Assessment

AASCU requires SOU to report several metrics as a way to if not measure the success or failure of each campus’ RFY initiatives, to provide some sort of benchmark. These metrics are:

1. Credit accumulation (all accumulated credits at end of first-year students’ first year)*
2. Credit completion ratio (the number of first year students who passed all courses attempted)
3. Gateway course completion (the number of students in gateway courses with a C grade or higher)**
4. Persistence (defined as Fall to Fall retention)

Both AASCU and our RFY Team recognize that these are not comprehensive measures. The main shortcoming is that they do not account for differences among the various first-year cohorts. They also don’t help us understand the impact of individual initiatives. A partial exception to this is the Course Design Academy. RFY has used CDA-redesigned courses as our gateway courses, so gateway course completion does at least partially get at the effectiveness of the CDA.

Moving forward, the RFY Team will do better assessment of individual initiatives by looking at the students affected by them. For example, how are Bridge students doing with respect to the RFY metrics? What relationships can be identified between Belonging and Mindset interventions on RFY metrics? What relationships can be identified between CDA intervention strategies on RFY metrics beyond gateway course completion?

The RFY Team also needs to know more about the characteristic of each first-year cohort. This year’s Fall-to-Fall retention rate is up, which is great news. However, before we can even begin to assess the impact of RFY on retention, we need to know if this year’s cohort was different from last year’s, and how much that might account for the improved retention rate. The RFY team’s continuing work with both the CDA and with IR will help us get some more useful measures.

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* Accumulated credit includes credits earned before matriculation. I am not convicted that this is a useful measure of credit accumulation.

** This number includes non-first year students, but gateway courses generally have a large number of first-year students. The initial goal was D grade or higher, but AASCU felt this target was too low, especially given the importance of gateway course completion to graduation rates.