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Enrollment Management
Lower Division Course Student-Faculty Ratios
What
In order to test the effects of reducing the student-faculty ratios in large, lower division courses (both GE and major), each college was asked to identify Spring 2017 courses with enrollment of 80 or above, and to reduce the class size by splitting the course into multiple sections. The additional sections were funded with GI 2025 grant money.
Who
Project Lead: Elizabeth Adams
When
Large, lower division courses were split into multiple, smaller sections in Spring 2017
Outcomes
Using a direct comparison of average course GPA and DFU rates in large and small sections of the course taught by the same instructor, we found a statistically significant increase in the average course GPA and a statistically significant decrease in the DFU rate in the small sections of the course. We attempted different cut offs for large classes to see how large a class had to be before size no longer had a significant impact on improved outcomes, and those with 60 students or fewer had the greatest impact on student success.
Resources
Link to report (coming soon)
Johnson, Iryna. 2010. “Class Size and Student Performance at a Public Research University: A Cross-Classified Model,” Research in Higher Education, December 2010, Vol. 51, Issue 8: 701-723.
Beattie, Irenee and Megan Thiele. 2016. “Connecting in Class? College Class Size and Inequality in Academic Social Capital,” Journal of Higher Education, May 2016, Vol. 87, Issue 3: 332-362.
Schedule Building Professional Development
What
To support college and departmental efforts to build class schedules that maximize student success, a professional development workshop for department chairs, managers of academic resources, and associate deans focusing on building data-driven, student-centered class schedules was offered in November 2017. More than 75 Department Chairs, Deans, MARs, and Associate Deans attended.
Who
Project leads: Diane Stephens, Elizabeth Adams, and Janet Oh
When
Workshop offered in November 2017 for enhancing the Fall 2018 and ongoing build
Outcomes
Anticipated outcomes are reduction in low enrolled courses and increase in overall course fill rate in Fall 2018 and forward
Resources
Schedule Augmentation
What
The campus added sections of high-demand majors classes for juniors and seniors beginning with the Fall 2016 schedule. In addition to our usual strategies for identifying these courses, we used the degree progress and milestone data now available in U-Achieve to identify bottlenecks sooner and aggressively adjust the Spring 2017 semester schedule (and future semester schedules) to address unmet demand. We also expanded the number of course sections set aside for FTT using the same data-informed strategy.
Who
Project Leads: Elizabeth Adams and Diane Stephens
When
The schedule has been augmented using this data-informed approach each semester, beginning in Fall 2016.