Action Research Blog Week 4

To date, I have received no peer comments; however, as I review other plans, I think that my focus/emphasis on technology may need to be increased.  Because most of my peers are K-12 employees, college graduation rates may not be so relevant.

I do plan modify the plan to increase student, faculty and staff utilization of the degree audit feature in our student portal. In preliminary discussions with graduation staff indicates they continued to use paper degree plans to audit and award degrees. Although we have had web-based CAPP for several years now, staff preferred the “old way.” I will need to add training to build confidence and capacity for the “practitioners” and then included academic advisors, faculty advisors and finally students.  Practitioners will find the time to degree and online course substitutions will save time; advisors can use the feature to discuss the degree plan options and the consequences (good and bad) if a student changes their major; and faculty advisors can leverage the feature in advising sessions with students.

Inclement weather and conference schedules prevented an in-person meeting with my site supervisor this week; however, we have been in contact via phone and email.  I discussed my concern regarding the need to emphasize technology innovation into the plan.  He encouraged me to explore increasing the utilization of the degree audit feature in the student portal…and reminded me that my original internship plan included technology innovations. 

We did discuss how to introduce the initiative with the staff during the Student Affairs update on Friday.  He encouraged me to focus on the positive and share simple math and simple solutions to maintain a laser focus on the graduation rate.  The most simple math: for every 19 students in the IPEDS cohort that graduate with 150% of their degree plan increase the rate by 1%. The most simple solution: automated degree audit.

This summer we began focusing on the graduation rate, so my mentor asked me to determine how much we have impacted the rate thus far with only the graduation staff focused on the initiative. While we still have time to impact the 2010 rate, to date it has increased by 3.9% from 2009 (13% to 16.9%). Our goal of doubling that 2009 rate may not be impossible. One student at a time.