I'm not teaching right now, but much of my attention and focus as an administrator is on improving student success, retention, and graduation. Also, as you also know, to these ends the college is in the middle of implementing a new advising model. I'm thinking that these endeavors could possibly be supported by an analysis of our student ePortfolios. For example, we have a huge corpus of student writing in these portfolios related to their academic and career goals. Would this information be useful to an advisor? to a program director?
We also have been attempting, over the past few years, to come up with metrics to "predict" the likelihood of a student completing a degree vs. dropping out - but without much success. Is it possible that looking at /analyzing students' reflections/writings in their first semester's ePortfolio could give us an indication which students might be at more risk?"
I would have to use a textual analysis tool, but am not sure yet if that would be sufficient. Suppose, for example, Wordle or Voyeur indicated that the word "career" was prominent in the reflections/writings of first year students - so I would know that the topic of careers is on their minds. But how would I know what the appearance of that word meant? Does it mean they didn't know what career they wanted, or that having a career (getting a good job) was their primary goal, or what? So it seems the tool would point me in a direction, but another level of analysis would be needed.
Friday, January 10, 2014
Hi Folks: My name is Paul Arcario. I am the provost of LaGuardia Community College. This year I've initiated the Provost's Learning Space - designed to create a community of faculty engaged in exploring topics that can inform and enhance pedagogy and/or scholarship. This year's topic is the "digital humanities." I look forward to learning together with all of you! Paul
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