Course Completion Playbook
Analyses and tools to improve student outcomes in critical gateway courses
This resource describes the four key steps to increasing course completion rates without reducing academic rigor.
This tool is now free to access as part of EAB’s work to help education leaders and employers tackle student readiness challenges.
High failure rates in gateway courses represent one of the largest obstacles to student success at most colleges and universities. Large required courses with failure rates as high as 30-60% can create retention and time-to-degree issues for hundreds or even thousands of students at a single institution.
While many faculty fear that nothing can be done without lowering academic standards, a growing body of research and practice demonstrates that with appropriate support, larger numbers of students can complete these courses and stay on track for a degree.
Start by completing the diagnostic exercise to determine which practices might be right for your institution. Then, explore the detailed descriptions, case studies, and resources for each of the nine tactics for improving course completion rates listed below.
Nine tactics for improving course completion rates
Early and frequent low-stakes assessment
Students are often unable to measure their progress until the first summative assessment, typically a midterm exam (if not the final exam). Frequent, low-stakes learning assessments allow students to check their progress early and often while enabling instructors to identify and intervene with students who are off-track.
Use frequent, low-stakes learning assessments so students can check their progress early and often. Such formative assessments enable students to seek help earlier if they are struggling. They also enable instructors to identify and intervene with students who are off track. These assessments can take a wide range of forms, from simple conversations in class, to written quizzes, to fully adaptive online learning tools.
Standardized assessment
Lack of coordination and standardization across course sections leads to widely varied experiences and results for students. While in principle, students taking the same course should achieve the same learning outcomes, in practice, differences in teaching materials, styles, and assessment practices set different standards for different sections and can leave students with vastly different levels of course material mastery.
Establish clear learning outcomes and a set of shared materials and assessments across course sections to support a common standard for student achievement. Instructors should regularly revisit learning outcomes to ensure concordance on student learning outcomes. Clear learning outcomes ensure assessments test the same knowledge and skills across sections.
Active learning
Traditional stand-and-deliver lectures frequently fail to engage students while obscuring struggling students. Incorporating student-centered active learning pedagogies in the classroom can help improve student mastery of competencies, better support underprepared students, and engage well-prepared students who were previously disengaged.
Incorporate student-centered active learning pedagogies in the classroom to improve mastery of competencies and support underprepared students. Such approaches allow instructors to more easily identify and engage struggling students, and also to engage well-prepared students who may have been disengaged.
Supplemental instruction
Tutoring is a key academic resource for struggling students. But, tutors often lack the necessary knowledge and experience to help students with course-specific material, and the one-on-one nature of tutoring can make it difficult to scale. Supplemental instruction is a more scalable option for providing additional academic support to students, providing opportunities to review and discuss key course concepts, develop study skills, and prepare for exams.
Supplemental instruction is a more scalable option for providing additional academic support to students. Supplemental instruction goes beyond helping students with homework, providing opportunities to review and discuss key course concepts, develop study skills, and prepare for exams. While some institutions use instructors to lead supplemental instruction, it is generally a peer-assisted study method leveraging students who have previously completed the course. Supplemental instruction can be targeted towards specific students, but is open to all.
Course behavior alerts
Instructors are well positioned to identify at-risk behavior due to their frequent engagement with students. However, without a central way to track concerns, students may not receive the support they need. Track and flag concerning student behavior and performance in critical courses to ensure interventions and support services can be deployed before it is too late.
Track and flag concerning student behavior and performance to ensure interventions and support services can be deployed before it is too late. The earlier at-risk students can be identified the better faculty, advising staff, and administrators can provide the proper support services to keep students on track.
Automated withdrawal advising
Many students withdraw from courses or leave college entirely for reasons that might have been addressed in a simple advising conversation. Without good advice, avoidable withdrawals can easily lead to severe delays on degree progress.
Require students to complete an online advising prompt before processing a withdrawal. Survey responses should trigger prompts about resources specific to students’ needs while discouraging unnecessary withdrawals.
Growth mindset priming
Students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and underrepresented minority groups often struggle to succeed in courses and to complete their degrees at similar rates to well-resourced students. This is due, in part, to these students’ perception that their first stumble means they won’t succeed.
The University of Texas at Austin addressed this gap by allowing psychology faculty to construct a pre-orientation exercise designed to encourage resilience among high-risk students.
Build confidence among new students by encouraging a growth mindset (e.g., the belief that intelligence can be expanded through effort, strategies, and support), as well as a sense of belonging, during the onboarding process.
Intensive early start cohorts
Underprepared students struggle to succeed in their first several semesters, placing them at higher risk of failing and ultimately dropping out entirely. Give students a head start through intensive for-credit course sections and counseling the summer before their first fall semester.
The summer program should include not only for-credit courses that count towards the student’s degree, but also supplemental instruction and advising across any areas that may become pitfalls.
Accelerated catch-up terms
When students drop a traditional, full-term course or withdraw after the drop deadline, they face three main risks: falling below full-time enrollment status and losing financial aid eligibility, delaying completion of a critical prerequisite by one or more terms, and struggling to catch up in new courses after missing the first several class sessions.
Offer accelerated “catch-up” courses for students who drop or withdraw early in a term, allowing them to maximize their course load, prevent delays in degree progress, and enroll without burdensome schedule restraints. These accelerated offerings can be run online or face-to-face, but should meet more frequently or for longer periods to ensure all necessary material is covered.
Several departments at the University of Alabama have addressed the challenges associated with withdrawals by creating accelerated, online course options for students who drop or withdraw within the first five weeks of a 15-week term.
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