Psychology in the Modern World Essays

Psychology in the Modern World Essays Psychology in the Modern World Essay Psychology in the Modern World Essay Critical Thinking using Psychological Science The Learning Alliance for Higher Education, an educational consulting firm based at the University of Pennsylvania, was hired by City College in 2011 to investigate and make recommendations for improving undergraduate retention and graduation at the College. Even though most City College students receive financial assistance, have decent high school grades, and live at home with their parents – factors that should contribute to good graduation rates – in fact, currently only 7% of students admitted to the College graduate from it in four years. Only 36% graduate in six years. Indeed, roughly half of the students admitted drop out completely within two years. Students who transfer to City College from another school, either inside or outside the CUNY system (e. g. , a CUNY community college), disappear even faster: Half leave the College, and half of those leave by their first year at the College. The goal of Fun Paper #1 is to use your critical thinking skills to evaluate the consultant’s report and consider hypotheses for explaining and improving the low City College graduation rate. We want you to write a paper that considers the strengths and weaknesses of the evidence and arguments, provides interpretations, and reaches your own conclusions using psychological science. Begin by reading the report, which is included at the bottom of this assignment. First, title your paper â€Å"A Critical Examination of Retention and Dropout at City College†. Next: FOLLOW EACH OF THE FOLLOWING FIVE INSTRUCTIONS EXACTLY (The following is a detailed outline on how you should write this paper): Your paper should consist of five paragraphs corresponding to the 5 questions below. DO NOT write an outlined paper: It needs to be in essay format. Within each paragraph, please be clear on which letter you are answering by placing a bold letter in front of the sentences. If you are answering â€Å"1a† place a letter â€Å"a† before the sentence/s. (Here’s an example: The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a summary of a report conducted by City College to make recommendations for student admission to the College. I found several strengths in this report. 1 a. One of the most convincing statements by the report’s author was†¦) 1. Begin the first paragraph of the paper with these sentences: â€Å"The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a report conducted by The Learning Alliance to investigate student retention at City College. I found several findings from this report helpful in illuminating the retention problem. † a. Which combinations of ethnicity and gender are most vulnerable to becoming college dropouts at City College? Which combinations of ethnicity and gender are least vulnerable to becoming college dropouts? Develop one hypothesis for why certain ethnic/gender groupings tend to drop out. (5 pts). b. Describe the correlation between when someone is admitted to the College and the tendency to drop out? Has this correlation increased, decreased, or stayed the same between 2004 and 2006? Suggest one interpretation of this correlation and its trend. (5 pts). c. City College dropout rates appear to depend in part on where someone originally comes from: the city, the state, or outside the country (which could include both the documented and the undocumented). How does where you come from affect dropout? Develop one hypothesis for why place of origin affects retention. (5 pts). 2. Begin the second paragraph of the paper with this sentence: â€Å"The retention problem may be due in part to the background preparation of students for college. † a. Describe the relationship between retention at City College and scores on pre-admission indices such as high school grades and SAT scores. What do these indices and this relationship suggest is one reason why City College students drop out in such great numbers? (5 pts). b. Describe the relationship between retention at City College and the numbers of courses students take and receive credit for each semester. Why would the number of courses taken affect retention? (5 pts). c. Use the relationships you have described in the second paragraph to develop a hypothesis about the role of background preparation for college in explaining dropout. (5 pts). 3. Begin the third paragraph of the paper with these sentences: â€Å"The retention problem may also be due in part to the reasons students come to study at City College, which has a lower retention and graduation rate than other senior colleges within CUNY. For example, many students come to City College to become engineering or pre-med majors. † a. Describe the relationship between students’ preferences for CUNY colleges and retention. (5 pts). b. How do engineering or pre-med majors fare here compared with other majors at the College? (5 pts). c. Describe how student preferences and area of major might jointly explain low retention at City College (hint: return to your hypothesis about background preparation for college). (5 pts). 4. Begin the fourth paragraph of the paper with these sentences: â€Å"One limitation of the report by The Learning Alliance is in the research strategy they used, which focused on associations between retention rates and a set of academic factors such as demographics and performance. † a. Name three variables not considered in this report that you think would have a strong relationship with retention at City College. For each variable, describe how you would collect the data and what relationship to retention you hypothesize. (6 pts). b. Explain the weakness in the research strategy used by The Learning Alliance. Why is it difficult to explain the high dropout rate at City College when relying exclusively on the relationships among variables (6 pts). c. What alternative research strategy would you recommend that obviates the problems of the one used by The Learning Alliance. Why is your recommended research strategy better? (6 pts). 5. Suppose you hypothesize from The Learning Alliance report that the high dropout rate at City College might be alleviated if at-risk students could be identified early with immediate intervention. Bob agrees to test your hypothesis using the current class of students enrolled in PSY 102. You divide students in the class into two groups: (1) Intervention Group: Sections in which the teaching assistants meet individually each week with any student who misses a class or an assignment; and (2) Baseline Group: Sections in which teaching assistants post grades and absences on Blackboard, but don’t meet specially with at-risk students. Begin the final paragraph of the paper with this sentence: â€Å"I have designed a study to test a hypothesis intended ultimately to improve the retention rate at City College. a. Describe the study, including how and when you plan to measure retention and how you plan to control for any preexisting differences between the groups. (6 pts). b. How can you tell whether any improvement in retention in the Intervention Group is due to at-risk students getting more attention from teaching assistants, developing better college learning skills, or som ething else entirely? How would you control for the different alternative explanations? (7 pts). c. Describe the statistical test you would perform to test the difference in retention between the two groups. What is the numerator of your statistical test? The denominator? (7 pts). d. Create a chart in Excel to show what you expect to find. Label the independent and dependent variables. Paste the chart into your fun paper. Write a concluding statement that summarizes your results from the chart and their implications for students entering City College this year. (7 pts). A tenth of your grade will be based on the following: a. Effective written communication (2 pts) b. Critical thinking and logical reasoning ability (2 pts) c. Ability to formulate questions, hypotheses, and research designs (2 pts) d. Proper use of psychological concepts and theories (2 pts) e. Competence in quantitative reasoning and analysis of research findings (2 pts) Due by 5:00 pm on MONDAY, OCTOBER 15th. Late papers will not be accepted. All papers need to be submitted electronically using the Assignment section in Blackboard (click on YOUR SECTION, then click on Course Tools > go to assignments > go to fun papers > click on the link corresponding to Fun Paper #1. Once there, scroll down and where it says â€Å"Attach local file† browse your computer for the finished paper and add it. Then click submit, and you are done). With the exception of the instructed sentences, the entire paper must be in your own words, in essay format and typewritten (double spaced) using Microsoft Word. Quoted, paraphrased, or borrowed sentences or phrases are not allowed. DO NOT USE ANY OF THE TEXT FROM THE LEARNING ALLIANCE REPORT, EVEN IN QUOTES. These will be regarded as plagiarism, which will be penalized by a zero on the assignment and a report filed with the Office of the Academic Integrity Official. Plagiarism software will be used to analyze your paper prior to grading. Do not use external references outside of lecture notes, the retention report, and the textbook. The paper should not exceed 4 pages. [pic] TOWARD UNDERSTANDING PERSISTENCE A Report on Undergraduate Retention at The City College of New York submitted by The Learning Alliance for Higher Education at the University of Pennsylvania April 2011 Undergraduate Retention The Issue The City College of New York (CCNY), concerned about its ability to retain and graduate the students who enter as full-time undergraduates, asked The Learning Alliance to conduct a study of student retention. Just about half of the first-time full-time freshmen leave CCNY before completing a degree, and nearly half of the students who enter as full-time transfer students stop attending before they finish their courses of study. This report examines the factors that contribute to the non-persistence at CCNY. It focuses more specifically on who leaves, when they leave, and what appears to cause them to leave. The Data For the analysis, CCNY provided the records for all 14,428 students who started CCNY as full-time undergraduates in fall 2004 though fall 2009 (Admissions Files). Consisting of data for 9,245 freshmen and 5,183 transfer students, the file includes demographic and admissions information. (See Appendix B for the data elements. ) In addition, CCNY provided academic profiles of all enrolled undergraduates for every semester from fall 2004 through spring 2010 (Academic Files). These files were merged with the Admissions Files so that each entering student has a profile of his or her experience at CCNY. The information in the Academic Files includes grades and credits, among other data. (See Appendix C for data elements. ) A file containing all undergraduates who received bachelor’s degrees from CCNY between spring 2005 and spring 2010 enabled us to flag those who had completed their degrees, and a list of those enrolled in fall 2010 allowed us to flag those who were continuing to pursue a degree. The Analysis The analysis is divided into two parts: freshmen and transfers. For freshmen there is good information about academic preparation, with high school GPA and SAT scores for most incoming students. For transfers there is information about the institutions from which they transferred and the credits1 they carried forward to CCNY. The freshmen analysis comprises matriculating students from fall 2004-2006, while the transfer analysis includes students who entered in fall 2007 as well. In addition to statistical profiles and statistical significance tests of the differences between students who failed to continue or complete their studies and those who did continue or complete their studies, logistic 1As will be discussed later in this report, the transfer credits were not recorded consistently. regression models were built to help quantify the odds of a student with a particular profile failing to be retained. FRESHMEN Highlights Half of all entering freshmen stop attending CCNY. Freshmen who fail to persist tend to do so early: about one-third of the non-persisters are off the rolls in or after the first year, two-thirds of all non-persisters stop attending by the end of the second year. Freshmen who stop attending begin to develop academic problems in the first semester. Those students earn fewer credits on average than persisting students and have significantly lower GPAs on average than those who persist, and particularly those who graduate. The later the admissions phase in which a freshman is admitted, the more likely he or she is to stop attending. Freshmen who chose CCNY as their first choice school are more likely to persist. Freshmen who persist for at least four semesters, but ultimately leave without a degree, attend school part-time in a larger proportion of semesters than do students who continue to persist. Freshmen who select a math-based STEM major (excluding those in the biological sciences) are somewhat more likely to be non-persisters. SAT scores are correlated with academic performance, so it is no surprise that students with lower entering SAT scores, on average, are less likely to persist. Similarly, students with lower high school grade point averages are less likely to persist. General Findings Any freshman that matriculated as a full-time student at CCNY in the fall of 2004, 2005, or 2006 is included in this analysis. Students are considered â€Å"Not Enrolled,† that is, non- persisters, if they did not enroll in fall 2010. If they are included in a list of graduates from 2004 through 2010, then they are considered â€Å"Graduated. Everyone else is â€Å"Still Enrolled. † As Figure 1 shows, more than half of all students who enrolled as freshmen in 2004 and 2005, and nearly half of those who entered in 2006 left CCNY before completing their degrees. Because students tend to take more than four years to complete their programs, the data for the students who entered in 2006 is less complete than the data for 2004 and 2005. It can be expected that a number of those who are still enrolled will be off the rolls before they can graduate. Figure 1. Full-time Freshmen by Status as of Fall 2010 Fall of First Freshman Enrollment | |F2004 |F2005 |F2006 | |Not Enrolled |612 |665 |698 | |Still Enrolled |105 |246 |718 | |Graduated |451 |367 |113 | |Total |1168 |1278 |1529 | |% Non-Persisting |52% |52% |46% | Freshmen who fail to persist tend to leave CCNY early in their academic careers. Among those who leave CCNY, between 8 and 11 percent are gone after just one semester. For example, of the 612 freshmen that entered CCNY in fall 2004, but did not persist, 62 or 10. 1% attended for no more than one semester. At the end of two semesters around one- third of those who ultimately leave are not registered, and after only two years the vast majority- around two-thirds of those who ultimately drop out- are no longer registered. Figure 2. Distribution of Non-Persisting Freshmen by Semesters Attended Before Leaving CCNY Semesters Enrolled Fall of First Freshman Enrollment Cumulative Number No Longer Enrolled | |F2004 |F2005 |F2006 | |1 |62 |55 |77 | |2 |199 |212 |253 | 3 |288 |316 |354 | |4 |406 |439 |484 | |5 or more |612 |665 |698 | Semesters Enrolled Cumulative Percent of All Non-Persisters F2004 F2005 F2006 |1 |10. 1% |8. 3% |11. % | |2 |32. 5% |31. 9% |36. 2% | |3 |47. 1% |47. 5% |50. 7% | |4 |66. 3% |66. 0% |69. 3% | |5 or more |100. 0% |100. 0% |100. 0% | Demographics The demographic profile of freshmen who stop attending reflects the conventional wisdom: men are more likely to be non-persisters than are women, and traditionally underrepresented minorities- black and Hispanic freshmen (who are nevertheless not underrepresented at CCNY)- are more likely to stop attending than are others. The differences between men and women, across ethnic groups, and citizenship, are statistically significant every year. Figure 3A. Percent of Freshmen Who Did Not Persist by Gender Fall of First Freshman Enrollment | |F2004 |F2005 |F2006 | |Gender |Total % Not |Total % Not |Total % Not | | |Freshman Enrolled |Freshman Enrolled |Freshman Enrolled | | |Cohort |Cohort |Cohort | |Female |531 48. % |592 48. 1% |760 43. 7% | |Male |637 55. 9% |686 55. 4% |769 47. 6% | p =