Author Archives: Rosa Cedano

Calvin, Ogulcan and Rosa Progress Report 5

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Progress Report #5 (12/3/2014-12/9/2014)

This week we met every day to work on the project and on 12/5/2014, we had a Skype call to discuss the content learned from the lecture by professor Belli. The main tasks during the week geared towards the completion of the first draft of the project. We began by fine tuning the selected questions to ensure that they would collect the necessary data, compilation of the introduction and the literary background, selection and documentation of data analysis methods, assembly of the results and discussion, formation of the presentation, formatting of the paper and a thorough revision of the final version of the first draft of the paper.

The first five meetings all focused on making sure that all the questions collected for the study had solid rationale for their inclusion on the questionnaire. They had to be both valid and reliable to enable the collection of accurate and informative data. After the survey questions were ready, the introduction became sublime and we were able to compile it within a single seating. The introduction matched the rationale guided by the questions that we selected from the ones that were available to us. Once the introduction was done, we went on to complete the methods and discussion sections, a feat achieved by dividing the work amongst team members. By the final meeting, the entire draft was complete with a table of contents, data analysis, an appendix and graphics.

The main obstacle faced during the week was the refinement of the questions selected for the survey and the lecture from Professor Belli went a long way in offering valuable clarification. Once that section was ready, the rest of the draft fell into place and the first draft of the project is ready to be present.

Calvin, Ogulcan, Rosa, Meeting Minutes 12-3-14

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Meeting Minutes #4

Online virtual meeting via Skype – 3 December 2014
Meeting called to order at 8:00 PM by Calvin Lo
Members present:
Rosa Cedano, Ogulcan Gol

Reading of Agenda:

To discuss some of the questions in our survey that we needed to edit and revise and the rationale accordingly.
New Business:
• Discussed about the feedback from Professor Belli.
o Tried to tackle each of her points the best of our abilities.
• Edited the questions of the survey.
• Rewrite the rationale.
o Edit the rationale we created in class accordingly.
• Finish and submitted our rationale for the survey.
Adjourned at 11:00 PM
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Meeting Minutes
Online virtual meeting via Skype – 4 December 2014
Meeting called to order at 10:00 PM by Calvin Lo
Members present:
Ogulcan Gol
Reading of Agenda:
To discuss the suggestions and feedback from Professor Belli about our rationale and revised our questions.
New Business:
• Discussed the rationale feedback from Prof. Belli.
• Do some additional research relevant to our survey.
• Revised the survey questions based on the feedback.
Adjourned at 11:30 PM
Meeting Minutes
Online virtual meeting via Skype – 5 December 2014
Meeting called to order at 12:30 PM by Calvin Lo
Members present:
Ogulcan Gol
Reading of Agenda:
To more research and thought about additional questions relevant to our survey and remove questions that were redundant.
New Business:
• Carefully reviewed our questions and omitted questions that were redundant.
• Added questions about engagement in lectures.
• Researched questions about chairperson and created question related to chairperson.
Adjourned at 3:30 PM
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Meeting Minutes
Online virtual meeting via Skype – 5 December 2014
Meeting called to order at 8:30 PM by Calvin Lo
Members present:
Ogulcan Gol, Rosa Cedano
Reading of Agenda:
To more research and thought about additional questions relevant to our survey and remove questions that were redundant.
New Business:
• Brainstormed new questions from additional research.
o Because we omitted some questions, we needed to create new questions to replace them.
• Reviewed of our deliverables.
• Finalized our revised survey.
• Finalized our new rationale.
• Posted revised survey and rationale on OpenLab.
• Discuss how to proceed with the first draft of the final report.
Adjourned at 10:00 PM

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Meeting Minutes
Online virtual meeting via Skype – 6 December 2014
Meeting called to order at 2:30 PM by Calvin Lo
Members present:
Rosa Cedano
Reading of Agenda:
To start the first draft of our report and start the introduction section.
New Business:
• Briefly review what should be included in our introduction.
• Research on how to write an introduction for a report.
Adjourned at 4:00 PM
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Meeting Minutes
Online virtual meeting via Skype – 6 December 2014
Meeting called to order at 8:30 PM by Calvin Lo
Members present:
Ogulcan Gol, Rosa Cedano
Reading of Agenda:
To start working on the body section of our report which are data analysis, methods and results.
New Business:
• Briefly review what should be included in our method section.
• Research on how to write the methods section for a report.
o Our findings were that it is split into 4 components. Data, Methods, Data Analysis and Results.
o Decided to omit the Data component as it might be too similar to the data analysis section.

• Conceptualized what should be included in the data analysis section.
• Created cover page and table of content.
• Updated the annotated bibliography.
Adjourned at 10:00 PM
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Meeting Minutes
Online virtual meeting via Skype – 7 December 2014
Meeting called to order at 2:30 PM by Calvin Lo
Members present:
Ogulcan Gol
Reading of Agenda:
Revise/edit the report and further work on the body section.
New Business:
• Carefully reviewed and edited introduction and data analysis.
• Carefully reviewed and edited the methods sections.
• Meeting Complete.
Adjourned at 4:00 PM
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Meeting Minutes
Online virtual meeting via Skype – 8 December 2014
Meeting called to order at 8:30 PM by Calvin Lo
Members present:
Ogulcan Gol, Rosa Cedano
Reading of Agenda:
To finish up the introduction and presentation of the first draft of our final write up and start working on the appendices.
New Business:
• Review what we have done so far and what else needs to be worked on.
• Started to create and organize the appendix section.
• Finished up our methods and data analysis.
Adjourned at 11:30 PM

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Meeting Minutes
Online virtual meeting via Skype – 9 December 2014
Meeting called to order at 2:30 PM by Calvin Lo
Members present:
Ogulcan Gol
Reading of Agenda:
To begin the conclusion, begin create graphs to visually represent our results.
New Business:
• Started working on our visuals.
o Copy our results from GoogleForms and paste it into Excel in order to separate each checkbox answer into its own cell and count it for a numerical answer.
• Started writing the conclusion section.
Adjourned at 4:30 PM
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Meeting Minutes
Online virtual meeting via Skype – 9 December 2014
Meeting called to order at 8:30 PM by Calvin Lo
Members present:
Ogulcan Gol, Rosa Cedano
Reading of Agenda:
Finish and finalize our first draft of the report and submit it to Dropbox
New Business:
• Carefully review all the sections of our write up.
• Finish up on the visuals.
• Compile everything into one document.
• Submit our first draft of report.
Adjourned at 11:30 PM

Calvin, Ogulcan, Rosa, Agenda 12-3-14

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Agenda #4

Date: December 3, 2014

Time: 8:00 PM to 11:00 PM

Place: Online virtual meeting via Skype

Meeting called by: Calvin Lo

Attendees: Ogulcan Gol, Rosa Cedano

Objective:  to discuss about some of the questions that we need to rephrase and compose and the rationale behind each question.

Agenda:

8:00 PM          Discussed about the feedback from Professor Belli.

8:30 PM          Rephrase and compose the questions of the Survey.

9:00 PM          Write the rationale behind each question.

10:00 PM        Finish and submit our rationale for survey

11:00 PM        Meeting complete.

 

Date: December 4, 2014

Time: 10:00 PM to 11:30 PM

Place: Online virtual meeting via Skype

Meeting called by: Calvin Lo

Attendees: Ogulcan Gol

Objective: To discuss the suggestions and feedback from Professor Belli about our rationale and revised our questions.

Agenda:

10:00 PM        Discuss rationale feedback from Prof. Belli.

10:20 PM        Do additional research relevant to our survey.

11:00 PM        Revised the survey questions.

11:30 PM        Meeting complete

 

Date: December 5, 2014

Time: 12:30 PM to 2:00PM

Place: Online virtual meeting via Skype

Meeting called by: Calvin Lo

Attendees: Ogulcan Gol

Objective: To more research and thought about additional questions relevant to our survey and remove questions that were redundant.

Agenda:

12:30 PM        Carefully review questions that were not significant in our survey.

12:45 PM        Added questions about engagement in lectures.

1:30 PM          Thought about rationale and added questions about chairperson

3:30 PM          Meeting adjourned.

 

Date: December 5, 2014

Time: 8:30 PM to 10:00 PM

Place: Online virtual meeting via Skype

Meeting called by: Calvin Lo

Attendees: Ogulcan Gol, Rosa Cedano

Objective: To create a revised survey based on our sources and start developing new questions.

Agenda:

8:35 PM          Added new questions based on new research.

9:00 PM          Went over our deliverables.

9:15 PM          Finalized our Survey

9:25 PM          Finalized the rationale and posted it on OpenLab.

9:17 PM          Briefly discuss our next steps to start our first draft of the final write up

10:00 PM        Meeting Complete.

 

Date: December 6, 2014

Time: 2:30 PM to 4:00 PM

Place: Online virtual meeting via Skype

Meeting called by: Calvin Lo

Attendees:  Rosa Cedano

Objective: To start the first draft of our write up and finish up the introduction section.

Agenda:

2:35 PM          Briefly review what content should be included in the write up.

3:00 PM          Begin to do our introduction.

3:30 PM          Review our deliverables.

3:55 PM          Finished up the introduction.

4:00 PM          Meeting Complete

 

Date: December 6, 2014

Time: 8:30 PM to 10:00 PM

Place: Online virtual meeting via Skype

Meeting called by: Calvin Lo

Attendees: Ogulcan Gol, Rosa Cedano

Objective: To start working on the body section such as data analysis, methods and results.

Agenda:

8:35 PM          Started writing the method section.

9:20 PM          Stated working on the data analysis sections.

9:15 PM          Carefully analyzed the rationale of our questions.

9:25 PM          Created a cover page and table of contents.

9:17 PM          Updated the annotated bibliography.

10:00 PM        Meeting Complete

 

Date: December 7, 2014

Time: 2:30 PM to 4:00 PM

Place: Online virtual meeting via Skype

Meeting called by: Calvin Lo

Attendees: Ogulcan Gol

Objective: Continued working on the body such as data analysis, methods, and results.

Agenda:

2:30 PM          Edited introduction and data analysis.

3:30 PM          Edited the Methods sections.

4:00 PM          Meeting Complete

 

Date: December 8, 2014

Time: 8:30 PM to 11:30 PM

Place: Online virtual meeting via Skype

Meeting called by: Calvin Lo

Attendees: Ogulcan Gol, Rosa Cedano

Objective: To finish up the body of the first draft of our final write up and start working on the appendices.

Agenda:

8:30 PM          Review what we have done so far and what we need to do moving forward.

9:00 PM          Further revise introduction and background.

9:40 PM          Started to create and organize the appendix.

10:20PM         Finished up our methods and data analysis

11:30PM         Meeting complete

Date: December 9, 2014

Time: 2:30 PM to 4:30 PM

Place: Online virtual meeting via Skype

Meeting called by: Calvin Lo

Attendees: Ogulcan Gol

Objective: To write the conclusion section and create graphs of our results.

Agenda:

2:30 PM          Started working on the graphs.

3:30 PM          Started writing the conclusion section.

4:30PM           Meeting complete

 

Date: December 9, 2014

Time: 8:30 PM to 11:30 PM

Place: Online virtual meeting via Skype

Meeting called by: Calvin Lo

Attendees: Ogulcan Gol, Rosa Cedano

Objective: To finish our first draft of the final write up and submit it to Dropbox

Agenda:

8:30 PM          Carefully review all the sections of our write up.

9:00 PM          Finish working up on the graph.

9:30 PM          Started to adding and editing everything in one document.

10:10PM         Finished up the Minutes and Agenda, Progress Report section of the appendix.

11:00PM         Submit our first draft of final write up.

11:30PM         Meeting complete.

 

Calvin, Ogulcan and Rosa Rationale for Survey

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Calvin, Ogulcan, Rosa

There are many surveys about student experience at any educational institution. However, most of these surveys are very broad and don’t focus on empowering students to express themselves fully. Most of the time students don’t give the most candid answers and often times they can be quite biased. Our survey aims to identify what aspects of faculty matters the most to students at City Tech and aspects of faculty the school lacks. From the responses, we hope to gain a bigger picture on what students are satisfied with in terms of faculty and what the faculty needs to further improve on.

There were numerous revisions that we went through in order to achieve the correct focus for our survey. In the beginning, our intention was to create a survey purely to evaluate the effectiveness of professors similar to how ratemyprofessor, ratemyteachers or operates. However, the problem that existed was that the feedback and ratings that students give to professors are too, subjective, too general, and the data that we were to receive would not be accurate and would not really want to measure what we intended it to.

Our second revision was focused on student satisfaction on different aspects of the school such as education, faculty and services. However, the problem that we encountered was that there were too many variables to take into account. Therefore, it made the survey too lengthy for students and it was too similar to already existing surveys such as CUNY AIR and the NSSE. We did not want to create an inferior survey that would measure close to the same thing. Another obstacle we encountered with it was that we always asked ourselves what was the purpose? This made it really difficult to proceed with this revision.

Going back to the drawing board for a new direction with our project, we researched on teacher evaluation surveys, what they measure, what they intend to measure, and why they aren’t as effective as they can be, and potential solutions to these problems. What we wanted to do was to create a new version of the City Tech teacher evaluation survey but because of political reasons, were not able to fully pursue it and have it be the main focus of our project.

What we have now is a survey with open ended questions with flexible answers that asks questions that pertain to faculty. How this differs from the original ideas we had is that the questions are much more meaningful, and they are much more specific. What we hope to achieve from the data is to find out what are the more important elements in City Tech for students, aspects in faculty that the school needs and can improve on, and find a trend in the overall satisfaction of faculty.

Moving on to the rationale, we want to know the relationship between students and faculty. Does faculty really have respect for students? Do they affect how you get your education at City Tech? Are faculty there to help you when you need it the most? Each one of our questions will specifically target the faculty and how to improve on it.

The first question asks about the most important thing a student has to city tech? This question is important in our project because this is the introductory part of the survey. It will help connect to the other questions we will ask.

The second question in our survey ask about what matters to you the most about instructional staff at City Tech? This question is important to our survey because it will help us as well as the faculty members to find out what are the strengths and weakness aspects on their staff. This will give an idea on what can the faculty staff improve.

The third question asks the students how does the faculty affect the courses you register at City Tech? This is a huge question because faculty plays a huge role in students academic careers. Students want the right professor for their classes. There are professors who have full respect to students and some have none. Our survey will basically identify the elements behind it.

The fourth question we ask student what they think the faculty lacks? As we already know the availability, promptness, teaching practices as well as good communication with the students  are primary responsibilities of some of the faculty members, therefore the intention with this question is to get a sense of which of those duties needs to be improve and from there figure out ways to make it more efficient.

Our fifth question asks what would students like to see improved about the faculty in City Tech.This question will help us see what is the main issue between students and faculty.

Our sixth question asks how satisfied you are with faculty in City Tech. This question will help us to create a virtual representation and get a comprehensive idea of how students feel about the faculty in general.

The final question will be a question that will ask the student to describe what will be their ideal faculty member. This is the question that will give us the biggest understanding on what aspects are the most important and have the most impact on a student.

 

Progress Report #4 Calvin, Ogulcan, Rosa

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11/26/14 – 12/2/14

Immediately after the discussion we had with Professor Belli on 11/26/14, we needed to figure out what we wanted to do with our project and get a consensus. We had two options which were to continue with our project but change the direction again to dissect teacher evaluation surveys and explain why they aren’t effective as they potentially can be, or, to change the topic of our project completely to something along the lines of knowing your computer and assembling one for people that are technologically challenged.

We decided to stick with our original project but change the direction of it yet again. We are very desperate on time so we definitely did not want to create more work for ourselves writing a new proposal, do additional research on the new topic and then create new annotated bibliographies from it.

Our consensus was to embrace the idea that the professor gave us which was to discuss why teacher evaluation surveys aren’t effective and how we can improve it. Eventually, we want to create our version of it after doing enough research.

After the Skype meeting we had on 11/30/14, we started researching on teacher evaluations and listing potential sources to use for our annotated bibliography. We also started brainstorming on how to classify some of the questions on other CUNY student teacher evaluation surveys. From there, it would give us better criteria on how to create a more effective survey based on the research that we have done.

During the meeting we had with Professor Belli on 12/2/14, we learned that we can’t recreate and improve the student teacher evaluation survey that we had originally planned to serve as our main focus for the project due to political reasons. As an alternative, we discussed some new possibilities for our project and brainstormed a few example questions to put on our survey. We also discussed what we need to accomplish by next class and by the end of the week. We also went over some of the deliverables for our project to gain a better perspective of the components that are included in our final project.

The Skype meeting that we held later in the evening went over all that things we discussed during the meeting with Professor Belli and composing a few questions that will hopefully be within the realm of what Professor Belli suggested to us. Our main priority right now is to have a draft of the survey, obtain results from our classmates and have Professor Belli review it to see if were headed in the right direction or not. We all hope that this will be the last time we have to change our project as we are running out of time and our overall morale for the project is dissipating.

Meeting Agenda #3 Calvin, Ogulcan, Rosa, Agenda

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Agenda #3

Meeting with Prof. Belli (1)

Date: November 26, 2014

Time: 2:15 PM to 3:00 PM

Place: Prof. Belli’s Office

Meeting called by: Calvin

Attendees: Rosa

 

Objective:  To discuss the new direction of our survey and have a clear point on what are our deliverables and how we can make our survey concentrate in one specific subject.

Agenda:

2:15 PM           Careful evaluation of our project.

2:30 PM           A few alternatives to concentrate our project on.

2:45 PM           Discuss the new direction and clarifying the steps to take for our survey.

3:00 PM           Meeting complete.

 

Skype Meeting (1)

Date: November 30, 2014

Time: 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM

Place: Online virtual meeting via Skype

Meeting called by: Calvin

Attendees: Ogulcan, Rosa

 

Objective:  To discuss the new direction of our survey and to find more sources that approach our new content.

Agenda:

7:30 PM           Discuss our previous meeting with Prof. Belli.

7:40 PM           Discuss the new direction of our survey.

10:10 PM         Discuss the new direction to do research on.

8:00 PM           Do research on “Students Evaluation of Teaching Effectiveness” to add it in our Annotated bibliographies and to determine what questions should be on the survey.

9:15 PM           Send an email to Prof. Belli of our progress.

9:30 PM           Meeting complete

 

Meeting with Prof. Belli  (2)

Date: December 2, 2014

Time: 1:45 PM to 2:10 PM

Place: Prof. Belli’s Office

Meeting called by: Ogulcan

Attendees: Calvin

 

Objective:  To discuss the general direction of our project and have a clear sense of our deliverables.

Agenda:

1:45 PM           Discuss the issues with using the City Tech Teacher student evaluation survey.

1:50 PM           Discuss what we did after the previous meeting with Professor Belli.

1:55 PM           Establish what we need to accomplish by next class and by the end of the week.

2:00 PM           Clarify our objectives with the new survey and list all deliverables for the project.

2:10 PM           Meeting adjourned

 

Skype Meeting (2)

Date: December 2, 2014

Time: 8:50 PM to 10:00 PM

Place: Online virtual meeting via Skype

Meeting called by: Calvin

Attendees: Ogulcan, Rosa

Objective:  To create a new survey base on our sources and start developing new questions.

Agenda:

8:55 PM           Discuss our previous meeting with Prof. Belli.

9:00 PM           Quick overview of our deliverables.

9:15 PM           Scan “Students Evaluation of Teaching” survey.

9:17 PM           Review the Students Evaluation of Teaching survey.

9:17 PM           Developed new questions for the new survey based on what Calvin and Ogulcan discussed with Professor Belli.

10:00 PM         Meeting Complete.

Calvin, Ogulcan and Rosa Revised Proposal

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What we propose for our final collaborative project is to create a survey given to students that will help reveal why the school’s graduation rate is so abysmal and why the transfer rate is so high. How we plan to approach this problem is to create a series of strategic questions that will ultimately show some sort of correlation that will assess these areas.

To proceed, we know that we have to take into account the vast amount of factors such as ethnicity, income, age, possible dependents, family matters, and  5 point scale questions that will ask about the satisfaction of education, facilities, and school services such as job placement help, tutoring, etc. We will also incorporate a short paragraph box for students to add any other relevant information or additional comments. We hope that with a large enough sample size; we will be able to reveal some sort of pattern.

We estimate that if the person seriously took the time to rationalize about each question, it will take anywhere from 20-45 minutes to complete the survey. To some, we know that it might be a bit lengthy but we want to be as thorough as possible with our questions and expect candid answers.

We know that our project will be compelling because it will provide valuable insight about the schools quality of education, satisfaction of student services, and effectiveness of classes through the feedback of students. With the results, we hope that we can build around these areas to improve the school’s statistics. It is important for the course because it will involve collaborating with other students in the class and most importantly will not be possible without the help of our classmates and students in the school.

Moving forward is our conceptualization of the project. Our project is broken up into multiple components: the questionnaire, the results, visual representation and a description of our project, a flyer to gain publicity, and we derived each question.

Some of the required research that we will need to do is to first look at similar surveys and how we can modify it to fit our own survey. We understand that our project isn’t the first to accomplish the same topic, so we need to look at others and understand the reasoning and relevancy. Most importantly and where the bulk of our research will reside is research what factors might determine a school’s graduation rate and transfer rate. Following up on that, we need to do research on what facilities, services other schools have that ours do not possess to see if there is some sort of correlation. We also need to learn how to plot our data for a visual representation which will probably be the most challenging part of this project.

For the division of labor, there isn’t an absolute definitive task that each member will administer. However, if there were tasks that each member will focus more on, Rosa will compose the questions, Ogulcan will talk about the rationale behind the questions, and Calvin will create the visual representation.  We will all contribute together in doing research for all the components of our project and getting exposure for our survey. We will ask class mates, clubs to participate to get as large of a sample size as possible.

Our methods of communication will be through phone, Skype, emails and setting up group meetings outside of class. This includes a well balanced basis where we have a combination of synchronous and asynchronous communication.

We will learn how to communicate verbally with others and with each other from this project. We will learn if our hypothesis is true or not. We will learn how to be better team associates and how to work in a collaborative environment.

This is what we hope to achieve with the given time frame that we are given. We will constantly make iterations as we see fit to help improve usability and accuracy of what we aim to provide.

Calvin, Ogulcan and Rosa Progress Report #1

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This week, we had plethora of synchronous and asynchronous communication that discussed about the direction of our project. To start off, after our meeting with Professor Belli, we were disgruntled about the situation with our final project. We didn’t know if we wanted to start from scratch with a new topic or continue with our existing one.

After emailing Professor Belli and getting her feedback, we decided to go with our existing project but take it in a different direction. We went through a total of 5 Skype conversations lasting 2 hours, 1 hour, 45 minutes, 30 minutes and 1 hour respectively. We also texted each other throughout the week to keep in touch when to have Skype conversations and the schedules of all the group members.

Once we figured out the direction that we wanted to take our project in, we delegated which items each person had to do research on. The items that were assigned to each person were: Rosa will do research on transfer rate, Ogulcan will do research on graduation rate and Calvin will do research on similar educational surveys and determine which questions are asked and could be relevant to the project.

Calvin, Ogulcan and Rosa Annotated Bibliography

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“AIR Home.” AIR. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2014.

This website provides information about all types of research that are conducted in the university. It stipulates that the research report presented is conducted on a semester basis and therefore all information is up to date. One of the most important data this website acquire is the City Tech data, which include surveys as well as  graduation and retention rates and a wide data overview where we can see on details where the school stand on. This website will help us to make our survey more efficient. Any improvement that can be done on the data should aim at improving the scope as the data is already up to date.

Allen, Grove. “See What It Takes To Get Into City Tech.” About Education. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2014.

The article provides information on the student data collected between 2012 and 2013 which provide a summary of City Tech. It presents the transfer out rate as 40% with the first year retention rate being 77%. The data is collected from National center for educational statistics which makes available data related to education in the U.S. This website is important as it provides numerical details of all the information on transfers required. This information may help us to develop questions related to our transfer rate so we can analyze the main reason why the school is getting high transfer rate.

Brckalorenz, Allison, Robert M. Gonyea, and Angie Miller. Updating the National Survey of Student Engagement: Analyses of the NSSE 2.0 Pilots (n.d.): n. pag. Web. 08 Nov. 2014.

This research journal explains about goals and purposes of the NSSE update and the new pilot instruments used to assess student engagement in educational practices. It also explains the rationale behind the pilot instruments, the methods of analyzing the pilot instruments and the results of the pilot analyses. The pilot instruments improve certain properties of measurements and eliminate outdated content. Some of these include teaching practices, technology usage, diverse perspectives and learning strategies. The components that we deem is relevant for our project are the “engagement indicators” such as Experiences with Faculty, Diverse Interactions, High Impact Practices, Campus Environment, and Demographic Items. By doing more research on some of these “engagement indicators” it may well lead to graduation rates and transfer rates.

Koebler, Jason. “Community College Attendance Up, But Graduation Rates Remain Low.” US News. U.S.News & World Report, 21 Apr. 2012. Web. 11 Nov. 2014.

This article explains why students cannot graduate from 2 year colleges or transfer from 2 year colleges to a 4 year college and what is the problem for this dilemma. The article tells how students are enrolling in college but cannot end up finishing or even transferring out. For most of the last century, community colleges were designed to expand students’ access to higher education. But in recent years, they’ve been asked to put unemployed Americans back to work. According to the article, less than half of students who enter a community college graduate or transfer to a four-year college within six years. This is important for our group project because these statistics can be used as a resource for explaining our concept of why colleges have such low graduation rates.

Kuh, George D. The National Survey of Student Engagement: Conceptual Framework and Overview of Psychometric Properties (n.d.): n. pag. Web. 08 Nov. 2014.

The research journal breaks down the content of the NSSE (Nation Survey of Student Engagement) Project and Questionnaire which is designed to assess whether students are engaged in optimal educational practices.  The research also shows the outcome if students emphasize good educational practices which lead to focused faculty, staff, better curriculum and a better college experience. The journal also goes over the items of the survey, and discovers whether the items are relatively stable from one year to the next. The research journal is composed of multiple components that detail the framework and structure of the NSSE. It also provides tables, correlations and graphs to give a visual representation of its findings. By acknowledging the rationale behind certain items within the survey, we can better understand which items will pertain to our project.

Moldoff, David K. “Top 10 Reasons Why Students Transfer.” College Transfer. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2014.

The website provides information as to why students might opt to transfer from one institution to another. It identifies 10 reasons why students transfer. A few mentioned are financial circumstances in search for lower paying schools, social circumstances that involve the type of people that a person relates with in the institution, and If the students switch their majors and the current school does not have that major, they are forced to transfer and a few more.  The website is important for this study as it provides the possible reasons why a student might want to transfer. Using the above reasons, the school can work to mitigate the possibility of a student transferring by providing suitable conditions and facilities.

 

 

Ritz, Glenda. “Graduation Rate Methodology and Definitions.” Indiana Department of Education. Glenda Ritz, Dec.-Jan. 2011. Web. 11 Nov. 2014.

 

This article explains how the graduation rate is calculated. Graduation rates are the percentage of students who graduate from an educational institution. According to the article, the general formula for graduation rate is the number of students graduating divided by the number of students. Graduation rates are important because it shows how committed schools are to graduating their students. Schools with high graduation rates have fewer students who fail in school and more students earning a degree. The way it works is first the college determines the amount of students who are graduating. Then they determine who entered as freshmen, and then add students who transferred to the school plus subtract the students who transferred out. Finally they divide the number of students graduating by the number of students in the graduating class. This is important for our topic because it shows why the schools have such low graduation rates. We want to discover the major problem as to why these rates are so low.

Turkle, Sherry. “The Flight From Conversation.” Summary

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In her article “The Flight From Conversation” (2012), Sherry Turkle discusses a technological world we are now living in and a way it affects our communication. S. Turkle has studied technologies of mobile connection about 15 years, and has found that mobile phones have changed not only the we behave, but also our personalities. Being constantly connected with one another, in fact we are trying to hide ourselves from an actual communication. We are living in a technological world where people fear to have real conversations. Technology allows us to keep people at right distance, not too far, but not too close. E-mails, instant massages, posts in Facebook and “tweets” in Twitter cannot replace conversation, but they are taking more and more space in our lives.Technology makes us expect fast answer, while face-to-face conversation teaches us to be patient to a companion. Moreover, in the process of conversation with others we learn our personality. Technology takes away this possibility of self-reflection, instead it offers  to present ourselves in a way we want to be, but not in a way we truly are. It makes us believe that our retouched voices, faces and bodies are more appealing for others than our real personalities.In a world where we unlearned how to listen to each other, people tend to consider machines  as those who care about them. A boy wishes he could talk to an artificial intelligence program about dating, instead of talking to his father. Others hope that Siri (a digital assistant) will become more advanced, so that “she” will be more like a friend for them. In conclusion, S.Turkle states that the constant connection is completely differ from face-to-face conversation, and, in fact can make us feel more lonely.

Works cited

Turkle, Sherry. “The Flight From Conversation.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 21 Apr. 2012. Web. 13 Oct. 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/opinion/sunday/the-flight-from-conversation.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0