Learn how to use the Postsecondary Data Partnership Credit Completion Ratio dashboard to measure the impact of college readiness metrics on our institution’s credit completion ratio.
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In this tutorial, we demonstrate how to use the PDP credit completion ratio dashboard to measure the impact of college readiness metrics on our institution's credit completion ratio. The credit completion ratio institution level dashboard reports how successful students are at completing the credits they attempt within their first year of college.
Why is this important? Studies show that higher first year credit completion ratios are linked with higher credential completion rates. This metric helps identify student populations in need of early intervention.
Let's use this dashboard to answer this research question: what is the impact of college readiness on the credit completion ratio?
First, navigate to the PDP credit completion ratio dashboard. Since we are interested in exploring the impact of college readiness on the credit completion ratio, there are two metrics that we should examine. The first metric is called math prep, which stands for math preparedness.
Because we want to compare the credit completion ratio between first year students who are prepared for college level math versus those who are not prepared for college level math, let's apply the math prep dimension. To do that, click on edit, which opens chart settings. Select math prep from the dimension dropdown and click apply settings.
Now we have three lines in our line chart: one line represents students who are not ready for college level math, one for students who are ready for college level math and one for students whose math preparedness was coded as unknown.
Let's filter out the unknown data since that won't help us understand the relationship between math preparedness and our credit completion ratio. To do that, click on edit, which opens chart settings. Click math prep and deselect unknown. Then click apply settings.
Now we're ready to review our results. Across all cohorts reported, first year students prepared for college level math have a higher credit completion ratio than first year students who entered our institution not prepared for college level math. Now let's focus our attention on the most recent cohort. Hovering over the 2022-23 data points we find that 80.5% of the credits attempted were completed for those first year students who were prepared for college level math when they entered our institution. On average, these students attempted 12.5 credits in their first year of college and earned 10.3 credits. The credit completion ratio for students who were not prepared for college level math was 72.6%. On average, they attempted 10.2 credits in their first year of college and earned 7.6 credits. This is an 8 percentage point gap.
To explore the impact of English college level course preparedness, let's reset the math prep variable by adding back in those students whose math prep status was unknown. To do that, click on edit, which opens chart settings. Click math prep and select all. Then click apply settings. The second college readiness metric is English prep, which stands for English preparedness. To understand its impact, let's apply that dimension. To do that, click on edit, which opens chart settings. Select English prep from the dimension dropdown and click apply settings.
Now we have three lines in our line chart: one line represents students who are not ready for college level English courses, one for students who are ready for college level English courses and one for students whose English preparedness was coded as unknown. Let's filter out the unknown data since that won't help us understand the relationship between English preparedness and our credit completion ratio. To do that, click on edit, which opens chart settings. Click English prep and deselect unknown. Then click apply settings.
Now we're ready to review our results. Across all cohorts reported, first year students prepared for college level English have a higher credit completion ratio than first year students who entered our institution not prepared for college level English. Now let's focus our attention on the most recent cohort. The credit completion ratio for first year students prepared for college level English is 79.4% compared to 70.3% for first year students not ready for college level English. This is a 9 percentage point gap which is one point higher than for math preparedness.
Let's summarize what we learned. Through this exploration, we found that first year students who are not prepared to take college level math when they enter our institution earn on average 2.7 credits less per year than students who enter our institution prepared to take college level math. First year students who are not prepared to take college level English when they enter our institution earn on average 2.8 credits less per year than students who enter our institution prepared to take college level English. Overall, the lack of college preparedness will add approximately 2 years to complete an associate degree or an additional four years to complete a bachelor's degree.
We could share these results with academic advisers, first year experience instructors and faculty in the math and English departments to make them aware of the long-term outcomes between these groups of students. Working together, we could find ways to better support those students. In summary, we hope you will use your institution's dashboards to better understand your most vulnerable student populations.
Thank you for joining us.