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Research & Planning CommitteeMinutes& Action Steps Meeting #15

Tuesday, December 9, 2010 2:00 – 3:30 p.m.

MVC Attendees: Janice Levasseur, JoAnna Quejada, Alex Cuatok

SJC Attendees: Charles Hawkins, Rebecca Teague, Susan Guarino, Brandon Moore, Alma Ramirez, Cheri Nash

1. Review & finalize

Objective -- get the two surveys taken care of and ready for launch in 2011.

2. Grad Survey

The two-step graduation process that was proposed in the last meeting has been abandoned.

Cheri was asked when would be a good time to issue the survey. Several options were discussed:

  1. Hand out survey invitation & link when students hand in the graduation application
  2. Mail with the graduation letter of eligibility the survey invitation & link
  3. Mail survey & link to actual grads with their certificates (work with Cheri and Susan)
  4. Name cards: both MSJC created and vendor (photographer) name cards to capture personal e-mails at graduation and deliver the invitation via smart-phone.

Pros and cons of each option were discussed. It was decided that options 1, 3, and 4 would all be used since each has a different time frame for the survey invitation. Different links would be set up to distinguish the option the student responded to but all links would go to the same survey. The option avenues will be tracked to determine which option yielded the greatest student response. It was suggested that maybe the Foundation could provide some incentive to completing the survey. Note: duplicate surveys will be weeded out since the survey asks for student ID. Further Note: This initial round of surveys would not include those who transfer without graduating.

3. Withdrawal/Drop Survey

Changes were suggested to the draft of the withdrawal drop survey:

  1. Change from student ID to MSJC user name (same as the one the students use to access Blackboard)
  2. Class names and Class sections – not mandatory since they may have multiple classes that are being dropped. Instead, a survey will be sent for each class dropped (and therefore students could list different reasons for the different class drops.)

An e-mail will be sent “you have recently dropped . . .” -- any drop will trigger this e-mail.

The withdrawal/drop survey will go live in the Spring 2011 semester.

4.EMT

What can be done for Fall 2011? Data driven decisions want to be made. If we can’t eliminate sections, can we drop the cap?

Questions to consider:

What are we here for? Remediation, transfer, certificates

Is success rate increasing with increasing % of cap?

Are withdrawal rates decreasing? Is it because sections are decreasing?

Data will be examined in January

Research & Planning CommitteeMinutes& Action Steps Meeting #14

Tuesday, November 23, 2010 2:00 – 3:30 p.m.

MVC Attendees: Ted Blake, Bahram Sherkat

SJC Attendees: Charles Hawkins, Rebecca Teague, Susan Guarino, Janice Levasseur, Dennis Anderson, Alex Cuatok, Brandon Moore

1. Review minutes & actions steps

A. XERN – Project shelved for now. Charles will pull the needed information 2 – 3 times per year.

B. Capturing Majors – An effort needs to be made to inform the faculty of the importance of declaring majors.

Action Step: Susan G, Tom, and Bill will meet to develop an action plan.

C. IRB & Review of Research Policies/Practices – This is on hold for now (there has been few requests for research). There is a concern, though, of over-polling the students, faculty, and staff (could lead to survey burn out.)

D. CTE – Looking at student records, there does appear to be a number of certificates that are not being handed out.

Action Step: Charles will meet with Dennis to discuss the pros and cons of automatically issuing certificates to students who have met the requirements.

E. Enrollment Management -- key elements to be discussed at the EMT (Enrollment Management Team) meeting. Given we cannot increase the number of sections offered, how can we maximize student enrollment to effectively serve our students? How do we generate FTEs without adding sections? There needs to be a strategy in place for what to do over the next 2 – 3 years and also how do we add sections once the situation turns around?

Side note: 1) We will run a Summer 2011 session at about the same level at Summer 2010 (96 sections district-wide).

2) Charles will have the Spring 2011 headcount forecast out sometime the week of November 29. Sections have increased due to the Pass area.

3) Dennis will present the ARCC scores at the January Board meeting.

4) Ted mentioned the “transfer velocity” of our student. Looking at a 4 year period (2004 – 2008), about 20% of our students transferred. It was suggested that a 6-year cohort should be studied.

2. Grad Survey

Susan G. presented a draft of the grad survey. The project was looking at how to get a better representative sample by looking at an on-line vehicle to deliver the survey.

Susan first proposed that the students go through a two-step process to apply for an AA/AS degree: Step #1 would be the survey and Step #2 would be the application. While not mandating the completion of the survey, it is hoped that students would assume it is necessary to complete “step 1”. Also, by calling it “step 1”, the word survey could be removed.

Ted suggested that instead of having these links buried, the applications (in two steps) be placed on the main page of the MSJC website.

3. Withdrawn Survey

DataTel does not have the capability to tie a survey into the current formatting.

Susan Guarino and Charles will incorporated all changes based on the committee’s recommendations.

The Withdrawal/Drop survey, for those students that drop with a ‘W’ will be sent to the student via an email as soon as they drop the course and be available on Blackboard flagged by an Icon (yet to be chosen) or MSJC’s main page.

The intent for both surveys is to use student ID to gather student demographics in the aggregate.

Next Meeting: Thursday, December 9, 2010- from 10:00 – 11:30 (SJC room 200, MVC room 851).

Notes furnished by Janice Levasseur

Research & Planning CommitteeMinutes& Action Steps Meeting #13

From Tuesday, October 26, 2010 2:00 – 3:30 p.m.

MSJC Research & Planning Meeting #13

MVC Attendees: Ted Blake, Janice Levasseur, JoAnna Quejada

SJC Attendees: Charles Hawkins, Rebecca Teague, Susan Guarino, Alma Ramirez, Dennis Anderson, Alex Cuatok, Bill Vincent

1. Distribute and Recap handouts from Sept meeting.

A. Handouts

1. Headcount by Service Area

2. The Pass Graduate and Enrollment Headcount: about 950 students live in the pass.

3. Unemployment Rate: Riverside County is forecasted to be one of the last areas to recover.

4. F’09 Engl, ESL, Math Success Rates: pull reading data for Alma

5. Read 64 and Engl 98: Currently, there isn’t a reading requirement for graduation; all we have are reading recommendations. How do we incentivize reading? Learning Communities and Reading Apprenticeships are in the works. We know reading is the key since it affects everything, especially on-line classes (is reading the real barrier to DE success?) English and Reading are separated. Bring these two together to reinforce one another.

2. Review minutes & actions steps

A. XERN – Susan G looked at the data: enrollment, average credit/student, and FTEs. Average credit/student data takes about 20 – 30 hours to pull. FTEs are generated by a formula. The # of sections data can be pulled from DSS. In short, Susan says we are 18 – 24 months away from being able to produce XERN (right now it is too labor intensive to produce.) Given that, Dennis said that DSS is adequate for now.

Action Step: Suspend production of XERN report until need arises (Charles will run as needed.)

B. Capturing Majors – Susan looked at the current students. For the Fall 2010 enrollment of 16,100, a total of 10,115 are undeclared! 23% of the undeclared students have completed 30+ units. The meeting Susan had with Dr. Vincent and Tom Spillman had to be rescheduled to 10/28/10 so they do not have anything yet to report.

Dennis commented that declaring a major is scary for students (think they are then stuck with that major.) Susan made clear, though, that it is difficult for students to change majors in ZAP right now. Is there a correlation between being counseled and declaring a major?

JoAnna suggested that 15 units be the contact point so as not to flood the counselors (set up contact during nonpeak hours!)

Action Step: Table the discussion about intervention till next time till Susan has had a chance to meet with Bill and Tom. In the meantime, we need to start getting the faculty to encourage their majors – promote AA and AS degrees along with the bachelor level degrees (remind the students that after a AA/AS, a bachelors is only 2 years off! Question: Is there a correlation between AA/AS degree and completion of BA/BS degree? Dennis Question: how many students move on w/o AA/AS?) Janice informed the group of Mu Alpha Theta’s effort to put together a lecture series during college hour so faculty can share what can be done with certain majors. The question then becomes, how can we reach out to the night students? Answer: Virtualize these talks – podcast!

C. W’s – Charles sat down with Brandon, Carlos and Pat regarding the ‘W’ survey. Susan wants a drop down for Question #1. Ted suggested generalizing the reasons into groups. Charles said that he would rather have the students tell us why they dropped and then we categorize the responses into groups. (It is better to collect more detail!)

Susan asked about the delivery method? We can’t place the survey into the drop process in Datatel. She could make it step #2 of the drop process (after dropping, direct the students to fill out the survey.) How can this be incentivized?

Action Step: Charles will incorporate Pat’s ideas and tweek questions #1 – 4. Charles will meet with Susan regarding the delivery vehicle for the survey. The plan is to go live with this next February.

D. IRB & Review of Research Policies/Practices – Rebecca and Charles will work on the IRB & Review of Research Policies/Practices in the Spring 2011 semester. There is a need to formalize the process.

E. Grad “exit interview” - biased result since only those at graduation practice were surveyed. There must be a way to survey certificated students and those who didn’t “graduate”. JoAnna would also like to have a “hard copy” option (Charles warned that a hard-copy option is labor intensive!)

Action Step: Charles and JoAnna will assess what questions were valuable? What can be streamlined? Susan will work on making the survey part of the graduation application process – Step #1 direct the students to fill out the 10 – 15 minute survey on-line (how do we incentivize this?) and then Step #2 graduation application. Initially the survey would be on-line (survey vehicle) but eventually we would move the electronic version of the survey to Class Climate. Our next meeting will be in a computer lab so we can all see prototypes of the survey.

3. Data for CTE – Michael Conner wants to know how many students didn’t apply for certificates although they had the units? Automotive requires 16 units.

This question is married to the project on “declaring majors.” How do we check up on the students? Should a degree audit be done? What are we looking for – purse out some indicators for certificates, i.e. students in certain classes? What can we do to increase our ARCC scores when it comes to this? Should there be a follow up meeting after completion of an ed goal?

Side Note: due to counselors’ request, the change your major functionality was never rolled out. Susan would like this functionality available for the students!

Action Step: determine the pros and cons of getting more certificates issued. Why do students have to apply for certificates? Why don’t we just give them out? Adopt a policy which would include a notice to apply for a cert. Next expand the current sample to other disciplines asides from automotive. Look also at transfer students.

Next Meeting: Surveys and CTE – meet in the board room all together at SJC on November 23.

Research & Planning CommitteeMinutes& Action Steps Meeting #12

From Tuesday, Sept.28 (2:00-3:30).

Committee members: X = in attendance
Ted Blake x5487 – English LRC MVC / X / Dennis Anderson x3420 –Instruction / X
Janice Levasseur* x5482- Mathematics MVC / X / Susan Guarino x3080 –IT / X
Brandon Moore x3754 – Statistics SJC / X / Charles Hawkins x3703 - Research / X
Bahram Sherkat x5754- Mathematics MVC / X / Brian Orlauski x3083 -IT
Pat James x5440 – Instruction / X / Rebecca Teague x3072 – Grants / X
Bill Vincent x3200 – Student Services / X
* scribe / Guest:Alex Cuatok / X
Alma Ramirez -x3645 - English / X

CC: Roger Schultz, Tom Spillman

Agenda items:

  1. Review minutes and action taken since last meeting
  2. XERN –formatted by service area–Headcount, FTES, %cap, credit hrs, sections, multi campus

Action Step(s):

  • Susan G will have for us at the next meeting and estimate of how long it would take to pull together the information manually from the multiple sources.
  1. Capturing Majors -
  • Charles reported that per Susan (09/15/10) for the Fall 2010 enrollment of 16,100, a total of 10,115 are undeclared!
  • 23% of the undeclared students (2,353 students) have completed 30+ units
  • 13% of the undeclared students (1,279) completed 45+ units
  • 7%completed (665)60+ units
  • It is important to get students to declare a major (students will be better focused and can follow an efficient course path.) Susan reminded the group that declaration of majors helps funding of certain programs.
  • Brandon suggested notifying chunks (maybe starting with those students with a very high number of units) of students at a time so as to not overwhelm the counselors. The initial response will be monitored to determine the best intervention strategy.
  • Title 5 says majors should be declared. Also relates to ARCC score and institutional goal (student success)
  • Big issue (especially when it comes to grants! Right now guess/estimation is used.
  • Right now the only place a student declares is on the initial application. Students can update application by going into counseling.
  • Enrollment management needs majors too. Charles suggested a survey (to be posted on BB)
  • Possibilities
  • Maybe send out an automatic alert “you’ve hit the 60 unit threshold, please declare a major.”
  • Have students declare each time the students enroll (we currently have this functionality in ZAP (?) but the mismatch is problematic now.)
  • Get the faculty involved to “promote” their major – have seminars to sell their majors!
  • Ted – place a mentor/counselor here in the LRC for students to see. .
  • Get them in to counseling to try to declare. If the student does not know, let them stay “undeclared”.

Be pro-active with intervention. At a certain threshold to be determined (30+, 45+, 60+, etc.) send a communication (e-mail, SARS call) inviting them to see a counselor given their unit completion.

Action Step(s):

  • Susann will meet with Dr. Vincent and Tom Spillman soon to discuss the threshold and the implementation of such an intervention.
  1. Ws -
  • W’s – the rough draft of the questionnaire was reviewed by the committee. The group made recommendations: 1) omit question #1 since most students cannot differentiate between a drop and a withdrawal; 2) provide several fields for multiple courses being dropped; 3) possibly tie the questionnaire to DataTel so that the student’s class schedule will pop up; 4) reformat the survey to have drop down menus; 5) add a question, “before withdrawing from this course, have you used other student resources?” 6) add a question, “if you drop all your classes, do you plan to return to MSJC next semester?”
  • The mode of administration of the survey was discussed. What is the best way to get compliance?
  • Other questions posed: 1) what if an instructor drops a student? 2) Should MSJC consider a possible grade “F/W” for those students who did not formally withdraw from class but stopped participating (i.e. the student failed due to lack of participation); 3) how much of a burden to the system would this survey pose (where would this survey actually be administered?)

Action Step(s):

  • Brandon, Susan, and Pat with work with Charles to modify and finalize the survey. Goal: Pilot the survey in the spring 2011 semester.
  1. IRB & Review of Research Policies/Practices
  • Rebecca o meet with the associate faculty member

Action Step:

  • They will work on the IRB & Review of Research Policies/Practices in the Spring 2011 semester.
  1. Grad “exit interviewer”
  • Originated by Roger years ago. Alex has been administering the survey the past three years. 2010 was the first year that the results were published.
  • Concerns over current format: administered to students who attended graduation practice (results slightly inflated due to the population surveyed and the timing of the survey. The results portray what a successful student looks like.) Students who didn’t participate in either graduation practice or the graduation ceremony were missed. The transfer and certificate students should be surveyed.

Action Step(s):

  • The committee will continue to critique the survey consider all the possible avenues to administer the survey (i.e. all the ways to “get out” of MSJC). Charles will check with Susan Loomis for target dates.
  • Susan Guarino build questionnaire into the graduation application process for next year for June 2011 Grads.
  1. Strategy for enrollment management –
  • How do we do more with less? One possible solution to reducing sections is to increase class sizes (use the bigger rooms on campus to maximize class caps). Concerns over increasing class sizes: COR (maximum enrollment), Academic Senate issues (faculty pay for increased class size). Ted suggested just aligning more carefully classroom assignment with COR Cap.

Action Step(s):

  • R&P Dept will compile FA09 sections & retention rate by course number (i.e. English101) for all courses with 5 sections or more
  • Continue this discussion in future IRC meetings.

Other items