Year-long Registration Model
Provost, Deans, IR
Project Purpose
Develop a student focused year-long registration model (including summer) to allow for longer term educational planning to support student retention and degree completion.
Deliverables
- Gather input from stakeholders by conducting listening sessions and surveys.
- Develop and implement a year-long schedule.
- Assess effectiveness of scheduling changes so the college can be agile in meeting changing student needs and continuously improve.
Project Scope
In Scope
Course scheduling, faculty assignments, registration timeline.
Effectiveness Measures
Project Goals
Increase student retention fall to spring.
Key Performance Indicators/Metrics
Student retention, degree completion, course fill rates.
Metric Collection and Review Schedule
In partnership with student affairs, data will be pulled to show how many students completed a year-long schedule. This should be collected after the first week of classes. Advisors will also be asked to qualitatively share what they are hearing from students regarding the schedule.
Reporting of Results
Written summary, assessment and refinements for next year. This will need to be completed prior to developing the AY2024-25 schedule in October 2023.
Constraints
Faculty credit limits.
Financial Impact
Improving student retention would have a positive financial impact on the college.
Summary of Results
Survey and Listening Session Results
- 72% of students indicated if the same course was offered online and on-campus, they would register for the on-campus option (n=51).
- The majority of students prefer to take classes two days (29%), three days (29%), or four days (30%) a week (n=92).
- Only 10% of students prefer evening classes (after 3:30pm).
Registration Data
Data collected after the first week of classes showing how many students completed a year-long schedule.
- Aug. 28, 2023 - 997 students registered for spring semester.
Data-Driven Decisions
- Scheduling blocks were adjusted to allow for more timeslots to vary course offerings.
- There will not be a dedicated open hour because it limits the time slots for courses.
- Common start times with minimal variation will be used for scheduling college-wide. If a department wants to deviate from the standard timeslots, they must write a petition to the dean with sound logic to support their request.
- A full Monday - Friday schedule will be employed.
- The deans will draft the schedules before sending it out to faculty for comments to ensure campus, school, program and transfer needs are met first.
Timeline
- Jan. 26, 2023 - The Vice President of Academic Affairs communicated year-long scheduling improvement decisions made as a result of triangulated survey and listening session data and shared the implementation timeline with faculty Shared Governance Council.
- Feb. 13, 2023 - Deans distributed the fall 2023, spring 2024 and summer 2024 draft schedule to faculty.
- Feb. 24, 2023 - Department schedules for all three terms were due to the dean's office for final approval.
- March 6, 2023 - Schedule went live for viewing at www.minnesota.edu/academics/class-schedules.
- March 27, 2023 - Registration opened to students for the entire 2023-2024 academic year.
Metrics Results
- FY24 - 748 students registered on the same day for both spring and fall semesters prior to the start of fall semester. Fall 2023 there are 2,882 degree seeking students which are both new and continuing students with the college. Note: we are uncertain the number of students that will be completing this semester, so unable to give an exact percentage of students that are utilizing this initiative.
