What's Completion Got To Do With It? Using Course-Taking Behavior to Understand CC Success

Career Ladders Project
NewsFlash - June 25, 2012

" . . a third of first-time students engaged in skills-building behavior-enrolling in a small number of courses over a few years. Although they passed these courses 94% of the time, this group did not go on to achieve a degree, certificate or transfer. This is a significant because colleges do not have a consistent way to capture the positive impacts of short-term course-taking, and because this large group is regarded as failing when using the completion yardstick."
 
What's Completion Got To Do With It?
Using Course-Taking Behavior to Understand Community College Success

As community college resources have declined, discussions about success have mainly focused on easily-counted outcomes, with completion of certificates, degrees, and transfer serving as the standards of success. But does completion capture the full impact of community colleges? And if community colleges desire to demonstrate their effect on students more broadly, what should they be measuring?

LearningWorks - in association with The RP Group - has released a new brief,  WHAT'S COMPLETION GOT TO DO WITH IT? Using Course-Taking Behavior to Understand Community College Success. By analyzing student behavior, such as the number of units attempted and how long they stayed in college, Peter Riley Bahr of the University of Michigan for the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office, was able to document several "clusters" or patterns of student use of community colleges and identify characteristics of students who were more likely to exhibit each pattern.

For more information and to download the brief visit:
www.learningworksca.org/whats-completion-got-to-do-with-it-using-course-taking-behavior-to-understand-community-college-success