Learn how to use the Postsecondary Data Partnership Credit Completion Ratio dashboard to understand the credit completion ratio for our new transfer-in students.
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Transcript
In this tutorial, we demonstrate how to use the PDP credit completion ratio dashboard. To understand the credit completion ratio for our new transfer-in students, 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. For this dashboard as well as all PDP dashboards, first year students are students who enrolled in college for the first time and students who have newly transferred into our institution.
Let's use this dashboard to answer this research question: among transfer-in students who are prepared to take college level English courses, what was their credit completion ratio? First navigate to the PDP credit completion ratio dashboard. This research question is focused on transfer-in students who are prepared to take college level English courses. To answer this question, we need to apply two filters. The first filter is enrollment type. To do that, click on edit, which opens chart settings. Click on enrollment type and deselect "all". Then select "transfer-in". Next click on English prep and deselect "all". Then select "ready in English". Then click apply settings.
Now the dashboard is filtered to show only transfer-in students who are prepared for English level college courses. Let's focus our attention on the most recent academic year. Hovering over the 2022-23 academic year, we find that on average this student population attempts 11.1 credits in an academic year and earns nine credits for a credit completion ratio of 80.3%.
What else can we learn about this student population? Let's explore if the credit completion ratio for transfer-in students is impacted by whether they have received a Pell grant. Because we want to compare student populations, we need to apply a dimension. To do that, click on edit, which opens chart settings. Select "Pell grant recipient" from the dimension drop down and click apply settings.
Our line chart now has two lines. One line representing students with Pell grants and one line for students who do not have Pell grants. Let's review the results. For the cohorts reported, Pell grant recipients who are also transfer-in students that entered college prepared to take college level English courses have a lower credit completion ratio than non-Pell grant recipient transfer-in students who are are college prepared. While both populations ratios have fluctuated over time, the gap has stayed consistent.
Now let's focus our attention on the most recent cohort. Hovering over the 2022-23 data point in the line chart, we see a credit completion ratio of 82.4% for transfer-in students who are not Pell grant recipients compared to 76.3% for transfer-in students who were Pell grant recipients. This is a 6 percentage point gap.
Let's summarize what we learned about our transfer-in students who entered our institution prepared to take college level English courses. We found that those students complete on average eight out of 10 credits attempted in their first year of college at the institution. We also learned that Pell grant recipients have a lower credit completion ratio than those who did not receive Pell grants. This information would be useful to academic advisers during their initial meetings with transfer-in students.
We encourage you to use your institution's PDP dashboards to better understand your students credit completion ratios and the impact they have on their success. Thank you for joining us.