Developmental education reforms in higher education strive to accelerate student progress toward degree completion. The RISE (Reinforced Instruction for Student Excellence) iteration of developmental education reform in North Carolina community colleges introduced corequisite support courses that support students’ development of essential academic skills while they earn college credit.
When we implemented the RISE model in 2019, Wake Technical Community College offered our first corequisite support courses for students who were one level below college ready. Like our sister community colleges across the state, our faculty developed corequisite courses for gateway English (ENG 111) and gateway math (MAT 110, MAT 121, MAT 143, MAT 152, and MAT 171) classes. Students with an unweighted high school GPA between 2.2 and 2.79 were allowed to register for their gateway English and math classes as long as they also enrolled in the required corequisite support English and math classes.
This corequisite model of developmental education increased access to the gateway classes for thousands of students at Wake Tech, many of whom — prior to RISE — would have been required to enroll in and pass prerequisite developmental education classes before being allowed to enroll in the gateway English and math classes. Researchers in our effectiveness and innovation department published a recent study of students enrolled in corequisite courses at Wake Tech; the study reveals two important findings.
First, students are well served with the corequisite support course model. And second, the single instructor approach to teaching corequisite and gateway courses multiplies the positive impact on student success.
Five years of RISE implementation gave us thousands of student records to consider in the study. The quasi-experimental study compares the rates of success in gateway English and math between two groups of students:
- Approximately 2,000 Wake Tech students with high school GPAs between 2.2 and 2.79 who enrolled in corequisite support courses alongside their gateway English and math courses in the five years of RISE model implementation (2019-2024), and
- Approximately 2,000 Wake Tech students with high school GPAs between 2.2 and 2.79 who enrolled in gateway English and math courses without corequisite support courses in the five years prior to the RISE model (2014-2019).
Researchers made sure the student groups were similar by using propensity score matching to group students based on factors like race, gender, financial aid status, and whether they had taken developmental courses before enrolling in the gateway course.
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The first key finding from this study is that Wake Tech students with low high school GPAs are 12% more likely to pass their gateway English and math courses with a grade of A, B, or C if they take corequisite support courses at the same time. That 12% represents hundreds of students who not only had earlier access to their gateway English and math classes, but also successfully completed their gateway English and math classes. When students take advantage of this early access and register for their gateway English and math in their first academic year, they benefit from “gateway momentum” that leads to higher graduation rates.
The second finding from the Wake Tech study addresses one of the many questions about the best way to implement corequisite support courses. There are lots of variations in implementation in corequisites. The instructional delivery methods of both the gateway and corequisite support course can include permutations such as online, in person, hybrid/blended gateway classes and online, in person, hybrid/blended corequisite support classes. Academic department leaders can schedule classes to include different ratios of corequisite students to no-corequisite students in the gateway course. Additionally, academic leaders can schedule the corequisite support class to take place before or after the gateway class on the same day or on a different day of the week. Finally, instructor assignments can include different faculty members teaching the gateway class and corequisite support class or the same faculty member teaching both classes.
Wake Tech leaders and faculty were inspired by early, promising research on the single instructor model in which the same faculty member teaches both the gateway and corequisite support classes, and we have increased our number of instances of the single instructor model year over year since we implemented RISE in fall 2019. Our research shows that Wake Tech students are more likely to pass their gateway English or math class if they had the same instructor for both the gateway and the corequisite support class, compared to students who had different instructors. Specifically, when students have the same instructor for both their gateway class and the corequisite support class, they are 7% more likely to pass the gateway class with an A, B, or C. This finding holds true for all groups of students, regardless of race, age, or financial background.
Recent messaging about developmental education reform efforts nationwide indicating that colleges have slowed or delayed their reforms does not resonate with many of us who have lived firsthand multiple initiatives in the last 10 years, including the integrated/accelerated/emporium model, RISE, and now DEAP (Developmental Education Alignment Project).
North Carolina has an opportunity to use data and research, such as our study at Wake Tech, to make meaningful changes that support the success of all community college students via strategies like corequisite support courses that provide the scaffolding that many students need to achieve their academic and professional goals.
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