What's Next for Promising Retention Strategies?

Continuing to post blog entries for my Research Writing class, this is one that I wrote a month or so ago when I was just starting my research for the Literature Review I have to turn in my Monday!  Hope you enjoy!  References to the articles are included below!

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Continuing my reading about student engagement, I came across a couple of articles that discussed more specific ideas for increasing student retention and some promising practices that could be implemented on college campus.  Zhao & Kuh (2004) wrote an article for Research in Higher Education about the effect of learning community participation on student engagement.  Learning communities have become more common on college campus as a positive student learning and success strategy.  Learning communities take many different forms, but in general they are linked courses (sometimes around a certain theme) students take together as a group.  The community is typically small and has opportunities for outside of class learning opportunities that enhance the in class curriculum.  Some learning communities also involve a residence hall living experience to go along with link courses.  

The purpose of this study was to learn if participation in a learning community had an effect on self-reported gains in student engagement, development, and satisfaction with college.  The study found that participation in learning communities did enhance all three dependent variables.  One other finding was that student who participated in learning communities in their first year learned college success strategies such as social student engagement, connections with faculty, and cooperation with peers that remained with them throughout their college experience.  Learning communities were also found to enhance academic performance, gains in multiple skill, competence, and knowledge, integration of experiences, and satisfaction with the overall college experience.  Additionally, the positive effects of learning communities were shown to make a significant difference for at risk student populations in increasing their chances for success on campus.  

I have worked with learning communities throughout my career in higher education and am not surprised at all by the results of this study.  While the gains found in this study apply also to non-residential learning communities, I do feel as though when students live together and take classes together, the opportunity to realize the gains in associated with college success increase.

The second article I read for this blog appeared in the Journal of College Student Retention and was authored by Vincent Tinto.  Tinto (2006) wrote this article as a review of previous and current research in student retention and outlined future directions in research and practice.  Tinto has been heavily cited in the previous articles I have read and blogged about, so although this isn't a study, I wanted to read his essay and learn more about his ideas for future research.  

The article started with an overview of the shift in thinking about student retention that has occurred throughout history.  At one time, the accepted cause of student attrition was that the student was not "cut out" for college and the university did not have a huge obligation to do much to assist unprepared students for success.   When retention research began to accept the role the college environment played in student success, more research was done on how faculty, staff, and administrators could create conditions that increased the chances for success.  

Tinto (2006) also discussed how student retention has become "big business" (p. 5) in that many accountability boards look at student retention as an indicator of a university's effectiveness and with decreasing budgets, losing students equates to losing money.  The author of this article feels many programs that are implemented on college campuses to increase retention are not effective because they lack faculty buy in and are not institutionalized.  Tinto (2006) suggested more research should be done to study models for institutional program and policy effectiveness that could increase the chances for more effective and widely accepted retention programs.  Additionally, Tinto (2006) suggests more discussion of professional development for faculty and staff and encouraging more tenured faculty to play a larger role in retention programs.  

One other area of future research that was discussed was the effects of socioeconomic status on persistence.  Previous research has shown lower income students are much less engaged and the rate of degree completion within six years is significantly lower for this group.  This article stated around 56% of higher income students earns a bachelor's degree in six years while only 25% of lower income students do (as quoted in Tinto, 2006).  I am particularly interested in this area of future research because the students are my current institution has the second lowest socioeconomic status among the 13 campuses in the University System.  I think it would be interesting to look at the level of student engagement among our lower income students and look to see if specific engagement opportunities could help increase their changes for degree completion.  For the past couple of days I have been thinking about how I could find a more unique take on student engagement and persistence research and this is definitely a question I would like to keep in mind as my research continues.

References:

Zhao, C. & Kuh, G.D. (2004). Adding value: Learning communities and student engagement. Research in Higher Education, 45(2), 115-138. doi: 10.1023/B:RIHE.0000015692.88534.de

Tinto, V. (2006). Research and practice of student retention: What next? Journal of College Student Retention, 8(1), 1-19. doi: 10.2190/4YNU-4TMB-22DJ-AN4W