MTC’s QEP
The New Student Experience:
Five Years Later
New Directions in Student Development
Piedmont Technical College
March 5-7, 2014
Student Development Services
Academic Affairs Division
MTC’s New Student Experience:
Five Years Later
Midlands Technical College’s QEP (Quality Enhancement
Plan)
• Engaging new students
• Creating learning communities
Session goals:
• Focus on process and development of the QEP
– Review QEP goals, challenges, and changes
• Focus on best practices
– Lessons learned
– Plans for sustaining our QEP goals
Five Years Later...
The New Student Experience
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
Design & Implementation
College-Wide Initiative
Learning Communities
Student Engagement
2013
2014
2008-2009: Developing
The New Student Experience
Findings from College-wide Discovery Process (2008)
• Academically and socially underprepared
• Retained only some information from New Student
Orientation
• Failed to access support early to influence decisions
• Struggled with communication, technology, identifying
support services, finances
New Student Experience Goals:
1. To support new students’ connection and
engagement with the college community.
2. To create classroom learning communities
(CLCs) that foster student success.
3. To create inquiry-based faculty learning
communities (FLCs) that prepare faculty to
implement effective CLCs.
Research supports the decision to
develop entry-level courses as CLCs:
"For students who commute to college, especially
those who have multiple obligations outside the
college, the classroom may be the only place
where students and faculty meet, where education
… is experienced. For those students, in particular,
the classroom is the crossroads where the social
and the academic meet."
Tinto, V. (1997). Classrooms as communities: Exploring
the educational character of student persistence.
Journal of Higher Education, 68(6), 599-624.
Research supports the decision to embed
success skills in entry-level courses:
"The success of underprepared students must be an
institution-wide, core responsibility [emphasis in orig.].
• Basic skills cannot be learned -- or taught -- in isolation as
a set of discrete mechanical skills … .
• The success of underprepared students cannot be the
responsibility of a small group of faculty teaching specially
designated courses.
• It must be an institutional responsibility: given visibility and
priority by campus leaders at the highest levels, attended
to in every classroom and every interaction with students."
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. (2008).
Basic skills for complex lives: Designs for learning in the
community college.
Pre-QEP Orientation & Advisement Model
2008: Pre-QEP Process
Students received letter of invitation to sign-up
for New Student Orientation
• Signed-up for orientation date
or
• Elected to wait for advisement appointment –
after students who participated in Orientation
Fall 2009, the First Step: Intermediate Model
Designed to Provide Information Online
Pre-Advisement Module (P.A.M.) requirement, with
gradual roll-out (New AA/AS students, plus a few Career
Programs, who advise their own majors)
• Students received letter
• Steps for enrollment identified
• Link to P.A.M. on homepage
P.A.M. Pilot: Fall 2009 – Spring 2010
Developed In-house
• Student log-in : Name and D/O/B
• Connection with Colleague Database not automatic
Five Areas:
• College Services and Resources: Counseling and Career Services,
Academic Success Center (tutoring), Library, Student Life, etc.
• Campus Cruiser™ – Email connection to the college (official
notifications)
• MTC Online – Portal to manage college business: Academic
information (testing, grades, schedule), financial aid, account
balance, etc.
• College Expectations – Honor Code, attendance, parking, smoking,
etc.
• Academic Advising Information – Placement results, prerequisites,
scheduling, program plan/evaluation, balancing college and other
responsibilities, etc.
Addressing Goal 1: Student Engagement
MTC Pre-Advisement Module
A project of The New Student Experience*
(read more)
Welcome to Midlands Technical College
As a new student at Midlands Technical college, you are now part of a college
community dedicated to your success. Being new can mean being unfamiliar
with your surroundings. The college offers an abundance of services and
programs designed to support you in achieving both your Academic and
Career goals. This pre-advisement module will show you how to connect to
these resources and people quickly. I wish you the best as you start your
college career at MTC. Dr. Marshall (Sonny) White, Jr. - President
12
P.A.M. required to participate…at
2009 – 2011:
Challenges & Solutions
• Preparing new students for
advisement
• Reaching all new students
• Online pre-advisement: P.A.M.
• Multiple student log-ins:
email, student account portal
• P.A.M. log-in with directions
for other accounts
• Manual log-in verification
Campus Cruiser
• Content length
• Query link via MOODLE
• Gradual roll out, with planned
expansion
• New LMS
• Essential content prior to
Orientation
• Added information - D2L
• P.A.M. confused with
Orientation
• Addressed student feedback –
avoiding duplication
P.A.M. 2.0 – Intermediate Model
Intermediate Model Evolution:
2010 - 2013
Intermediate Model 2009 - 2013
2011 – 2013:
More Challenges & More Solutions
• Student email and account
systems changed
• Student log-in same for all
systems
• Expanded Orientation
Sessions (redundancy)
• Expanded use of D2L and
online supplements
• Updated to reflect changes:
MyMTC Email; MyMTC
• Students discover log-in
problems prior to advisement
& quick access P.A.M. results
• Revised content length prior
to Orientation
• Added more information
about D2L in P.A.M.
• D2L access delayed (4 days
prior to beginning of term)
• P.A.M. confused with
Orientation
• Establish workgroup of A.A.,
SDS, IRM, Online Learning
• P.A.M. content retooled to
avoid duplication
2013-2014
Orientation &
Advisement
Model
Retooling
All New Students
– All majors
Retooling and Upgrading
• Students aware of Learning Management
System prior to academic term
• Address log-in awareness prior to classes
• Part of student expectations about technology
literacy
• Administered within the college
NSO 5 Years Later: towards the future
Upon Admission for Fall 2014, students sent communication(s):
“Complete Pre-Advisement Module” with link to sign-up for NSO
Goal: Connection and engagement, upon Admission
• Part 1 Completion leads to Orientation, session options
Orientation –
• On-campus: Focus on engaging activities and advisement
• General welcome session: Essential information, overview of
advising and registration process with college representatives
present
• Concurrent break-out sessions:
Guests: more information (financial aid Q&A, time-management,
setting priorities, how guests can become coaches)
Students: Academic advising and time management, setting
priorities
Goal 1 Outcomes: P.A.M.& Orientation
• P.A.M.: increase participation at New Student Orientation
• 363 … > 2,000+
• Partnerships – A.A., S.D.S.
• New Student Orientation aligned more with Academic
Advising process
• Buy-in from students and guests (coaches)
• Transformation from (just) Advising to New Student
Orientation with Informed Advisement
• On-campus – addressing concerns of all stakeholders
via concurrent sessions
P.A.M. updated…
Data – fall 2013
• 2,185 students completed
• Nearly 86% persisted spring 2014 (on-campus participants)
2.7
2.669
2.6
2.5
Avg. GPA Without Orienation
2.4
Avg. GPA Attended Orienation
2.3
2.338
2.2
2.1
Collaboration across the College:
Moving from Goal 1 to Implementing
Goals 2 and 3
• Re-visioning NSO increased college-wide
collaborations
• Addressing QEP Goals 2 and 3: More collegewide collaboration
• Goal 3: Learning communities – faculty & staff
– to prepare for teaching new students
• Goal 2: Self-contained classroom learning
communities
Moving toward Goal 2:
Classroom learning communities (CLCs) that
foster student success.
• Modeling and reinforcing academic success
skills in CLCs in entry level courses.
• Four CLC competencies intentionally addressed:
– Connecting students with college resources
– Developing information and technology
literacy
– Making learning visible (metacognition)
– Developing classroom skills and behaviors
Goal 3
Structuring FLCs to Implement Effective CLCs
• Inquiry semester:
• Exploring, identifying, and developing ways to
integrate course-related student learning
outcomes and classroom success competencies.
• Developing strategies for connecting students
with college resources that support course
outcomes.
• Implementation semester: CLCs
• Sharing results with college community
Focus on Goals 2 and 3
• Faculty awareness and appreciation of the whole
student
– Librarians
– Academic resources (especially IT)
– Tutorial Services (Academic Success Center)
– Student Development Services
• Begin with entry-level courses for new students
– Cycle 1: ENG 100, MAT 100, RDG 100
– Cycle 2: ENG 101, MAT 101, AHS 102
– Cycle 3: MAT 102, SBS, HUM, some CPT
– Cycle 4: MAT 110, more CPT, SBS, and HUMS
Student Impact: Some Basic Numbers
• 8-9 Faculty LC participants each cycle
• Goal of each cycle: 25 CLC sections in targeted
courses each fall
• Goal: 400-500 students each fall
• Additive effect after Cycle 1:
– CLCs in Cycle 1 courses (ENG 100, MAT 100, and RDG 100)
continue when CLC 2 courses in AHS 102, ENG 101, and
MAT 101 added, etc.
• Results for each Fall semesters:
–
–
–
–
Fall 2010 – 27 CLC 1 sections
Fall 2011 – 21 CLC 2 sections (42 in total)
Fall 2012 – 28 CLC 3 sections (58 in total)
Fall 2013 – 21 CLC 4 sections (80 in total)
Student Success: Some Basic Numbers
• More A, B, and C grades than D and F (W, WF) grades
(trend going up for students in CLCs)
• SP 2010: 82% > 80%, FA 2010: 88% > 82%, SP 2011:
84% > 82%, …
• More students retained over the next two semesters
SP 2010: FA 10 50% > 47%; SP 11 45% > 40%
FA 2010: SP 11 74% > 70%; FA 11 48% > 44%
SP 2011: FA 11 47% = 47%; SP 12 46% > 44%
Emphasizing Active Learning Skills
•
•
•
•
•
Active practice and reinforcement of skills
Showing how skills and content translate into “value”
Helping students accept transformation and change
Active and effective use of course materials
“Translation” activities to demonstrate learning
(reflection and assessment of learning process)
• Asking and answering the hard questions:
When do you know that you know something?
How can we help our students realize this?
Lessons Learned from the FLCs
Developing Self-Aware & Self-Reliant Learners
• Build awareness of shared responsibilities using the
syllabus and related materials
• Develop course activities and assignments as facultystudent contract
• Review course materials, effective use of them
Key words: Transparency and Involvement
Weeks 1 & 2: Build awareness of membership in a
community of learners, with shared responsibility for
accomplishing course goals
Developing Self-Aware
& Self-Reliant Learners
Throughout the Semester:
• Reinforce intentional connections to college resources
• Make learning visible
– Make processes explicit, breaking down assignments
– Assess strategies for approaching assignments
– Make clear outcomes of actions
• Create awareness of role and responsibility for learning
• Create assessment and self-assessment opportunities
– Provide feedback early, within the first two weeks
– Promote self-assessment early and at mid-term
– Provide students with tools and rubrics for selfevaluation
QEP Development Activities
(Some Examples)
Past summer workshops:
• “Reading and Writing across the Curriculum: Designing
Transparent Assignments and Assessments”
• “The First Two Weeks – Engaging Students and Building
Community”
• “Using Technology to Connect with Students”
MTC Assessment Institute (developing learning communities, soft
skills)
Discipline specific meetings (engaging students with technology)
National Learning Communities Conference (embedding success
skills, self-contained CLCs, LCs for faculty development)
Summer 2014 Workshops: Metacognition and Integrated Learning
Challenges to Extending the
Learning Community Approach
• All the challenges we faced when designing the QEP
• Curriculum and course redesigns need new LCs to
identify how to reconnect with the CLC competencies
• Heavy teaching load limits interactions with students
• Increase in non-instructional faculty responsibilities
• Infrastructure and logistic developments
• Developing better courses with clearer understanding
of our students = Time and Focus
• Continuing the LC approach: A new opportunity each
fall to participate in an FLC
The New Student Experience
Summary:
•
•
•
•
Self-Study: Data-Driven Discovery & Design Process
Identify Realistic Goals
Develop Pragmatic Strategies
Implementation: Pilot, test, refine and revise (and repeat
process again!)
• New student orientation and advisement
• College-wide engagement: Communication tools, selfmanagement tools, success skill support
• Classroom-supported academic success competency goals
• Faculty and staff preparation
• Identify Lessons Learned and Best Practices
• Develop Sustainability and Institutionalization Plan
Questions?
Barbara Church
Orientation Coordinator,
churchb@midlandstech.edu
Nina Staggers
Associate Director, Advisement and Orientation Services,
staggersn@midlandstech.edu
Robert Stuessy
Director, Advisement and Orientation Services,
stuessyr@midlandstech.edu
Jan Jake
English Department Faculty & QEP Director,
jakej@midlandstech.edu
Thank you!