New Cambrian College Program Translates Into Practical Retention Strategy
At the Cambrian College Quality Teaching Resource Centre
(QTRC), the coordinator is always looking for new and innovative ways to bring
faculty together within and across programs, with the ultimate goal of
enhancing student success. So when one of her colleagues mentioned professional learning communities (PLC), she had to know more. She quickly learned that this
approach is used exclusively at the elementary and secondary level in numerous
school systems across North America, but no one has brought it to the
postsecondary level, yet.
Everything about the concept fit beautifully with
Cambrian’s student-centered culture. The three main tenets of the approach are:
(1) Student success and true student-centered teaching are
the driving force behind all curriculum delivery decisions;
(2) a culture of student focus can be best created and
maintained in a climate of faculty collaboration; and
(3) student success must be measured empirically and
systematically.
Not to be confused with the concept of professional
communities that is becoming prevalent across North American post-secondary
institutions, the PLC concept isn’t focused as much on the faculty and the
notion of sharing resources as it is on enhancing student success. Heightened
collegiality and the sharing of resources is certainly a natural by-product of
the PLC approach, though they aren’t its raison d’être. In Cambrian’s college
setting, this would translate readily into a practical retention strategy. The
big question was how the faculty would respond to the initiative, given that at
face value, it looks like extra work. And frankly, it is. The PLC approach
emphasizes the need for weekly faculty meetings and clear products of those
meetings by reviewing data and developing action plans resulting from the data.
The timing of the roll-out of this initiative at Cambrian
coincided well with the needs of the chemical engineering program faculty and
students. There had been a pattern of serious student retention issues
throughout the three-year diploma program, but most notably between its first
and second years. Students who were deemed quite capable of the work and
demands of the program were choosing to exit at the end of their first
semester, in some cases, but more frequently at the end of their first year.
The cause of student withdrawal rates had never been confirmed, but the faculty
strongly suspected that the students were lacking a sense of connection to
other students, particularly those in the upper semesters who were clearly
managing the program well. Previous efforts to stem the tide of withdrawals
were ineffective, so the chemical engineering coordinator and faculty decided
to institute a structured approach in the form of a mentorship
program to respond to this trend.
The program was first introduced at orientation. It would
involve all students in the program. A social meet-and-greet was also held
toward the beginning of the semester, during which students would be introduced
to the other members of their working group. These groups were established by
faculty and were comprised in equal
numbers of students from all years of the program. They were encouraged to meet weekly throughout the semester, though
the agenda for each session was to be driven by the members of the group.
It was immediately clear to the chemical engineering
faculty that the PLC concept would be an ideal mechanism through which to
monitor the effectiveness of the mentorship program and plot its impact. The
QTRC coordinator met with the chemical engineering faculty at the end of the
winter semester, prior to the initiation of their mentorship program, to
discuss the PLC approach more thoroughly as it pertained to their particular
goals and objectives. Meetings among faculty have taken place throughout the
semester, though it is too early to say what impact the whole intervention is
having.
For more information about the PLC concept as it has been
applied at Cambrian College, contact Irene Nizzero at irene.nizzero@cambriancollege.ca.
For more details regarding the mentorship program in the chemical engineering
department at Cambrian College, contact Hadi Fergani at hadi.fergani@cambriancollege.ca.
Reference:*DuFour, R., Dufour, R., & Eaker, R. (2008). Revisiting Professional Learning Communities at Work. Bloomington: Solution Tree.
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