Learning communities, groups of students who take linked courses together and support each other during a semester, have grown in popularity as a way to improve student performance at community colleges.
But a series of reports discussed at the American Association of Community Colleges’ annual convention here Sunday revealed that while students do make academic gains, such as progressing more quickly through developmental courses, the gains don’t persist beyond the semester students are involved with the learning community.
The studies discussed during the session “Learning Communities: Rigorous Research and the Real World” were conducted by MDRC, a nonprofit research organization based in New York.
For some, the findings might seem discouraging, said Mary Visher, a senior associate in MDRC’s Young Adults and Postsecondary Education Policy Area. “But the fact that learning communities definitely help students move through the developmental-course sequence is not a trivial finding.”
The studies evaluated learning communities at six community colleges: the Community College of Baltimore County, in Maryland; Hillsborough Community College, in Tampa, Fla.; Houston Community College; Kingsborough Community College, in Brooklyn, N.Y.; Merced College, in California, and Queensborough Community College, in Queens, N.Y. Kingsborough and Queensborough are part of the City University of New York.
The community colleges are taking part in the National Center for Postsecondary Research’s Learning Community Demonstration. The demonstration’s focus is on determining whether learning communities are an effective strategy for helping students who need developmental education to not only pass those courses but to stay enrolled.
At Hillsborough Community College, the answer to that question right now is no. A study found that with respect to total credits earned, students in the program group and the control group performed about the same during the program semester and the first semester after. In addition, during the two semesters following the program, students in the control group were about as likely to stay enrolled as those in the program group.
Findings for other community colleges were similar to those at Hillsborough. At Queensborough and Houston Community Colleges, students in learning communities attempted and passed their developmental math class at higher rates than did students in a control group. However, this impact generally did not translate into increased cumulative progress in math by the end of the two or three semesters.
The first study of learning communities by MDRC was done at Kingsborough, as part of MDRC’s larger Opening Doors Demonstration that examined a number of interventions. Kingsborough’s findings proved so positive for the learning-communities intervention that MDRC decided to scale up its study to include a total of six community colleges.
Students at Kingsborough moved more quickly through developmental English requirements, took and passed more courses, and earned more credits in their first semester than did students in a control group. Two years later, they were also somewhat more likely to be enrolled in college.
Today, Kingsborough students in learning communities, numbering 2,000 each year, consistently persist and achieve at higher levels than do students not in learning communities, said Rachel E. Singer, director of academic affairs at Kingsborough.
Jedediah J. Teres, a research associate at MDRC, said the early results from the more recent studies were not that surprising given that students in learning communities are already behind academically when they enroll at a community college.
MDRC expects to release additional reports throughout the year that may result in different outcomes. In the meantime, Ms. Visher said, the research suggests that colleges need to think more about how to maintain the gains some students make. “Something else needs to be put in place as students emerge from the learning community.”
International Students Excel
Another new study found that international students from underrepresented minority groups who attended community colleges in the United States had higher grade-point averages, engagement levels, and certificate-completion rates than did their American counterparts.
The profile of the international students in the study was similar to that of American community-college students, including that they were the first in their family to attend college. The authors of a report on the study acknowledged, however, that the international students did better academically in part because they didn’t have the same family and work commitments as did their American counterparts.
Community Colleges for International Development Inc., based in Iowa, conducted the study, which found that over 95 percent of the international students completed their certificates. The students also finished with grade-point averages close to a 4.0 and excelled in leadership and volunteer positions.
Carol Stax Brown, the organization’s national director, who becomes its executive director this week, said the decision to conduct the student survey grew from a frustration that the Obama administration’s college-completion agenda gives insufficient attention to global perspectives, competencies, or connectedness.
“We find this to be counterintuitive when the mission of the community college is to provide a globally competitive work force,” she said.
She said the results show that the international students were highly motivated to succeed and valued learning about other cultures. Students in the United States are not always given the opportunity to do the same, she said, and others don’t have the inclination to learn about other countries.
Offering study-abroad experiences or other types of programs at community colleges would expose American students to other markets and cultures and better position them for the future, Ms. Brown said.
“U.S. students are not aware that the job market they are trying to compete in now includes highly motivated, dare we say desperate, educated, creative, and connected youth from every corner of world,” she said.
The international students received a lot of support such as attending weekly meetings to discuss their college experience, and they were instructed on how to get involved in the American higher-education process, including by joining clubs and community organizations. Those factors also accounted for some of the academic gains among the international students, the study found.