Ascendium Awards Grants to Scale Evidence-Informed Shortened Course Formats

Ascendium recently made two grants to Achieving the Dream (ATD) and Community College Research Center (CCRC) with the goal of scaling and evaluating shortened academic terms at community colleges across the nation.

Redesigning the traditional semester into shortened academic terms offers an evidence-informed solution for learners with limited time and resources to accelerate their progress towards credential completion.

Shortened academic terms offer a compelling approach to redesigning postsecondary education in ways that better align with learners’ lives. With shortened course schedules, more flexible and manageable options mean that learners have multiple entry points in an academic year, thereby protecting them from losing time and momentum if they have to stop out. This is especially true for learners from low-income backgrounds, who often balance education with work and family responsibilities.

Given the encouraging institution-level and statewide evidence that this structural redesign supports student success, many community colleges are interested in adopting shortened academic terms formats. Still, there is a need for continued evidence-building on shortened terms alongside other student success reforms. This includes which learner populations benefit, or do not, and what state- and institution-level conditions support their adoption at scale.

The grants to ATD and CCRC will help scale this model while building evidence on learner outcomes and the conditions that support success.

The grant to ATD aims to increase the number of shortened courses offered at up to 16 community colleges across four states. State and institutional partners will be selected through a competitive process later this year. ATD will provide tailored technical assistance and opportunities for peer learning to the colleges and state leaders to support institutions in adopting and sustaining the model at scale. The goal of this grant is to increase the participating colleges’ share of courses offered in a shortened format and intentionally build a large enough cohort of courses and institutions to enable rigorous learning.

“Community colleges across the ATD Network are adopting strategies to accelerate time to completion for all students,” says ATD President and CEO Dr. Karen A. Stout. “Shortened academic terms are one of those levers. This effort with the selected colleges and states, along with the evaluation by CCRC, will help us deepen the field’s understanding of the whole-college transformation necessary for successful and scaled adoption of shortened terms. This includes understanding the supports faculty need and gaining a better understanding of the students who will benefit most from this reform.”

A complementary grant will support CCRC in implementing a comprehensive external evaluation of the ATD initiative. The evaluation will monitor progress towards initiative goals and build needed evidence on students’ learning outcomes and the state- and institution-level conditions that support the scale of shortened academic terms.

“We look forward to working with ATD and the selected colleges as they scale shortened academic terms producing ‘real-time’ feedback to learn and make adjustments,” says CCRC Director Tom Brock. “This integration of research and practice will benefit all our organizations and generate lessons that will help other community colleges and state systems improve student success.”

These grants are a direct response to the field’s demand for adopting shortened academic terms and exemplify Ascendium’s commitment to learning about scaling evidence-informed solutions as part of our Support Learner Success strategy.

This initiative is the first multistate project to scale shortened academic terms in community colleges across the nation. Since previous initiatives have been at specific institutions or statewide, the national approach will be valuable to the field, community college leaders, state higher education leaders, and policymakers interested in scaling or expanding shortened academic terms within their institutions or states.

“The traditional academic year schedule simply doesn't work well for the many learners trying to balance education with other life responsibilities,” says Ascendium President and CEO Keith Witham. “Accelerated term scheduling is a compelling innovation, but colleges need to approach it strategically, equipped with evidence about how and for whom it works. We applaud ATD and CCRC in partnering to build that evidence.”