Middle Georgia State University Campus Plan Update 2016

High Impact Strategy

Strategy 4.2 Use predictive analytics to help identify students who are off track and to help students understand their likelihood of success in particular programs.

Related Goals

CCG Goal 4: Provide proactive advising to keep students on track to graduate

Demonstration of Priority and/or Impact

Data show 12% of students enrolled Fall ’15, compared to 10% of students enrolled Fall ’14, took all of their courses on-line.  Thirty-five percent (35%) of students enrolled Fall ’15, compared to 34% Fall ’14, enrolled in courses on multiple campuses and on-line. 

The necessity of students needing to take courses across multiple campuses increases the importance of proactive advising to increase the likelihood that students will earn their degree on-time and without accruing unnecessary credits toward that degree.

Primary Point of Contact

Dr. Pamela Bedwell, Vice Provost Academic Initiatives, pamela.bedwell@mga.edu

Summary of Activities

This strategy and related goal began in 2013 and has served as the necessary driver for all retention and completion efforts.  Consolidation of student data bases for two institutions with distinctly different missions and a large geographic service area were the impetus for building a culture of using technology to know our students and provide the supports they need to be successful in attaining their goal.  EAB Student Success Collaborative (SSC) is that tech tool.  Over the course of three years all faculty have been trained in how to use SSC for proactive advising and for identifying sub-populations of students for retention campaigns.   Beginning Fall 2015, faculty and staff in Enrollment Management and Student Affairs Services were given access and training in SSC. In November 2015 a retention retreat was conducted for all academic administrators and enrollment management administrators. The outcomes for the retreat were to highlight the primary reasons MGA students do not persist and to begin the conversation about building functional and accountable coalitions between academic and non-academic units that impact student resiliency and success.  

In November 2015 through Summer session 2016 retention campaigns were conducted using watch lists created in the EAB Student Success platform (SSSC).  As examples of the nature of this work, the Chair of the Department of History and Political Science identified all history majors with 120 hours and no earned degree.  He met with each to create their graduation plan.   The Professional Advisor for the School of Business identified majors whose mid-term grades in gatekeeping courses put them at risk of course failure and subsequent denial into the program.  She sent each student an email and follow-up phone call with an invitation to meet with her, a faculty member, or a tutor to discuss the difficulties the student was having passing the course(s).   

Measures of Progress

Measure. Metric or data element

CCG Progress metric 1.1: - 5-year history of one-year retention rates for the institution as a whole Retention rates dropped slightly for the institution as a whole from Fall 2013 to Fall 2014. This may be an artifact of data reconciliation or possibly due to the number of students graduating Spring 2014 and the drop in new student enrollment.  Retention rates returned Fall 2015 to the Fall 2013 level.  [See Appendices Table 2]

CCG Progress metric 1.2: – 5-year history of one-year retention rates for students who begin as full-time students

Retention rates for students who begin as full-time students has steadily increased over the five year period from 68.06% Fall 2011 to 71.07% Fall 2015. [See Appendices Table 2  for institutional data and Table 3 for FTFTF]

CCG Progress metric 1.3: 5-year history of one-year retention rates for students who begin as part-time students

Retention  rates for part-time students has improved but is still below the system level average for FTFTF.  [See Appendices Table2]

Outcome metric 1.2: Number and percentage of students enrolled in 15 or more credit hours, 12-14 credit hours, or less than 12 credit hours.

The institution has made progress in this area but still lags behind state university averages.

[See Appendices Table 4]

Outcome metric 4.11: 5- year history of percentage of credits successfully completed (A,B,C,P,S) versus attempted (A,B,C,D,F,U,W,WF) end of Fall semester

The percentage of credits successfully completed dropped .5% Fall 2014 to Fall 2015.  Initial analysis of the data suggests that the increased use of video conferencing to deliver courses across multiple campuses and students who were admitted Fall who did not meet the admission standards are reflected in this data.  [See Appendices Tables 5 and 6 and Chart 1]

Baseline measure

Fall 2011 serves as the baseline data.  One caveat, Fall 2011-Spring 2013 is pre-consolidation data.   All efforts have been made to make it as clean as is possible when combining two historical data bases.   Fall 2013 is the first semester for FTFTF for the consolidated institution.

Interim measures of progress

1. Fall to Spring  retention rates

2. Mid-term grades for sub-populations

Measures of success

Institutional Fall to Fall baccalaureate degree retention rate of  72% by 2020

Fall to Fall baccalaureate retention rate for students attending full time 80% by 2020

FTFTF retention rate equal to USG State University average by 2020. Target 56.7%

Lessons learned

Using data to inform decisions about how to improve the students’ academic experience has taken root.  Both faculty and staff in enrollment and student services are now working within the SSC platform to advise students and to monitor the success of subpopulations of students.  It has not been the campus culture to assess the impact or return on investment on retention campaigns.  For the 2016-2017 academic year, emphasis is on making data- informed decisions for student success initiatives for each campus that have the most promise for the retention and degree completion of MGA students.

Trend data suggests there are three identified subpopulations whose risk of dropping out,  “stopping  out,”  or being dismissed should be the focus of the institution’s  CCG efforts.  They are:

1.  FTFTF, the sub-population of students that are used as the primary measure of an institution’s

     merit, [See Table 5]

2.  Freshmen who end their first and second semester with less than a 2.0 GPA, and

3.  Students  who attend part-time.