Improve Student Course Outcomes Through Course Redesign
Read the brief to learn why course completion rates are an important indicator of student success and how to improve outcomes while maintaining academic rigor during course redesign.
Improve gateway course completion rates
While high DFW rates (30%-40%) are typical for many gateway courses, some faculty remain skeptical of attempts to improve course completion rates. Recognizing and addressing faculty concerns is essential to making progress. Pedagogical conversations that focus on blaming weak students (or weak instructors) for poor outcomes are rarely productive.
Research has shown that redesigning the pedagogical model for gateway courses can measurably improve student success, but complete course redesigns can be expensive, time-consuming, and politically challenging. Simply adding supplemental instruction or early-low stakes assessments, for example, can also have a major positive impact but with significantly less effort. Many approaches to pedagogical innovation require the engagement of instructors, but they do not depend on having large numbers of faculty fundamentally rethinking their teaching philosophy.
This resource is part of the Facilitate Student-Centered Course Redesign Roadmap. Access the Roadmap for stepwise guidance with additional tools and research.
Four steps to address course completion rates
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1. Size the opportunity
While every institution recognizes that some students do not complete some courses, many are surprised when they actually analyze the data. Quantifying DFW rates at the institutional, college, department, and course level can help administrators and faculty understand just how many credits are being lost and how many students are being negatively impacted.
It is important to look at both the DFW rate (the percentage of students who are not completing a course) and the absolute number of credits lost due to DFWs. Often a very large course with a relatively low DFW rate will impact more students than a very small course with a high DFW rate. Sharing these data widely across campus can stimulate productive conversations about how to understand the DFW challenge and how to respond to it.
2. Identify root causes
While counting incomplete credits is relatively straightforward, determining why students are not passing courses is often significantly more difficult. Common findings include:
While lack of academic preparation certainly contributes to the issue, even highly selective institutions face high DFW rates in certain programs and courses.
Students often struggle with financial, personal, emotional, etc. challenges. While individual instructors may not be able to address these issues in class, these challenges often manifest first as absences or failing grades. Instructors can identify early warning signs and pass them to advising and counseling staff.
For example, this includes large variations in DFW ranges among different instructors teaching sections of the same course, which is often a major driver of higher DFW rates. Variability in instructor DFW rates is often due not to differences in student preparation but rather differences in grading philosophy or a lack of standardization of assessments across multiple sections of a single course.
For example, this has been seen with first generation, underrepresented minority. Identifying these disparities is an important first step in understanding which pedagogical approaches are more or less effective for different types of students.
3. Prioritize resources
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Read the ArticleIt is not possible (or necessary) to redesign the majority of courses taught on any campus. Given limited time and resources, it is critical to focus on those courses that have the largest impact on student success and where pedagogical innovation has the most support.
Look at courses with high DFW rates and high absolute numbers of lost credit hours. Consider courses with high variability in DFW rates by instructor or by student group.
4. Engage faculty
Ultimately, faculty are responsible for what happens in the classroom, and no changes to pedagogy can or should be made without their leadership. It is important to recognize, however, that faculty face many barriers to adopting new approaches in the classroom.
It is critical to recognize that this work needs to be done by the faculty and that faculty require time and resources to engage in the challenging but productive work of course improvement. While all institutions have a handful of passionate faculty innovators, relying on the intense devotion of a handful of instructors will not be sufficient to make a measurable impact across multiple sections, multiple courses, and multiple departments. A coordinated effort to provide resources, support, time, and incentives is essential.
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