Article Title

Better Together: The Effect of Learning Communities on Business Student Retention and Performance

Authors

Lynn Murray, Pittsburg State UniversityFollow
Alexander Binder, Pittsburg State UniversityFollow
Gail Yarick, Pittsburg State UniversityFollow
Mary K. Wachter, Pittsburg State UniversityFollow

Keywords

retention, gateway courses, learning community, high-impact practices

Abstract

College student performance and retention have been areas of concern for higher education for decades, and increasingly so over the last quarter century. This study explores how creating a learning community comprised of a first-year seminar and two disciplinary gateway courses across two semesters affected student performance in the gateway classes and in student retention. The study found three things of interest: 1) participation in a learning community and in a residential learning community each slightly improve the likelihood that a student will enroll in the second semester; 2) performance in Introduction to Business, a disciplinary gateway course, is highly predictive of both retention across multiple semesters and performance in challenging gateway courses in the second semester; and 3) students participating in the learning community performed better than did non-learning community students in a challenging gateway course.

Recommended Citation

Murray, L., Binder, A., Yarick, G., & Wachter, M. K. (2021). Better Together: The Effect of Learning Communities on Business Student Retention and Performance. Mountain Plains Journal of Business and Technology, 22(1). Retrieved from https://openspaces.unk.edu/mpjbt/vol22/iss1/9