Impact of College Readiness on Time to Credential for First-Time Students

Transcript
In this tutorial, we demonstrate how to use the PDP Time to Credential/Credentials Conferred dashboard to understand the impact that college readiness has on time to credential for first-time students.​

As a quick reminder, the Time to Credential/Credentials Conferred dashboard reports two metrics:​

The first metric is the average time it takes a student to complete their credential(s).​

The second metric is the number and proportion of credentials awarded by your institution within an academic year disaggregated by credential type.​

Let’s use this dashboard to answer this research question: How does first-time student readiness to take college-level courses impact their time to complete an associate degree?​

Before we continue, please remember that the results and trends shown in this tutorial cannot be applied to your institution. This data is only for demonstration purposes only. Please review your institution’s data before drawing conclusions.​

On the Home Page for the PDP dashboards, one of the Outcomes-Over-Time metrics is the Time to Credential/Credentials Conferred dashboard. Clicking this icon takes us to the dashboard. ​

Before we begin, we need to set up our dashboard.​

Since we’re interested in first-time students, let’s filter the data to that population. Click “Enrollment Type”, deselect “All”, select “First-Time”, and click “Apply”.​

Next, since we’re interested in understanding the impact of college readiness on time-to-credential, let’s click the “Math Prep” global filter.  Here, we see three categories: “Not Ready in Math”, “Ready in Math”, and “Unknown”. Let’s filter out the “Unknown” data since it won’t be helpful to us. Deselect “Unknown” and click “Apply”.​

Now, since we’re interested in time-to-credential, let’s toggle the “Select Chart” option to “Average Time to Credential”. Notice that the only chart affected is the lower right chart.​

And, finally, we’re interested in comparing the time-to-credential between students who are ready for college-level math compared to those who are not. To compare two variables, we need to apply a dimension. Click “Select Dimension” and select “Math Prep”. Again, notice that the only chart affected is the lower right chart.​

Looking at the lower right chart, we find the average time-to credential is disaggregated by this metric. The first row is the average time-to-credential for first-time students who entered our institution not ready to take college-level math. Hovering over the orange segment in the 2018-19 section, we find that the average time for those students who completed associate degrees during this academic year was 3.3 years.​

The second row shows the average time-to-credential for first-time students who entered our institution prepared to take college-level math. Hovering over the orange segment in the 2018-19 section, we find it took 2.8 years for those students to complete associate degrees.​

Calculating the difference in time-to-credential, we find that first-time students who entered our institution ready for college-level math completed their associate degrees 6 months sooner than students who were not ready for college-level math.​

Before we continue, let’s reset the “Math Prep” filter by clicking “Math Prep”, selecting “All”, and clicking “Apply”.​

What about readiness to take college-level English courses? To determine its impact on time-to-credential, let’s click the “English Prep” global filter, deselect “Unknown”, and click “Apply”. Now, let’s change our dimension from Math Prep to English Prep so we can compare the average time-to-credential for first-time students who entered our institution who were and were not ready to take college-level English courses.​

Hovering over the orange segment in the 2018-19 section, we find that the average time for first-time students who entered our institution not ready for college-level English completed their associate degrees in 3.3 years.​

The second row shows the average time-to-credential for first-time students who entered our institution prepared to take college-level English courses.  Hovering over the orange segment in the 2018-19 section, we find it took 3.0 years for those students to complete associate degrees.​

Calculating the difference, we find that first-time students who entered our institution ready for college-level English completed their associate degrees 3.6 months sooner than students who were not ready for college-level English.​

We can use this dashboard to identify student populations who take longer to complete their credentials. Sharing this data with others at your institution can lead to changes in institutional policies or improved support services to better serve your students.   ​

We encourage you to explore your institution’s dashboards to learn more about your students. Thank you for joining us.​