In order to help students who are struggling with their remedial classes at colleges, teachers have looked at how their programs could be restructured to improve student grades. This is exactly what has occurred at Northern Virginia Community College (known locally as NOVA), where math professor Alison Thimblin and counselor Ray Jones banded together to develop a new ‘learning communities’ program for the students. Instead of blaming the poor performance rates on students themselves, professors have looked at how their program could be adjusted to suit students.

“It is not just the individual student rising or falling on his or her merits,” says John Dever, NOVA’s executive vice president for academic and student affairs. “If large numbers of students aren’t making it through, it’s a question of, is the program structure successful?”

Thimblin broke down math in a way that students found more accessible to understand. At the same time, students enrolled in her class also needed to take the College Success Skills subject. This class was taught by counselor Jones and covered essential skills necessary to succeed in college, such as note taking, time management and dealing with test anxiety. Thimblin and Jones emphasized the importance of students not only helping themselves, but each other. They believe these ‘learning communities’ will help bond students and make the learning experience easier.

NOVA hopes their ‘learning communities’ scheme will help increase the number of students completing remedial classes by 20% by the year 2015. Last fall, 145 students at NOVA took remedial math whilst being involved in learning communities. Of these students, 49% passed – a figure which is slightly higher than the 44% of students who took remedial math and did not participate in learning communities. There are positives, though. Of the students who partook in learning communities last fall, 83% returned the following semester, compared with 72% of the other developmental math students.

“That’s a measure of success,” said Thimbin. NOVA is hoping these numbers will improve in years to come, though it will require hard work and dedication from campus officials and students alike.