I attended the Texas CoRequisite Project Conference earlier this week, during which representatives of the Rand Corporation presented results of their research on CoReq effectiveness. You can read some of the recommendations they draw from their research here — and I encourage you to give their recommendations some thought. One of their slides was particularly intriguing: nine key ingredients for CoReq success.
- Momentum: early opportunity for college credit
- Alignment: DevEd and Credit integration (professors’ communication, sharing curriculum)
- Access to rigorous coursework/expectation (critical thinking, moving away from “skill/drill,” focus on college-level content)
- Intensity of practice of academic skills: dosage of practice matters
- In some skills, more intense practice over a shorter time-span correlates to better outcomes
- Student-centered instruction, including
- Differentiation
- Active learning
- Contextualization
- Support in both reading and writing (integrating is more effective)
- Focus on student success skills rather than just academic skills
- Study skills
- Self-efficacy
- Self-regulation
- Harness peers to support learning
- Learning communities
- ‘Peer editing
- Peer tutoring/peer learning
- Class atmosphere (etc., need safety to risk, etc.)
- Mixing DevEd and college-ready students
- Eliminate stigma of Dev Ed
- Reframe: college readiness
- Move away from “deficit framing”
I was pleased to see that Rand’s data supported the idea of “just-in-time remediation”: Students at the higher range of the mandated remediation band benefit from selective, targeted support — like NCBEs tied to the credit sections in which they are enrolled, as opposed to routing students into “whole course” support solutions. This fits with “differentiation” under student-centered approach.
One of the most encouraging implications of the research to date is that moving the student success needle is less dependent on which implementation model of CoReq courses than on generic traits having to do with the quality of engagement and framing for students. The Rand presenters summarized this by encouraging us to “Focus on what you’re trying to achieve more than the model.”
But there’s a footnote to this data: These effectiveness outcomes are for the top band of students below TSI completion (i.e., the so-called “bubble”). It’s obviously good news that we’re helping students become college-ready (in the TSI sense), but unfortunately we’re doing the best job with the students who need the least help. And we’re doing a good job with them no matter which implementation of CoReq we adopt — which most likely means that we aren’t the operative factor in their success. They are.
One way to frame the encouraging outcomes of the bubble students is to note that being enrolled in a credit-bearing course is a powerful incentive and motivator. But this data also suggests that a more significant challenge lies with students below the “bubble.” For perspective, let’s remember that we don’t have an impressive record with these students in traditional remediation approaches, and worse, we also see a pretty dismal record in CoReqs. Just to take one easy marker, students below the bubble drop at several times the rate of students in the bubble.
This shouldn’t be surprising. Suppose you are not in shape but you want to be. Suppose you come to me for coaching. Suppose I tell you, “Tomorrow, run a mile, and increase your distance by a quarter mile every day until you’re running five miles, then keep it up — that’s your first month.”
If you’re already in good enough shape to run daily, tackling this challenge might be within reach. But if you’re below the “running daily” bubble, then you’ve just been handed a challenge that is overwhelming because you lack adequate preparation for that challenge. That, I argue, is what those lower band students experience in the credit course in a CoReq.
This is obviously only one factor, but I focus on this because of my belief that work on tasks that we cannot now perform but for which we have adequate preparation (knowledge, skills, training, etc.) provides the opportunity for integration and consolidation of those strands of preparation, and builds self-esteem and capacity. A challenge that is too far out of reach does the opposite, and the student’s confidence erodes and unravels.
So this leaves us with a dilemma. We want to serve students for whom the gap between current functioning and TSI completion is significant, and we don’t want the status quo. On the other hand, enrolling in a credit course may be worse — which means we lack one of the best aspects of CoReq: the incentive and motivation of earning college credit.
CoReq may not be the answer for these students, but it has done them a favor by making them more visible to us as an institution. Our next step should be to study this group more carefully to understand their assets and needs, and reflect on what we can bring to the table.
