{"id":4492,"date":"2012-07-20T15:38:32","date_gmt":"2012-07-20T21:38:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4492"},"modified":"2012-07-20T15:38:32","modified_gmt":"2012-07-20T21:38:32","slug":"data-mining-and-student-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4492","title":{"rendered":"Data-Mining and Student Success"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An article in the <em>Chronicle of Higher Education <\/em>discusses<a href=\"http:\/\/chronicle.com\/article\/College-Degrees-Designed-by\/132945\/\"> using data-mining techniques for better student advising.<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>One way to ensure that students will reach the finish line is to quickly figure out if they&#8217;ve selected a suitable track. So the Arizona State system front-loads key courses. For example, to succeed in psychology, a student must perform well in statistics.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Kids who major in psych put that off, because they don&#8217;t want to take statistics,&#8221; Ms. Capaldi says. &#8220;They want to know, Does their boyfriend love them? Are they nuts? They take all those courses, then they hit statistics and they say, &#8216;Oh, God, I can&#8217;t do this. I can&#8217;t do experimental design.&#8217; And so they&#8217;re in the wrong major. By putting those courses first, you can see if a student is going to succeed in that major early.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Arizona State&#8217;s retention rate rose to 84 percent from 77 percent in recent years, a change that the provost credits largely to eAdvisor.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It might work.<\/p>\n<p>My university has tried all the usual approaches:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Every faculty member must advise some undergraduates (particularly in their first year).<\/li>\n<li>Certain trained faculty advisers will do it and be rewarded with release time.<\/li>\n<li>Specialist staff advisers will do it, freeing up professors to teach.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I think I saw the whole cycle go around and start over again.<\/p>\n<p>As a freshman a<a href=\"http:\/\/www.reed.edu\">t Reed College<\/a> years ago, I was the victim of ineffectual advising. I was assigned to a professor of foreign languages. She was not informed about things outside her department. She just said OK to whatever courses I chose and signed the forms. It was not until my second year that I began to realize that I had made some bad choices in terms of meeting requirements and taking things in sequence. It took me another year to get straightened out and on track.<\/p>\n<p>A more aware human adviser could have helped me sooner. For a university with complicated &#8220;distribution requirements,&#8221; a human adviser plus the data-mining might actually help a lot.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education discusses using data-mining techniques for better student advising. One way to ensure that students will reach the finish line is to quickly figure out if they&#8217;ve selected a suitable track. So the Arizona State system front-loads key courses. For example, to succeed in psychology, a student must [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[137],"class_list":["post-4492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-academia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1as","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":433,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=433","url_meta":{"origin":4492,"position":0},"title":"These should be easy timesThe\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 11, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"These should be easy timesThe semester refuses to let go. The director of composition dumps a file folder of papers on me, which I am to read to help her evaluate one of the part-time faculty.I feel for the instructor, a \"freeway flier,\" someone teaching part-time for miserable Colorado wages\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13495,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13495","url_meta":{"origin":4492,"position":1},"title":"Lifting up Love &#038; Light in North Carolina","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 4, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"A mug with the Pagan triple goddess symbol is pictured at Quantum Soul in Carrboro on Sunday, Oct. 22, 2023. The student newspaper at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, does the annual Pagans-and-witches story but reaches out a little farther to interview a graduate student working in that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3241,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3241","url_meta":{"origin":4492,"position":2},"title":"Oh yes, learn to write","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 6, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Walter Russell Meade on advice for new college students and their parents\u2014if you are on of those, raise your hand. Good stuff, such as \"The real world does not work like school\" and \"Choosing the right courses is more important than choosing the right school.\" It's actually a classic defense\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2726,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2726","url_meta":{"origin":4492,"position":3},"title":"Do You Call Your Professor &#8220;Professor&#8221;?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 4, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"How to address your professor, explained at Inside Higher Ed. (This is the American version.) For those who prefer diagrams to prose, go here: \"The Semiotics of Professor E-mail Signatures.\" It goes both ways. Advice to new doctorate-degree holders: Once you have successfully defended your dissertation, after that initial round\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4030,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4030","url_meta":{"origin":4492,"position":4},"title":"University Courses that I Wish I Could Have Taken","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 4, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Anthropology 666, \"The Anthropology of Shamanism and Occult Experience,\" with Professor Neil Whitehead at Wisconsin. I wonder what the exam questions were like and what sort of papers he assigned.","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":114,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=114","url_meta":{"origin":4492,"position":5},"title":"Pagans in Canada Canada's census\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 12, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Pagans in Canada Canada's census asks questions about religion, and in 2001, slightly more than 21,000 Canadians (median age, 30.4) reported themselves as Pagan and\/or Wicca. Of course, defining \"Pagan\" broadly, I would include the followers of \"Aboriginal spirituality\" as well, which would more than double that number. Statistics are\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4492"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4493,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4492\/revisions\/4493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}