Mountain View College

Electric Engineering

Student Attrition

Challenge

Needs assessments are a foundational tool in Human Performance Technology (HPT), serving as a systematic process for identifying performance gaps and uncovering their root causes. By distinguishing between current and desired performance levels, needs assessments ensure that solutions are targeted, evidence-based, and aligned with organizational goals. This step prevents wasted resources on training or interventions that don’t address the true issues, thereby increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of performance improvement efforts. A well-executed needs assessment sets the stage for impactful, measurable results.

Mountain View College

Mountain View College offers a well-regarded Bachelor's of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering. The program has experienced a concerning level of student attrition, prompting the institution’s leadership to commission a comprehensive Needs Assessment. My team's diagnostic review aimed to uncover underlying causes—from academic preparedness and curriculum structure to student support services and external pressures—to ensure that the college could design targeted interventions to support student persistence, retention, and successful completion of the four-year engineering programs.

Methods

The Needs Assessment phase is arguably the most structured component of the Human Performance Technology (HPT) process, as it establishes the foundation for all subsequent phases—Intervention, Evaluation, and Maintenance. In our case, we began with Robert Chevalier’s derivation of the Behavior Engineering Model (often referred to as the "nuclear BEM") to identify performance gaps within Mountain View College’s electrical engineering program. However, as our understanding deepened, it became evident that the program’s various levels—faculty, curriculum, and student support—were not consistently aligned with shared goals or measurable outcomes. This insight prompted a strategic shift to the 9-Boxes model of analysis, allowing us to more effectively map organizational, environmental, and individual factors. This structured and methodical pivot highlights how a robust Needs Assessment can clarify misalignments and ensure that performance solutions are not only targeted but strategically grounded.

Causes

After a comprehensive analysis using cause triangulation across multiple data sources—student and teacher surveys, class observations, academic performance data, and process mapping—we applied force field analysis to identify the primary push and pull factors influencing attrition among electrical and computer engineering students. We found that while external motivators, such as career opportunities and personal interest in other fields, acted as pull factors, significant push factors stemmed from internal challenges. These included a lack of alignment between student needs, departmental priorities, and college-wide goals. For example, although most engineering students nationwide take longer than four years to graduate, Mountain View College continued to emphasize four-year graduation rates to meet state performance standards. In response, the department designed a rigid curriculum structure in which many required courses were only offered once a year, forcing students into a narrow academic timeline. These findings provided a strong foundation for developing targeted interventions aimed at improving student retention.

Recommended Solutions

The primary recommendation was to offer each core class during both the fall and spring semesters, and to offer the most frequently retaken classes during the summer. This solution emerged as the most logical and effective course of action, given both its practicality and its direct alignment with the key driver of student attrition: scheduling rigidity. By increasing the availability of core courses throughout the academic year, the department would provide students with greater flexibility to stay on track academically, recover from setbacks more efficiently, and customize their course loads to better fit their individual circumstances. Offering high-failure or high-repeat classes during the summer would further reduce bottlenecks and delays in academic progress. Compared to more complex or resource-intensive solutions, this scheduling adjustment presents a relatively low-cost, high-impact intervention that directly addresses the structural barriers contributing to student dropout, making it an immediately actionable and sustainable improvement.

References

Green, M., Bovee, M., Giorgi, B., Hussain, M., & England, E. (2024, Fall). Mountain View ECE Department student retention project. Boise State University.

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