4 Steps to Address Course Completion Rates

Explore this brief to learn how to improve course completion rates in gateway courses and identify root causes.

EAB data finds that while high-DFW courses vary from institution to institution, there is a common set of six courses that tend to have the highest number of uncompleted credits: intro to chemistry, intro to psychology, intro to biology, college algebra, freshman English, and intro to political science.

2. Identify root causes

Lack of academic preparation frequently prevents students from succeeding in courses. While low high school GPAs and/or low SAT or ACT scores can help identify those students who need additional support, students without such markers may also be at risk. Students with strong high school GPAs who attended academically weak institutions or did not take rigorous courses are often still missing critical study skills.

There are a number of barriers that can prevent students from completing a course. The student may have had multiple absences or several missed assignments preventing them from mastering enough of the material to pass. Moreover, underrepresented students are often balancing multiple competing priorities such as caring for a parent or guardian or working while enrolled which can impact their academic performance.

Particularly important for online courses, students may never have logged into the learning management system (LMS). Such lack of engagement prevents students from gaining access to critical course information, assignments, and support mechanisms.

3. Prioritize resources

Prioritize investments in redesign based on a specific set of criteria. Well-intentioned blended learning initiatives often fail to achieve the desired course conversion or student success results because of an imbalance between central administrative oversight and ground-up faculty support.

One method of balancing both the interests of the institution and the curricular flexibility desired by faculty is to administer a provost-level grant program for course design innovation. By using targeted investments through an RFP process, the administration at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte ensures that willing faculty have plentiful support and recognition throughout the redesign and assessment process without trying to coerce faculty who are resistant.

Course Redesign Prioritization Criteria

4. Engage faculty

Faculty ownership is essential to the success and longevity of any course redesign initiative and can help improve course completion rates. One of the best ways to engage and support faculty is through faculty learning communities (FLC) which support individual pedagogical exploration while encouraging collective learning through practice and outcomes sharing. Boise State’s Center for Teaching and Learning invited mathematics faculty to participate in a course-based FLC, specifically to restructure Calculus I. The redesign effort took place in two phases over the course of about 16 months.

The first phase brought together an “Exploratory FLC,” convening calculus instructors to explore and experiment with redesign strategies at both the individual and institutional level. This created greater consensus around effective pedagogy across multiple instructors engaged in redesign efforts. The second phase entailed a “Collective Action FLC,” the goal of which was to implement the redesign. Invitations to this FLC, which was convened in the fall term, were limited to instructors slated to teach calculus in the upcoming spring term. During the first half of this FLC, members set out to determine agreed upon reforms.