Though 80 % of getting into neighborhood faculty college students categorical a need to earn a bachelor’s diploma, solely about 30 % switch to a four-year establishment, and even fewer full a bachelor’s diploma inside six years. To determine systemic obstacles, establishments—each sending neighborhood faculties and receiving four-year establishments—ought to look inward at their insurance policies and practices that help or inhibit switch. The Loss/Momentum Framework (LMF) is designed to help in figuring out interactions between an establishment and its college students that may both propel (momentum factors) or impede (loss factors) progress towards diploma completion. The LMF has served as a useful gizmo for neighborhood faculties and state techniques looking for to enhance diploma completion and vertical switch outcomes.
Altering the Dialog From Consequence Knowledge to Scholar Pathways
Utilizing a qualitative analysis design, we carried out focus teams and interviews with 33 pre- and posttransfer college students from a sending neighborhood faculty and a receiving four-year college in Ohio using the LMF to know the loss and momentum factors generally encountered by college students at varied phases of their vertical switch journeys.
By highlighting how these interactions form the coed expertise, the LMF modifications the dialog about pupil success from a slim concentrate on consequence information—which affords restricted perception into college students’ experiences alongside their diploma and switch journeys—to understanding “particular components of scholars’ paths from enrollment to commencement [that] made the distinction between their success and failure.” These particular components are captured by the framework’s key ideas of loss factors and momentum factors. Loss factors are “junctures at which college students typically delay or resolve to not proceed with postsecondary schooling,” whereas momentum factors are “interactions with the establishment that facilitate and encourage the completion of packages, achievement of credentials and switch to four-year establishments.”
Whereas recognizing that every pupil’s journey to and thru postsecondary schooling is exclusive, the LMF guides establishments in figuring out frequent loss and momentum factors to allow them to make modifications to their insurance policies, practices, packages and processes that improve all college students’ success in achieving a desired credential.
Momentum Factors: Serving to and Supporting Vertical Switch
Inside the 70 excerpts coded as momentum factors, members recognized particular practices, packages and processes they perceived as useful in facilitating their switch to a four-year establishment and progress towards finishing a bachelor’s diploma. These included the practices of educational advising and college interactions, packages that supplied educational or monetary help, and institutional processes designed to facilitate the switch course of.
- Tutorial advising practices: Essentially the most frequent momentum factors, talked about by 18 of the 33 members, have been educational advising practices at each the neighborhood faculty and four-year establishment. Individuals mentioned varied methods through which advising proved useful. Mostly, advisers supplied well timed details about required programs, scheduling and diploma pathways to make sure members stayed heading in the right direction to efficiently switch with out dropping credit score for lessons taken on the neighborhood faculty or having to retake lessons on the college, which in flip supplied momentum towards bachelor’s diploma completion.
- School interplay practices: A number of members mentioned interactions with college at varied factors alongside their journeys that inspired them to switch to a four-year establishment and full their bachelor’s levels. Whereas educational advisers primarily supplied momentum by serving to college students navigate the logistical and bureaucratic complexities of switch and diploma completion, these interactions with college supplied momentum in ways in which have been extra inspirational than instrumental.
- Institutional packages: One of many 4 P’s inside the LMF is packages for help. Individuals mentioned three packages that supplied such help, fostering their switch momentum. These included devoted switch scholarships, orientation programming and educational help packages.
- Institutional processes: In the course of the focus teams and interviews, 10 of the 33 members talked about varied institutional processes that they discovered useful alongside their switch journeys.
Loss Factors: Hindering Vertical Switch
Though our members had not skilled any loss factors that prompted them to pause or finish their postsecondary schooling on the time of their participation, they mentioned a number of institutional obstacles and challenges that might fairly create a loss level for different college students. We coded 51 excerpts from the main target group and interview transcripts as loss factors. These included educational advising processes and practices, processes and insurance policies that have an effect on curriculum and subsequent switch credit score acceptance and applicability and monetary support practices. Taken collectively, these loss factors recommend areas through which the receiving college can enhance its switch receptivity.
- Tutorial advising processes: Roughly one-third of members mentioned ineffective educational advising that served as a loss level. Experiences with educational advising diverse extensively amongst members, and in some situations, a single participant skilled advising practices on the identical establishment that each boosted and hindered their momentum towards diploma completion.
- Lack of transparency by the receiving college: Individuals skilled challenges when the receiving establishment’s insurance policies and practices concerning vertical switch weren’t clear or clearly communicated. A number of members shared frustration concerning the lack of transparency concerning whether or not their neighborhood faculty lessons would switch to the college.
Switch pupil journeys are particular person and distinctive; nevertheless, by using the LMF as a analysis lens, we have now uncovered collective loss and momentum factors skilled by vertical switch college students at a sending neighborhood faculty and receiving four-year college. Our findings spotlight the necessity for sending and receiving establishments to discover the institutional obstacles and helps they’re creating and co-creating for college kids at varied phases of their journeys from neighborhood faculty to switch and bachelor’s diploma completion.
Given the wide range of experiences our members had with educational advising, it’s clear there stays a ripe alternative for establishments to remodel advising observe right into a constant supply of momentum for switch college students:
- Decreasing advisers’ caseloads,
- Strengthening advisers’ skilled growth,
- Hiring devoted switch advisers at accomplice establishments who collaborate as a workforce to help vertical switch college students,
- Integrating pupil help with instruction,
- Switch orientation,
- Switch-specific scholarships, and
- Assist providers for minoritized college students
In the end, our findings spotlight the necessity for establishments to supply well timed and correct data to switch college students. Establishments that talk, create packages that anticipate questions or issues earlier than they come up, and leverage influential institutional relationships are nicely on their option to eradicating obstacles and structuring momentum that results in diploma completion.
Learn the total analysis report, “Making use of the Loss/Momentum Framework to Determine Systemic Limitations for Neighborhood Faculty Switch College students,” right here.
