Retention Meeting, March 18, 2013 11:30 pm
In attendance: Priya, Jun Da, Shelly, Jason, Thom, Paolo, Soraya, Joan, Deniz, Kari
Priya opened the meeting reminding us that the information from today’s meeting
can be found in the Google Document for the Retention Committee. She then
explained how to read the “Drop Data” that is found there. The aim is for our
courses to reflect no more than a 50% drop rate and most of our languages are.
Thom interjected that there is no way to account for the inflow of students into
classes as transfers or heritage students who add later and in more advanced
classes. This influx of students will skew our drop data but positively so.
The main issue that was brought up by Joan is “Where are majors starting?” In
other words, at what point do students declare Foreign Languages as a major?
Jason then presented this data in a slightly different format making use of many
different kinds of charts and groupings to see if we could identify other trends. Not
surprisingly the largest drops in numbers occur after 1010 and 1020. Retention
goes up once students successfully negotiate the elementary courses and when they
elect to continue their study of a language. The higher we go into our language
courses, the better our retention.
It was suggested that we need a graph that illustrates the trends for all language
courses offered (combining all languages) so we can talk about the percentages as a
whole.
The question was raised, “Do we want to subtract out the students who were taking
the courses in our data set who were only taking the course to fulfill their high
school deficiencies?” If we do this, then the data will be better in terms of
comparisons with upcoming years where the high school deficiencies will no longer
play a role. The group seemed to indicate that we need to do this for accurate
comparisons.
We also discussed better ways to get data that would more accurately reflect the
reasons for dropping language courses. We discussed performing the study again
during the first week of classes, after the 14 day drop, and also trying to find a way
to survey those students who have dropped. The idea was raised (I want to take
credit for it but I don’t know if it was mine or not) that if there was a survey field
inserted into the Pipeline drop system that required them to select a reason for
dropping a course, this would be the most accurate way of surveying dropping
students. This would require action by the administration so…we will continue to
brainstorm other ways of achieving this goal.
Thom’s presentation: Sadly, we were informed that the Japanese surveys were lost.
It is a mystery that will live on past the life of this committee, I am sure. See the
handout for a breakdown of why students say they will not continue studying their
respective languages. The **key point** here is that **very rarely** does a student
select “experience in course” as a reason for not continuing. Instead other life
factors are cited as reasons for not continuing. Thom suggests that we add
“graduation” as a field for reasons not to continue. He also suggests that we restrict
students to only one reason for not continuing because our data was rather messy
this first time.
Brainstorming:
How can we retain more students:
1. Offer more 1010 courses or 1030 courses. If we are looking at raw numbers
this should improve that. However, we run the risk of increasing our overall
drop rate. As I suggested, employing TAs and adjuncts can often be
counterproductive to retention numbers. I had a larger number of Arabic
students when I offered more 1010 courses but my attrition rate was always
higher in the sections that I was not teaching myself.
2. We need to focus on the students who are majors because we have been told
that they are only looking at majors. There is a new person in charge of these
numbers and we might get better information about who are majors are,
when they are declaring, and what our actual retention of majors is. Right
now, Joan thinks that the last figure that she received said we had less than
10 majors. Impossible.
3. We noted that CUSTOMS enrollments were low for freshman supporting the
idea that our majors declare later in their academic careers. I have never had
more than 3 students in a CUSTOMS session.
4. 1030 proposals were discussed and how to deploy those classes most
effectively. Spring sessions are most ideal. Summer was suggested for those
languages with limited (read 1) faculty. However, we were cautioned that
summer numbers are probably going to be low for the foreseeable future.
5. How do we keep students once they have declared? Party on the hall was
talked about. We also need to make sure that we talk to the majors that
require 2 years of language training. We should try to work in partnerships
with majors that seem like “good fits” with an international focus. In other
words, we need to do some PR work for our department and enlist other
supporting staff to encourage students to major in foreign languages or do a
dual major. The Poetry Reading being revived and transferred to
International Week was discussed.
6. Should we do the survey again. Yes. Of course.
Meeting adjourned at 12:30pm
Report prepared by Kari Neely