Effectiveness of Online Advising on Honors Student Retention and Engagement
Pages 51 - 67
Abstract
Academic advising is an important component of a student's education, and more often universities are turning to technology to aid in this task. This paper presents a case study of an online advising system that complements a university degree audit system by providing honors students and advisors up-to-date details on individual progress towards completing the honors curriculum and on the level of engagement in the honors co-curricular programming. By leveraging the features of Google Apps for Education, this advising system allows faculty and students to securely and easily access accurate information during schedule planning, and frees up honors staff from repetitive tasks allowing them to dedicate more time to helping students plan their educational journey. Effectiveness of this new system is measured by accuracy of information, time spent by the administration in maintaining the system, student retention and completion of the honors curriculum, and student engagement in honors co-curricular programming. The Google Script described in this paper can be adapted for mail-merge and automatic web page generation in several educational settings beyond academic advising.
References
[1]
Burton, J., & Wellington, K. 1998. The O'Banion Model of Academic Advising: An Integrative Approach. NACADA Journal, 182, 13-20.
[2]
Campbell, K. C., & Fuqua, D. R. 2008. Factors Predictive of Student Completion in a Collegiate Honors Program. Journal of College Student Retention, 102, 129-153.
[3]
Cosgrove, J. R. 2004. The Impact of Honors Programs on Undergraduate Academic Performance, Retention, and Graduation. Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council, 52, 45-53.
[4]
Elias, K. & Drea, C. 2013. The Co-Curricular Record: Enhancing a Postsecondary Education. College Quarterly, 16 1.
[5]
Extending Google Sheets. n. d. Retrieved from https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/sheets
[6]
Fierro, H., & Lan, I. 2012. Google Developers Tutorial: Simple Mail Merge. Retrieved from https://developers.google.com/apps-script/articles/mail_merge?hl=en
[7]
Florida International University Honors College. 2015. Honors College Citizenship Requirements. Retreived from http://honors.fiu.edu/students/policies/citizenship/
[8]
Goodstein, L., & Szarek, P. 2013. They come but do they finish? Program completion for honors students at a major public university, 1998-2010. Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council, 131, 85-104.
[9]
Google Apps for Work. Compliance. n.d. Retrieved from https://support.google.com/work/answer/6056694?hl=en&ref_topic=6055719&vid=1-635770607955315542-2268357996
[10]
Google for Education. n.d. Retrieved from https://www.google.com/edu/trust/
[11]
Gray, T. 2010. A tale of two clouds. EDUCAUSE Quarterly, 332, 3.
[12]
Holland, A. A. 2012. Honors retention: The persistence of juniors and seniors in the honors program through examination of commitment to completion of honors thesis Honors Scholar Theses Paper 247. Retrieved from http://digitalcommons.uconn.edu/srhonors_theses/247
[13]
Huggett, K. D. 2004. Advising in undergraduate honors programs: A learner-centered approach. NACADA Journal, 241&2, 75-87.
[14]
Katz, R., Goldstein, R., Yanosky, R., & Rushlo, B. 2010. Cloud computing in higher education. Proceedings of EDUCAUSE 10.
[15]
Leonard, M. J. 1996. The next generation of computer-assisted advising and beyond. NACADA Journal, 161, 47-50.
[16]
Leonard, M. J. 2008. Advising delivery: Using technology. In Gordon, V. N., Habley, W. R., & Grites, T. J. et al . Eds., Academic Advising: A comprehensive handbook 2nd ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
[17]
Maguire, M. 2015. Google Sheets Programming With Google Apps Script: Your Guide to Building Spreadsheet Applications in the Cloud. Lean Publishing. Retrieved from http://leanpub.com/googlespreadsheetprogramming
[18]
Mutkoski, S. 2014. Cloud computing, regulatory compliance, and student privacy: A guide for school administrators and legal counsel. The John Marshall Journal of Information Technology and Privacy Law, 303, 511-533.
[19]
O'Banion, T. 2012. Updating the Traditional Academic Advising Model for the 21st Century. Community College Journal, October/November issue, 42-47.
[20]
Student Affairs Leadership Council. 2009. Co-curricular Transcripts: Custom Research Brief. Washington DC: The Advisory Board Company. Retrieved from http://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/107958.pdf
[21]
Yarbough, D. 2002. The Engagement Model for Effective Academic Advising with Undergraduate College Students and Student Organizations. The Journal of Humanistic Counseling, Education and Development, 411, 61-68.
- Effectiveness of Online Advising on Honors Student Retention and Engagement
Recommendations
EngageCSEdu: CS1 and CS2 Materials for Engaging and Retaining Undergraduate CS Students
SIGCSE '15: Proceedings of the 46th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science EducationHow do you engage students in the computer science classroom? In this Demo Session we will examine this question within the context of EngageCSEdu (http://www.engage-csedu.org), a web-based collection of instructional materials for introductory CS ...
Intention, Transition, Retention: Examining High School Distance E-Learners' Participation in Post-Secondary Education
Studies of student transition to post-secondary education have not examined the transition experiences of students who complete on-line courses as part of their high school curriculum. To address this area of deficit in on-line learning research, in ...
Challenges and Approaches for Data Collection to Understand Student Retention: (Abstract Only)
SIGCSE '18: Proceedings of the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science EducationFor many years, computing faculty have devoted substantial time and energy to the retention of diverse populations. But how are we doing really? The ACM Retention Committee has identified at least 5 populations of interest in tracking student retention: ...
Comments
Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.Information & Contributors
Information
Published In
Publisher
IGI Global
United States
Publication History
Published: 01 April 2016
Author Tags
Qualifiers
- Article
Contributors
Other Metrics
Bibliometrics & Citations
Bibliometrics
Article Metrics
- 0Total Citations
- 0Total Downloads
- Downloads (Last 12 months)0
- Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
Reflects downloads up to 16 Feb 2025