October 26, 2007
Predicting Student Struggles in College
Seattle—Colleges now collect a wealth of data on their students. And within that data lies a way to keep students from failing a class by finding early signs of trouble, says John P. Campbel, associate vice-president of teaching and learning technologies at Purdue University.
At a session at the Educause technology meeting here, Mr. Campbell noted that course-management systems now track student participation in assignments.
He looked at 27,276 Purdue students enrolled in 597 courses. By putting together this engagement data with their GPA’s and scores on standardized tests, Campbell developed a model that successfully predicted students who were heading for a grade of C or lower 66 percent of the time.
In a freshman biology class, students who fit the failing profiles were first sent e-mail messages or told by the instructor about study sessions and extra help available.
Did it work? Not for the highest risk, least engaged students. But for a middle-risk group, the interventions helped. They went to study sessions, got tutoring, and moved out of the high-risk category in their behavior. —Josh Fischman
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The issue here seems to be what prevents the most at risk student from seeking the help?
Was there a followup that uncovered why “e-mails” did not work?
— Dr. Arlene A. O'Leary Oct 26, 10:45 AM #
Mr. Campbell confessed that he was at a loss about motivating this high risk group to seek help. Emails were not the only ineffective strategy for these students. Even calls from their academic advisors did not motivate them.
— Josh Fischman Oct 26, 06:50 PM #
Kudos to Purdue for taking this initiative instead of insisting it is up to the students to work it out by themselves. Students are in college to learn how to be adults. Not all who are failing are blowing it off; many are overwhelmed, getting little support. No one strategy works for everyone, but reaching the middle-risk group is a good beginning. Hopefully Mr. Campbell will identify other strategies that will prove more successful with high-risk students. What is important is that they are trying to help and head off negative outcomes – a step in the right direction. Depression or suicide in college students doesn’t just ‘happen” and isn’t always a result of pre-existing conditions. Failing a course may lead to depression or conversely, be a symptom of it. Hopefully other colleges are watching and using John Campbell’s model on their campuses while developing support networks of their own.
— Sue Schneider Oct 26, 07:24 PM #
Cabrillo College has developed a program to address these at-risk students and they have been highly successful in their 4+ years. The program is called the Digital Bridge Academy They actively track a number of traits across the classes of the student and then through faculty weekly meetings monitor and intervene where needed. Cool program, might be the missing component to the Purdue program.
— Christopher Shockey Oct 29, 12:19 PM #