Measures Of Student Success Research Articles

Can Academic Library Instant Message Transcripts Provide Documentation of Undergraduate Student Success?

Instant message transcripts provide verbatim documentation of students’ expressed needs. Academic libraries fund many practices and services thought to enhance student success by meeting students’ needs. Utilizing the framework of natural experiments, Microsoft Excel conditional statements were used to mine instant message transcripts for specific occurrences of key text in order to determine the effects of changes in a limited number of academic library practices and services. A limited set of key terms were derived from an ad hoc group of librarians familiar with the San Francisco State University instant message service. Counts from the Excel conditional statements documented: the decrease in PIN requests with the implementation of a single sign-in and decreases in requests for the basic information competency tutorial, OASIS. These institutional interventions in academic library practices and services represented changes that influenced students’ expressed needs in the transcripts, illustrating the value of library-centric measures of student success.

More than a Number: A Capabilities Framework for Conceptualizing Community College Success

Context Community colleges in the United States are increasingly tasked with demonstrating their commitment to improved institutional outcomes even as measures of student success are critiqued for failing to capture the colleges’ diverse missions and student populations. Purpose This paper offers an alternative framework for understanding and evaluating community college student success based on the normative and interdisciplinary capabilities approach. Setting The larger study on which this paper is based took place at a large, diverse community college located in the southwestern United States. Participants The sample for this study consists of 958 e-survey respondents (N = 17,080; response rate 6%), and semi-structured follow-up interviews with a heterogeneous group of 40 community college students. Research Design The study uses mixed methods consisting of a large-scale e-survey, student interviews, participant- and researcher-generated visual methods, and in-depth reviews of the community college and capabilities approach literatures. Results The author used a top-down/bottom-up process to generate a final empirical list of 12 community college capabilities that are informed by both the literature and student voices: practical reason, knowledge and imagination, learning disposition, social relations and networks, respect and recognition, emotional health, bodily health, economic opportunities, love and care, language competency and confidence, autonomy, and refuge. This paper also transparently documents the methodological process the author uses to generate these capabilities to aid both researchers and practitioners in their efforts to help students flourish and thrive as they navigate the higher education landscape. Conclusions The results of this study provide educational researchers and practitioners with a methodological process for developing their own locally sourced understandings of student success. As proposed in this paper, reframing the educational experience around capabilities and capabilities development provides colleges—and education institutions more generally— with a new, more responsive and democratic set of tools to use in understanding all the ways in which community colleges help students build and sustain meaningful lives.

The Impact of a Camp Orientation Program on First-Year Academic Engagement and Persistence

More and more, institutions of higher education are being held accountable for student success measures such as persistence and completion rates. If research indicates that higher levels of student engagement lead to better academic outcomes, it is then reasonable to equate this to improved retention and graduation rates. The present study presents findings associated with a camp orientation program for first-year students and its impact on levels of academic engagement and persistence. Data collected from the Beginning College Survey of Student Engagement (BCSSE) and National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) were used to determine if statistically significant differences exist between camp participants and non-participants. Findings indicate no statistically significant difference between camp participants and non-participants on NSSE benchmarks related to academic satisfaction, enriching educational experiences, student-faculty engagement or persistence from fall to spring of the first college year.

The Effect of Undergraduate Coursework on Students' Performance in the First Year at a U.S. Dental School.

The aim of this study was to determine if there was a relationship between students' academic history and their performance in the first year of dental school, with a focus on academic load in undergraduate education. A total of 174 student records from the Rutgers School of Dental Medicine Classes of 2011 to 2018 were analyzed. These records included students at the top and bottom of each class at the end of their first term of study. Outcomes were broad measures of student success: student continued in curriculum, student withdrew/was dismissed, or student remediated at least one course. In the comparison of the top and bottom ten students across the classes, the following variables were found to be significant: Barron's score of undergraduate institution, undergraduate science GPA, number of failures or withdrawals from science courses during undergraduate education, DAT scores, and underrepresented minority status. The results of this study are not meant to inform the admissions process, but to highlight opportunities for enhancing student services via early identification of students who may benefit from additional academic support while in dental school.

People, Practices, and Patterns: Transforming into a Learning Institution

The Challenge: Organizational transformation takes time, energy, and patience. Intentional change was engaged by an academic-administrative unit, The Hub for Innovation in Learning and Technology (the Hub). The Hub aspires to help Michigan State University (MSU) “reinvent itself as a learning institution” by transforming ourselves so that we might transform others. The authors, all current employees of the Hub, provide an in-depth look into the challenges and triumphs of purposeful organizational change.
 Potential Consequences: Without change, MSU would maintain existing gaps on measures of student success among different demographic groups. The key audience of these efforts are learners in the university while considering the surrounding system of faculty, staff, administrators, curriculum, assessment, and student engagement efforts.
 Description/Analysis/Methods: The Hub catalyzes innovative ways to collaborate, learn, research, and impact learning. We design new opportunities that take advantage of skills and connections across the disciplines. The Hub adapted work practices that can sustain transformation. The Hub also built a physical space reflective of these strategies.
 Rationale/Reflection/Replication: Initial practices resulted in a series of careful, bold learning pathways focused on new capacity and professional development for stakeholders. We extrapolated experiences, practices, and findings for other transforming university, business, and organizational contexts.

Accounting for Student Success: Academic and Stakeholder Perspectives That Have Shaped the Discourse on Student Success in the United States

The meaning of student success differs according to the goals, interests and roles among prospective students, their parents and extended family, educators, scholars, employers, legislators and other stakeholders. Despite this wide variation, accountability for student success has been mostly equated with readily available measures like degree completion rates, time to degree and credit accumulation. Recently, especially in the United States, where the student assumes a large cost burden for attending college, interest has increased regarding the amount of debt incurred and the employment and wages obtained post-graduation to enable students to pay off that debt. There are many from within and outside the academy who criticize these simplistic measures of student success and seek evidence about how a college education develops students intellectually and morally, preparing them to lead lives as productive citizens and members of the 21st Century workforce. In this article, we review the key concepts of student success that have emerged from the U.S. higher education research literature, as well as major U.S. policy initiatives related to improving student success. The purpose of this analysis is to develop an organizing framework that enables scholars and policy makers to place their work within a broader context as related to the discourse on student success in the early 21st Century, especially within the United States, but with increasingly common elements internationally.

HUBUNGAN SELF-EFFICACY DAN SIKAP POSITIF TERHADAP PRESTASI AKADEMIK SISWA SMK NEGERI 1 SIPIROK

Self-efficacy is a person's feelings, ways of thinking, self-motivation, and desire to have something, while a positive attitude means in the learning process students have a tendency to accept or reject a concept or idea, if not in accordance with his mind. Students can think and be positive if if a learning can provide real benefits for life. While the academic achievement is the result of behavioral changes that include the cognitive domain, affective domain and psychomotor domain which is a measure of student success after being given treatment or learning. This research was conducted at SMK Negeri 1 Sipirok. This study uses descriptive research method with correlational approach with the aim to know whether there is a significant relationship between self-efficacy and positive attitude toward student academic achievement. Based on the research that has been done, the research results found that there is a significant relationship between self-efficacy and positive attitude of students to the academic achievement in SMK Negeri 1 Sipirok Tapanuli Selatan but the relationship is not showing increase or decrease so it can be said academic achievement is not important enough in pushing self-efficacy and positive attitude of students.

The Out Loud Assignment: Articulating Library Contributions to First-year Student Success

As more and more libraries consider GPA and year-to-year retention as relevant and meaningful measures of interest, it is important to consider whether these measures are locally appropriate. Several limitations of broadly applying GPA and first-year retention as measures of student success were recently discovered while completing a large exploratory research project. The project assessed the impact of a library assignment offered to students during their first term on campus at a large public research university. Findings revealed the assignment had a greater impact on regional campus students in contrast to the larger central campus, where changes in admission requirements has created an increasingly high-performing cohort of first-year students. Other indicators which may better locally articulate library contributions to student success are needed.

Open Educational Resources and Student Course Outcomes: A Multilevel Analysis

<p class="3">Salt Lake Community College (SLCC) is Utah’s largest open enrollment college, and as an institution, is concerned about the expense associated with attaining a degree. All students face challenges in paying for their education, but SLCC students tend to have fewer resources to dedicate to school than students at other institutions in the state. While faculty and administrators have little control over the rising cost of tuition, they are able to offer students open educational resources (OER) to cut down on textbook costs. Salt Lake Community College’s OER initiative was implemented in Summer 2014, and has since expanded to include 125 sections in Spring 2016. We examine OER’s impact on three measures of student success: course grade, likelihood of passing, and likelihood of withdrawing. We use a multilevel modeling (MLM) approach in order to control for student, instructor, and course effects, and found no difference between courses using OER and traditional textbooks for continuing students. For new students, there is evidence that OER increases average grade. However, student-level differences such as demographic background and educational experience have a far greater impact on course grade and likelihood of passing or withdrawing than an instructor’s use of an OER text. Future research should focus on longer-term impacts of OER on retention, completion, and transfer.</p>

Measures of student success with textbook transformations: the Affordable Learning Georgia Initiative

In 2014, the state of Georgia’s budget supported a University System of Georgia (USG) initiative: Affordable Learning Georgia (ALG). The initiative was implemented via Textbook Transformation Grants, which provided grants to USG faculty, libraries and librarians, and institutions to “transform their use of textbooks and other learning materials into using lower cost options”, in other words to use open educational resources (OER) in lieu of a traditional bound textbook. The Round One Textbook Transformation Grants have already shown to be successful in that they saved students approximately $760,000. What is not known, is the collective impact on student learning. This study examines the learning gains or losses pre- and post-transformation in ALG Round One courses where traditional resources were replaced with OER. It estimates differences between pre- and post- textbook transformation across the following outcomes: 1) Drop Fail Withdraw (DFW) rates, 2) rates of completion, 3) numbers of students receiving a final grade of A or B, C and D, 4) numerical final grades as a percent, 5) final exam grades as a percent, and, 6) course-specific assessment grades measured in percent. Twenty-four data sets were analyzed for DFW rate, eight data sets for completion rate, fourteen data sets for grade distribution, three data sets for final exam grades, three data sets for course specific assessment and one data set for final grades. The null hypothesis that there would be no differences between pre- and post-transformation rates in these learning outcomes was supported. Thus, this study demonstrates that the USG’s ALG initiative helped students save money without negatively impacting learning outcomes. In addition, it is the first of its kind to measure some of these learning outcomes (e.g. final exam grade, assessment grade, and distribution of letter grades) at this scale.

Influence of Social Integration on Class Success

The present study investigated whether an integrative behavior for one student success outcome could be applied to another student success outcome. Braxton and colleagues (2013) state that student perception of the institution's commitment to student welfare influences the level of social integration by the student, which affects student persistence at residential colleges and universities. The purpose of this study was to apply this theoretical construct to another measure of student success: class grade. A sample of students enrolled in a freshman-level general education course was surveyed to identify perceived levels of commitment by the institution to student welfare and levels of informal social integration, which were then examined to determine the impact on the final course grade. Nonparametric measures were used to analyze levels of perceived institutional commitment to levels of social integration, which were then analyzed against final class grade. No significant independent relationship existed between perceived commitment of the institution to student welfare and social integration. In addition, no significant independent relationship existed between social integration and final class grade. The authors suggest incorporating formal, integrative learning in the class as a way to apply a central tenet of persistence to classroom success.

Small Groups, Significant Impact: A Review of Peer-Led Team Learning Research with Implications for STEM Education Researchers and Faculty

Peer-led team learning (PLTL) research has expanded from its roots in program evaluation of student success measures in Workshop Chemistry to a spectrum of research questions and qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods study approaches. In order to develop recommendations for PLTL research and propose best practices for faculty who will integrate PLTL in their classrooms, the theoretical frameworks, study designs, results, and limitations of sixty-seven peer-reviewed studies, spanning a variety of STEM disciplines and institution types, were examined. Five program evaluation themes emerged from this synthesis of the literature: student success measures; student perceptions; reasoning and critical thinking skills; research on peer leaders; and variants of the PLTL model. For each of the themes, areas for future study and implications for practice are suggested to STEM discipline-based education researchers and faculty.

Using methodological triangulation to examine the effectiveness of a mentoring program for online instructors

In this quasi-experimental mixed methods study, we examined the effectiveness of a faculty-to-faculty mentoring program to increase student success rates in online courses at an American university. Over one semester, 24 faculty mentees worked with 6 faculty mentors on improving course organization and implementing student engagement techniques. Using methodological triangulation, we found positive results for two of our effectiveness measures (i.e., mentor and mentee feedback and mentors’ ratings of mentees’ courses). However, in terms of our third measure (i.e., student learning data), although institutional data showed that there was a 4.1% aggregate increase in online student success after the intervention, the intervention group made no significantly greater gains than two control groups. Our findings highlight some benefits and shortcomings of these types of university initiatives and also emphasize the importance of using triangulation to integrate participant feedback with formal measures of student success.

Testing provides crucial information

The National Urban League president and CEO Marc H. Morial weighs in on what he sees as the need for continued annual assessments of students, rejecting the course of opting out that has taken hold in some places across America. Assessment data provides students with the opportunity to receive personalized supports and necessary interventions to achieve academic success Morial said. All parents want their children to succeed in school and they have the right to know how well and in what ways their children are excelling or struggling. Education stakeholders, including parents, also have a right to know where education systems are making progress and where they need intervention. Statewide annual assessments are the only objective, consistent, and comparable measure of student success. Assessments are a part of life and while they are not comfortable, they are necessary. We wouldn’t ask a parent not to take their child to the doctor for their annual check-up, said Morial. Similarly, we should not encourage parents to skip their child’s annual academic check-up.

Beyond Embedded: Creating an Online-Learning Community Integrating Information Literacy and Composition Courses

This article recounts our experience developing an embedded librarian model which evolved into a fully integrated learning community, pairing online composition with an online information literacy credit-bearing course. Our assessment of student success measures indicate that the positive trends we found under the embedded librarian program have continued to improve under the formal learning community model. We discuss the results of our qualitative and quantitative measures of the program's impact on student success and share our recommendations for further developments.

Predicting different grades in different ways for selective admission: disentangling the first-year grade point average

The first-year grade point average (FYGPA) is the predominant measure of student success in most studies on university admission. Previous cognitive achievements measured with high school grades or standardized tests have been found to be the strongest predictors of FYGPA. For this reason, standardized tests measuring cognitive achievement are widely used as a tool for selective admission to higher education. The FYGPA, however, measures many markedly different aspects of student success. In this article it is shown that when the FYGPA is divided into averages that reflect performance on different types of goals, the predictive value of previous cognitive achievement differs significantly between these disentangled averages. It is therefore important to distinguish between different types of goals when considering what student success is, and which students should be admitted to particular university programmes.

Success in Community College: Do Institutions Differ?

Community colleges are complex organizations and assessing their performance, though important, is difficult. Compared to 4-year colleges and universities, community colleges serve a more diverse population and provide a wider variety of educational programs that include continuing education and technical training for adults, and diplomas, associates degrees, and transfer credits for recent high school graduates. Focusing solely on the latter programs of North Carolina’s community colleges, we measure the success of each college along two dimensions: attainment of an applied diploma or degree; or completion of the coursework required to transfer to a 4-year college or university. We address three questions. First, how much variation is there across the institutions in these measures of student success? Second, how do these measures of success differ across institutions after we adjust for the characteristics of the enrolled students? Third, how do our measures compare to the measures of success used by the North Carolina Community College System? Although we find variation along both dimensions of success, we also find that part of this variation is attributable to differences in the kinds of students who attend various colleges. Once we correct for such differences, we find that it is not possible to distinguish most of the system’s colleges from one another along either dimension. Top-performing institutions, however, can be distinguished from the most poorly performing ones. Finally, our adjusted rates of success show little correlation either to measurable aspects of the various colleges or to the metrics used by the state.

Addressing the Challenge of Diversity in the Graduate Ranks: Good Practices Yield Good Outcomes

In this paper, we examine the impact of implementing three systemic practices on the diversity and institutional culture in biomedical and public health PhD training at Brown University. We hypothesized that these practices, designed as part of the National Institutes of Health-funded Initiative to Maximize Student Development (IMSD) program in the Division of Biology and Medicine, would have a positive effect on underrepresented minority (URM) recruitment and retention and objective measures of student success. These practices include: 1) develop strategic partnerships with selected undergraduate institutions; 2) provide a personalized education program of student support and skill-based modules to supplement discipline-based course work; and 3) transform institutional culture by engaging faculty in supporting diversity-related goals and practices. Data comparing URM numbers and key academic milestones before and after implementation of IMSD practices support the initial hypothesis and effectiveness of these practices at Brown. Program components are broadly applicable as best practices for others seeking to improve URM recruitment and achievements of graduate students traditionally underrepresented in the sciences.

Student Success

This article examines measures of student success, with a focus on how they apply to community colleges. A conceptual framework is presented as a way of facilitating thinking about and accurately grounding discussions of student success. The article closes with an examination of emerging concepts related to the measurement of student success in higher education generally and at community colleges particularly.

How Well Do Undergraduate Research Programs Promote Engagement and Success of Students?

Assessment of undergraduate research (UR) programs using participant surveys has produced a wealth of information about design, implementation, and perceived benefits of UR programs. However, measurement of student participation university wide, and the potential contribution of research experience to student success, also require the study of extrinsic measures. In this essay, institutional data on student credit-hour generation and grade point average (GPA) from the University of Georgia are used to approach these questions. Institutional data provide a measure of annual enrollment in UR classes in diverse disciplines. This operational definition allows accurate and retrospective analysis, but does not measure all modes of engagement in UR. Cumulative GPA is proposed as a quantitative extrinsic measure of student success. Initial results show that extended participation in research for more than a single semester is correlated with an increase in GPA, even after using SAT to control for the initial ability level of the students. While the authors acknowledge that correlation does not prove causality, continued efforts to measure the impact of UR programs on student outcomes using GPA or an alternate extrinsic measure is needed for development of evidence-based programmatic recommendations.