Learn how to use the Postsecondary Data Partnership Credit Accumulation Rate dashboard to measure the impact of college readiness metrics on our institution’s credit completion ratio.
Transcript
In this tutorial, we demonstrate how to use the PDP Credit Accumulation Rate dashboard to measure the impact of college readiness metrics on our institution’s credit completion ratio.
As a quick reminder, the Credit Completion Ratio Institution-Level dashboard reports how successful students are at completing the credits they attempt within their first year of college. Why is this important? Studies show that higher first-year credit completion ratios are linked with higher credential completion rates. This metric helps identify student populations in need of early intervention.
First-year students are students who enrolled in college for the first-time and students who have newly transferred-in to our institution.
Let’s use this dashboard to answer this research question: What is the impact of college readiness on the credit completion ratio?
Before we continue, please remember that the results and trends shown in this tutorial can not be applied to your institution. This data is only for demonstration purposes only. Please review your institution’s data before drawing conclusions.
This is the Home Page for the Postsecondary Data Partnership dashboards. The Credit Accumulation Rate Institution-Level dashboard is one of the early momentum metrics. Clicking on that icon brings us to the dashboard.
We are interested in exploring the impact of college readiness on the credit completion ratio. There are two metrics that we should examine. The first metric is called “Math Prep” which stands for math preparedness. Because we want to compare the credit completion ratio between first-year students who are prepared for college-level math vs. those who are not prepared for college-level math, let’s apply the Math Prep dimension.
Click on “Select Dimension” then choose “Math Prep”. Now, we have three lines in our line chart and three sections in the lower left-hand bar chart – one for students who are not ready for college-level math, one for students who are ready for college-level math, and one for students whose math preparedness is unknown.
Let’s filter out the “Unknown” data since that that won’t help us understand the relationship between math preparedness and our credit completion ratio. Click on the global filter called “Math Prep”, deselect “Unknown”, and click “Apply”. Now the students represented in this dashboard are first-year students whose math preparedness is known.
Hovering over the 2018-19 data points, we find that 73.6% of the credits attempted were completed for those first-year students who were prepared for college-level math when they entered our institution. We also find that they completed 16.2 credits in their first year of college. Hovering over the orange line, we find that that the credit completion ratio for first-year students who were not prepared for college-level math was 65%. We also see that they completed 13 credits in their first year of college which is three credits less than students who were prepared for college-level math.
Now, let’s reset our math prep filter by selecting on “Unknown” and clicking on Apply.
The second college-readiness metric is English Prep which stands for English preparedness. Let’s add that dimension. And let’s remove the category of “Unknown” from the English Prep global filter.
The credit completion ratio for first-year students prepared for college-level English is 70.7% compared to 66.5% for first-year students not ready for college-level English. While there is still an achievement gap, it is narrower than for the college-level math preparedness metric.
To summarize, we found that first-year students who enter our institution under-prepared for college-level math or English complete fewer credits than first-year students who are prepared. We could share these results with academic advisors, first-year experience instructors, and faculty in the math and English departments to make them aware of the achievement gaps and long-term outcomes between these groups of students. Working together we could find ways to better support those students.
In summary, we hope you will use your institution’s dashboards to better understand your most vulnerable student populations.