Citation
Barnes, R., & Piland, W. (2010). Impact of learning communities in developmental English on community college student retention and persistence. Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory, & Practice, 12(1), 7-24.
Highlights
- This study’s objective was to evaluate the effectiveness of learning communities as an alternative pedagogical format for students enrolled in developmental reading and English composition courses at an urban community college.
- The authors employed a quasi-experimental design to compare average retention and persistence rates of students enrolled in learning community developmental English courses with those of students enrolled in traditional developmental English courses in the same semester.
- The study found that retention rates were higher for students who enrolled in learning community developmental courses compared with their counterparts who took the same courses but in the traditional format. Furthermore, for the four semesters studied, learning community students were more likely to enroll in courses the following semester than were students who were not enrolled in learning communities.
- The quality of causal evidence provided in this study is low because authors did not use sufficient controls in the analysis. This means we are not confident that the estimated effects are attributable to the learning communities. Other factors are likely to have contributed.
Intervention Examined
Learning Communities
Features of the Intervention
A learning community is an instructional model that provides students enrolled in linked courses opportunities to interact and engage with one another in a supportive learning environment. The learning community assessed in this study consisted of developmental English writing and reading courses at one and two levels below college-level English. Aside from the unique learning environment, students also received special services, such as in-course tutoring. In addition, course faculty received professional development and planning time to develop course themes.
Features of the Study
The authors collected academic and administrative data on students enrolled in developmental English courses in a community college located in an urban area of southern California. The study evaluated students who enrolled in one of two developmental English course sequences: English 042 and 043 (two levels below college-level English) and English 051 and 056 (one level below college-level English) during any of the following four semesters: fall 2007, spring 2008, fall 2008, and spring 2009.
The intervention outcomes of interest in this study included (1) retention rates, which were equal to the proportion of students who completed the course relative to the total number of students enrolled after the drop deadline; and (2) persistence, defined as whether the student reenrolled the semester following completion of the developmental course sequence. The study used a quasi-experimental comparison group design, in which the authors compared retention and persistence rates of learning community and nonlearning community students to test for significant differences between groups.
The intervention sample included all 760 students enrolled in developmental English learning communities during the study period (fall 2007 to spring 2009). The comparison group consisted of a random sample of 760 students enrolled in the same developmental courses, but who took them in the traditional format that was not part of a learning community. For the persistence measure, however, only those students who successfully completed the developmental English course were evaluated, which reduced the overall sample size used for analysis by about half (61 percent of the original treatment group and 38 percent of the original comparison group).
Findings
- The study found that retention rates were significantly higher for students enrolled in the learning community developmental courses English 043 and English 051 compared with their counterparts who took the same courses but in the traditional format. In addition, when courses were grouped by level (that is, English 042/043 and English 051/056) the differences between the treatment and comparison groups were statistically significant for both sets of courses.
- Persistence rates in the grouped English 051/056 courses for fall 2007 to spring 2008 and for fall 2008 to spring 2009 were significantly higher for learning community students than for comparison students. In addition, persistence rates for fall 2008 to spring 2009 in English 051 were significantly higher for learning community students than for comparison students.
Considerations for Interpreting the Findings
The authors did not account for self-selection into learning communities by including control variables in their analyses or by demonstrating that the treatment and comparison groups were similar on key characteristics before the intervention. In fact, the authors established that the treatment and comparison groups differed on observable characteristics (gender and ethnicity) in the analytic sample. Self-selection of treatment students into learning communities is a concern because it can bias estimates of the impacts of the intervention on outcomes. For example, more motivated students might be more likely to enroll in learning communities and to achieve higher persistence and retention rates. A lack of statistical controls for possible systematic differences between the treatment and comparison groups raises concerns that factors other than the intervention could account for the observed differences in retention and persistence rates. Therefore, the study is not eligible for a moderate causal evidence rating, the highest rating available for nonexperimental designs.
Causal Evidence Rating
The quality of causal evidence provided in this study is low because the authors did not use sufficient controls in the analysis. This means that we are not confident that the estimated effects are attributable to the learning communities. Other factors are likely to have contributed.