Southwest Texas Junior College

Presentation for

AtD Strategy Institute Workshop

February 6-7, 2008

Dick Whipple

Dr. Blaine Bennett

Southwest Texas Junior College

Is A “Round One” AtD College

Our New Mantra Is

“As an AtD college, we seek to be data driven in our decision making.”

Being “Data Driven” Means

• Collecting and analyzing data

• Reporting and interpreting results

• Making decisions supported by the data

• Getting buy-in from constituencies

• Making changes to processes

• Repeating and tracking improvement

Cohort Analysis

• Cohort analysis is a basic tool in data-driven decision making

• Working definition: Cohort analysis is the time-based study of an outcome based on some common characteristic of cohort membership.

Cohort Analysis Components

1. A criteria to select the cohort from a larger group

2. A completion or “success” criteria

3. A time over which to conduct the study

IPEDS Graduation Rate

1. Selection criteria: FTIC, full-time, degree seeking students

2. Completion criteria: Degree

3. Time: 150% of expected degree completion time.

SWTJC Graduation Rate

1. Selection: FTIC 2002, full-time, degree seeking

2. Completion: Associate Degree

3. Time: Three years

Gatekeeper Cohort

1. Selection criteria: Enrolled Fall 2003, Enrolled developmental MATH 0303 (Level 3 of 3)

2. Completion criteria: MATH 1314 College Algebra (Gatekeeper)

3. Time: Three years

Enrolled

Fall 2003

EnrolledMATH 0303

CompletedMATH 1314

4734 252 85

“Larger Group” “Cohort” “Success in three years”

Digging Deeper

• 34% of the cohort completed the gatekeeper course in three years

• A good baseline measure for evaluating improvement strategies

• But is there more information lying beneath the surface?

• Do we need to dig a little deeper?

Estudias – Data Warehouse

• SWTJC uses a commercial product called Estudias as a data warehousing tool

• Estudias provides a number of custom reporting options

• One of these graphically displays cohort tracking results

• We utilized this to “dig deeper” into our math developmental cohort

Completion Point Analysis

• Graphically depicts “completion vs. time”

• Reveals a problematic delay between completing the developmental sequence and completing the gatekeeper

• Raises further questions about the effect of the delay on success in the gatekeeper

• Graphically then, what do we want to see?

Ideal Curve

More Success...Sooner!

Cumulative Completion Analysis

• Graphically depicts “cumulative completions vs. time”

• The same data is depicted in a different way

• Consider the gateway completion example above

Cumulative Completion Analysis

• As before, there is an “ideal curve” we want to achieve

• It would rise quickly to level off at a desired value

• Again, let’s look at the gateway completion example above

More Success...Sooner!

Ideal Curve

AtD Initiative – Math Linking

• Lets look at a specific example showing how this use of data lead to an Atd initiative

• Recall the earlier “Completion Point Analysis” math gatekeeper completion

Suggests that students are waiting too long after completing the developmental sequence to take college algebra, a gatekeeper course.

AtD Initiative – Math Linking

• Hold that thought for a second and consider this additional piece of data

• Let’s study the time to graduation for students completing our three gatekeeper courses (College Algebra, Comp I, and U. S. History I)

Suggests that students completing college algebra are more likely to graduate.

AtD Initiative – Math Linking

• The data would suggest that we should close the gap between when students complete the math developmental sequence and take college algebra

• For the last two years, as an AtD initiative we have linked the highest level of developmental math and College Algebra into a single semester format.

• Let’s take a look at the results so far.

AtD Initiative – Math Linking

• The data clearly demonstrates that math linking is having the desired effect.

• This spring we will further evaluate the linking initiative and plan for its future.

• We are looking at other linking options including MATH 0302 to MATH 0303.

• Let’s test drive Estudias and see it work.