Persistence Project

A FACULTY DRIVEN INITIATIVE

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What are the responsibilities of the Persistence Project faculty?

Participating faculty are asked to designate at least one course section in which they will incorporate intentional student engagement strategies throughout the semester.  These include the following:

• Pre-semester engagement strategies
• 1st 3-Week engagement strategies
• Remainder of the semester engagement strategies
• Assessments of effectiveness

 

Pre-semester engagement strategies

Persistence Project faculty commit to providing students prior to the first day of instruction the following:

• Equitable, welcoming syllabus to students
• Welcome email or video introducing yourself and the course

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1st 3-Week engagement strategies

Persistence Project faculty commit to their students:

• Learn every student's name 
• Host a short, one-on-one "get-to-know-you" conference with each student
• Give quality feedback on one assignment or quiz that encourages the student to grow
• Build a community within the classroom between the instructor-to-students and students-to-students.

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engagement strategies during the remainder of the semester

Persistence Project faculty commit to the following during the the remainder of the semester:

• Contact students who are struggling in class and offer them help
• Participate in assessment activities for the project as a whole 

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Assessments 

Across the project, there are many formal and informal assessments that Persistence Project faculty commit to to inform their support of students.

Within the Classroom

Leading Indicators. Leading indicators are formal and informal assessments to support faculty in identifying students that require additional help.  Faculty commit to communicating support to change their student's trajectory within a semester.

• examples: GPA at Census, participation in class, etc.

 

Across the Campus

Lagging Indicators: Lagging indicators are the typical measures of student success and give faculty information about the sum student success in past semesters and the effect engagement strategies have had.

• We partner with Institutional Research to assess the effectiveness of the project each semester.

 

Across the project

Each semester, all Persistence Project course sections engage in short student surveys and faculty surveys.  These are used to provide faculty and our college with information that can be used to improve instruction, support and project initiatives for the next semester.