Transitioning to a 7-Week Course Schedule

What is the Achieving the Dream Action Plan?

Colleges develop and submit an Action Plan at the end of the discovery and planning period that defines the first year of participation in the Achieving the Dream (ATD) network. The Action Plan does three key things:

1.    Tells a story of what the college has done during its first year in ATD’s Network that it can share with colleagues.
2.    Translates learning into an overarching vision and strategy for improving student and institutional outcomes.
3.    Describes how the college will seek to improve policies, processes, and systems; maximize impact through the college-wide scaling of strategies; align and allocate resources to support implementation; and measure the impact of student success work.

Three strategy teams, made up of individuals from across the college's departments, focused on orientation, gateway courses, and online and accelerated terms respectively, recommended a suite of strategies to increase student success in the first year. The 7-week course recommendation grew from the work of the Online and Accelerated Terms (OATs) Strategy Team.

PVCC's recommendation for 7-week courses follows.

Priority: Increase success rates for FTIC, non-dual enrollment students in online and shortened-term courses.

Recommendation: Move to a predominantly 7-week semester schedule.

The College's decision to increase the number of courses offered in a 7-week format grew from this recommendation. Feedback obtained from college stakeholders indicated additional infrastructure was needed to support current 7-week courses and any expansion in the future. The 7-week course implementation planning group expanded to include additional faculty and staff who identified changes needed to administrative functions to support scaling this initiative. 

Instead of moving to a predominantly 7-week course schedule, the College is seeking to increase the number of UCGS courses offered as part of the General Studies program in 7W format.