Student Success Pilot

Redesigning the First Year General Education Curriculum

The First Year Inquiry Student Success Pilot is an ambitious redesign of Portland State University’s first year general education curriculum. Faculty and peer mentors in our general education program, University Studies, have partnered with the Office of Student Success to create a rigorous academic curriculum which also serves as a place where students learn to become successful university students and connect their education to their values and broader life plans.

What Motivated the Pilot

Portland State University offers many important resources and services for students. Currently, accessing them often depends on student-initiative or on outreach to students in crisis (which is often too late). Many students are unaware of or reluctant to use the services on campus to help them succeed academically, find community, support their mental health and financial wellness, and to align their studies with their longer term career and life goals.

This pilot addresses a key component of PSU’s “Time to Act: Plan for Equity and Racial Justice” by expanding faculty ability to support equitable student success. It also addresses access equity at our University because it integrates curricular content for first year students that are designed to foster belonging and knowledge about campus supports -- resources that students may not access otherwise.

This pilot is built on the philosophy that student success is a collective responsibility and on the conviction that the classroom is the place for students to build relationships. We have investigated what first year students need to learn about campus resources and faculty and peer mentors have built our courses accordingly, co-designing student-success curriculum with colleagues across campus.

Assessment

University Studies and Student Success are committed to an ethos of experimentation and assessment. To determine how to best serve our students, we should pilot initiatives, meticulously assess them, preserve what works and jettison or revise what does not.

Assessment for the Student Success pilot will focus on the following project outcomes: 

• Belonging: Identify and access appropriate resources for belonging and community in and out of the classroom at Portland State.
• Cognitive Skills: Develop specific cognitive  skills related to success as a student at Portland State, including time management, attention, task prioritization, study strategies, note-taking, test preparation.
• Non-Cognitive Skills: Develop specific non-cognitive skills related to success as a student at Portland State, including self-advocacy, confidence, emotional intelligence, resilience, perseverance, self-control, and growth mindset.
• PSU Resources: Gain  thorough and practical knowledge of PSU resources, including the Learning Center, Career Services, Advising / onboarding , Financial Wellness, Library , SHAC, Student Activities & Leadership Programs, Cultural Resource Centers.
• Career Readiness/ Development: Investigate how their education connects to their values and broader life plans.
• Academic Outcomes and Enrollment: Student term to term persistence, fall to fall retention, and term grades and GPA.

Formative Assessment

Ongoing feedback will be important in this year-long project. Faculty and mentors will receive mid-term feedback from students each term. The project team will collect feedback from faculty and mentors about specific assignments and activities. We will also convene end of term feedback sessions and offer surveys to find out more broadly about the faculty and mentor experience.

End-of-Project Assessment

We will assess how well the project met its goals through a combination of existing and new measures, seeking feedback from students as well as participating faculty, mentors, and campus partners.

Student classroom and campus experience assessment will be based around the existing structure of course evaluations and routine departmental data collection and analysis in order to compare student outcomes from the Pilot courses to student outcomes in non-Pilot courses. These data will be supplemented by focus groups with Pilot students.

Faculty and mentor end-of-year feedback will be gathered via a survey and optional focus group event.

Our campus partners will also have a chance to give regular feedback during and at the end of the academic year.

Outcomes by Student Group

In order to identify and address any potential equity gaps, our analysis will include disaggregating outcomes by student subgroups based on entering high school GPA, race/ethnicity, first-generation status, and legal sex.

 

Support

This work was supported by a grant through the Higher Education Coordinating Commission (HECC) Strong Start Grant to provide support to first-year students whose education may have been negatively impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. Questions about this grant can be sent to Andrea Garrity, Executive Director of Student Success (agarrity@pdx.edu).

For more information about the pilot, contact unststudentsuccess@pdx.edu or click the button below to read program updates provided by the Office of Student Success