The Tennessee Coaching Project: Enhancing Corequisite Learning Support to Accelerate Pandemic Recovery

By Amy Moreland, Madison Dell, and Erin Delle

Tennessee community colleges are developing new ways to help young adults build the skills they need to succeed in their first year of college.

More than half of students at Tennessee community colleges are deemed academically underprepared for college coursework. Over the past decade, Tennessee colleges have implemented meaningful improvements to help underprepared students succeed. Reforms like corequisite learning support and the alignment of math pathways helped community college students build early momentum toward postsecondary credentials.

Yet, many underprepared students still struggled in their first year of college. Gaps in success persisted, and many young adults struggled to earn credit and persist beyond their first year of college. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated these challenges at community colleges across the state. After the onset of the pandemic, fewer students earned credit and completed important gateway courses.

In fall 2022, two Tennessee community colleges launched a new project to support underprepared students. Through the Tennessee Coaching Project, Northeast State Community College and Jackson State Community College embedded coaches into students’ first year of college. Coaches help students navigate the institution, connect with campus and community resources, and explore careers. Coaches are also embedded into students’ corequisite learning support experiences in the first year by actively making connections between the learning support and college-level courses. Through multiple touchpoints with the students and active engagement with learning support faculty, the coaches provide support for students who may have experienced COVID-related learning loss or other challenges during the pandemic.

The project focuses on students who graduated from high school during the pandemic and enrolled in corequisite learning support courses for math, reading, or writing. In the first year the program was offered, 600 students were randomly selected for coaching. Each coach worked with a caseload of 100–150 students throughout the first year of college. A coaching curriculum and outreach campaign helped coaches structure their support for students.

In the first year, students engaged with their coaches at high rates by responding to text messages or other outreach as well as attending meetings. Although students are not required to work with their coach, 72% of students engaged with their coach in the first year.

Early results suggest that coaching is helping students build momentum toward graduation. Students with a coach persisted in college at higher rates than students who did not have access to coaching. After one semester of coaching, 74% of students selected for coaching persisted from the fall to spring term, compared with 69% of students who were not selected for coaching—a difference of 5 percentage points. Early outcomes also show gains in math success for students selected for coaching. After one semester of coaching, 57% of selected students passed a gateway math course compared with 50% of students not selected—a difference of 7 percentage points.

The pilot colleges are also working to understand outcomes for students who are actively engaging with their coach. After one semester of coaching, 84% of students who engaged with their coach persisted to their next term, compared with 69% of students who were not selected for coaching and 55% who were selected for coaching but never met with their coach.

A second wave of students was selected for coaching in fall 2023. The pilot colleges have identified several goals for the project’s second year. First, they hope to increase the frequency of student engagements with coaches. Although students meet with coaches at high rates, engagement rates have room to grow. Second, they hope to continue promoting meaningful engagement with coaches beyond transactional advising interactions. While traditional advising meetings may focus on academic planning or course registration, this project promotes a coaching model that includes career coaching and discussions that connect students to college resources.

These early outcomes give us at TBR—The College System of Tennessee—a sense of how coaching supports students. As the project continues, we will build on this analysis to provide more evidence about the impact of coaching on student success.

In June 2023, TBR published an interactive policy brief about the Tennessee Coaching Project. The policy brief describes the project’s goals and early outcomes. It also includes an interactive feature that illustrates the curriculum and outreach plan coaches use to support students. TBR will release the next policy brief with more outcomes about the project in fall 2023.

This project is supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305S220005 to the Tennessee Board of Regents.

Amy Moreland is the assistant vice chancellor for policy & strategy at TBR—The College System of Tennessee. Madison Dell is the senior director of strategic research initiatives and Erin Delle is the coordinator of strategic research initiatives at TBR.