What Works: Learning Outcomes Due to Design Variations in Community College Student Success Courses

Background/Context Based on well-established evidence that certain student success skills and college knowledge are closely associated with academic achievement, persistence, and completion, community colleges increasingly implement various types of first-year student success courses and programs. However, by looking only at the distal impact of program participation, the question of whether these programs actually influence those mediating skills of college success has scarcely been investigated in the higher education literature, let alone which program features may be determining factors. Purpose/Objective This study examined the scope and design of community college student success courses to address which program features relate to learning objectives of student success skills, college knowledge, and engagement. Population/Participants/Subjects Participants were students and instructors drawn from 47 student success course sections at 42 public community colleges in 24 states, representing all U.S. geographic regions. Research Design The study adopted a multimodal research design, using both qualitative and quantitative research methods while primarily relying on quantitative analysis. Data Collection and Analysis Students in selected student success course sections completed a pre- and postsurvey. Instructors participated in a structured interview and provided course syllabi. Course design information was quantitized and merged with student-level data to model variation in learning outcomes as a function of course features, according to an activity theory conceptual framework. Data were analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling. Conclusions Findings from this research point to several recommendations for practice by highlighting the reality that one term may be too little to learn some student success skills and that particular features of course designs may result in unintended adverse effects. Results indicate that structural elements are the most impactful features and that the skills-based curricular features that receive the most attention may be in fact the least influential features in realizing desired skills and knowledge outcomes. The study points to methodological ways forward to further explore and unpack the relationship between success course design features and educational outcomes.