An activity-based format increased student retention in a community college microbiology course

Microbiology is offered each semester at the Allied Health Campus of Pearl River Community College. The evening course meets weekly for 16 sessions from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Most students enrolled in the course are in one of the seven associate degree allied health programs on the allied health campus. Among the challenges of teaching a course in this situation is retention of enrolled students. Although the course is required for most of the allied health programs on the campus, many students enrolled, attended class for a few weeks, and withdrew from the course. During the 1998-1999 school year the retention rates for students enrolled in the night microbiology classes for Fall and Spring semesters were 52% and 47%, respectively. The format for the 1998-1999 academic year was a conventional course with 2½ hours of lecture material followed by 2 hours of laboratory. Little or no effort was made to correlate laboratory and lecture topics. The course format for Fall 1999 was modified to (i) provide the laboratory component at the beginning of the time slot, (ii) tailor the lecture topics to relate to the laboratory component each night, and (iii) add an outside reading component. The laboratory served as an introduction to the lecture topic, and the lecture became more significant since it related directly to the laboratory experience. Following this format change the retention rate for the Fall 1999 semester increased to 80%.