Professor Tonsing is absolutely right. Academic Support does help. We can make a difference to students and now
I can prove it!!! (with the caveat, of course, that I am not a mathematician,
see below).
I am just now compiling our statistics from last year to see
if there is any correlation between what we do and the ultimate success or
failure of our students. Interestingly, because
I was out on maternity leave last spring, I have a control group of sorts to
work with because our office did not see all the students who were flagged as “at
risk” by their first semester grades.
In the past, we have worked with every student (in some
capacity) that has received an unsatisfactory grade (defined here as a C- or
below). Usually we conduct one-on-one meetings with these students and follow a
curriculum that involves a review of outlining and exam taking techniques as
well as many practice hypotheticals and multiple choice questions. But last year we couldn’t see everyone: and it made a difference (by my calculations,
keeping in mind the last time I took a course in statistics was as an
undergraduate!). It really seems (note
the intentional use of the passive voice to take into account my potentially
flawed statistical analysis), that seeing students one-on-one will help keep them
from being placed on academic warning at the end of their first year.
didn’t see one-on-one were on academic warning at the end of the first year as
those we did see. This is significant
because the one-on-one triage the office engaged in involved not seeing those students
who appeared to be at a lower risk for being in academic distress at the end of
the year. That is, we did not see
students who had one unsatisfactory midterm grade as opposed to those who had
an unsatisfactory final grade or more than one unsatisfactory midterm grade. We also saw some students whose GPA’s were in
the automatic dismissal (if it were the end of the year) range.
There are some variables that I could not quantify and include while
doing my analysis. For example, I personally think the student who comes in to
see us with the attitude of, “I messed up, please help me get this right” is
always bound to make more progress than the, “my professors hate me” student. I also could not tell from the numbers if
there were students who were just not capable of doing the work, no matter how much
and what kind of help they were given. But
even so, the numbers really do seem to point to an advantage in meeting with
students individually after the red-flag of a poor grade in the first semester.
Simply put, in the end, the students we saw one-on-one did
better. I agree with Prof. Tonsing that this is a hard
time of year for academic supporters, but get out your pom-poms and get going,
because we really can make a difference!!(ezs)
