Re: ITracking Lab Users

["Dr. Beth Rapp Young" <byoung@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu>]

anne mullin wrote:

> Another question about using these figures, though, relates to the
> standardized test scores  -- if the lab users already have higher
> scores, how can we make the case that using the lab contributes to their
> higher GPA's in general?

Hmm . . .   Well, first you can congratulate yourselves for successfully
overcoming the myth that only "remedial" students should use your wctr.  :)

Without knowing much about your context, here are some misc thoughts:

Is there some other basis of comparison that you can use to distinguish
between clients and non clients? High school gpa?  Overall college gpa?
Major?

Is there a particular group which is skewing your results?  For example, if
all the fyc teachers require wctr use, and if fyc students make up the
majority of your clients, then your SAT results might be warped by the fyc
population.  You could try excluding that population from your analysis.

Or could you compare the use of your wctr to usage for other student
services?  Maybe high-SAT students are more likely to take advantage of such
services.  If these students are, say, 30% more likely to use student
services, but your usage rate shows only 25% more usage by these students,
you might still have a pretty good usage rate by low-SAT students (did that
make sense?)

Or maybe high SAT scores are not predictive of retention or higher grades at
your institution.  If that is the case, then the SAT scores are irrelevant.

Or you could decide that you need to improve outreach to the "at-risk"
populations (assuming low SAT = "at-risk), and draft a plan for doing so.

Of course, many of these strategies would require even more time-consuming
research!  Sometimes I wish I could hire a full-time statistician.  For
awhile, we had a grad student in cognitive psych investigating these issues
for us--it was heaven.

Beth Young

~~~~~~~~~~
Dr. Beth Rapp Young   Building: LS-616, +1347
Director, University Writing Center Office: 407-823-2853
Assistant Professor, English  Fax: 407-823-3007
University of Central Florida, Orlando Email: byoung@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~byoung

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