Get a general overview of the Credit Completion Ratio Institution-Level dashboard.
Transcript
This is the introduction and basic functionality tutorial for the National Student Clearinghouse’s Postsecondary Data Partnership Credit Completion Ratio Institution-Level dashboard. Thank you for joining us.
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-in to our institution.
How do we calculate the credit completion ratio? First, the credit completion ratio is calculated for each first-year student. The numerator is the number of credits the student completed in their first-year of college at our institution. The denominator is the number of credits the student attempted in their first-year. That ratio is multiplied by 100 to create a percentage.
For example, if a student earned 28 credits in their first-year of college at our institution out of the 32 credits they attempted, then their credit completion ratio would be 28 ÷ 32 * 100% or 87.5%. The institution’s credit completion ratio is calculated as the average of the students’ credit completion ratios.
Also please remember that a student’s first year is calculated based on when they entered our institution, not based on an academic year.
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.
This is the Home Page for the Postsecondary Data Partnership dashboards. The Credit Completion Ratio Institution-Level dashboard is one of the early momentum metrics. Clicking on that icon brings us to the dashboard.
Above the data charts are the global filters. These include metrics like enrollment type, age group, gender, and GPA range. Applying one or more filters allows us to focus on a specific student population like male Hispanic students who attend college full-time.
Below the global filters, you will find this dashboard’s dimensions. These dimensions are the same as the global filter metrics. Dimensions are used if we want to compare student populations to find achievement gaps. For example, we could apply the Enrollment Type dimension to understand the achievement gap between first-time and new transfer-in students.
Below the dimensions, in the top left quadrant, this dashboard answers several questions like: How successful are our students at completing the credits they attempt in their first academic year? Or, on average, how many credits do students attempt and how many do they complete?
The upper right-hand quadrant is a trend-line visualization which reports the credit completion ratio for first-year students enrolling at our institution in each academic year shown.
If we hover over the 2018-19 data point, we see a tool tip pop-up with details about that data point. Here we see that this institution’s credit completion ratio is 73% which means that, for every four credits that a first-year student attempted, they completed three of them.
We can also hover over each of the previous years to view their data details.
The lower left-hand chart shows two different metrics – the height of each bar represents the credit completion ratio and the number over each bar shows the average credits earned.
In addition, there is a blue color overlay. The lightest blue bar is the year where the average credits earned was the lowest – in this case, it’s the 2013-14 year where the average credits earned was 13.6. The darkest blue bar is the year where there was the highest average credits earned. Here it’s the 2016-17 year where students earned, on average, 18.2 credits.
And the final chart, in the lower right quadrant, is an overall view of this dataset. For this chart, the length of the blue bars represent the credit completion ratio, and the purple line shows the average credits earned.
In summary, credit completion ratio rate is an important early momentum metric. We encourage you to take time to explore the filters and dimensions in this dashboard in order to identify students who are, or are not, making sufficient progress and may benefit from additional support.