Early Intervention
The Early Intervention program stemmed from Task Force 1’s charge to design a system that identifies and intervenes with students who are at risk of failing or withdrawing. The goal of the early intervention system is to improve retention and completion rates.
LSC-Kingwood implemented the EI pilot program in February 2008. The pilot project addresses implementation procedures and the data collected will inform our research design for the EI program in fall 2008. This pilot will generate preliminary procedures and data that will then guide the final research-based design, methodology, and expected outcomes for the full Early Intervention program at LSC-Kingwood in fall 2008.
The Early Intervention implementation team consists of: the dean of education program support; the dean of the math, science & health sciences division; a counselor from business, technology & social sciences; the assistant director of admissions; a counselor from arts & humanities; and the recently hired Early Intervention Coordinator. The team further collaborated with the chair of the math department to engage the faculty.
The goal for this semester is to train participating team members (Early Intervention coordinator and coaches), adopt and execute procedures, and measure the effectiveness of the procedures before full implementation in the fall. The selection parameters of the pilot project participation are presented in the following goal statements:
- To involve a specific number of participatory sections that will be sufficient to generate the spectrum of implementation challenges while also being sufficient to draw inferences from the data obtained. All 21 sections of Math 0308 being offered at the main campus were deemed a reasonable target. These sections have a total of 450 students enrolled, with part-time faculty instructing 56% of the students and full-time instructing the remaining 44%.
- To represent the types of student-experienced impediments that the EI program endeavors to address so the results have a real, demonstrative value. Developmental studies math courses have traditionally been a difficult hurdle for many students. Sixteen percent of Lone Star College System’s 2003 Achieving the Dream cohort were placed in Math 0308. In fall 2007, 22% of students at LSC-Kingwood enrolled in developmental studies. Because of these well disclosed statistics, Math 0308 was chosen to represent the type of relevant academic problems amenable to intervention.