Learn how to use the Postsecondary Data Partnership Time to Credential/Credentials Conferred dashboard to understand the impact of enrollment type and attendance on the time it takes students to complete associate degrees.
Transcript
In this tutorial, we demonstrate how to use the PDP Time to Credential / Credentials Conferred dashboard to understand the impact of enrollment type and attendance on the time it takes students to complete associate degrees.
The Time to Credential/Credentials Conferred dashboard reports the average time it takes a student to complete their credentials, and 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: What impact does a student’s enrollment type and attendance have on their time to complete an associate degree?
Let’s navigate to the PDP Time to Credential / Credentials Conferred dashboard. Since we’re interested in comparing time to credential between full-time and part-time students, let’s apply the Attendance dimension. To do that, click on “Edit” which opens Chart Settings. Then, select “Attendance” from the Dimension drop down.
And since we’re interested in understanding the impact of enrollment type on time to credential, let’s first focus on first-time students. To filter for those students, click “Enrollment Type”, deselect “All”, select “First-Time”, and click “Apply Settings”.
Now our dashboard is filtered to first-time students, and we have applied the Attendance dimension. Next, we’re interested in time-to-credential so let’s toggle the “Select Chart” option to “Average Time to Credential”.
Now, let’s scroll down to the chart called “Average Time to Credential by Attendance”. This chart shows the average time-to-credential disaggregated by attendance for first-time students. The first row is the average time-to-credential for full-time students and the second row is for part-time students. The first set of data markers represent certificates and the second set are associate degrees.
Focusing on the most recent cohort, we find that the average time-to-credential for an associate degree for full-time, first-time students is 2.9 years while it took part-time, first-time students 3.4 years.
Now let’s change the Enrollment Type to include only transfer-in students. Focusing on the most recent cohort, we find that the average time-to-credential for an associate degree for full-time, transfer-in students is 2 years while it took part-time, transfer-in students 2.7 years.
Let’s summarize what we learned through this exploration. It takes part-time, first-time students 6 months longer to complete their associate degree compared to full-time, first-time students. And it takes part-time, transfer-in students 8 months longer to complete their associate degree compared to full-time, transfer-in students.
How can this information be used? Sharing this data with students might help them understand the impact that attendance has on the time it takes to complete their credential.
We encourage you to explore this data to learn more about your students and institution.
Thank you for joining us.