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Acceleration Spotlight: Chaffey College

Piloting Acceleration on a Large Scale

In
Spring 2011, Chaffey College launched its “Fast Track” initiative with 52
sections of accelerated courses, including not only English and Math, but also
ESL, Spanish, Biology, and Astronomy.

The initiative began in Chaffey’s Enrollment and Success Management
Committee. Members of the group read and discussed Hern and Snell’s article “Exponential Attrition and the Promise of Acceleration in
Developmental English and Math,” then invited faculty from neighboring
Citrus College to visit campus and share their own experience with acceleration.
Initially, some Chaffey instructors were hesitant about acceleration. But, says
Dean of Instructional Support Laura Hope, the college’s culture of
experimentation and risk-tolerance helped them move ahead quickly. “We asked
ourselves, ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’”

Chaffey’s Fast Track initiative focuses on shortening the time-frame for
students to complete requirements and eliminating the exit points between
courses in their sequences. This currently involves three different models of
acceleration.

Compressed Courses

Separate
courses are packaged together in a single semester, taught by the same
instructor, with students enrolling in both courses at the same time. The
structure eliminates the exit point between classes, where students who pass one
level often do not enroll in the next.  Chaffey’s first round of compressed
courses included:

Two 3-unit English courses offered as a 6-unit package (2 levels of
developmental English combined, 1 level below combined with English 1A, and
English 1A combined with English 1B);

Two 4-unit Spanish classes (1A, 1B) offered as an 8-unit package;

A “four-pack” of science and math (total of 18 units) that enables many
non-math/science majors to complete their requirements in one semester:
Biology (4 units), Biology Lab (3 units), Astronomy (3 units), Intermediate
Algebra (4 units), and College Algebra (4 units).

Short-Term, Intensive
Courses

This
model involves 8-week intensive classes that give students more flexible
starting points within the 18-week semester. The increase in class time each
week also expands the relationship-building among students, and between students
and teachers, over what is typical in the full-length semester. Disciplines
offering courses in this format include Accounting, Anthropology, Child
Development, English, ESL, Computer Science, Spanish, Psychology, and
Sociology.

Avoidance Model in Developmental
Math, Combined with Short-Term Intensive Course

Students
who place into arithmetic (4 levels below transfer Math) can enroll in an
intensive 3-week review course and then re-take the placement test. Of the
approximately 400 students who have participated to date, 80% of the students
who complete the class have been able to re-test directly into Intermediate
Algebra after three weeks, avoiding three classes in the sequence. Students can
then enroll in a late-start intensive section of that course. If successful,
they complete their developmental Math requirements in one semester, rather than
the four required under the traditional sequence.

Despite the initial caution of some faculty, many of those teaching in the
new models have discovered the benefits cited by faculty in other accelerated
programs. Melissa Utsler, English instructor, noted that she “has never loved
teaching so much.”  Emily Avila, Biology instructor, taught an accelerated
version and a traditional version of Biology 1 during Spring 2011.  The
accelerated class not only increased success by 20 percentage points, but Avila
found students were more cohesive and engaged than in her traditional class,
developing a strong bond and becoming “more supportive of each other than [she]
had ever seen before.”

During a series of panels this semester, the first round of accelerated
faculty have shared their experiences with the faculty who will teach
accelerated sections in the fall. Among their observations from the early
accelerated courses: a higher level of student focus, greater retention and
success among students who would have been at risk in the standard format, a
greater sense of community in the classroom, and increased help-seeking behavior
among students.

So far, student retention and success have been notably stronger in the
accelerated courses than in non-accelerated sections of the same course: 90.3%
of students were retained in these courses, compared to 83.1% in the traditional
model; 67.4% of accelerated students passed their courses, compared with a 57%
in non-accelerated sections. (Accelerated data from 23 sections with reported
grades to date, comparison data from F 2007-F 2010.)

Dean Laura Hope reports that in 2011-12, the college plans to offer 70
accelerated sections each semester in a range of disciplines, and these will be
highlighted in a special “Fast Track” section of the course schedule. Chaffey
will also explore the use of Supplemental Instruction leaders in accelerated
classes. Over the next 18 months, she says, the college will study the outcomes
of their accelerated offerings closely, tracking not only success and retention
within a single semester but students’ sequence completion rates over time.

“At the end of several semesters of experimentation and dialogue,” Hope says,
“we’re going to know a lot better about what works for us.”

As Chaffey moves into Phase Three of Implementation: Refining and Expanding
Accelerated Approaches, Hope expects that the college will build upon its
current models and consider approaches that involve curricular redesign, such as
models using “backwards design” to ensure that all of the content covered inside
existing developmental sequences directly aligns with the most essential
learning goals of college-level courses.

For
more information, contact Laura Hope, Dean of Instructional Support, Chaffey
College, [email-masked]

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February 10, 2012 9:30 am - February 10, 2012 2:00 pm

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