Adult Education and Minnesota State Co-Req Partnership Gatherings Wrap Up Another Successful School Year

Year four of Affinity Group gatherings concluded on April 3 and 4, 2025. For several years, Adult Education teachers and administrators have joined forces with Minnesota State campus faculty, administrators, and system-wide leaders to pursue strategies to address and support college-enrolled students who are academically underprepared for their college courses and programs of study.

Shift from Dev Ed to co-requisite model

Over the past two years, Minn State has initiated the process of transforming the approach it takes to serve developmental education students who are lacking the necessary math, reading, and writing skills to remain in college and attain the degrees and credentials they are seeking. The system has begun the shift to a co-requisite format, which intends to provide lower academic skilled students with the various supports they need in college courses while accruing college course credits. Dev Ed enrolled students pay college tuition but unfortunately do not acquire applicable college credit. One intention of offering co-req classes is to address this inequity.

The challenge the Affinity Group members desire to address is how to ensure that low academic skilled students access and benefit from the instruction and the in-classroom and wrap-around classroom supports they need to complete the more rigorous academic expectations of co-req courses. Minn State faculty provides good content instruction, however differentiating the instruction in a co-req classroom while remaining on a course completion schedule becomes exceedingly difficult when significant numbers of students are performing well below course requirements. This is where partnering with local adult education programs to provide complementary instruction is more critical than ever.

Recent Affinity Group updates

The April 3 and 4 educator gatherings featured a progress report from the Minn State P-20 Unit regarding the work that is underway to study student and faculty needs as the shift to co-req takes place. There is a systemwide goal to completely transition to the co-req format and arrive at supporting strategies by the 2027-28 academic year. Some campuses are offering a few co-req classes as pilot experiences to help inform the overall direction. And some of those pilot offerings involve adult education partners who share their experiences at the Affinity Group meetings, so others can replicate successes and minimize ineffective approaches. Members received an update on the systemwide work to take faculty and staff recommendations through the chain of command.

Some professional development experiences have recently been offered in math pathways. Two faculty trainers attending the meeting explained that one course is for mathematics and statistics faculty who will be designing and offering corequisite support courses on their campuses for the first time. The course emphasizes the details of bringing corequisite courses from an idea to full-scale implementation. The second course is geared to educators seeking to enhance their teaching strategies for math corequisite courses. Both courses were full.

The meeting concluded with the announcement that three virtual Affinity Group gatherings will continue in the 2025-26 academic year. Stay tuned for fall, winter, and spring meeting date information in late summer 2025.