Work in Progress: Developing a Procedure for Identifying Indicators of "Over-persistence"

Abstract

recently earned her PhD in Engineering and Science Education from Clemson University. She is now the Assistant Coordinator for Clemson's Peer Assisted Learning program. Her research interests include cross-disciplinary teamwork, student development, and program assessment. Rachel received a M.

Development of an Academic Dashboard for Empowering Students to be Adaptive Decision Makers

“…SAT Verbal is more predictive than SAT Math. The results of using Youden's J are consistent with those previously found by regression in [1], with the added benefit that an optimal cutoff point has been identified.…”

“…Using our definition of "overpersisters" as first-time college students who enroll full-time at a university for at least one year and either (i) leave the university without a degree or (ii) are enrolled in the same major for six years and have not graduated [1], we are examining a different method to identify potential indicators of overpersistence. The method we are exploring in the current paper is the use of Youden's J statistic [8] with historical data of Mechanical Engineering (ME) students from our original sample as described in [1]. This sample included 902 full-time, first-time-in-college students who were enrolled at a single institution for more than one calendar year whose first degree-granting major and last major were both ME.…”

“…This sample included 902 full-time, first-time-in-college students who were enrolled at a single institution for more than one calendar year whose first degree-granting major and last major were both ME. There are 11 more students than in [1] due to a programming error in the prior work that excluded students taking exactly 12 hours in their first semester. The study institution has a first-year engineering program that would be categorized as "FYE" by the Chen et al taxonomy [9].…”

“…The first research goal seeks to identify indicators of poor academic fit in engineering majors as well as their corresponding paths of success across multiple institutions. Our work to accomplish this goal has included identifying indicators of overpersistence [1] and how confidence in major choice correlates with major change [2], [3]. Initial indicators of overpersistence in Mechanical Engineering include high school GPA, SAT Verbal score, and college GPA.…”

“…Initial indicators of overpersistence in Mechanical Engineering include high school GPA, SAT Verbal score, and college GPA. While the first term GPA is the most explanatory of the term GPAs, cumulative GPA gains explanatory power with each semester [1]. We have also found that a single item measure of confidence in major choice is a better indicator of whether first-year students will matriculate into their originally intended engineering major from a common first-year engineering program than the Decision-Making Competency Inventory (DMCI) [2], [3].…”