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

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.

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.

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.

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.