Gathering Evidence on the Value of Frequent Feedback

An article in a recent issue of the journal, Innovative Higher Education, details research done at Washington State University on the effects of two testing strategies on academic achievement and final grades in an introductory statistics course. Researchers compared (a) performance of 63 students in one section of introductory statistics who took two mid-term examinations (one at six weeks and the second at 12 weeks) with (b) performance of 68 students in a second section of the same course who took bi-weekly exams throughout the 16-week semester. On average, students taking bi-weekly exams performed about 10 percentage points higher (one letter grade) than students taking only the mid-terms, and they scored about 15 percentage points higher on the cumulative final examination for this course.

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Photo courtesy of Florida Southern College

The Good Old Summertime: A Lever for Student Persistence

Did you go to summer school when you were a college student? Maybe you were just trying to get ahead—to graduate in three years instead of four. Maybe you had to attend to repeat a course. But did you know you might also have improved your chances of completing your degree? In the recent report, The Toolbox Revisited (2006), Clifford Adelman, Senior Research Analyst in the U. S. Department of Education*, provides some powerful evidence that students (especially African Americans) who earn more than four credits during summer terms complete their degrees at dramatically higher rates than students who earn no summer school credits. Even fewer than four summer credits result in improved degree completion rates for all groups except Latino students.

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Photo courtesy of Rich Mountain Community College

Foundations of Excellence® Dimension Grades

Past Foundations of Excellence® participants have often asked about the rationale behind the Report Card and if Dimension grades are useful. These grades are based on committee discussions and findings and are evaluated against the aspirational level of the Foundational Dimensions®– a level of performance that few, if any, institutions have reached. We often suggest that a campus may be in the middle or even above average when compared to peer institutions, but be a "D" compared to the aspirational model. These grades reflect institutional performance at a single point in time within the larger context of state/local support, economic conditions, etc. Ultimately the Steering Committee will consider all nine Dimension grades and develop a final grade report that sets each grade in relative terms to all the others.

Perhaps the best way to think about this issue is to look at the rationale behind assigning a grade to each Dimension...

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Taking a Birds-Eye View of DWFI rates at FoE Institutions

What factors result in poor academic performance in first-year courses? This is a question that many FoE institutions are asking, after they viewed rates of Ds, Fs, Withdrawals, and Incompletes in the courses identified as enrolling the highest percentage of first-year students.* Looking across all FoE institutions for the past two years, the average DFWI rates in the 245 courses listed are 25% for four-year institutions and 35% for two-year institutions. In spite of the higher average DFWI rates in two-year institutions, a few courses at four-year campuses had the highest actual rates of DFWIs--70% or over.

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Meet John Gardner, Executive Director of the Policy Center on the First Year of College

Meet Betsy Barefoot, Co-Director and Senior Scholar of the Policy Center on the First Year of College

Meet Randy Swing, Co-Director and Senior Scholar of the Policy Center on the First Year of College

Meet Kathy Morley, Assistant Director of the Policy Center on the First Year of College

2007 ©Policy Center on the First Year of College