A 4-year institution uses the Postsecondary Data Partnership’s early momentum dashboards to look at the current state of student success and make recommendations on ways to improve student success based on the PDP dashboards.
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Transcript
Our institution is undergoing the planning process to create its next 5-year strategic plan.
In preparation, Elise, our institution’s provost, asked Joshua, our Director of Enrollment Management, and Ram, our Director of Academic Advising, to make recommendations for ways our institution can improve student success.
Joshua and Ram meet to review their institution’s PDP dashboards to better understand the current state of student success and identify where the institution should focus their improvement efforts over the next five years.
Because their work is intended to create improvement efforts, they focus their attention on early momentum metrics which are leading indicators of academic momentum and student success.
First, they select the Credit Completion Ratio Institution-Level dashboard.
This dashboard reports the percentage of attempted credits that first-year students successfully completed within an academic year.
Focusing on the line chart, he sees that the Credit Completion Ratio improved from 2018-19 to 2021-22 then declined slightly in 2022-23. Because they’re interested in identifying equity gaps, Joshua needs to apply a dimension. To do that, he clicks “Edit” which opens Chart Settings. Then he selects “Race/Ethnicity” from the Dimension drop down and clicks "Apply Settings".
Now there’s a line representing the credit completion ratio for each race/ethnicity category. Because there are several categories, it’s challenging to interpret the chart. Since nearly 90% of their students are Asian, Black or African American, Hispanic, or White, he decides to apply a race and ethnicity filter to include those categories. To do that, he clicks on “Edit” which opens Chart Settings. Then he opens the “Race/ethnicity” drop-down and deselects "All". Next, he selects Asian, Black or African American, Hispanic and White. Then he clicks “Apply Settings”.
Now the line chart is easier to read.
Looking at the trend line for their Asian students, they find that their credit completion ratio improved by 3 percentage points while their white students showed no change. Hispanic students had an impressive four percentage point improvement, but their Black or African American students had an incredible nine percentage point improvement.
Next, they wanted to see if their institution was able to close the equity gaps in this metric. In 2017-18, the difference between highest and lowest values represented an 18-percentage point gap while in 2022-23, that gap had narrowed to 12 percentage points.
They summarize their findings. They learned that, there was an improvement in the average credit completion ratio among Asian, Hispanic, and Black or African American students while the average metric held relatively constant for White students. Black or African American students showed the largest improvement. And, while a substantial equity gap still exists, that gap has narrowed.
Next, they select the Credit Accumulation Rate Institution-Level dashboard.
This dashboard has a credit threshold filter to allow reporting the percentage of part-time students who completed 15 credits in an academic year and the percentage of full-time students who attained 30 credits in an academic year. They could lower the credit threshold to 12 credits for part-time students and 24 credits for full-time students, but they choose to keep it at the higher standard of 15 and 30. Because they are focused on first-year student success, they keep the Academic Year filter set to “1”.
Now, they focus their attention on the line chart and see that the overall credit accumulation rate remained consistent from 2017-18 to 2020-21 then sharply declined.
To check for equity gaps, they add the Race/Ethnicity dimension and filter the dashboard to Asian, Black or African American, Hispanic, and White students.
Now there’s a line representing the credit accumulation rate for each of four race/ethnicity categories. In 2017-18, white students had the highest credit accumulation rate, but that rate fell 22 percentage points by 2022-23 placing it lower than the rate for Asian students. Over that same time frame, the credit completion rate for Asian students decreased by 15 percentage points. The rate for Hispanic students fell by 23 percentage points placing it at the lowest among the four race/ethnicity categories in 2022-23 while the rate for Black or African American students fell by 16 percentage points over that same period.
Next, they wanted to see if the equity gap had changed. In 2017-18, the difference between highest and lowest values represented a 9-percentage point gap while in 2022-23, that gap had widened slightly to 10 percentage points.
They close the dashboard and summarize their findings. They learned that there was a decline for all student groups regardless of race/ethnicity. And, while the student group who earned the higher and lower credit accumulation rate changed, the overall equity gap remained consistent.
Based on those results, Joshua and Ram share their work with the Student Success Council. After much consideration, the Council drafts recommendations for improvement which include:
- Ask each academic department to analyze course success rates with disaggregation and create a plan for courses of focus.
- Require one mid-term advising appointment, in which advisors focus on understanding barriers students are experiencing and refer students to resources that can help students deal with those barriers. Those results can then be tabulated and shared.
- Redesign the open advising position to require a person with extensive experience in working with diverse populations.
- [click] Revitalize the student affinity groups for students of color to enhance their sense of belonging.