East Georgia State College 2023

Observations and next steps

What strategies and activities have been most successful?

1- Inclusive access: At the beginning of Fall 2022, the East Georgia State College Academic Team decided to implement a new sale model for college textbooks called inclusive access. This model, which is also known as automatic textbook, involves the delivery of digital content to students by the first day of class. The cost of the textbooks is directly charged to the students’ account. However, students have a period to opt out of receiving the digital textbook. After a discussion with Lucy, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Academic Library Services and Executive Director of GALILEO at the University System of Georgia, we were able to start the inclusive access model in Spring 2023 and have expanded it through Fall 2023. While the effects on course success rate still need more semesters to be fully analyzed, this approach has been successful because the number of courses, sections, and students in sections with inclusive access have increased from Spring 2023 to Fall 2023, resulting in more than $75,000 saved in textbook cost. Finally, the very opt out rate suggests that students have adopted this model to deliver digital content.

2- Success coaches: At the beginning of the Spring 2023 semester, Success Coaches began scheduling workshops within the library after hours to provide academic tips in areas our students reflected deficiencies in such as study skills, and time management. Although many workshops were offered, we had very few students attend and realized we needed to collaborate with faculty to get inside the classrooms. Fall 2023 marked the beginning of Success Coaches collaborating with faculty to present workshops within the co-requisite classes. We have seen an increase of activity within the Academic Center for Excellence and look forward to collecting data on the impact these workshops have made within the classes attended success rates. We will continue to expand on the topics available to online and on-campus students based on the deficiencies noted by faculty when scheduling is done with Success Coaches.

What have been least effective?

The update of the two-years plan: In June, we had planned to update and redesign the curriculum maps for each degree program, making sure they were accurate and making them more appealing and understandable to the students. Later in the summer, before we began our efforts, we learned of a new and different approach to the core curriculum being developed and working through the USG, so we tabled our efforts until the new core curriculum was available. Therefore, updating our curriculum maps for our degree programs was our least effective effort.

How has your institution made adjustments to your completion activities over the past year?

Over the last year, the Student Learning Communities have encountered some issues. For instance, decreasing student enrollment, limited faculty, scheduling issues, and the co-requisite model have all affected the implementation and success of the project. Under the co-requisite model, students who participated in an SLC were required to register for the co-requisite course associated with it. If the student wanted to withdraw from one of the courses due to being at risk of failing, then he/she was also required to withdraw from the co-requisite course. Thus, students had to make difficult decisions about withdrawing from two courses, putting them behind in their academic progress or remaining in a class that they could potentially fail, which would impact their GPA. As a result, during the Fall 2022 and Spring 2023 semesters, the QEP team met to discuss new approaches and strategies for implementing SLCs. From these discussions, a new approach to SLCs was proposed. Under the thematic approach to SLCs, four to five faculty members would select a theme or themes to base their courses around. Each section of the course taught by these faculty members would be labeled with the theme and have an SL section designation for Student Learning Communities. These four or five courses would be open to all students and not require any co-requisites. If a student registered for at least two of the courses within the thematic learning group, then the student would be considered an SLC participant. It is the hope that this approach will help combat the issues with student enrollment, limited faculty, scheduling issues, and the co-requisite model.

The QEP Director, Jessica Todd, presented the new thematic approach to SLCs to faculty on February 2, 2023, and faculty were able to express their opinions and vote whether they approved of this new approach. The approach was received favorably by the faculty and went through the appropriate forms of governance; it was approved at each step. During the Fall 2023 semester, information and training sessions were implemented to make faculty and advisors aware of the new format and approach to SLCs. Proposal forms for SLCs were revised to reflect the new thematic approach and a training session on how to complete the form was held. For the Spring 2024 semester, we have one thematic SLC on the schedule. We also have a few other thematic SLCs in development for the Fall 2024 semester on each campus.

Where would you want to see student success efforts shift in the coming year(s)?

1- Complete of the Core IMPACTS Mathematics and Writing within 30 hours:

Increasing the percentage of new freshmen completing initial writing sequence and mathematics courses within their first academic year is one of the focuses from the upcoming EGSC strategic plan. Presented below are the number and percentages of students who were beginning freshmen in a fall semester and successfully completed their core Mathematics and Writing requirements by the conclusion of the following summer semester by earning a Grade C or better in all three core math and writing courses for the 2019 through 2023 academic years.

We are currently revising the activities that will be implemented to achieve this goal. We asked for input from Faculty during a recent faculty workshop.

2- Students enroll in 30 credit hours for each academic year (Fall, Spring, and Summer):

As an access institution, we have two pathways that students can take when enrolling in classes to reach the 30-credit hour goal. One allows them to take classes during the Fall and Spring with a Summer break, and the other requires enrollment during all semesters. While each path allows the student to complete their degree withing two years, the three-semester path allows students to complete with less academic stress.