Abstract
With a limited budget, but a critical need to develop 21st century marketplace skills, Georgia Perimeter College (GPC) developed the Million Dollar Difference Campaign. Focusing on how quality instruction affects retention and student outcomes, GPC re-energized a 1000-faculty workforce in one year through a series of innovative teaching strategies. Data were collected that proved the campaign worked.
H.G. Wells once said that history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) at Georgia Perimeter College (GPC) recognizes that retention rates of students nationwide and locally are unacceptable, and current teaching practices are not adequate to prepare students for required 21st-century marketplace skills. With limited resources—1½ staff members working in the CTL, 1000 faculty spread over five campuses and 21,000 students—we faced a daunting question: How can you effect significant change toward quality instruction, with limited resources and time? Efforts devoted to engaging, retaining, and teaching our students with innovative pedagogy led to a two-part plan developed by the GPC Center for Teaching and Learning named the Million Dollar Difference Project.
In an effort to guide students toward success, we embarked on a two-step program, which involved focusing on (a) creating a series of teaching projects that would stimulate faculty to try new ways of teaching in the classroom, and (b) reviewing the research literature to create a simple retention pilot based on quality classroom instruction.
To engage student interest, posters were placed all over campuses challenging students about whether they knew what the Million Dollar Difference in their life might be. The campaign was based on the fact that students who obtain their college degrees will earn over a million dollars more over their lifetime than those who do not. At the same time, the CTL was developing a multistep retention pilot based partially on Astin's Theory of Involvement and Tinto's theories of commitment and social interaction. The pilot focused on research literature which indicated that intervention techniques used in the first three to four weeks of class are vital for student retention (Quigley, Darkenwald, & Merriam).
Teachers were trained on five proven strategies for student retention, and the CTL translated each strategy into a simple pedagogical practice for the classroom. The results were astounding. There was a statistically significant increase in retention rates of approximately 10% over one semester. The retention rate was maintained the following semester as well. The total cost of the pilot was less than $500.
After creating a framework for engaging students and retaining them, the Center for Teaching and Learning turned to the question of how to reenergize 1000 faculty across five campuses. Using resources already existing—a technology infrastructure—we created the 21st Century Teaching Series focusing on new ways of employing active learning, problem based learning, and other strategies to create teaching skills that, in turn, developed 21st century skill sets in students. To reach all faculty cost-effectively, we used streaming video to create miniworkshops. Response to this series was overwhelming. To fund their newfound interest in trying new methods in the classroom, we redirected $2000 from a printing budget to create Instructional Enhancement Grants for faculty members who needed money for projects devoted to engaging and retaining students.
At the cost of $2500 and one year's time, today our retention pilot is being expanded to every discipline, and our teaching series provides workshops to every faculty member on their schedule. Innovation met cost effectiveness, and our students were the winners.