The Effects of Student Coaching

Abstract

College graduation rates often lag behind college attendance rates. One theory as to why students do not complete college is that they lack key information about how to be successful or fail to act on the information that they have. We present evidence from a randomized experiment which tests the effectiveness of individualized student coaching. Over the course of two separate school years, InsideTrack, a student coaching service, provided coaching to students attending public, private, and proprietary universities. Most of the participating students were nontraditional college students enrolled in degree programs. The participating universities and InsideTrack randomly assigned students to be coached. The coach contacted students regularly to develop a clear vision of their goals, to guide them in connecting their daily activities to their long-term goals, and to support them in building skills, including time management, self-advocacy, and study skills. Students who were randomly assigned to a coach were more likely to persist during the treatment period and were more likely to be attending the university 1 year after the coaching had ended. Coaching also proved a more cost-effective method of achieving retention and completion gains when compared with previously studied interventions such as increased financial aid.

Predicting and resolving non-completion in higher (online) education – A literature review

“…The total number of participants in these intervention studies ranged from 12 (Chyung, 2001) to 255878 (Martorell & McFarlin, 2011). Six of the interventions investigated were (at least partly) online interventions (Bettinger & Baker, 2014;Chyung, 2001;Huett et al, 2008;Inkelaar & Simpson, 2015;Ruthig, Perry, Hall, & Hladkyj, 2004;Simpson, 2008). Interventions lasted from a minimum of one informal session (Ruthig et al, 2004) until one year (Arnold, 2015;Bettinger & Baker, 2014;Larose et al, 2011;Salinitri, 2005; Sneyers & De Witte, 2017; Stegers-Jager, Cohen-Schotanus, Splinter, & Themmen, 2011), though not all intervention studies gave details regarding the duration of the intervention.…”

“…In terms of threat to internal validity, also multiple points need to be stressed. For instance, in a majority of the intervention studies there has been no manipulation check, to analyse whether the factor that was aimed to be modified (e.g., motivation), actually changed by the intervention (Bettinger & Baker, 2014;De Paola & Scoppa, 2014;Inkelaar & Simpson, 2015;Pagan & Edwards-Wilson, 2002;Patterson et al, 2014;Ruthig et al, 2004;Salinitri, 2005;Simpson, 2008). In addition, in some intervention studies actually multiple interventions are evaluated at once, which makes it hard to interpret the results on effectiveness of the intervention characteristics (Chyung, 2001;Huett et al, 2008;Wang & Grimes, 2000).…”

Achieving College Readiness through a Dual Enrollment Course

“…Smith (2013) calls this "a set of unwritten norms, values, and expectations that unofficially governs how individuals interact with and evaluate one another" (p. 47). Addressing these issues through interventions such as success coaching or success courses is based on literature demonstrating that these non-academic factors can in fact be influenced and changed (Bettinger & Baker, 2014;Zeidenberg, Jenkins, and Calcagno, 2007).…”

Monitoring Student (Dis)engagement: Retention Officers’ Experiences at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology

“…There are different names for ROs. They are called First Year Advisors (Box, Callan, Geddes, Kemp & Wojcieszek, 2012), Academic Advisors (Coll & Draves, 2009), Coaches (Bettinger & Baker, 2014). By whatever name they are called, they are responsible for academic preparation, information gathering, information sharing and social integration of firstyear students into the university.…”