Retaining Students

The Completion By Design Loss/Momentum Framework helps colleges take a systems-level view and  identify where students stumble, become sidetracked, and drop out of college. One core idea of this framework is that the points where students struggle to proceed are shared by many students and are discoverable. These points are called loss points.

SCC decided to apply the Loss/Momentum Framework at the course level and coach faculty in their own discovery process. This course-level view examines places in a specific course where students stop participating or drop (loss points) and places where they deeply engage (momentum points). The perfect scenario is to flip a loss point to a momentum point through interventions like better scaffolding, clearer feedback, communication about expectations, personal conversation with students, and more.

We know some loss points are generic across courses--we tend to lose students at the 3-6 week time frame in a standard semester long course, or immediately following a midterm exam. Students quietly disappear, and fail to accomplish what they set out to do. But courses have their own unique places where they lose students. Communication courses lose students when they have to give a speech, English courses lose students at the research paper, Physics courses lose students–well probably everywhere because it’s just plain hard. The data from our own faculty shows that creating interventions around course loss points keeps more students enrolled.

Take a peek at the list of Loss Point Interventions that Scottsdale Community College faculty came up with in the past two years in SCC’s Strategies for Student Retention course. Consider adopting any that you think will help your student stay in class!

Loss Point Interventions

• Provide a 1-2 minute video in your Welcome Module illustrating the benefits to students of completing your course. 

• Award 5 bonus points for on time completion of the first assignment. 

• Send an email to students who do not submit the introduction assignment on time, ask why, and offer help.

• Place an easter egg in the text of your syllabus that says "eMail me your favorite movie for 10 bonus points" and mention it in the next class, congratulating those who got the points and motivating others to find other easter eggs throughout the semester by reading the course materials. 

• Employ a buddy system in the first class wherein all pairs check in at the end of each class to reflect on, discuss, and otherwise process the content of the course. Buddies will be responsible for checking in when their buddy is absent––share what was covered in class. The brief in-class check-in time may be used to converse and share how each person feels and is progressing.

• Use the Canvas Analytics tool to find one particular assignment with the worst on time submission, completion, or success rate. Rework that assignment into something more prescriptive and offer peer reviews where students can see and comment on each other’s work. 

• Create an accurate time estimate of how long each assignment will take to complete and include it in the assignment title.

• Extend the amount of time spent in the most difficult section of the class, allowing for introducing those skills more slowly. 

• Identify the specific skills that create the biggest problems for students and create a brief video for each skill. 

• Create additional practice opportunities for the most difficult to master skills.

• Require students to write out their life schedule, work schedule, school schedule, and then create a plan for when they are going to schedule time for the hours this course takes.

• Meet with each student for 10 minutes during weeks 1 and 2 and walk them through how the class is set up and the value of the content to their lives.

• Make course information more realistic of situations the students might encounter in their future careers. 

• Use the audio or video options in SpeedGrader to offer feedback to students in your own voice.

• Send messages to students who earned a B or above on an exam and congratulate them on their hard work.

• At midterm, ask students to participate in a planning meeting with the purpose being to plan how to finish strong in the course.

To learn more about the Loss/Momentum Framework, read Understanding the Student Experience Through the Loss/Momentum Framework: Clearing the Path to Completion

Rassen, Chaplot, Jenkins & Johnstone/The RP Group.

To dive deeper into creating loss point interventions and momentum point enhancements, consider taking SCC’s Strategies for Student Retention course.