Photo courtesy SMBCollege

Photo courtesy SMBCollege

An emerging strategy to promote community higher success is to have students enroll in "student success courses" that focus on study and career skills and assist guide them through their community higher experience.

Encouraging more students to accept these courses, as role of a range of "student support services," is a principal recommendation of the California Community Higher's Pupil Success Task Force.

The Task Force was mandated past 2010 legislation to examine how to improve student success in community colleges. In its draft study, it tersely noted that "a educatee's readiness for college is based on several factors in addition to their bookish proficiency in English and mathematics or their ability to perform well on standard assessment tests."

The Task Force, whose recommendations will be considered by the California Community College's Lath of Governors side by side month, pointed out that students' "college knowledge," or awareness and understanding of "college culture" and support services, can assistance them navigate the complexities of life on campus and access services such as tutoring labs and financial aid that may be critical to their success.

The report said the student success courses the Task Forcefulness had in listen would well-nigh likely be provided in a noncredit format in social club to avoid issues related to cost or financial aid. But it left it up in the air as to whether they should exist required for students who demonstrate they need help after taking an assessment test to measure their skill levels.

If required, it is non clear how the customs colleges would pay the costs of calculation multiple new  course sections to serve larger numbers of students. Some community college leaders also worry that making a student success form a requirement could have the unintended impact of erecting still another obstacle that students have to traverse in order to reach their educational goals.

Typically, a pupil success form has been offered in conjunction with other support services, such equally establishing "learning communities" in which a group of students enroll in the aforementioned courses and form a support grouping to assistance each other and together make use of other services offered past their higher, such as extra tutoring.

Similar many of the Job Forcefulness's recommendations, the idea of a student success course is not a new ane merely builds on what is already in place in more than limited form in some colleges. Courses intended to impart useful information to help students succeed are offered at community colleges like Urban center College of San Francisco, College of Alameda, Skyline College in San Bruno, Mt. San Antonio Higher in Walnut,  and the Cosumnes River Higher near Sacramento.

For at least 25 years, student success courses were offered at Metropolis College of San Francisco as a one-unit, non-for-credit course, said Nadine Rosenthal, the managing director of City Higher'southward Learning Assistance Middle.

It has since expanded to a 3-unit of measurement course taken by some 800 students that tin can be used for transfer to a UC or CSU campus. It consists of three segments: 1 focused on personal growth and learning styles; another on study strategies and exam-taking skills, and another on critical and creative thinking. An average of 40 students are enrolled in 22 course sections.

Rosenthal said surveys showed that students found the "time management" and "goal setting" portions of the class almost valuable, followed by techniques for memorizing and concentrating on course materials.

But she opposed making it a required course for students who are shown to be lagging on a placement test. She said information technology would be "logistically challenging" as well as extremely costly to offer as many every bit 100 course sections without a major increase in staffing — an unlikely prospect during this period of extreme cuts to the community colleges' budget.

Regina Stanback Stroud, the president of Skyline Higher, said she worried that making "student success" courses mandatory for some students may take the unintended impact of slowing students' progress toward transferring to CSU or UC.

She as well expressed concerns that students in career technical programs, such every bit automotive technology, would be required to take the student success class even though they wouldn't need to acquire study and other skills more than appropriate for academic classes.

The push to expand pupil success courses, said Bob Gabriner, a task strength member and manager of the Education Leadership Program at San Francisco State, is in part a response to the difficulties in providing students with regular admission to college counselors, whose ranks take been drastically macerated as a result of upkeep cuts, even as enrollments have increased.

"As y'all cut back on counseling resources and student services resource, you lot have to effigy out how to evangelize those services and that information in a more efficient way," Gabriner said. Providing information during a 16-week semester form may be more effective than a i-time session with a counselor, he said, because instructors can attain far more than students and tin respond to students' needs as they arise.

"Having a scaffolding over an entire semester turns out to be a better way" to impart information such equally how to get library privileges and other practical aspects of campus life, Gabriner said.

A MDRC report looked at the impact of programs that integrated education with student support services at ix community colleges in California. Specifically, the report looked at SSPIRE programs (Support Partnership Integrating Resources and Education), which included approaches such as "drop-in" study centers, summer math courses, and college readiness courses.

The report argued that student success classes and similar "classroom-based interventions may accept the reward of reaching students who otherwise would not seek help …They may also exist a more efficient means of enhancing student services than a model predicated on many individual appointments betwixt students and counselors."

The most compelling research showing the impact of comes from Florida, where students have taken "student life skills" classes.   A 2006 study found that students who completed those classes were more  more likely to earn a community higher credential, transfer to the country university system, or still be enrolled in college later on five years. A later study showed a "positive relationship betwixt taking a student life skills form and various pupil success indicators — credential completion, persistence, and transfer."

With obvious relevance for California, the  researchers concluded the following:

 Student life skills courses may contribute to positive outcomes by helping students early in the college experience to develop clearer goals for education and careers, ameliorate ideas of what information technology takes to succeed in college, and some practical skills useful for achievement.

This is one of a series of reports on key recommendations of the California Community College's Student Success Chore Force.  Other reports focused on proposals to amend the requirements for receiving a Board of Governors fee waiver, and to draw up an "private pedagogy plan" for all students.

For research and background material on the effectiveness of student success courses and other educatee support services, hither are some relevant reports:

A 2007 study on didactics outcomes of students who participated in a "student life skills" course at Florida Community Colleges, along with an earlier study.

Evaluation of California's SSPIRE (Back up Partnership Integrating Resources and Education) program.

Evaluation of Learning Communities at Queensborough and Houston Community Colleges.

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