Daily Plans
I’ll share our plans for each class session here. Link to calendar on homepage and here too.
May 4
Go back to Fact Book to compare your data with Chico State data:
April 18:
Work with UNIV 101 qualitative data
Descriptive codes.
What claims could we make using this data?
Week 10: April 4 & 6 (asynchronous week)
Two asynchronous tasks this week: find secondary sources for your area of research and complete your Qualtrics survey. Tasks are due by Friday, April 7
- Find sources: use the library database to find a secondary source for your research. Upload the article you find to our shared readings folder, linked here. Write a short (a paragraph is fine) summary/annotation of the article you find and paste into our shared notes document. Remember: we have an assignment (Research Narrative) due this month, which asks you to work with at least 4 sources. This will count as one of those sources and annotation.
- You can schedule a virtual appointment with a librarian here too. They are super helpful for finding resources. William Cuthbertson specializes in social science research so you might consider a 20 minute virtual session with him. I promise it would be so so helpful for finding sources.
- Finish your survey: complete the surveys you started for your own research in Qualtrics. Share the link with me and start data collection for your research.
I will get our shared survey cleaned up and sent out to colleagues this week too.
Checklist for the week:
- Secondary Source: Find secondary source and upload here
- Summary: Write summary of the source and paste in our shared document here
- Survey: Finish your Qualtrics survey that you are using for your own data collection (not our shared survey but the one you are working on with more questions for your data collection). Share with Kim via email: kjaxon@csuchico.edu
- Link to Qualtrics
- Qualtrics support/tutorials
Thank you for all your work!
Week 9: March 28 & 30
Stella’s survey (nice model)
Read over the survey section in this chapter from the book Try This
Link to Qualtrics (for account set up)
Qualtrics support/tutorials
Shared Notes doc: we’ll place questions for the shared survey here
Week 7: March 7 & 9
March 9:
Second Case Study: Sharing interview transcripts
Link to shared folder to upload transcripts
Identify threads across transcripts. Compare to case studies.
Memo 2 due when we return from break
March 7:
link to our interview questions
Week 6: Feb 28 & March 2
March 2:
Questions for Drs. McCarthy & Ertle
- What does a dean do exactly? Typical day ?
- What do you do in the summer/winter to prepare for the school year?
- What’s the range of initiatives you are working on to improve equity on campus?
- What initiatives are ‘handed’ to you? And what are you able to create?
- Do you see room for improvement/adjustment?
- What is the biggest challenge campus is currently facing?
- Budget?
- Student engagement/connection?
- Representation?
- What would you want us to research? What insights from students would be helpful to your efforts toward success and equity?
Feb 28:
- Share first case study
- Coding glossary introduction
- Let’s get survey ready to go: Google Forms or Qualtrics?
- Interview Protocol ready
- Questions for Drs. Kate McCarthy and Ellie Ertle: SHARED NOTES link
Week 5: Feb 21 & 23
Feb 23
Our current data collection efforts:
- one case study is you (due Monday, Feb 27 by noon);
- another case study is a peer that you’ll interview (transcript due Monday, March 7; paper due March 9).
- a survey in Qualtrics to give to students
Case Study: You
**SHARED NOTES link: with our possible questions for your case study of you**
Ideas for representations of your case study: what do these various formats support in terms of data representation?
- Piktochart
- Digital poster format
- Slide Deck: digital storytelling
- Stella’s paper
- Short film ideas? day in the life? Vlog?
Case Study: Peer Interview
Use otter.ai ? try out together on Monday?
Tangent if you’re interested: ChatGPT resources
Feb 21
Look at calendar together
Insights from “Introduction to Primary Research’?
Our first pass at “what do we want to know about student success and equity at Chico State”?
Can your own case study provide insights into your discoveries from the first memo? For example, Eduardo looked at the impact of changing majors on the graduation rate. He could write about his own experiences and decisions making process for changing his major as part of his case study. Kolin asked about belonging and feeling connected to campus; again, he could write about his experiences in staying connected to campus life.
Link to Institutional Review Board (IRB) at Chico State
First Case Study: You (also on assignments page)
For this first paper, I’d like to invite you to place your Chico State experience alongside the data from the CSU Dashboard and other Chico State data we uncover. What is the story behind the numbers? Do you see your college experience reflected in the data and the findings? You might start this paper by sharing some highlights and challenges in your college career so far: how have you made connections? what have you learned in course work? what were some of the challenges along the way? what resources have you utilized? You could compare these experiences with the data we’ve reviewed. Where do the findings reflect your experience? What is missing from the data based on your college experience?
Let’s brainstorm approaches to this paper together.
Which artifacts might you gather to write your case study?
Weeks 3 & 4:
Feb 9: Shared Notes by Feb 12
Spend an hour with a section of the data we have not looked at together from the Fact Book or the Briefs and Reports. Leave some notes on our shared notes document: a paragraph or two that says what you looked at, what you discovered, what could be interesting to follow up on in our research projects.
Post notes before Sunday, Feb 12. Think of these notes as supporting our research team, our first research memos, and ideas for research going forward.
Feb 14: Research Memo 1 due (google doc). Share with my google account: kjaxon@mail.csuchico.edu (note: email is different. Our google accounts still use @mail.csuchico.edu)
This first memo is a one-page summary and initial thoughts about the data we’ve looked at so far. Questions you could address: What trends are you able to make sense of from the fact book data (where are we doing better? worse? Who is succeeding? What does that look like)? Which of the findings are interesting or puzzling to you? Do you find yourself wondering about something that is missing from the data we have? What questions arise after looking over the data?
Think of this memo as an informal thought process: you could start by explaining what you looked at, what you noticed, what was interesting, what questions you’re left with. We’ll compare our first memos when we’re back together on the 21st.
Feb 16: Read and comment on “Introduction to Primary Research” in Perusall. As you’re commenting, consider how the research methods discussed in the article could be useful to our research designs going forward.
We’ll prep for the first paper that is due on Feb 23: a case study of you. THANK YOU all!
Week 2
Jan 31:
Grades in Blackboard? Does that work best for y’all? Checking email or announcements? Looking ahead on calendar
Today: deeper dive with Fact Book and DFW rates. Working with General Education Dashboards
We’ll analyze the data and keep shared notes
Try out various scenarios with drop down menus re: DFW rate data.
Share out and add notes to our google doc:
- How/what did you search? Walk us through how you sorted variables
- What did you learn/discover?
- Anything confusing about the data? Terms we need to look up?
- What would you do next to understand the data? What questions would you ask? Who would you interview? What kinds of research questions might emerge?
For Thursday: Read and Comment on “The Graduation Rate Myth and the Equity Gap” in Perusall
Feb 2
“The Graduation Myth…”
- Review comments in Perusall: Identify major claims together
- Select a passage for us to consider: to talk from and think about next steps for research. Link to shared slide deck here
- Are there stats/claims in this article that we want to compare to our campus data?
- Chico State grad initiative page link here
Chico State budget
- Check out: Campus Budget in Perusall
Next Steps:
- Divide next steps for looking at Fact Book and other Briefs & reports: come with notes for Tuesday. Briefs & Reports
Week 1:
Day 1 (Jan 24):
Introductions: when are you graduating? How you decided to attend Chico State. Majors. Best thing about that major
Getting Situated: Our course site, Perusall (link here to Perusall)
Together: Read and annotate “On Taking My Parents to College” in Perusall.
Together: Mapping our Chico State network
- Start with a list: organizations, people, places, clubs, paths through campus
- Categories for that list
- Visual representation of the list
- Compare representation with table group. Create a new visual combining your networks.
- What questions might we ask from this data?
Before next class: take a quick look at the CSU Success Dashboard
Day 2: Jan 26
Working with the CSU Success Dashboard
Compare our “coming to college” stories. What is the impact of the first semester? What does the CSU data say about the first year?
