Patrick Henry Community College: Predicting Success

We’re indebted to Greg Hodges, dean of developmental education and transitional programs, and Kevin Shropshire, director of institutional research, at Patrick Henry Community College for their contributions to this post.

In 2009, at the beginning of their Developmental Education Initiative grant, Patrick Henry Community College planned two different strategies for accelerating students’ progress through developmental education: Fast Track math that allowed students to complete two dev math courses in one semester and Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) courses, based on the model pioneered at the Community College of Baltimore County. PHCC knew that these different accelerated strategies weren’t a perfect fit for every student and wanted a way for advisors to assess which students would be most likely to succeed in these courses. They created a computer-based predictor tool with an easy-to-use interface that was built on top of a database that calculated a student’s likelihood of success based on his/her response to a series of questions asked during an advising visit. Preliminary results with the tool were promising. And then the Virginia Community College System launched a system-wide redesign of developmental mathematics that essentially fast-tracked all students, with a requirement to complete all dev math in one year, using a series of nine modules and a new diagnostic instrument. Here’s the story of the early days of the advising tool and how PHCC plans for revisions that will enable them to continue using it to place students in the appropriate type of acceleration.

Version One
PHCC first deployed the predictor tool in fall 2010. In the past, the assessment of advising at the college was difficult because different advisors focused on different characteristics to guide students to specific courses; thus, trying to sort out which student characteristics and situations would affect success in a particular instructional method was nearly impossible. The advising tool—and the database on which it is built—provides for consistency of some key variables and documents decision-making of different advisors. Variables included: 

• expected absences
• expected use of tutorial services
• placement test scores, including math, reading, and writing
• previous developmental math success .

The database returned a statistical likelihood (high, medium, low) of a student’s success in an accelerated course. (The key characteristics and probabilities were based on a risk model of prior students’ behaviors and rates of success.) Here’s a screen shot of the interface created by the college's webmaster:

An advisor considered this computer-driven recommendation along with his/her own professional judgment, and the student’s perspective to make a proactive decision about acceleration possibilities that were in the best interest of the student. 

Preliminary data suggested promise—and the need for some refinements. In fall 2010, the pass rate for Fast Track students with a record in the database (meaning the advisors used the advising database), was 82 percent. The rate for students with no records in the database (those that enrolled on their own or whose advisors did not use the advising database) was 65 percent. This suggests the possibility that the advising system helped advisors identify students who were more likely to be successful in this accelerated course.

The input predictor model was 80-85 percent accurate, mainly driven by student absences. In addition, the predictor can also be applied to all students at the end of a semester, though it must be acknowledged that some of the inputs—like math lab visits and expected absences—are student-driven. These estimates can then be correlated with student success measures such as course success and retention.

Redesign the Curriculum – Redesign the Predictor
The folks at Patrick Henry weren’t the only Virginians doing DEI work. In 2009 -2010, the Virginia Community College System convened a state-wide task force and redesigned the entire developmental mathematics curriculum. (You can read about the redesign here.) When the final curriculum was launched at all VCCS colleges in January of 2012, content that was once delivered in 3-4 credit developmental courses was now captured in nine one-credit modules, with the aim that all developmental math course work could be completed in one year. That meant that acceleration became the norm—not just one of many options—at Patrick Henry. And that meant that a predictor that might recommend a traditional, non-accelerated course for a student was no longer the right tool for advisors.
However, PHCC was confident that there was still great value in advisors having more information on which to base advising recommendations. Since VCCS allowed colleges to decide on the delivery mechanisms for the new developmental math modules, PHCC undertook three different delivery options for the new VA math: face-to-face instruction, computer-based instruction, and ALP (combining developmental with on-level coursework). This summer and fall they will be hard at work creating and implementing a revised predictor that will help advisors counsel students about their best instructional option. They have already identified some key characteristics that affect student success in the different course models.

We’re looking forward to seeing how the next iteration of the predictor shapes up. We’ll be sure to update our blog readers. If you’re interested in more specifics about how the college built their model, please contact Greg Hodges at ghodges@patrickhenry.edu or Kevin Shropshire at kshropshire@patrickhenry.edu. (Achieving the Dream colleges: they’re even willing to share SAS code that’s already set up for ATD data!)

One More D.R.E.A.M.: On the Road Again

Today, one final dispatch from last week's trip to Dallas. Richard Hart, MDC communications director, wrote this after attending one of the fantastic concurrent sessions at D.R.E.A.M.

The most exciting thing I learned during a presentation last week by Zane State College about the college’s innovations in developmental education during D.R.E.A.M. (Achieving the Dream’s inspiring confab on student success), was this: the students seem to really like what Zane State’s doing.

That, and developmental education instructors from around the country are apparently big fans of Willie Nelson.

Becky Ament, associate dean for developmental education at Zane State, and Beth Fischer, director of institutional research and planning at the college, talked about the evolution of the college’s compressed dev ed math courses and their dev ed courses linked to college-level classes, together a program they call “ADVANCE.”  In a nutshell, Becky and Beth walked the packed room through the successes and initial limitations of ADVANCE, which includes voluntary case management, on-campus promotion, and higher retention and completion rates for students who take advantage of the program. (Their PowerPoint presentation will be uploaded to the ATD website soon.)

But one of the less quantifiable benefits of the program seems to be the students’ response. Becky and Beth played videos of interviews done with students after they’d been through the program to record their reactions, and they were remarkably positive (with Becky and Beth reassuring the crowd that the students hadn’t been prompted).

“They develop a lot more friendships and collaborative relationships,” Becky said about students who took dev ed English along with a linked sociology class.

One student interviewed said before classes began she was nervous about her just-in-time dev ed instruction that was paced to meet the needs of her linked college-level course. She didn’t like or understand the program at first, but by the time it was over she realized: “It’s really fun.” Another benefit for students, Becky explained: taking the paired courses at the same time cuts a student’s costs.

There were challenges along the way, such as a shortage of advisers, lower-than-expected enrollment at first, inadequate promotion, some reluctant faculty, and the failure of ADVANCE classes to appear on the “live” course schedule. Dev ed faculty who attended the session offered lots of (solicited) advice, such as: make it mandatory, find out the times that are most convenient for students, and involve more faculty who support the program.
Things were already looking up by the second year, as advisors were fully integrated into the program, courses made it onto the “live” schedule, and promotion was increased. The ADVANCE program was developed with support from the Developmental Education Initiative, and Becky and Beth assured the group that the program would continue beyond the end of its DEI grant this year—and said the courses are even making money for the school.

And what’s that about Willie Nelson? Between breaks in the presentation, Beth hit the “play” button on her laptop and Willie’s voice rang out, singing “On the Road Again.” When she’d occasionally forget to hit the button, the crowd shouted “Play Willie!” By then, the students weren’t the only ones having fun.

Guest Post: Getting the Message Right

It’s time for the second installment of “SCALERS: Round 2.” Originally created by Paul Bloom at the Duke University Fuqua School of Business Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship, the SCALERS model identifies seven organizational capacities that support the successful scaling of a social enterprise: Staffing, Communicating, Alliance-building, Lobbying, Earnings Generation, Replicating Impact, and Stimulating Market Forces. (You can read an introduction to each driver in our first SCALERS series.) 

Now, we’re asking DEI colleges about how particular SCALERS drivers have contributed to their scaling efforts. Last month, we looked at staffing. Today, Becky Samberg of Housatonic Community College in Bridgeport, CT, shows what HCC is learning about how changing the message can change behavior.

Remember playing the childhood game of telephone? As the message was whispered from one child’s ear to another, one thing was certain: the game always ended with peals of laughter when the message whispered by the first child never was the same message repeated by the last in the chain. From this childhood game, we learn a very valuable lesson: communication needs to be deliberate and precise.

In our DEI work, we strive to be deliberate and precise in communicating with our HCC community about the initiatives on which we are working. Over the last year, however, lower-than-expected success rates in self-paced courses led us to change how we communicate to our students the nature of the self-paced program and the unique expectations of students enrolled in these courses.

Our self-paced program began in 2007 with developmental math courses. Originally, students could enroll in self-paced math courses—what we then called “Open Entry/Open Exit”—at any time in the semester and exit whenever they finished the course. Students also could start the next course in the same semester. We learned, however, that “Open Entry/Open Exit” was a misnomer.  Students were not accelerating as quickly or as successfully as we anticipated, and students’ financial aid obligations and status as a full- or part-time impeded their ability to move from one course to the next during a semester. As we considered these challenges, we concluded that the individualized instructional format and our expectations of students in these courses were not made explicit by the Open Entry/Open Exit title, so we made the following changes:

• We adopted the name “Self-Paced,” emphasizing the focus on individualized mathematics and English instruction. This new course name more explicitly communicates that students enrolling in these courses will have individualized instruction at a self-determined pace.  
• We defined our expectations of students and developed an orientation so students hear a consistent message from their instructors and the Self-Paced studies lab coordinator, who conducts the in-class orientation and oversees students’ visits to the lab. 
• We made lab visits mandatory, deliberately delivering the message that self-paced does not mean no pace, and regular engagement with the course material is essential to student success. 
• We re-designed the courses, communicating to students their obligation to make consistent progress throughout the semester and establishing the expectation that students work toward the goal of successfully completing the course within or in less than a traditional semester.  
• We created a schedule for completing the self-paced courses in a single semester, sharing it with students, and embedding it in the course software. Students are told the pace at which they need to work and the benchmarks they need to reach to successfully complete the course in one semester.

Moving forward, we hope that the changes we have made will increase student success in our self-paced courses. In changing the course title to better communicate the nature of the course and in deliberately and precisely communicating class policies and our expectations of students, we hope to avoid the inevitable outcome of a game of telephone.

Becky Samberg is the chair of developmental studies and DEI director at Housatonic Community College.

Guest Post: It's All in How You Say a Thing

Today, Pamela Henney, an adjunct faculty member in the English department at DEI college North Central State College in Mansfield, Ohio, shares her perspective on how perception, language, and expectations can influence faculty-student interactions—and results in the classroom.

Higher education is increasingly focused on developmental education initiatives, and definitely should be with 40 to 69 percent of high school graduates requiring at least one developmental course in college. We fund new developmental programs, devise new pedagogies, share our secrets of success, and warn of failures with others, encourage more studies of our students, and target varied groups of students for extra attention—all highly worthy endeavors. However, we might be missing one crucial point: perception.

Several speakers noted this perception issue almost in passing at this year’s Community College of Baltimore County Accelerated Learning Project’s 3rd Annual Conference on Acceleration in Developmental Education. Perception is vital to student success. If our students see themselves as capable of passing they tend to succeed. We may believe ourselves to be helpful, empathetic, and encouraging with our students, but then we fall into our academic jargon forgetting we are conversing with students. 

We often find ourselves so entrenched in the new teaching approaches and prospects for students that we find ourselves believing students will understand the underlying philosophy and pedagogy exactly as we do. They do not often recognize this educational opportunity with the same vigor we offer it. Think about it: How often do we hear cries of glee from a student being told “You’ve placed in Basic Writing, a program to help you progress,” when the student confidently believed himself to be starting out in First Year Composition. How persuasive is it to tell our students this non-transferrable credit course will help “address deficiencies,” “relearn skills,” or even “catch up?”

In addition to creating effective developmental programs and devising new pedagogies all aimed at supporting student success, we need to consider how each element of a student success plan is perceived.  If we want our students to have a successful, confident mindset, then we have to seamlessly illustrate our support. The phrase “we are placing you in Basic Writing” is often heard as “You aren’t ready for college English,” “You aren’t ready for college,” or simply “You can’t do this.” For some of our students, it is the same negative rhetoric they have been hearing all of their lives.

The rebuttal for this downward psychological spiral is inherent in accelerated developmental programs. Hearing “Your test score gives you the opportunity to take advantage of our accelerated program” right away translates in a student’s mind into “You can do this” – and not only do it, but do it faster and more efficiently than other students. It also connotes our expectation of student success.

True, this issue seems very simple and much like a sales technique, but students who recognize that other people—especially advisers and professors—believe they can succeed often tend to try to live up to those expectations, even internalizing a “can do” mindset. This apparently minor change should impact student perception of developmental programs and create a positive foundation which meets the criteria for continued success.

Guest Post: Mobilizing Faculty toward Dramatic Curricular Change

Please welcome Katie Hern, Ed.D., an English Instructor at Chabot College, to Accelerating Achievement! Katie leads the California Acceleration Project, an initiative of the California Community Colleges’ Success Network (3CSN), with support from the Walter S. Johnson Foundation, LearningWorks, and the Community College Research Center. Bruce Vandal posted a great summary of the program and its results over at Getting Past Go yesterday; below, you can read what Katie has learned about motivating folks to take on the challenge of accelerated developmental education courses.

The California Acceleration Project has ambitious goals: getting the state’s 112 community colleges to shorten and redesign their developmental sequences in English and math.

The California community college system—if “system” is the right word—is among the most decentralized in the country. For those of us advocating change, this means we have to do more than provide good data to a group of high-level decision-makers. We have to convince individual faculty at all 112 individual colleges to pursue the change themselves.
 
On the face of it, this might seem a job for Sisyphus. And yet, faculty across California have begun doing exactly that.
 
The project is part of the California Community Colleges’ Success Network (3CSN), which provides professional development for the state’s Basic Skills Initiative. To date, more than 80 of California’s community colleges have participated in the project’s acceleration trainings, 19 colleges are working together on accelerated English and pre-statistics courses they will offer in 2011-12, and at least 12 more colleges are actively pursuing pilots for the following year. 

Bringing acceleration to scale requires us to think about what motivates people to change. Inside 3CSN, we talk a lot about a book called Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard. Business writers Dan and Chip Heath stress that everyone has two competing drives influencing our decisions: “the rider,” or rational side, and the “elephant,” or emotional side.  Mobilizing change requires engaging the rider holding the reins and the elephant that the rider is trying to steer. “Anytime the six-ton Elephant and the Rider disagree about which direction to go, the Rider is going to lose” (Switch, p. 7). 

In making a case for acceleration, my co-leader Myra Snell and I ground our conversations in quantitative data. No one would listen if we didn’t show that acceleration can significantly increase the number of developmental students going on to pass college-level gatekeeper courses. But data are never enough. We also have to address the elephant. What is spooking faculty about acceleration? Where are the emotional sticking points? And what positive emotions can be harnessed so that faculty charge toward change, instead of sitting stubbornly by while would-be change agents seek “buy in”? 

Sometimes teachers’ elephants don’t move because they literally can’t see the way ahead. In faculty workshops, we show two classroom videos, five minutes from my open-access accelerated English class, where students engage an excerpt from Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and five minutes from Myra Snell’s open-access pre-statistics course where students grapple with a problem from a national statistics exam and prove that the exam’s answer key is incorrect. These videos give faculty a visceral, concrete sense of how developmental education might be different. They see that students who might have placed 2, 3, 4 levels below college in their own sequences have the capacity to do challenging intellectual work. They see that developmental education doesn’t have to be grammar workbooks or skill-and-drill math procedures. They get a vision of the possible, and their elephants respond. They want to be part of it. 

The California Acceleration Project is not arguing for small-scale changes—tutoring, student success courses, mandatory placement testing. We’re arguing that developmental education is broken; that community colleges must shorten and redesign our long remedial sequences; that our placement system is profoundly flawed; and that students are capable of so much more than developmental classes often ask of them. It’s not an easy case to make, and there are many opportunities for our riders and our elephants to derail movement. Yet the good news from California is that, when faculty elephants and riders get going in the same direction, dramatic change becomes possible. 

To see Katie Hern and Myra Snell make a case for acceleration and speak to both rider and elephant, check out their webinar “College Completion: Why Acceleration Developmental English and Math is the Essential First Step.” For more information about the California Acceleration Project, go to http://3csn.org/developmental-sequences.