ANNUAL PROGRESS REPORT
2012
A. Describe the past year’s accomplishments and the current status of this Action
Project.
The First Year Experience (FYE) project was launched with President's Cabinet
approval in January 2011. The FYE core team and its subcommittees have
maintained regularly scheduled meetings for each of the project sub-goals, with the
core team meeting monthly to guide the overall project’s direction and focus.
Several action items were completed or launched in pilot phase this year, including
the First Year Advising Center, Delegate Light Touch Program, College Student
Inventory (CSI) diagnostic tool, “Sinclair Talks” series, Faculty Development
Series, and the New Student Orientation pilot.
A significant event for the college is the receipt in August 2012 of a large five year
grant entitled “Completion by Design” (CbD) from the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation. This award followed a year of intensive planning during the 2011-12
year, and the work of the grant will include re-engineering college processes,
services and policies, with the goal of substantially increasing the degree/certificate
completion of the college’s students. CbD builds on and complements AQIP
Action Project work in the college, including the First Year Experience project.
Many of the initiatives outlined in this First Year Experience Action Project are
integrated into the Completion by Design Implementation Plan and a forthcoming
Completion Agenda Strategic Plan for the college which will integrate and
coordinate work across the college that is part of the completion agenda.
New Student Orientation Redesign
A syllabus for a substantially revised and expanded New Student Orientation
program was developed and piloted this year, with learning outcomes focused on
the information and skills critical to the student’s success in the first term. The
redesigned orientation program attempts to model expectations that students will
encounter in the classroom, including the student’s responsibility to actively
participate and be accountable for learning outcomes. Also, new orientation course
materials were created and the orientation video updated. The college’s orientation
for English as a Second Language (ESL) students is also being formatted to model
this redesign.
A redesign of facilities was completed to create a dedicated orientation room. A
small classroom environment was created to model the students’ classroom
experience and foster greater engagement with peers and facilitators. College
funding was reallocated to purchase new media equipment and furnishings for this
space.
An assessment was developed and piloted to regularly gather feedback from
students participating in the revised New Student Orientation sessions. The
assessment will be administered routinely in the ninth week of a new student’s first
term, with the first assessment to be conducted in fall 2012.
New Student Orientation is also now more closely integrated with the First Year
Academic Advising Center to ensure students attend orientation prior to meeting
with an academic advisor. Student advising appointments are established through a
shared calendar, managed by the Enrollment Center. However, the shared calendar
that has been utilized to schedule Orientation and First Year Advising appointments
has been challenging. A next step is to determine if there is a better
scheduling/tracking tool that can be purchased or developed for the pathway
connection.
The New Student Orientation work team is developing a plan to phase in
mandatory orientation for all new degree and certificate seeking students, a
significant change in college practice from the current optional approach to
orientation. The team’s planning includes process, policy, staffing, information
technology and cost implications, as well as on-going evaluation and revision of
orientation effectiveness. These plans are to be folded into the Completion Agenda
Strategic Plan.
Academic Advising
Since opening the First Year Advising Center (FYAC) in August 2011, the college
is able to provide more comprehensive advising for all new students. Two software
tools developed at Sinclair are used by advisors and students to assist with program
planning and progress tracking: Student Success Planning (SSP) and My Advising
Plan (MAP). For the first time, the college is able to track systematically when
students deviate from their academic plans and intervene to help students get back
on track.
Sinclair is developing a plan to phase in mandatory advising for all for all new
degree and certificate seeking students, a significant policy shift but one that the
literature as well as student feedback indicate holds promise for improving timely
completion. This new policy will require changes in key processes as well as
revision of advisor roles. Under this model, students would have an assigned
advisor, and advisors would have defined caseloads. The Student Success Planning
(SSP) and My Academic Plan (MAP) software tools would be further implemented
for all degree and certificate seeking students (currently being primarily used by
FYAC).
Gatekeeper Courses
Sinclair’s Developmental Education Initiative (DEI) programs are designed to
reduce the need for developmental education and accelerate students’ progress
through developmental coursework. While this grant-funded initiative stands as its
own project, three of the DEI programs were evaluated this year as they relate to
the First Year Experience Action Project:
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Boot Camps (short-term intensive review in developmental reading,
writing and mathematics)
Accelerated English (a course that combines developmental English and
freshman English composition)
Math Academy classes (opportunity for students to work at their own pace
and complete as many of their developmental mathematics
courses/competencies in one term as possible)
Initial results for each of these three programs are promising. Students are making
more gains more quickly in their developmental coursework, and these projects are
moving to scale. The college’s institutional research office, as well as external
reviewers, continues to evaluate the success of these three programs and possible
enhancements to their delivery to further increase the quality and pace of student
learning. The success of students who complete these programs once they reach
college-level study also is being evaluated.
As part of a commitment to supporting new and different teaching approaches in
developmental education, the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) offered a
“Student Engagement Track” for the 2011-12 academic year. The track consisted of
a series of six consecutive workshops which included topics related to increasing
student engagement within and outside the classroom, effective use of instructional
technology, problem based learning, breaking down barriers to individual students’
learning, and related topics. This faculty development experience will continue to
be part of the Center’s offerings and revised based on faculty feedback from the
inaugural offering.
Sinclair’s experience with placement of students into the appropriate course level
based on standardized placement testing suggests there is significant room to
improve the accuracy of placement. This issue also is receiving a great deal of
attention nationally, and it is increasingly clear that placement tests alone are not a
measure that serves all students well. During the 2011-12 year, a pilot was
conducted of an additional indicator of appropriate placement of students into
writing courses: comparing the recommendations of the Writeplacer software
application and those of a trained team of faculty evaluators based on student
writing samples. This pilot reflected a high degree of alignment between faculty
placement recommendations and those of Writeplacer, and thus Writeplacer will be
used as the new placement indicator for all entering students for this next academic
year. Reading placement scores also will continue to be considered in conjunction
with Writeplacer scores.
The student success course SCC 101 continues to demonstrate positive outcomes (a
10-12% increase over the comparison group) in next term success rates and next
term GPA. Significant revisions to the course were completed in 2011-12 in
preparation for the college’s move to a semester calendar. In the year ahead,
Sinclair’s course content and outcomes will be benchmarked against those of peer
institutions, with a particular emphasis on how other institutions are incorporating
the knowledge and skills of this type of course into the learning experiences of
developmental students. Both the professional literature and student feedback
indicate that helping students develop realistic educational and professional goals
earlier can help improve persistence and completion. In light of this information,
Sinclair’s student success course will include greater attention to career decisionmaking and planning.
Other Initiatives
The “Light Touch Delegate Support Program” was initiated to reach out to first
time, degree seeking African American students by making phone contacts the
week before classes begin and then the first and third week of class. Preliminary
data analysis from Fall 12 indicates an 18% increase in fall to winter term retention
for students who were contacted. For the upcoming year, this effort will continued
to be piloted with additional students and using more delegates; faculty who serve
as delegates will be assigned to students based on the student’s major. Evaluation
of this pilot will continue in 2012-13.
“Sinclair Talks” is a series of weekly sessions throughout the term covering a
variety of topics likely to be of interest to a wide array of students. The goal of this
program is to engage students, broaden their knowledge and prompt discussion of
international, cultural, and social issues. Through the 2011-12 academic year, 30
sessions were offered and 914 students attended. A needs assessment was
developed and conducted in May 2012 with three populations (students, faculty and
staff), and the results of the needs assessment were used to determine content
programming for future sessions. For the 2012-13 year, plans are in place to double
the number of sessions and expand the scope to include academic enhancement,
educational planning, Sinclair resources, career development, and personal
development, along with continued inclusion of social/cultural issues and
international issues.
B.
Describe how the institution involved people in work on this Action Project.
Staff and faculty were invited to participate on committees and subcommittees
associated with this Action Project based on their interest and expertise. To date, 17
faculty and 27 staff at various levels of the organization (advisors, managers,
directors, and deans) have participated actively in committee work. Two hundred
staff and faculty participated in the day-long Retention Summit on entering student
success. Additionally, students in two sections of an English composition class
were involved in a service learning project to edit the 89 page set of findings and
recommendations from the sub-teams.
C.
Describe your planned next steps for this Action Project.
The key next steps include conducting follow-up surveys in advising and
orientation in order to more fully understand students’ experiences with and
perceptions of these services; reviewing SENSE and CCSSE data to identify new
trends in new students’ experience; finalizing the Completion Agenda strategic
plan in concert with the Completion by Design initiative; and moving various
policy recommendations to the appropriate decision-making bodies as needed.
Based on plans for moving to mandatory orientation and mandatory advising,
software for tracking, scheduling and student communication is needed. Mandatory
orientation and advising will require more precision in tracking and reporting given
that the planned consequence for not participating in these services will be
prohibition from registering for the subsequent term. A recently formed Logistics
Team, made up of representatives from the Orientation and Advising
Subcommittee, will determine a detailed plan for the steps and processes needed to
fully implement mandatory orientation and mandatory advising.
To better support students through their First Year Experience, an orientation
workbook was developed, along with an online site to demo the concept. The next
step to fully develop this resource is to work with key Sinclair departments and
identify additional content for the workbook (e.g., Tutorial Services, Career
Services, Academic Advising). Marketing support will be required for design, and
funding has been budgeted for this project.
Orientation content will be targeted to the goals and interests of particular student
populations. Transfer, transient and first-time-in-college students all have different
experiences and needs, and their orientation experience should reflect these
differences. Establishing orientation sessions that vary in modality to meet different
schedules and learning preferences will be developed and piloted during the
upcoming year. Additionally, by further disaggregating orientation content –
determining what should be delivered when to which groups of students – more
helpful and timely information will be shared.
As part of the mandatory orientation for new students, an orientation component
specific to each academic division is under development. In this extension of New
Student Orientation, students will meet with faculty from their prospective division
of interest at a designated point in the first year process and receive specific
information that will prepare them for entry into their academic program of choice.
Efforts are being made to improve career development and connections through the
Career Services office. Web-driven tools for career counseling and assisting with
goal clarification are under development and planned for testing in fall 2012.
D.
Describe any “effective practice(s)” that resulted from your work on this
Action Project.
This First Year Experience Action Project, in conjunction with the Completion by
Design and DEI initiatives, has led the college toward more prescriptive and
coherent student pathways to completion. The move to require interventions such
as orientation and advising reflects a significant shift for the college in terms of
policy and practice. Modifications to entry systems have laid the groundwork for
additional efforts to improve student success and completion.
The DEI initiatives (Boot Camps, Accelerated English and the Math Academy) all
are demonstrating improved and accelerated student success in developmental
education. The Light Touch Delegate program also shows promise, with an 18%
increase in next quarter retention for students participating vs. those who did not,
and it is likely to be scaled up if the evaluation of the pilot continues to show
positive gains. Sinclair Talks has been successful in attracting student
participation; whether it will prove attractive to more students and show evidence
of positive engagement that fuels student persistence remains to be seen.
E. What challenges, if any, are you still facing in regards to this Action Project?
This is an opportunity to get constructive, actionable feedback and advice from our
review process. Use this question to specify where your blocks, gaps, sticking
points, or problems are. If you have already fashioned strategies to deal with any
challenge you face, share both the challenge and your strategy for meeting it. If you
would like to discuss the possibility of AQIP providing you help beyond the review
process, explain your need(s) and tell us whom to contact and when.
Sinclair’s work to improve student persistence and completion comes at an
interesting time. The level of college engagement around this priority is at a high
water mark, and there is considerable investment in this agenda, both from college
resources and external funders. A core challenge is balancing work on a series of
activities and initiatives, ensuring coordination and avoiding initiative fatigue. We
believe an important strategy is to continue to integrate the work as much as
possible rather than adding more to our collective workload.
While these initiatives will help align the college to the new state funding formula
(with increasing weight on student success metrics), the initial investment for new
processes poses a major challenge. Central to meeting this challenge will be the
creation of a carefully developed and purposefully integrated Completion Agenda
Strategic Plan, to be presented to the President’s Cabinet and Board of Trustees in
the coming months. This plan will be part of a discussion to realign college
priorities to focus more resources on driving completion.
A key issue is funding for continuation of the First Year Advising Center staffing
model beyond the semester conversion initiative. Additional staff were funded to
effect the conversion, but continuation of additional staffing will be essential to
implementing mandatory advising. Implementing mandatory advising also will
require extensive facilities modifications.