Understanding the Student Experience

Learning Objectives & Outcomes

After completing this module, participants will be able to:
  • Understand the need to intentionally and regularly gather information about how students experience the college.
  • Understand how to decide which method of understanding the student experience (focus groups, secret shoppers, or student surveys ) may be best given a particular situation.
  • Plan for the implementation of focus groups, secret shoppers, and student surveys at their college.

Module Overview

Many community college leaders understand the importance of collecting and analyzing data to identify student access and success gaps, measure progress in closing those gaps, and ultimately determine whether or not a student success initiative has “worked.” This was not always the case. Anecdotal stories about the remarkable success of one student, a few students, or a few hundred students often obscured the negative outcomes experienced by thousands of other students. At community colleges, where an average of 60 to 70 percent of students fail to graduate and pernicious equity gaps persist, data have been used by leaders to shed light on the urgent need for reform.

But as important as analyzing data to assess student outcomes is, so too is engaging in rigorous analysis of the student experience. Data are essential to understanding which students struggle, but the student voice is needed to understand why and to bring the data to life.

Quite often, what students experience at community college is different from what faculty and administrators assume it is. Processes for course registration, tutoring, advising, financial aid, and other critical student services are often designed to be “user-friendly,” but students may not experience them as such. Processes are also designed with certain assumptions in mind about what students are struggling most with—what stands in the way of their success—but if these assumptions are incorrect, the processes will be flawed. For these reasons, leaders must regularly take steps to understand the student experience. In this module, participants will explore three strategies for gathering information about how students experience the college: student surveys, focus groups, and “secret shoppers.”

Preparation

Pre-Reading:

Module Outline

Media