Critical Assessment and Strategies for Increased Student Retention
Critical Assessment and Strategies for Increased Student Retention

Author: Black, Ruth Claire

Publisher: IGI Global

Published: 2017-11-30

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 1522529993

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Student retention has become a difficult issue within higher education. As such, it is imperative to examine the causes, as well as provide educators with strategies to implement to improve retention rates. Critical Assessment and Strategies for Increased Student Retention is a pivotal reference source for the latest progressive research on a variety of current student success and attendance perpetuation issues. Featuring a broad range of coverage on a number of perspectives and topics, such as academic performance, counseling, and culture, this publication is geared towards practitioners, academicians, and researchers interested in understanding the difficulties with maintaining student retention.

Evaluating The Undergraduate Research Experience
Evaluating The Undergraduate Research Experience

Author: Gabriel M. Della-Piana

Publisher: IAP

Published: 2014-01-01

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1623965438

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The current movement toward more and better research experiences for undergraduates has spread across disciplines in the arts, humanities, science, mathematics, and engineering beyond the “research university” to the full range of post-secondary institutions of higher education. Along with this spread of practice is the need to take stock of the programs and make use of evaluation to inform program improvement and to communicate an understanding of the worth of the program to funders, institutional administrators, faculty/mentors, and students. The main aim of the book is to provide a practical guide for planning an evaluation of an undergraduate experience program. The intent is to enable a program director to plan with a team consisting of an internal evaluator and program staff, a systematic and rigorous study of the program (processes, products, organizational dynamics, etc.) including the gathering and analysis of information that is context-sensitive, and connected to an argument and justification for descriptive, causal, and practice-useful claims. It is useful for a program director to contract with an evaluator. It is specific to the field of undergraduate research experience while being useful for other fields. It places strong emphasis on how to find and specify evaluation questions that yield information that has high leverage for program improvement and demonstrating the effectiveness and worth of the program. A measure of attitude toward evaluation allows you to reflect on your leanings evaluation orientations such as formative/summative, process/product, preordinate goals/emergent goals, and other characteristics of approaches to and confidence in evaluation. The main readership is targeted to directors and developers of undergraduate research experience programs. While the examples are mainly in the undergraduate research experience, it will be found useful for instructors of courses in project evaluation and beginning level evaluators. The usefulness of the book is enhanced by a checklist in the final chapter that integrates the approaches from throughout the book referencing the earlier discussions.

Student Success and Persistence
Student Success and Persistence

Author: Donna A. Nivens-Aragon

Publisher:

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 112

ISBN-13:

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"An evaluation of an academic development program to improve undergraduate student persistence and academic success was undertaken. Records for a total of 1477 students attending the University of Southern Colorado (USC) from cohorts of first-time freshmen in the Fall semesters of 1990, 1991, and 1993 were analyzed. Existing student information system records and College Student Inventory results were examined in an effort to define the at-risk student at USC and to determine the effectiveness of USC's Learning Assistance Center (LAC) interventions. Analyses of variance revealed that student success and persistence rates varied between different levels of several of the variables. Results also showed some degree of effectiveness of the LAC interventions."--Abstract.

Best Practices in Student Persistence and Completion
Best Practices in Student Persistence and Completion

Author: Felicita A. Myers

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13:

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Student services units in community colleges are now encouraged to assume a larger role in supporting student retention and are charged with implementing intervention strategies that improve student success and persistence. Yet, many community colleges, especially those in rural communities, struggle to define the role of student services in improving retention, especially between the first and second semesters. A process program evaluation of three student services units at a rural Missouri community college was conducted in order to assess whether the outputs (activities) identified in the logic models for each of the three units had occurred. At the conclusion of the process evaluation the evaluators intended to conduct an impact evaluation. Typical of convergent parallel designs, an electronic survey was utilized that simultaneously yielded both quantitative and qualitative data of the three units. Both sets of data were at first analyzed separately and then in parallel. There were two significant findings. The primary service offered in each unit was identified as academic advising and that: (1) each utilized developmental, intrusive, and prescriptive advising strategies coupled with career advising, and (2) other best practices employed include relationship building, individualized goal setting with students, collaborative partnerships for programming, interventions that provide academic supports, responsiveness to student referrals, and workshops that promote persistence and retention. Although some best practices are currently in place, it is recommended that each unit assess their practices with regard to the standards set forth by the Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS). These standards emphasize academic advising as integral to student persistence, retention and graduation.

Helping Underprepared Students
Helping Underprepared Students

Author: Roy John Caligan (Jr)

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 148

ISBN-13:

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The goal to discover the effective elements of a retention program is part of the pragmatic epistemology of mixed-methods research. This research evaluated the effectiveness of a first-year retention program at an open-access university in the northwestern United States. The grade point averages and retention rates of students who participated in the program were compared against two groups of students: those who were eligible for the program but did not participate and other freshman students in the same academic year. Overall, most of the students who participated in the program earned higher GPAs than students who opted out of the program, but none of the differences were statistically significant. Additionally, the program improved student retention when compared with students who opted out of the program, but the differences in retention rates were not statistically significant. Qualitative data gathered from the students and staff who participated in the program provided some insight into the benefits and hinderances of the program as they pertain to social integration, institutional commitment, locus of control, self-efficacy, and achievement. The evaluation concludes with recommendations for improvement and future research.

Evaluation of an Intervention to Improve College Student Academic Performance, Retention, and Graduation Rates
Evaluation of an Intervention to Improve College Student Academic Performance, Retention, and Graduation Rates

Author: Shardae Laniece Dawkins

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

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This single-institution longitudinal study is used as an evaluative opportunity to examine the impact of the ACAD 1100 freshman orientation course on actual academic achievement, retention, and graduation outcomes. Expounding on a previous study by Burgette and Magun-Jackson (2008), some additional covariates (ACT and SES) were added to ensure ACAD and non-ACAD groups were comparable. For students in the two freshman cohorts examined, results of logistic regression as well as multiple regression analyses revealed that ACAD participation is advantageous in year-to-year persistence and college achievement at two-tailed significance p