Essay On At-Risk Prevention Study

Designing an At-Risk Prevention Study using Supplemental Instruction

1. Introduction

a. Certain groups of students in college today are at much higher risk of course failure and drop out than others. According to Tough “Who Gets to Graduate” two big risk factors in college retention and graduation are education (SAT) and the student’s family income.

b. The SAT scores are likely to predict college graduation because somehow it showed if the student is ready for college. However, a poor student with high SAT scores is less likely to graduate compared with a rich student with low SAT scores because the student familial income is more influential than the SAT scores.

c. One intervention from the article used at universities to address college failure and dropout of at-risk students is a student success program that follow the Texas Interdisciplinary Plan (TIP) model that offer small classes, peer mentoring, extra tutoring help, engaged faculty advisers and community-building exercises.

d. The hypothesis being addressed in the study is that high-achieving, low income students might make it into college, but they aren’t graduating at the rate that wealthy students are.

2. Method

a. (i) The participants are the students in Psy 102 in City College

of New York. The target population is the at-risk students in the class. The measures that would be used to define it operationally are students who are receiving grades of C’s and below. The participants for each group are going to be recruit through posters, signs, emails and notifications on blackboard. The population should be sampled randomly to avoid any bias.
a. (ii) In order to address Dr. Steph’s concerns about reluctance of at-risk students to participate it will be voluntary for those with C’s and below. I will have three groups. These groups consist of at-risk students who attend SI more than the half of sessions, and at-risk students who attend SI less than the half of sessions, at-risk students who do not attend SI (control group). I will recruit as many as possible students that fit in any group and then I will balance the groups. The assignment of participant to groups will be depending if the student meet the requirements for the group.
b. (i) The SI intervention used in the experimental group will be a 30-minute class. Since there are three groups, there is one control group. The control group is the at-risk students who do not attend. The two experimental groups are the at-risk students – those who attend SI more than the half of sessions, and at-risk students who attend SI less than the half of sessions. A video for at-risk student should be shown during one SI session about how PSY 102 students somehow face academic adversities in their first semester, causing them to lose motivation in obtaining that degree, but they determination helped them to obtain a four-year degree. After the students in the video give their testimonies, they will explain how they got back up, resulting in a psychological imprint in the SI students’ mind. They will leave the SI session subconsciously knowing that they too can succeed through academic adversities.
b.

(II) The three variables: (1)TA visits, (2)outside work, and (3)inconsistency of attendance in SI sessions can be controlled by assigning one mandatory TA visit per test. This would prioritize the students outside work and schedule strategically their workload. In addition, the inconsistency of attendance in SI could be controlled by the possibility of rewrite papers. Two other variables that need to be controlled in the study is the amount of weekly homework turned in and extra credit completion. The amount of weekly homework turned in could be low because the at-risk students should have to complete these assignments in the SI sessions. The extra credit completion should be encouraging to be complete in the SI

sessions.
c. The dependent variable could be define by the grades the at-risk student receives in quizzes, exams, and fun papers. Three possible beneficial measures that can happen to an at-risk student is a more confident understanding of the material. Another benefit can be that the at-risk student scores higher than usual on quizzes and exams. A third benefit can be that the at-risk student visits their TA more often.
d. The independent variable is the assistance to SI sessions. The control variables are the material, book, rubric, tests, homework and quizzes.

3. Result
a. A statistical test can be performed to measure the scores between the experimental groups and the control group. The difference can be calculated by finding the range of scores from those at-risk who attended SI sessions and those at-risk who did not attend SI sessions.
b. The variation between groups can be calculated through standard deviation. The variance must be calculated by taking each difference of all groups, squaring it, then averaging the results.
c. Statistical significance shows that an experiment results could occur by chance or by a specific cause. For example, if the statistical significance is weak, it is less likely due to chance. What would lead me to conclude that the groups are statistically significant if the at-risk students who attend SI sessions score B’s or above compared to at-risk students who did not attend the SI sessions, who still score C’s and below.
4. Conclusion
a. Dr. Steph would not be correct because the students she asked were not out of a random sample from at-risk students. Perhaps, these at-risks students had extraneous variables that were not controlled. This cannot be carried out for the entire at-risk population because the extraneous variables were not measured, such as outside work, class schedule, free time, disabilities, etc.
b. The at-risk students have a much better course performance than the comparison students because there were only two volunteers compared to the size of the population of the comparison group. These two volunteer students probably had more personal learning from the pilot study.
c. Considering the counterclaim that SI had nothing to do with the difference between groups in the pilot study, three extraneous variables that may have been the real source of this difference are student’s parents income, student’s social responsibilities and student’s willing to learn.
d. Recommendations that should be made to improve Dr. Steph’s pilot study is to increase the number of students through random sample. A large experimental group is needed along with a larger control group.