How Amarillo College increased survey response rates and retention with Watermark
Survey responses jumped to 90%+ and retention rose to 68% with a combination of Watermark solutions.
Becky Burton, M. Ed., Associate Vice President Academic Learning at Amarillo College, shares how the institution transformed course feedback and student success initiatives using Watermark. By improving course evaluation response rates and giving faculty meaningful data to act on, Amarillo College strengthened teaching practices while empowering its student success team with better insights to support students and improve retention.
Years ago we did paper and pencil and had great success because it was in class. Online classes historically had low response rates. Then in about 2012 we moved to online using Class Climate. The response rates were below 10% most years. So, the biggest challenges were low student response rates on surveys and low retention rates. This created SACS compliance issues, faculty were limited in what they could provide in their yearly evaluations, upper leadership did not have enough data to help investigate student complaints, and faculty lacked student comments and survey results to support their rank applications.
Our survey response rates went from single digits to 90+%. Our fall to fall retention went from below 40% to 68%. The challenges mentioned above have all been resolved and this is the biggest gain. After we made the switch to Course Evaluations & Surveys our faculty were tasked with rewriting the evaluation questions. Once we partnered with them and allowed them to have a voice in the process, and even tailor some questions by modality and department, they have used them to truly assess their teaching. Faculty reach out to our Center for Teaching and Learning consistently and ask for help to make positive changes in their courses based on feedback.
Ease of use and support from Watermark.There are so many examples. When have they not provided support? I still meet monthly with our rep and he is always responsive to my requests or concerns. One of the things that always stands out to me was in Student Success & Engagement. We asked for a process that they did not have, gave them the reasoning and the impact it would have and within a semester they had built it in the system and rolled it out. We have asked for some customized training and gotten it.
Watermark has the tools that help us focus on our solutions. Here are some of the benefits we have seen:
Consistency in taking attendance.
- Increased visits to tutoring centers by using alerts.
- Increased usage of our CTL department.
- Increase in timely grade postings.
- More collaboration between departments and success coaches through SS&E.
- All of these things have led to an increase of 81% fall to spring retention and 68% fall to fall retention.
Moving forward, our focus is on data synergy: we are aggressively exploring new ways to integrate Watermark’s capabilities with our existing institutional frameworks to create a 360-degree view of the student and faculty experiences. Supported by Watermark’s customer success team, we continue to push the boundaries of the platform—ensuring that every data point we capture is translated into a meaningful, life-changing intervention for our students.
