ARE COMPRESSED COURSES ADVANTAGEOUS TO NON-MAJOR GEOSCIENCE STUDENTS? STUDENT SUCCESS AND RETENTION RATES IN 16-WEEK VERSUS 8-WEEK ASYNCHRONOUS ONLINE GEOL 101 CLASSES AT ANTELOPE VALLEY COLLEGE

Full-term courses are the default for most college-level geoscience courses. However, some students benefit from the opportunity to take short-term courses within the regular term, where, for example, a typical 16-week GEOL 101 (Physical Geology) course runs for 8 weeks. The same material is covered in 8 weeks, but at twice the pace.

Benefits of short-term courses include: ability to focus deeply on fewer courses without attention being divided between multiple courses; ability to stay “on track” by re-taking a course without waiting for the next full term; careful scheduling of sequential courses could accelerate progress toward degree; flexibility for students to schedule around fluctuating personal schedules.

I taught three Spring 2024 asynchronous online sections of GEOL 101 at Antelope Valley College, a California Community College in Lancaster, CA. Two sections (census total = 97 students) were 16-week, full-term courses. One section (38 students) was a late-start, 8-week course running in the second half of the 16-week semester. All sections used the same basic format and assessments.

I analyzed student success (final grade of C or better) and retention (did not drop the class) to attempt to determine if student outcomes were affected by course length.

In the 16-week classes: 91 of 97 students (94%) completed the course with a mean grade of 2.73+/-0.96 (with an A represented as 4.0, B as 3.0, etc.). 91% of students had a grade of C or higher.

In the 8-week class, 33 of 38 (87%) completed the course with a mean grade of 2.12+/-0.93. 85% of students had a grade of C or higher.

The full-term classes have higher success and retention rates, but it's not clear that the differences are caused by the course length.

For instance, 27% of students in the 16-week course claimed to have previously taken geology 101 or a related course at the high school or college level, versus 21% of students in the 8-week course.

Additional complications include: data is from only a single semester; generative AI’s sudden ubiquity affected student work so pervasively that I made some changes to the course between the 16-week and 8-week versions; the 8-week class was added late to the schedule, after the semester had started, so some 8-week enrollees may have been less interested in or prepared for the course; lack of 8-week lab, so 8-week lecture students could not take the corresponding, optional lab course.