Extend the Time to Complete First Year English Composition: Why Wait?

Authors: Elizabeth Benton, Evan Crump, and Charmaine Weston

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Dr. Elizabeth Benton serves as dean of English and reading at Montgomery College. Dr. Benton holds an Ed. D. in Curriculum and Instruction from The George Washington University, an M.A. in English Education from Columbia Teachers College, and a B.A. in English from Baylor University. Dr. Benton's research interests in access and equity shepherded the development of Extend the Time to Complete (ETC).

Dr. Evan Crump serves as Professor of English at Montgomery College. Dr. Crump holds an Ed.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from The George Washington University, an M.F.A. and a M.Litt. in Shakespeare Performance from Mary Baldwin University, and a BA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Maryland. Dr. Crump is a professional playwright, actor, director and producer. Dr. Crump is the college-wide coordinator of ETC.

Dr. Charmaine Weston is the Chair of English and Reading at Montgomery College's Takoma Park/Silver Spring campus. Dr. Weston holds an Ed.D. in Leadership and Learning from Vanderbilt University, an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Seton Hill University, and an M.A. in English and Book Publishing from Rosemont College. Dr. Weston is the founder of the Extend the Time to Complete (ETC).

Abstract

Extend the Time to Complete (ETC) is a bold new program designed to help mitigate students’ inability to complete foundational English courses due to adverse circumstances. The program invites faculty of record to recommend students to work with a part-time faculty member (ETC instructor) during winter or summer to complete a major assignment from the previous fall or spring semester. In the program, students have the opportunity to earn a passing grade and persist to the next semester without the burden of retaking a class. On average, four or five ETC instructors support about 40 students at the end of each semester. Developed as a response to the pandemic but continuing to evolve based on feedback from participants, ETC has helped hundreds of students receive passing grades since its implementation, proving a vital resource for student persistence, retention, and matriculation. This article addresses how the program developed, some key decisions made over the course of its implementation, and future avenues for study.

Successful Program Launch

In March 2020, our English and Reading academic leadership team, including a dean, three department chairs, and the director of a writing, reading, and language center, launched a pandemic-response program: English Composition Bootcamp (later named Extend the Time to Complete, signaling responsive rather than preparatory instruction). This program supported students whose ability to successfully complete foundational English courses had been disrupted by the pandemic and a growing number of faculty who faced assigning incomplete grades.

Our leadership team engaged part-time faculty to serve as one-on-one ETC instructors to over 200 students who fell short of completing their courses by one or two major assignments (such as an essay or culminating portfolio). During the latter part of the semester, Dr. Weston emailed faculty of record, asking them to recommend students to ETC, to provide necessary assignments and/or information, and to recommend a grade upon completion of ETC.

Once students were identified and recommended by faculty of record, students were contacted by Dr. Weston and assigned an ETC instructor. During summer and/or winter months between semesters, students and the ETC instructor worked collaboratively, Zooming or emailing to satisfy assignment completion or work through the process of a retroactive withdrawal. Students completed necessary drafts, final essays, and revisions. ETC instructors discussed completed assignments with students and provided feedback prior to grading the assignments. At the end of the program (approximately 4 weeks), the chair liaison changed the incomplete grades to letter grades.

More than half of the recommended students took advantage of the program, whether through course completion or, if necessary, working with department chair and co-author of this article Dr. Charmaine Weston to retroactively withdraw and retake the course.

Dr. Weston created a shared management site in Microsoft Teams, where standard emails, a program overview, data, and critical program materials reside. She created spreadsheets to track student progress and assignments. Dr. Weston calculated completion-failure ratios and reviewed registration among completing students. She met with ETC instructors to discuss the process and its challenges. The collected data created a framework of improvement that sculpted a more efficient and effective process, including more streamlined methods of getting information from faculty of record, such as assignment prompts; boilerplate language in initial emails to address frequently asked questions; and a reduction of the program's timeframe to four weeks to help keep students engaged, prevent instructor burnout, and ensure students do not regress academically. After additional iterations, we invited an ETC instructor to facilitate the program, helping to manage procedures while fostering communication between faculty of record, ETC instructors, and students. Finally, we adopted a new program name, Extend the Time to Complete (ETC), to reflect the “just in time” and responsive nature of the program.

The information below outlines our collaborative program, which involves faculty of record, part-time faculty serving as ETC instructors between semesters, a department chair liaison, a part-time faculty facilitator, and the college registrar.

Current Design and Student Success

Communication with Faculty of Record: With guidance from the department chair liaison, the ETC facilitator sends out communication to approximately 150 faculty and staff, reminding them of the program, its key tenets, and procedures for submitting eligible students.

Recruitment of ETC Instructors: The ETC facilitator works with the department chair liaison to recruit between two and four ETC instructors from the part-time faculty pool based on the number of students submitted. Instructors work with 10-12 students each over the relevant summer or winter term, for approximately one hour each week, typically for about four weeks.

Eligible Students: Faculty of record recommend students based on personal hardship or pace of progress that prevented successful course completion. Eligible students continue to work on a maximum of two major assignments and/or the final portfolio (if required). The faculty of record assess whether the student is academically capable of completing the course were it not for their extenuating circumstances and obstacles. The faculty of record assign incompletes to these students, inform them of the ETC program, and provide their contact information to the department chair who coordinates the program.

Internal Process: Using Microsoft Office forms and an Incomplete form from the registrar, faculty of record recommend students to the program. The chair liaison converts the information into a spreadsheet, ensures student contact information and required assignments are available, and follows up with faculty of record regarding missing data or unclear instructions.

Procedures for Students: Recommended students receive an email communication from the ETC facilitator detailing the program’s parameters, including their ETC instructor’s name and contact. Through phone, email and via Zoom, as needed, the student and the ETC instructor (who serves as a tutor, reviewer, and resource) review assignments, establish a plan with deadlines, and develop a communication schedule. The student must complete the work within four to five weeks of the winter or summer term.

Procedures for Faculty of Record: Faculty of record suggest a preferred course grade for each recommended ETC student. They may choose to engage in the tutoring process, but newly revised work is assessed by the ETC instructor.

Awarding of Final Grade: The ETC instructor calculates grades based on the course criteria and the faculty of record’s recommendation. The chair liaison submits the final grades.

Follow-Up with Students: ETC instructors inform the student of their final course grade and let them know a rough window when the grade is likely to update from incomplete to maximize their opportunity to register for the next course in sequence, if applicable.

Over the past five years, the faculty of record have recommended more than 450 students for the ETC program. Our current success data shows that approximately 60% of these students earn grades of A, B, or C, reflecting the program’s effectiveness in helping students. This success prevents disruptions to their matriculation while also saving them over $150,000 in tuition.

ETC does not replace traditional methods of assigning incomplete grades to students. Between semesters, many faculty of record continue to work independently with students to rectify incompletes. However, ETC is designed to support faculty and students with specific needs: It supports full-time and part-time faculty for whom support outside of the classroom is challenging between semesters. It provides additional instruction for students who are weighed down by life circumstances or who require support to get across the finish line.

Reflections and Next Steps

We have received IRB approval for a formal review of ETC so that we can understand and share our program’s impact. While there are numerous studies on the effects of developmental courses, summer bridge programs, and other related pre-100-level English teaching interventions in community colleges, little has been studied on the efficacy of post-coursework programs such as ETC (Crisp & Delgado; Dorman, Havey, & Fagioli; Hodara, Xu, & Petrokubi; Miller & Rochford). Therefore, we are conducting a deep dive: studying empirical data and theoretical underpinnings, reviewing disaggregated data that illuminates the program’s impact on underserved populations, interviewing stakeholders, and drawing comparisons between our program and similar programs at peer institutions. We anticipate that our inquiry will provide insights on hits and misses and scaffold the direction of ETC for the next triennial review.

In academia, we may be reticent to scale up bold ideas that we fear will be rejected by institutions focused on maintaining academic standards and educational quality. Moreover, extending deadlines for some students and not others might create inequity, leading to perceptions of unfairness among students who meet established timelines. The ETC program, however, focuses its attention on students who have dealt with significant challenges that go above and beyond typical academic or time management issues students face. Additionally, institutions often prioritize graduation rates, and there are fears that prolonging course completion may negatively impact these metrics; however, in the case of ETC, the improved rates of student course completion have the opposite effect, enabling students to avoid costly and time-consuming retakes.

Extending completion time might create unintended consequences for students; in this case, one such concern, as we began the program, was enabling ineffective study habits by offering a bailout to procrastinating students. On the contrary, this transformative and creative program incorporates collaboration with faculty of record, one-on-one support from ETC instructors, and empathetic responses to adverse experiences of students, many of whom come from underserved populations.

ETC improves student efficacy when departments provide the opportunity. The evolution of our bold and creative student success program exemplifies our post-pandemic mindset of starting now and working swiftly, methodically, and effectively to complete our college’s mission to transform lives.

Works Cited

Crisp, Gloria, and Chryssa Delgado. "The impact of developmental education on

community college persistence and vertical transfer." Community College Review, vol. 42, no. 2, 2014, pp. 99-117.

Dorman, Joshua, Nicholas Havey, and Loris Fagioli. "Bridging the gap: Summer bridge

programs as an effective strategy for improving minority student academic attainment in community colleges." Journal of Applied Research in the Community College vol. 27, no. 1, 2020, pp. 65-80.

Hodara, Michelle, Di Xu, and Julie Petrokubi, J. “A Case Study Using Developmental

Education to Raise Equity and Maintain Standards.” Achieving Equity and Quality in Higher Education: Global Perspectives in an Era of Widening Participation, eds. Mahsood Shaw and Jade McKay, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 97-117.

Miller, Benjamin Lawrence, and Regina A. Rochford. "The bridge to English 101:

Redesigning the intersession reading and writing workshop." Community College Journal of Research and Practice, vol. 45, no. 10, 2021, pp. 701-717.