know how to access them, find them inconvenient, or feel stigmatized by using them.

For example, SENSE data show that after three weeks in college, 28 percent of entering students are unaware of their college’s academic planning and advising services.   Among CCSSE respondents, who typically have more college experience, 34 percent report rarely or never using academic advising/planning services. Almost a fifth (19 percent) of SENSE respondents are unaware that their college has an orientation program or course and 26 percent do not know about financial assistance advising.

According to the report, “Intentionally integrating student support into coursework circumvents many of the barriers that keep students from using services.”  Examples of this approach include requiring freshman seminars or student success courses; making participation in supplemental instruction, tutoring, or academic skill labs mandatory; and  incorporating advising and academic planning into learning communities or first-year experiences.

Expand Professional Development Focused on Engaging Students

Through significant foundation support and institutional initiative, the community college field is increasingly involved in work to identify and implement effective educational strategies.  Funding from both philanthropic organizations and government agencies in turn is focused on evaluating the impact of those strategies on student success. 

Bringing effective new strategies to scale in order to promote higher levels of learning and college completion is a complex endeavor requiring both faculty collaboration and courageous administrative decisions to reallocate scarce resources. Further, the Center’s report emphasizes that “any effective strategy for dramatically increasing college completion must include a substantial commitment to professional development” for full-time faculty members, for college teams, and especially for the burgeoning numbers of part-time instructors, who now comprise about two-thirds of community college faculty. 

Faculty survey data indicate that close to one-third of instructors (31 percent) report spending at least 50 percent of class time lecturing. Only 27 percent spend at least 20 percent of class time on small-group activities. Reports from part-time instructors unsurprisingly reveal that they spend far less time advising students or otherwise interacting with them outside the classroom than do their full-time faculty counterparts.

Create Policy Conditions to Promote Learning and Completion

The report encourages community colleges to consider institutional and academic policies that create more structure and fewer options for students.  According to McClenney, “We have to relinquish our reluctance to require, even when that reluctance arises from an abundance of empathy for multi-tasking students.” Examples cited include requirements that students complete registration before classes begin, participate in college orientation, or enroll in a student success course in their first academic term.  Survey data indicate mixed results on issues related to institutional policy:

• Only 58 percent of SENSE respondents participated in a college orientation program (on campus, online, or as part of a course) during their first academic term.
• Only four percent of SENSE respondents registered for courses after classes began.
• While 88 percent of SENSE respondents report being required to take a placement test before registering for classes, a smaller number (75 percent) say that their college required them to enroll during their first term in the classes indicated as appropriate by the student’s placement test scores.

Grounded in research about effective educational practice, CCSSE, CCFSSE and SENSE are tools that assess student engagement -– how engaged students are with college faculty and staff, with their studies, and with other students.  As each survey collects data from a particular perspective, the collective results offer a comprehensive picture of educational practice on community college campuses.  The 2010 CCSSE Cohort includes more than 400,000 students from 658 institutions in 47 states as well as British Columbia, the Marshall Islands, Nova Scotia, and Ontario.  The 2009 SENSE survey was administered during the fourth and fifth weeks of the fall academic term at 120 community colleges from 30 states and yielded more than 50,000 usable surveys from entering students.  

According to The Heart of Student Success, quality teaching-–augmented by integrated student support services and with continuous improvement supported through targeted professional development-– is a necessary part of the community college response to the college completion challenge.  Just as access to college is an empty promise without a companion commitment to student success, improved college completion will have real meaning only with serious and sustained attention to the quality of learning.  The heart of the matter, the Center argues, is that improvement of outcomes requires an intensive focus on the people and the educational practices that produce those outcomes. Examples of community colleges working to connect learning and completion are provided in the report to illustrate that the promise of increased student success is not a pipe dream but a growing reality.

—Dr. Kay McClenney, Director of Center for Community College Student Engagement, kmcclenney@cccse.org
or Kay Randall, Office of the Vice President for Public Affairs, 512-232-3910