Data-Driven Decision Making
by Carolyn Byrd,
Patrick Henry Community College

Patrick Henry Community College has been an ELASSI user for approximately 10 years (Web LASSI since 1999). We use it in many of our developmental, nursing and some of our first year seminar classes. To a lesser degree we have used it for advising prior to registration. Many of us had confidence that we could tell how a student would do based on certain scores. However, we had not conducted a thorough analysis until recently. The college is involved with a grant project that is focusing on data-driven decision making. We are scrutinizing our data very carefully. We happen to have a large enough database of students who have taken the WEB LASSI to see if the student’s scores could be a predictor. We have definitely found that the motivation score has a direct correlation to student success. It appears that the student’s score on concentration is a predictor as well, but we will conduct more research to confirm this finding. In the fall, the college will be using WEB LASSI as an advising tool for high-risk students. If all goes well, we plan on expanding use to all in-coming students.