What Impact Does Course Compaction Have on Student Success?

Earlier this month, Andrew and I had an extended discussion on the term “Course Compaction” as it relates to student progress and efficiency. Through our back-and-forth comments in Microsoft Word and Slack, we finally realized we held different connotations about the use and impacts of course compaction as an enrollment management tool. Beyond how this is one example of how having a platform like Plaid Govern can help reduce confusion and clarify meaning between two parties (yes, glass houses, dear reader), it also shows how disagreement can spark a dialogue about how enrollment management goes beyond program intakes and recruitment, to curriculum design, course forecasting, and understanding student behaviour.

Initially, I offered a negative view of course compaction, where compaction indicates roadblocks for student progression in a program. Andrew approached it from a positive view, where course compaction improves program efficiency and streamlines course pathways to enable students to finish on time. Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been revisiting what we mean by course compaction, how to measure it, and evaluate whether courses are too compacted or not enough, and what success-sponsoring compaction looks like. The result is this new blog series on course compaction, and the announcement that course-level enrollment forecasting is at the alpha stage of development and will soon be available to Plaid Forecast subscribers.

Course compaction is all about balance.

As one component of enrollment planning, strategic course compaction helps institutions achieve long-term sustainability and resiliency by understanding and addressing the needs of their students and community. We discussed the difference between positive and negative course compaction, and what indicators might be useful to enable analysis and create meaning for enrollment planners. In this series, we’ll look at how course compaction prioritizes student success, supports instructors, then discuss factors that influence and indicate the existence of over- and under-compacted calendar offerings and course scheduling, measuring compaction, and how course enrollment forecasting can improve strategic course compaction decision-making.

Four ways course compaction benefits students:

1. By merging courses with overlapping content, students from different programs are more likely to end up in a class with peers from outside their programs. This diversity increases opportunities for students to engage with different views, build communication skills, and learn to re-evaluate their position through conflict and discussion. Not to mention, that it also increases social opportunities for students to make friends and feel connected to the community, but also build networks that will serve them in their future job prospects, and help them see the full range of educational opportunities including interdisciplinary studies. This can open up the positive aspects of program change and transfer.

2. By consolidating similar courses, faculties may be able to offer multiple sections in a term or year, reducing waitlists. More section offerings mean more flexibility and schedule options for those with external conflicts like work or childcare, part-time and out-of-sequence students, and depending on the size of the institution and number of instructors able to teach the course, enable students to pick sections with instructors they have had previous positive learning-teaching relationships with.

3. Course compaction reduces redundant learning for students. Concepts they’ve already mastered are minimally revisited throughout their program, instead delivering them consistently new content and opportunity to build advanced skills.

4. By consolidating and merging courses the complexity of the Academic Calendar and program pathways to graduation become clearer. With a reduced number of course options, advisors and students are better able to interpret course applicability to program transfers, and identify remaining courses need to graduate. Decision-making, like creativity, thrives with constraints.

5. When combined with flexible assignment curriculum, students can explore a special topic of interest within the context of a single course while the iron of interest is hot, instead of waiting potentially multiple terms until the special topics course is available. Additionally, this provides more interesting reading of assignments for instructors and increases student engagement with the course material when they are able to apply class learning to their own domain of interest.

Course compaction can be a powerful tool for enhancing student learning and optimizing institutional resources. But the key to identifying appropriate opportunities for course compaction is in having timely, accessible, and relevant data. With nuanced analysis of positive and negative compaction indicators, encouraging cross-unit collaboration and dialogue, and leveraging metadata management tools like Plaid Govern, institutions can navigate the complexities of course compaction to create more streamlined, engaging, and effective academic programs for their students.

Our second post in the series is all about impacts of course compaction to instructors.

As we continue to explore this concept in this series, let us know your take on course compaction and student benefits by joining the conversation on LinkedIn.

Want to learn how combining courses or changing a program curriculum might change student course registration behaviour and enrollment? Email us to learn about projecting course enrollments and scenario planning with Plaid Forecast.