More than 10 years of research and development have gone into Sinclair Community College’s soon-to-be open source software project: Student Success Plan (SSP).
SSP is used across campus for recordkeeping, counseling, self-help and intervention for students needing help with completing their goals. Participating students have been identified as “at-risk” of being unlikely to complete college. Among Sinclair students participating in SSP are those who test into developmental courses in two or more subjects, students with documented disabilities, displaced workers, high school students, distance learning students and others.
The SSP software, developed in collaboration with Student Services, allows staff, faculty and the student to list the student’s goals and record challenges they are facing. Working from that, action plans and reports are made to lead the student toward success while the student’s progress is managed. Information entered into SSP is shared across departments but can be controlled, explained Russ Little, manager of Sinclair’s Web Systems, Sinclair graduate and employee for more than 17 years.
“If you’re an academic advisor and the student has a disability, but you don’t have a need to know, then you simply won’t know,” said Little.
The program received $1.825 million across five years from a U.S. Department of Education Title III grant, which funded its research and development. The SSP project received an additional $250,000 grant from Next Generation Learning Challenge, in 2011, funding a transition of the software from its current form to open source.
“Software is not magic; people are the magic. Software is enabling,” Little said, during a teleconference and online presentation of SSP to representatives of Michigan’s Lansing Community College. According to Little’s presentation, five other colleges are using Sinclair’s SSP software, which has won 11 national awards since 2004, and has served over 35,000 students. More than 10 schools are reviewing it for use, including Lansing.
Between fall 2010 and winter 2011, Sinclair students that qualified and participated in pathways to completion coaching through SSP experienced a “quarter to quarter” retention rate that was 37 percent higher than qualified non-participating students, and 26 percent higher than students not considered “at-risk,” according to SSP presentation data. SSP participants from 2005 to 2011 were five times more likely to graduate within six years.
Sinclair’s rate for first-time, full-time students receiving their degree within three years of enrollment was 9 percent in 2011, according to Complete College America, a national nonprofit specializing in state-level college completion statistics.
Their data for 2011, from the U.S. Department of Education, shows that across Ohio 9.4 percent of full-time students received an associate degree within three years, and 16.5 percent of them finished the degree in four years.
“Most people need a systemic counseling,” said Little. Unlike Sinclair’s current approach to academic advising, where a dedicated advisor isn’t necessarily guaranteed, current SSP participants, “are assigned to an individual, so that the assigned person is accountable for that student.”
Little’s future plans for SSP include possibly implementing it for Sinclair Honors students, integrating it with My Academic Plan (MAP) and discovering ways to leverage SSP in helping connect students to their career field sooner.
The My Guide to Planning Success (GPS) component of SSP can be found online at resources.sinclair.edu.
- Sat. Jul 20th, 2024