One part of the ‘completion agenda” has been to encourage colleges to use analytics to improve their success rates at moving students toward graduation. Another part has been to draw attention to “gateway courses,” those that launch students on majors or programs of study, and the way many of these courses have high drop-out rates and have the impact of shutting rather than opening doors for students. On Thursday, September 27 at 2 p.m. Eastern, Inside Higher Ed presented a webinar featuring Andrew Koch, executive vice president of the John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education, and Matt Pistilli, a research scientist in information technology at Purdue University, exploring the combination of these two efforts: how to use analytics to improve student completion and student learning in gateway courses.
The presentation covered:
- The major concerns about gateway courses.
- How to tell if your college’s gateway courses are working or have problems that need addressing.
- The kinds of data you should be collecting about gateway courses.
- The kinds of reforms that – depending on what you learn about your gateway courses – may be appropriate.
- How to track success with these reforms.
Download the slide deck by clicking here.
About the presenters:
Andrew Koch is executive vice president of the John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education. Formerly he was vice president for new strategy at the institute, and prior to that he held a number of student success positions at Purdue University, Hofstra University, and the University of Richmond.
Matt Pistilli is a research scientist for academic technologies at Purdue University. For the past 13 years, he has worked in various positions at Purdue focused on student success programming, and most recently has worked to better understand the intersection of technology and student success.