Helena College in Montana is a two-year, open enrollment campus serving a rural community. Robyn Kiesling, General Education and Transfer Division Chair, and Joyce Walborn, Math Faculty, discuss how they helped lead implementation of Corequisite Support at their college, and how it impacted their students.
Joyce Walborn:
Helena College is a two-year, open-enrollment institution with a large percentage of non-traditional students that test into remedial mathematics. In my experience, our remedial students have either never been exposed to the prerequisite material, or a significant number of years have passed since they learned it.
Robyn Kiesling:
With traditional remediation, it took some students up to two full semesters to reach their college-level math courses. This was a barrier that we were all too aware of and we didn’t know how to decrease students’ time to gateway math course completion.
Joyce:
To me, the idea of just-in-time remedial support implied that students had learned the material in the past and just needed a refresher, but our students required more than that. So when first approached with the idea of replacing traditional math remediation with Corequisite Support, I admit I was skeptical.
I agreed to serve on the statewide Co-Requisite Taskforce primarily because my involvement with Complete College America on the Montana Math Pathways Taskforce gave me confidence that the Corequisite Support model was based on solid research and data.
It is important to first understand that Math Pathways as a precursor to the corequisite model. My work with the Montana Math Pathways Taskforce resulted in a requirement that all institutions determine the appropriate gateway math course for each degree or major, re-evaluate the prerequisite for each gateway course, and encourage students to only take College Algebra if they are heading towards a STEM field.
In the fall of 2015, Helena College reduced the prerequisite for two of the three gateway math courses to Introductory Algebra, so only College Algebra required Intermediate Algebra. We also made Contemporary Math the default math course for undecided students, which helped shift enrollment away from College Algebra.
Robyn:
Math Pathways was a huge step forward in removing remedial coursework barriers for students at Helena College. It required work for everyone, not just the math faculty. There was curriculum revision, discussions about the new math pathways, and training for advisors. Discussions weren’t limited to only the Helena College campuses, but included our nine dual enrollment partner high schools. We conducted a lot of training for high school counselors and teachers on the new pathways and where students belonged. Honestly, one of the biggest obstacles with Math Pathways has been helping high schools understand that not all students need College Algebra, and that they’ll be better served if they are on the correct pathway. It’s an ongoing discussion, but one that’s incredibly valuable for students.
Joyce:
Once these pathways were in place, I agreed to implement Corequisite Support for Contemporary Math in the fall of 2016, and have continued to offer it every fall and spring semester since. There is no cutoff score for the corequisite lab, so all students enter the gateway course in the first semester. The course has mixed enrollment of both qualifying and corequisite students, and the same instructor teaches both the corequisite and gateway course, which develops a sense of community and contributes to student success.
Robyn:
Having the same faculty teaching the lab and math course has been a major factor in corequisite success. This idea was born with faculty, and it has not changed since our first implementation.
Joyce:
During the 2017-18 academic year, I piloted Contemporary Math on our campus as a dual credit course, with the high schools agreeing to a reverse-transfer of the college credit as high school math credit. The target students for this pilot were seniors with an ACT math score of 17 and below (ACT 21 is required for M105). The pilot was small, but all of the students passed Contemporary Math in the A/B grade range. Grades aside, the students said that the most valuable result was that they saw that they could successfully navigate a college level class, and could see themselves attending college after graduation. This was a worthwhile endeavor for students whose ACT scores might have told them otherwise.
I have since added another corequisite course to our schedule. In the spring of 2019, I offered a back-to-back Intermediate Algebra/College Algebra course. While this is a different delivery model than our Contemporary Math Corequisite, I determined that a majority of our students test into Intermediate Algebra because they have never encountered the material and therefore needed a complete yet fast course to prepare for College Algebra. I will continue to offer this combination course every semester, and our math department will also be adding a back-to-back combination course for our final gateway course, Probability and Linear Math.
Robyn:
Implementing Corequisite Support has taken several years, but we will finally be fully scaled in fall 2019. I believe that our corequisite model is successful in large part because we took the time necessary for solid implementation, and because our faculty were fully supportive and took the lead. We addressed issues and challenges along the way, and learned from what was or was not working well.
The corequisite model did impact teaching loads and the course schedule. Our full-time faculty have had to adjust their course assignments to accommodate both the corequisite labs and the accelerated stacked courses. Because the faculty believe that the same faculty should teach both the corequisite lab and the math course, this hasn’t been much of an issue.
The larger impact is a result of the decreased number of math courses offered at Helena College. Because a lot of students only need one math course for their Math Pathway, we no longer offer standalone remedial courses, which has decreased the number of adjunct faculty teaching each semester. A positive result of this change has been that we’ve been able to add new, higher-level math courses at Helena College, because full-time faculty have room in their schedules. The addition of new math courses has opened new academic pathways for transfer students, particularly those on STEM pathways.
The math corequisite model has informed changes in other disciplines, including writing. We fully scaled a corequisite lab model with all college-level writing courses in fall 2017. All students are able to take their gateway writing course in their first semester, with a corequisite writing lab if necessary. The writing corequisite lab is identical to the math corequisite lab, with students taking both the lab and the writing course with the same instructor. We’ve started discussions about how the corequisite lab model can be used in other high-stakes gateway courses like Anatomy & Physiology and Chemistry, and I look forward to seeing how this model can be used to offer more support for students in the future.
Joyce:
Over the past four years, I have transformed from a corequisite skeptic to someone who believes that the corequisite math model helps students complete their math requirement and achieve their educational goals. CCA provides solid data and research to back up these initiatives, as well as the structure to develop and implement these models. Without CCA, our students may still be sitting in remediation.
Robyn:
Corequisite Support has completely changed how students are supported towards completion of their gateway math courses. We were one of many colleges and universities struggling with how to best support students that placed into remedial courses; we knew students needed extra support, but that those who completed their gateway math and writing courses within their first two semesters were more likely to complete their degree.
The biggest lesson learned from implementing the corequisite model is that it requires full support from both faculty and administration in order to truly succeed. Helena College has been fortunate in that the Montana University System fully supports both Math Pathways and Corequisite Support models and is part of the CCA Alliance. The state-level support and connection to CCA has been an important part of the corequisite success at Helena College.
To learn more, watch CCA’s webinar with Joyce Walborn and Robyn Kiesling.
