ACED 9420 Issues in Adult and Career Education Fall 2004

1. CONCEPT PAPERThe academic success of students enrolled in condensed and full-semester courses at a two-year college: A Mixed-Methods study ACED 9420 Issues in Adult and Career Education Fall 2004

2. Concept of Research • Purpose: To examine the academic success of students enrolled in condensed college courses, and students enrolled in the same course taught for a full semester. • Research design: A mixed-methods examination, with a quantitative portion to determine if there was any statistically significant difference in student academic performance, and a qualitative portion to explore the reasons behind the difference.

3. Concept of Research • Enrollment in condensed and shortened semester courses at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College (ABAC) has steadily increased. • May semester: 15 class sessions over three weeks, each session lasting three hours. • The same academic material taught to the same standard as during a full-length semester, each of the class sessions approximated three of the 50-minute classes. • Popular with students, very successful from viewpoint of grades, failures, and number of students dropping from courses.

4. Concept of Research • Half-semester versions of full-semester courses – called Session A and B. Same course content, same academic standard, only meet twice as often for half the length of a full academic semester. • Anecdotal evidence from instructors report greater student participation in discussions, less absences, higher grades awarded, less failures, and less withdrawals from the courses. There appears to be an equal amount of student satisfaction with these courses.

5. Concept of Research • Establish is whether there is, in fact, greater academic success in these shortened or condensed semesters than in the same course taught for a full semester. • Does student success result from a lessening of academic standards, or a less-rigorous curriculum being presented by the instructors?

6. Concept of Research • Night or weekend courses. These types of courses usually attract the older non-traditional college student and are usually taught by adjunct instructors. These types of courses will not be a part of the study for those same reasons. • Three formats to be examined are those offered to traditional and non-traditional students, on the main college campus, during traditional class hours. • The courses would be taught by the same instructor in each of the three formats.

7. Concept of Research • Assuming the course material to be the same, greater student success in the same course, taught by the same instructor, during condensed-semester time frames, should be the result of student factors or the shortened structure of the course itself. • Three different disciplines would indicate whether student success in any condensed course could be attributed to the subject matter. If a particular subject was academically “harder” than others, it would be expected to retain its “hard” status relative to the other subjects when the course lengths changed.

8. Concept of Research • The participants would be students enrolled in full semester courses, the half-semester “Session A” or “B” courses, and the condensed “May-Mester” at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College. • Students from three different academic disciplines, Math/Science, English, and Social Science. • Courses with a like-number of students enrolled would be selected, without any prior examination of the student demographics in either course. • The students would be administered a basic questionnaire concerning their age and academic background.

9. Concept of Research • Volunteers from each course would be solicited for later qualitative interviews. An equal number of students would be interviewed from each course; at least two students from each course would be selected from the volunteers. • The qualitative data analysis would address student perception of the course and the reason for their academic success during 30 to 60 minute interviews, using phenomenological method to obtain their subjective appraisal of the course experience.

10. Concept of Research • Interviews would attempt to address whether success in a course was related to their age, prior academic experience, other personal factors such as motivation or interest in the subject material, the structure of the course itself, or some other factor which contributed to their academic success. • Of particular interest would be whether the students received the grade they expected to receive in the course, what factors they felt impacted the grade they received in the course, and what factors led to their decision to select the half-semester format for that particular course.

11. Major Unanswered Questions • The first issue of the research design appears to be supported by the literature review - that there is a higher degree of academic success by students enrolled in shortened-semester courses, and that the students received the same course material as presented to students in the same courses taught for the full semester. • One alternative hypotheses is that students enrolled in the shorter courses are better prepared, more experienced, or older than those in the full-semester courses. This subject is the topic of my research in RSCH 9860 this semester.

12. Major Unanswered Questions • The three research hypotheses to be tested this semester are: • Hypothesis 1: Greater academic success of students in half-semester courses is age-related: the older a student is – the greater their academic success (final grade) will be. • Null Hypothesis #1: There is no relationship between age and academic success (final grade) of students in half-semester courses. • Hypothesis #2: Greater academic success of students in half-semester courses is related to previous academic experience: students who have completed or enrolled in more semester hours prior to beginning the half-semester course will receive a higher final grade than those will less previous academic experience. • Null Hypothesis #2: There is no relationship between prior academic experience and academic success (final grade) in a half-semester course. • Hypothesis #3: Academic success in the half-semester course is related to the course structure – meeting five days a week over eight weeks. • Null Hypothesis #3: Academic success in a half-semester course is not related to the course structure.

13. Major Unanswered Questions • Students’ motivation for selection of condensed courses. The problem of “selection bias” may still be present, but examination of the demographic data and qualitative interviews addressing the students’ motivations for selecting course format, will hopefully resolve this issue. • The possibility of the “Hawthorne effect.” As the research will involve the same instructors over a full academic year, will the fact that their students’ success is being studied impact on the professor’s style of teaching in any particular session format? This issue, as well as other teacher-related influences will need to be addressed.

14. Major Unanswered Questions • The application of “Parkinson’s Law.” “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” • In time-shortened sessions, the students are not afforded the time to become lazy or complacent, as they meet every day of the week. In full-semester sessions, where students meet only twice or three times a week for less hours, there may be a tendency to procrastinate or lose interest in the subject matter over a period of 16 weeks. • This issue can best be addressed in the qualitative interviews of students in the different sessions.

15. Major Unanswered Questions • Whether the long-term impact of the condensed courses will be any better than those of the full-semester courses. This issue was addressed in the literature review, and appears to be a settled question. • It may be advisable to add a follow-up component to the research design. This could be a short 30-50 question survey which would be standardized for the three courses to be tested. The key components of each course would be included. This could be administered to the students as a pre-test, post-test, and follow-up survey administered three to six months after completion of the course.

16. Methodology • This research is basically inductive, which suggests a mixed-methods approach. • Whether shortened-session courses are effective is established by previous research. What is needed is answers to the “why” questions. This suggests a quantitative design to establish whether there is a statistically-significant difference in student performance across the three course sessions, and correlations of the student demographic data to identify any significant student features impacting on success (such as age or prior student academic experience).

17. Methodology • It is hypothesized if there is significant difference in student academic performance in the shortened courses, and the students themselves are essentially equal across all sessions, then the length of the session itself or other unidentified factors would be responsible. • The qualitative component would then explore the student perspectives and attempt to identify what factors impacted positively or negatively on student success.

18. Methodology • As data for both the quantitative and qualitative portions would be collected during the entire course of the research, a concurrent triangulation or concurrent transformative design would be most appropriate, with the design equation: Qual + Quan (Tashakkori & Teddlie, 2003). • As numerous qualitative interviews will be conducted, a single-site design is appropriate. This is also supported by the literature review, as all but one previous research study was conducted using a single student population.

19. Methodology • An anticipated problem will be obtaining sufficient research subjects to interview. This was experienced in a previous research attempt, and corrective measures will be used in this semester’s research. It is hoped that face-to-face interaction with the students at the end of each course session will generate sufficient volunteers for qualitative interviews. • This is an important component to the research design, with an equal number of interview subjects being necessary for validity and reliability reasons. Any “lop-sided” interview results, where the only students who were interviewed came from one of two of the three disciplines, would skew the results.

20. Potential for Study • It is doubtful that the results of this study would be grounds to re-convert the entire University System away from semesters. There are too many other administrative and political factors which impact on the decision to convert from one system to another. • Establishing first that shortened-session courses are at least equal to full-semester sessions, and second what factors make those sessions a success for students, may lead to changes in course offerings at other institutions. • Determining “what works,” and “why does it work,” in a college environment is an important research goal, especially with ever-increasing student enrollment projected for the next decade or beyond.

21. References: • Chabot College, CA. (1975) A Report on the Academic Calendar: Quarter System or Semester System? Hayward, CA. • Daniel, Eileen. (2000) A review of time-shortened courses across disciplines. College Student Journal, Vol 64, Iss 2. • Spurling, Steven. (2001) Compression of semesters or intensity of study: what is it that increases student success? San Francisco, CA. • Tashakkori, C. and Teddlie, C. (2003) Handbook of mixed methods in social & behavior research. Thousand Oaks, CA. Sage Publications. • Valdosta State University. (1997) Semester Transition Handbook. Valdosta, GA. • Western Wisconsin Technical Institute. (1974) Student and Staff Evaluation of the Quarter System at Western Wisconsin Vocational, Technical, and Adult Education District. Final Report. Lacrosse, WI.