Engaging Community Colleges A First Look

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STORIES THE DATA TELL US
Washington 2007 Summer Association Conference
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Story 1 The Critical Importance of Community
and Technical Colleges

• Almost half of U.S. undergraduates
• Disproportionate numbers of first-generation
  students, low-income students, students of color,
  and students who are academically underprepared
• In other words, the students our society most
  needs to do a much better job of educating

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Story 2 Limits on Community and Technical
College Success

• Nationally, of community college students
  seeking an associate degree or higher, 45 earn
  an associate or bachelors degree or transfer to
  a 4-year institution within 6 years
• (An additional 9 are still enrolled.)

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Story 3 Intolerable Gaps in Successful
Outcomes for Students

• The outcome statistics are significantly lower
  for Latino/Hispanic and African American
  students.

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Story 4 Why the Numbers Say What They Say

• Not everything that counts can be counted, and
  not everything that can be counted counts.
• - Albert Einstein

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Story 5 What Matters Most in Strengthening
Student Success
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WHAT MATTERS MOST

• 1 Engagement matters
• for community college students
• and different kinds of engagement matter most
  for different kinds of students

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Furthermore,

• In community colleges, engagement is unlikely to
  happen by accident.
• It has to happen by design.

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WHAT MATTERS MOST

• 2 We must engage students early and often.
• Student Success Courses
• Coming soon the Entering Student Survey

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WHAT MATTERS MOST

• In focus groups with students, what do they
  typically report as the most important factor in
  keeping them in school, persisting toward their
  goals?
• 3 Relationships Matter

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WHAT MATTERS MOST

• 4 High (and clear) expectations matter
• As does frequent feedback on students
  academic performance.

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WHAT MATTERS MOST

• 5 Effective Developmental Education Matters
  Hugely
• Data points
• Academic policy and support services
• How we teach

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WHAT MATTERS MOST

• 6 Building a Culture of Evidence
• Take nothing on its looks take everything on
  evidence. Theres no better rule.
• Charles Dickens (1812 1870) Great
  Expectations

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Building a Culture of Evidence

• Key Questions
• What data are needed to deepen our
  understanding?
• How will we assess the effectiveness of
  intervention/improvement strategies?

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The Courage to See
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Building a Culture of Evidence

• Repeat after me
• Track and assess ALL of your students.
• Disaggregate data.
• Dare to discuss what you see.
• Distinguish between best and typical.

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Community College Faculty Surveyof Student
Engagement

• CCFSSE
• Elicits information from faculty about their
  teaching practices, the ways they spend their
  professional time both in and out of class, and
  their perceptions regarding students educational
  experiences
• Is aligned with CCSSE to allow colleges to
  contrast student and faculty perceptions

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A Tale of Two Perspectives
Effective Educational Practices Student and
Faculty Responses

• CCFSSE data are based on results from all
  colleges in the 2006 CCFSSE cohort. When student
  (CCSSE) and faculty (CCFSSE) views are shown
  side-by-side in this presentation, the student
  responses include data only from colleges that
  participated in the faculty survey. It also is
  important to note that while CCSSE results are
  expressed in terms of benchmarks, which are
  created through a complex statistical analysis
  and peer review, there are no benchmarks for
  CCFSSE. For this presentation, CCFSSE results are
  presented in groupings of survey items that
  correspond to the CCSSE benchmarks.

Source 2006 CCSSE and CCFSSE cohort data.
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WHAT MATTERS MOST

• 7 Focused, sustained efforts, targeted to
  significant numbers of students, can produce real
  improvements in student engagement, learning,
  persistence, and academic attainment.

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WHAT MATTERS MOST

• 8
• Resisting the Average/
• Reaching for Excellence

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Benchmarking and Reaching for Excellence

• The most important comparison where you are now,
  compared with where you want to be.

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Challenges
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The Inarguable Fundamentals

• The center of community college work is student
  learning, persistence, and success.
• We dont get better at things were not willing
  to look at.
• Every program, every service, every academic
  policy, every course syllabus is perfectly
  designed to achieve the exact outcome it
  currently produces.

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The Inarguable Fundamentals

• If nothing changes, nothing changes.
• Neither organizations nor individuals are very
  good at accomplishing things we never actually
  decide to do.

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CHALLENGES

• Building a culture of evidence and inquiry
• Asking questions that matter, that people
  actually care about
• Answering the question How good is good
  enough?

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CHALLENGES

• Committing to the use of data to target
  improvements
• Purposefully re-designing learning experiences
  for students
• Assuming collective responsibility for student
  learning, persistence and attainment

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Kay McClenney, Ph.D.

• Director, Community College Survey of Student
  Engagement
• www.ccsse.org