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Making the Connection: Engaging and Retaining Young Adults in Postsecondary Education

Year: 2009
Name of Institution:
University of Minnesota
Goal: Development and Innovation
Principal Investigator:
Johnson, David
Award Amount: $727,237
Award Period: 3 years
Award Number: R305A090122

Description:

Purpose: The purpose of this project is to develop a set of specific intervention strategies that promote the retention of students, ages 18–30, attending community colleges. The strategies will be based, in part, on Check & Connect (C&C), a secondary dropout prevention and intervention model that has been successfully tested and validated with high school students in multiple studies. The project seeks to determine the feasibility of adapting the secondary C&C to create a postsecondary model to increase students' engagement and persistence in community college settings.

Project Activities: This project involves two phases. In the first nine-month phase, project staff will develop a model of C&C that maintains essential elements of the C&C intervention while adapting it to fit the needs of the community college setting. In the second phase, project staff will pilot the new model with 40–60 students per site. A comparison group, receiving "treatment as usual," will be formed matching as closely as possible on status and alterable variables. Project personnel will conduct appropriate statistical analyses comparing the two groups on academic/achievement variables and school engagement variables.

Products: This project will result in a model of C&C revised for the postsecondary setting with an implementation manual.

Structured Abstract

Setting: The project will be conducted by the University of Minnesota at two participating community colleges: Minneapolis Community and Technical College, Minneapolis, MN and Jefferson Community and Technical College, Louisville, KY.

Populations: This project will focus on 18–30 year-old students determined to be at risk of dropping out based on a range of student characteristics (e.g., high school GPA, socio-economic status). The two participating community college sites have experienced significant challenges in engaging and retaining students through their full programs of study and are ideal settings for the proposed project.

Intervention to be Developed: Based on several trials to validate its effects on high school completion rates, C&C has met the evidence standards of the Institute of Education Sciences. This project will investigate the potential applicability of C&C strategies to postsecondary education environments. A cyclical progression will be implemented to determine the adaptations necessary to bridge the differences between secondary and postsecondary environments (e.g., increased self-directed student behavior, faculty roles, student support services).

Primary Research Method: Through an iterative process of planning, development, and evaluation with key stakeholders (e.g., community college faculty, advisers), University of Minnesota project staff will develop C&C for application at the postsecondary level. The adapted model will then be pilot tested with a sample of students using a continuous implementation and process evaluation. Data collected at several data points will inform each cycle of revision and redesign until stakeholders find the intervention feasible, useful, and applicable.

Sample for Pilot Test: At each of the two sites, two mentors will serve a sample of 40–75 students. Students will be selected on the basis of potentially malleable variables (e.g., course failures, credit accrual, late registration, lack of a clear academic goal, pattern of irregular course completion).

Measure of Key Outcomes: For the first phase of the project, an array of appropriate measures will be used to determine the feasibility of the postsecondary C&C model. The Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) survey will be used to assess progress on understanding and implementing the model. Surveys and interviews will be used to gather information on applicability, relevance, utility, flexibility, social validity, and cost effectiveness. The utility of three independent measures—the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE), the College Student Inventory (CSI), and the Student Readiness Inventory (SRI)—will be reviewed for goodness of fit, appropriateness, and predictive validity. One or more will be selected for use with participating students in phase two.

For the second pilot phase, student outcomes aligned with the new model will be assessed every 3 months of the pilot implementation. These include but are not limited to such outcomes as enrollment status, continuous enrolment, courses attempted/courses completed, class attendance, registration behaviors, number of appointments with the mentor, co-curricular activities, and number of service referrals made by mentor.

An observation protocol, the Fidelity Matrix, will be developed to judge whether implementation conditions in the pilot of the revised model are evident, usually evident, seldom evident, and not evident.

Data Analytic Strategy: For phase one, data analysis will consist of appropriate qualitative and descriptive methods. The CBAM provides scales for its survey data that describe response to the innovation. For other surveys, descriptive measures will inform assessment of progress toward applicability, relevance, utility, flexibility, social validity, and cost effectiveness. Interview data will be analyzed through bricolage (Kvale 2009) or ad hoc (Miles & Huberman 1994) techniques, noting patterns and themes, seeing plausibility, making comparisons, and building a logical chain of evidence, following the general requirement for rich description.

For the pilot study in phase two, the treatment and comparison groups will be compared using analysis of covariance adjusting for risk factors of importance. Student outcomes will include enrollment status, continuous enrollment, courses attempted/courses completed, class attendance, registration behaviors as well as other relevant variables. Measures of program participation (e.g., appointments with the mentor, co-curricular activities, number of service referrals made by mentor) will be analyzed. Survey data will also be analyzed to provide a descriptive understanding of the role of the mentor. Scores on the CCSSE, CSI, and/or SRI, will be compared for the treatment and comparison groups.