Pre-requisite
Most of the time when we see frustrated students in the classrooms that complaint about the course content, I think it is in part due to lack of information or miss-selection by the time they are enroll in school. Admissions play a critical role into delivering the long-term goals of each program. Unfortunately, students get enrolled in programs without filling out the pre-requisites for the programs. That situation could be problematic later on for the students, instructors, and the school administrators as well.
Carlos,
In a perfect world our students would have the prerequiste knowledge to begin taking their education further in our classes. Your situation appears out of sync. However, seeing the need and being willing to seek change is among the merits to your credit. Any success you achive will benefit multiple students in years to come.
Barry Westling
I teach some of the advance technology courses and finding out that students are not well prepare from their prerequisite. But the other problem that I could not believe is that when the program was prepared that they did not set it up with proper prerequisite or that their is not a review when the course material changes. For example a electron mail server class that I am teaching. They should have had a server class and active directory class as a prerequisite. The mail server is MS Exchange Server 2007 and it has been since Exchange 2000 that Microsoft has tie it's directory to Active Directory. Prior to that it had it's own directory. So, students learn Exchange 2000 and on up need to also know Active Directory before hand. I will be trying to change that. But unfortunately I will have to try to fill that gap for those students that I will be teach next term since I doubt it they will change it that quickly.
Sona,
Sounds good. I think when we consider that students are not always on the same page as the instructor, anything we can do to clarify, communicate expectations, review, and reinstruct what is needed, will be helpful. I really think most students can benefit from numerous repititious instructions, and won't mind having information repeated.
Barry Westling
I always try to fill in the gap in the first week. I do a pre-test and then review of the basic skills required.
Carlos,
In my program, we have to report retention rates annually to our accrediting body, and these are then posted on a public consumer page, presumably for the benefit of potential students to consider high attrition rates prior to enrollment. In this setting, the combined efforts of admissions, program and campus administration have to work together to identify and enroll only qualified applicants who have realistic opportunities for successfulness in the program. Just one example of the rationale for good prerequiste screening.
Barry Westling
