Evaluation of First Year Experience Program at Georgia Southern University
Keywords:
retention rate; academic performance; social integration; academic integration; college coursesAbstract
To increase the retention rate, Georgia Southern University
launched the First-Year Experience (FYE) program. FYE is a
comprehensive program which includes two mandatory courses (FYE
1220: First-Year Seminar, and FYE 1410: Global Citizens), conversations
with professors, intrusive academic advising, giving early
alert/midterm grades, and limiting number of withdrawals. The two
mandatory courses have been offered since fall 2008. This study is to
assess the impact of the two mandatory courses on academic
performance of students majoring in information technology (IT). A
comparison is made among the two mandatory courses, two general
education courses (English and Math), and two information technology
courses. Grade point averages (GPA) and the grades of six courses were
extracted from the university data warehouse. Pearson correlation is
used to detect the dependence between course grades and GPA. The
result shows that the two mandatory courses have higher correlations
with GPA than the other courses do. The two IT courses have higher
correlations with GPA than the two general education courses do. The
first course FYE 1220 is designed with a purpose of facilitating students
integrated into academic environment, and the second course FYE 1410
is designed with emphasis of social integration. The result of the strong
correlations validated Tinto,s integration theory, i.e., academic
integration and social integration leads to the academic success.
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