Citation
Bandyopadhyay, P. (2010). The impact of course delivery systems on student achievement and sense of community: A comparison of learning community versus stand-alone classroom settings in an open-enrollment inner city public community college (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. (UMI No. 3390450)
Highlights
- The study’s objective was to examine the impact of a learning community on the retention of community college students enrolled in developmental reading and writing and a social science course at an open-enrollment inner city public community college in the United States.
- The author used a nonexperimental study design, analyzing school records of students enrolled in the highest level of developmental reading and writing and either a learning community or stand-alone version of one of two social science courses (Introduction to Psychology or Principles of Sociology).
- The study found no statistically significant difference in the fall 2008 to spring 2009 retention rates between the students in the learning community and the students in stand-alone courses.
- The quality of causal evidence presented in this report is moderate because it was based on a well-implemented nonexperimental design. This means we would be somewhat confident that any estimated effects would be attributable to the learning community. However, the study did not find statistically significant effects.
Intervention Examined
Learning Communities
Features of the Intervention
Students at an open-enrollment inner city public community college in the United States who placed into the highest level of developmental reading and writing (Basic Reading/Writing III) were also eligible to enroll in a college-level social science course in either a stand-alone or learning community format. The learning community version of the Introduction to Psychology or Principles of Sociology course used syllabi linking the developmental course and the social science course. In addition, learning community students wrote weekly learning logs.
Features of the Study
The study used a nonexperimental design to compare the retention rates of 69 students who self-selected into the learning community and 71 into the stand-alone version of the social science courses. The author estimated the effect of learning communities by performing cross-tabulations and tests of statistical significance.
Findings
- The study found no statistically significant difference in the fall 2008 to spring 2009 retention rates between the students in the learning community (91.3 percent) and the stand-alone courses (84.5 percent).
Considerations for Interpreting the Findings
Students chose whether to take the learning community or the stand-alone version of the social science course; this selection might be based on characteristics of the students that also influenced their persistence in community college. The analyses did not include controls to account for such characteristics, but the author showed that there were no statistically significant differences between the groups on their age, race/ethnicity, gender, pre-intervention financial disadvantage, and pre-intervention academic achievement.
Causal Evidence Rating
The quality of causal evidence presented in this report is moderate because it was based on a well-implemented nonexperimental design. This means we would be somewhat confident that any estimated effects would be attributable to the learning community. However, the study did not find statistically significant effects.