Implementation of Course-Based Learning Communities and Living Learning Communities along with the Development of a Simple Python Program for Measuring Retention

摘要

Retention of engineering students has been a major concern for universities across the country. Those students who have trouble adjusting and making friends tend to leave at a higher rate than those students who have successfully integrated into college life. In addition, due to the rigor of engineering programs, students have to learn how to study better and more often than they had just a few months prior when they were still in high school. Learning communities have shown success in helping students to become academically and socially integrated quickly. This has resulted in students being retained higher rates that those students who are not in these types of communities. This paper chronicles the development and implementation of course-based learning teams and living learning communities at a major metropolitan university, along with the development of a flexible and easy to use python program to measure the retention of students. Many schools do not have robust data systems to provide retention numbers and other data analysis required to measure the success of their programs. By developing these programs in house, in addition to providing basic overall retention numbers, it allows for an expansion of the measurement of retention into several categories and subcategories which helps to provide a more in-depth analysis of student success programs. Initial findings over the first two years indicate that these learning communities are having a significant impact on the retention of the students not only at the university level but also in the college of engineering. The software program helped to show the basic retention numbers and then allowed for further deeper exploration of student retention by showing the retention broken out by many different subcategories of students.