Starfish Findings at CHC Show Retention Tool Increases Student Success and Completion Rates

Publish Date: March 23, 2022

The Crafton Hills College Starfish Impact Report findings for the 2019-2021 academic years have been published. Starfish is a program that helps to create an online student success environment, facilitating counseling and advising, tutoring, mentoring and other student services with the aim of improving student success and retention.

Use of Crafton’s Starfish Early Alert allows the College to gauge and help improve the success of disproportionally impacted students. Shown in the graph below is the significant increase in the number of tracking items raised from 3902 in 2019-2020 to 8089 in 2020-2021. These data demonstrate an increase in engagement and the utilization of Starfish to track items such as flags, kudos, referrals, and to-do’s for students.

Fall-to spring retention rates shown in the graph below indicate that students taking at least one section that was using Starfish were found to have a much higher retention rate compared to those that were not. This increase shows an outstanding improvement leading Crafton closer to its institutional goal of increasing fall-to-spring retention as outlined in our 2019-2022 Student Equity Plan.

The findings show an overall increase in instructors engaging with Starfish, a higher proportion of Starfish sections being offered, as well as an increase in the success and completion rates for students enrolled in Starfish sections compared to those that were not. Even with classes being online and the shift to remote instruction, Starfish is substantially increasing student retention.