California Community College counselors have been teaching counseling related classes for over thirty years. As community colleges continued to evolved from junior colleges in the sixties, professionally trained counseling faculty began to be hired within the community college system statewide. Many of these counselors developed and facilitated counseling groups as a means to enhance student interaction and deliver personal and career counseling to greater numbers of students. These early groups began to evolve into classes as pressure came in the late seventies to “eliminate the fluff from the curriculum” and only offer “legitimate” college courses. It was at this time that community college counseling faculty first crossed over into the classroom and began in earnest to develop curriculum and teach classes.
During these early years, I can remember thinking that while the group process was helpful to many students, I believed, I was much more effective as a counselor when I was counseling one on one with a student as opposed to facilitating a group with 10 to 12 students. When I was first asked to develop curriculum for a career planning class and to increase the number of students from a dozen to 18 to 20, I had serious doubts as to whether I could be effective providing the same counseling assistance as I could counseling one on one or in a small group. The change from facilitating the group process with a small group of students to teaching a large class was a daunting task and I found the transition to be a difficult one. Today, I many times have 35 to 40 students and sometimes as many as 50 students in my counseling classes and over the years it has been a tremendous challenge to adjust my curriculum and teaching style to the larger numbers of students. I know my colleagues at Saddleback College, as well as counseling faculty throughout the state, have struggled with the dilemma of teaching large classes and of offering counseling services to ever increasing numbers of students through college classes.
The challenge of teaching counseling related classes and the effectiveness of these classes has been an ongoing issue for many counseling faculty and counseling departments throughout the state. Some counselors have given up on teaching as the classes became too large, and some colleges no longer offer counseling related classes because they were not deemed as necessary or important as the other offerings within the college curriculum. Over the many years that I have taught my classes, I often wondered if these counseling classes actually worked, “Are these counseling classes as effective as we counselors would like them to be?” Whenever I pondered this question, I felt intuitively that I knew the answer. I was sure that the classes were effective. The students provided me with positive comments when I asked them for feedback at the end of each class, and I had a strong sense that many of these same students I had in my classes were the ones going on to finish A.A. Degrees and transferring to four-year colleges. The only problem was that my feelings about the effectiveness of counseling classes were just that, feelings, I had never seen any hard data that indicated this to be true.
At Saddleback College, we recently had an opportunity to seek some answers to these questions. As part of a program review by the counseling department this past fall semester 2003, a study was undertaken to collect data regarding three of the counseling related classes taught at Saddleback College. Victor Manchik, a Research Analyst for Student Services, compiled the data and completed the study.
Community College Counselors teach many different types of classes, but probably the most common counseling related classes within the majority of community college’s curriculum are Orientation and Student Success classes, Career Planning classes, and Study Skills classes. These three classes were the ones that were targeted in the study. These classes at Saddleback College are Applied Psychology 140 “Educational and Vocational Planning”, Applied Psychology 160 “Career and Vocational Exploration” and Applied Psychology 161 “Learning and Study Techniques”. For simplicity purposes we will discuss results of Applied Psychology 140 “Educational and Vocational Planning” only, however, the results of all three classes are similar.
The focus of this study was to determine if there was evidence that Applied Psychology courses have a positive effect on student retention and persistence. Do students who take these classes continue at Saddleback College? If they do, which courses do they take? How many enroll in transfer level English or math courses? How many graduate? When I was first informed of the study, I was concerned that the results would be misinterpreted. I had a strong feeling that the data would show lower persistence and graduation rates of students from our classes than the comparison student groups. I believed this might be the case, because the students who we targeted for our classes were the students who were most lost and “clueless” regarding their educational and career goals. They, many times, were also the students who were least successful in high school, and came to the class with low self-esteem and a lack of motivation. As a result, I was somewhat surprised and gratified when I saw the results of the study.
Because the South Orange County Community College District maintains a comprehensive Research Data Warehouse with information on all Saddleback College students since 1993, we decided to use "cohort tracking" methodology to find answers to our questions utilizing the BrioQuery software. Four cohorts of first-time freshmen were selected for each class and tracked six years. The Applied Psychology 140 “Educational and Vocational Planning” cohorts consisted of first-time students enrolled in fall 1993 (N = 192), fall 1994 (N = 255), fall 1995 (N = 170), and fall 1996 (N = 191). The results from these groups were compared to the results from all first-time freshmen who started during the same semesters, fall 1993 (N = 2,498), fall 1994 (N = 2,551), fall 1995 (N = 2,057), and fall 1996 (N = 2,478). We looked at how many of students in the cohorts returned to Saddleback College after their first semester, the type of courses they took, and calculated their graduation rates.
The charts below summarize the results of our program review study.
Source: SOCCCD Research Data Warehouse
Chart 1 shows that students who took the Applied Psychology 140 course during their first semester returned to Saddleback College in higher numbers. This was true for all four cohorts. On average 90.2% of students in the four all first-time freshmen Applied Psychology cohorts returned to Saddleback College after their first semester and took at least one transferable course, compared to 72% of the students in the comparison groups.
Source: SOCCCD Research Data Warehouse
The same happened when we looked at English courses as is evident from looking at Chart 2. More students who took the "Applied Psychology 140" course during their first semester took at least one transfer level English course within six-year time period following their first semester. The average for students in the Applied Psychology 140 cohorts was 57.7% compared to 39.4% in the comparison groups.
Source: SOCCCD Research Data Warehouse
Chart 3 shows the percentage of students who returned and took at least one transfer level math course. Once again, more students who took the Applied Psychology 140 course during their first semester subsequently enrolled in transfer level math courses - 36.8% average compared to 24.3% for students in the comparison groups.
Source: SOCCCD Research Data Warehouse
Chart 4 shows the percentage of students who returned to Saddleback College after their first semester and, within a six-year time period, completed 56 or more units and took at least one transferable math course.
Source: SOCCCD Research Data Warehouse
Chart 5 shows graduation rates of students who enrolled in the Applied Psychology 140 classes and comparison cohorts.
Of course data can be interpreted in many ways, and one may argue that because students were not randomly assigned to experimental and control groups in this study, it is impossible to establish cause and affect relationship. Yet, the question of whether counseling classes are effective will never be answered simply by looking at numbers and percentages dealing with retention and persistence. Counselors teach classes as an extension of the counseling process and the class is effective if the counselor can positively impact and empower students to better understand and believe in themselves and to succeed in their lives and reach their personal goals. The number of students who take counseling classes and graduate or transfer is important, but numbers are never solely the indicator that a counseling class has been effective. As professional counseling faculty we all know this to be true. Many of our students do not graduate or transfer and yet receive tremendous assistance from our classes. However, in light of budget cuts and closer scrutiny from administration and boards, we as counseling faculty do need to work at justifying our counseling classes. We know they are effective, but we must be able to show others that they work. We need to show this in a manner that makes sense to those individuals and groups who make decisions regarding curriculum and budgets.
(1) First-time freshmen are students to whom Saddleback College is the first college after high school (Chancellor’s Office, 2000)
(2) "All first-time freshmen" comparison group did not include students who enrolled in the emeritus courses. Because majority the emeritus students take course for personal development.
References
California Community College Chancellor’s Office (October, 2000) California Community Colleges Management Information System Data Element Dictionary. Retrieved January 11, 2004, from http://www.cccco.edu/divisions/tris/mis/dedmain.htm
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