Many institutions, even if they haven't launched full-scale research to assess the effectiveness of collaborative learning or learning communities, have devised studies that use such data to compare student retention and success in collaborative settings with that of students in traditional settings. Likewise, many instructors teaching in collaborative learning classrooms have themselves begun to assess the effectiveness of their work, either because their institutions lack an institutional research office or, simply, because the instructors themselves want quantifiable confirmation of their sense that students who work collaboratively enhance their learning. Institutions which track student success in learning community programs use the easily accessible data tracking student retention, where retention is defined as the number of students registered on the tenth day who also complete the course. Many institutions in Washington state keep these records, and several also provide average institutional retention rates, which can be used for comparison. A few examples follow, all of which show higher retention in the learning community than in the institution as a whole.
Some instructors use more elaborate data to conduct similar quantifiable studies.
Two biology instructors at Yakima Valley Community College, Judy Moore and Eric Mould, used retention rates and grade distributions to compare student success in their sections of Biology 101 before and after implementing a collaborative learning approach to the course. They compared retention and grade distribution rates from their last twelve sections taught in the lecture mode to those in the first twelve sections taught using their new design with collaborative learning strategies. After implementing the collaborative learning approach, their retention rates climbed even higher. These numbers mean that only two to three students in a typical section failed to complete Bio 101. Judy and Eric also note that, with the new collaborative approach, students rarely drop after the third week, while under the lecture method, students dropped throughout the quarter.