Research Critique: the Freshman Seminar
Research Critique: The Freshman Seminar and Academic Success of At-Risk Students Authors Potts, Glenn; Schultz, Brian
Importance of the Problem Attention to student retention and success remains a significant priority among universities across the globe. Trends to support academic success programs among freshman that increase second year persistence and timely graduation at postsecondary institutions continue to be adopted. As more states implement funding based funding, campuses have a more targeted focus and have increased attention on student retention and completion rates. The increase in accountability has been enforced in many states, at the same time campuses are adjusting to significant decreases in state funding. Campuses of all types and sizes are being pushed to “do less…with less better”. In this article, researchers review the goals to increase student retention while developing effective learning communities among academic colleges.
Research Design Used While the research reviewed underlying assumptions and perspectives they provided an experimental and comparative review of the subjects that was manipulated by conditions. Participants were assigned conditions in a variety of ways, 100 entering business students were placed into ten random cohorts. In addition, 131 incoming freshmen were placed into a freshman seminar taught by faculty within the college. Several students were removed due to scheduling issues. Several control measures were implemented including: small, academic cohorts within the college of business, each ten person cohort shared a set of three common courses, a required one-hour semester long Freshman Seminar. The longitudinal, eight semester study reviewed retention rates, grade point averages, and graduation rates.
Review of Literature
While student retention and academic success are not new areas of research in higher education, in an effort to increase accountability more focus on demographic variables
Importance of the Problem Attention to student retention and success remains a significant priority among universities across the globe. Trends to support academic success programs among freshman that increase second year persistence and timely graduation at postsecondary institutions continue to be adopted. As more states implement funding based funding, campuses have a more targeted focus and have increased attention on student retention and completion rates. The increase in accountability has been enforced in many states, at the same time campuses are adjusting to significant decreases in state funding. Campuses of all types and sizes are being pushed to “do less…with less better”. In this article, researchers review the goals to increase student retention while developing effective learning communities among academic colleges.
Research Design Used While the research reviewed underlying assumptions and perspectives they provided an experimental and comparative review of the subjects that was manipulated by conditions. Participants were assigned conditions in a variety of ways, 100 entering business students were placed into ten random cohorts. In addition, 131 incoming freshmen were placed into a freshman seminar taught by faculty within the college. Several students were removed due to scheduling issues. Several control measures were implemented including: small, academic cohorts within the college of business, each ten person cohort shared a set of three common courses, a required one-hour semester long Freshman Seminar. The longitudinal, eight semester study reviewed retention rates, grade point averages, and graduation rates.
Review of Literature
While student retention and academic success are not new areas of research in higher education, in an effort to increase accountability more focus on demographic variables