Capstone For Institutional Research Research - 2886 Words

Ken Jian Guan Project Two Draft Capstone for Institutional Research C678, Professor Victor Borden 11/17/2014 Table of Content Introduction Analysis Data sources Rationale for the Variables Rationale for the Method Results Variable 1 - Designated Office for Orientation Variable 2 - Length of Orientation (Days) Variable 3 - Topics in Aggregated Groups Summary Discussion Conclusion Reference Appendix Table 1 - Independent Variables and Graduation Rate Table 2 - Independent Variables and University Performance Rate (Difference between Actual and Predicted) Table 3 - Independent Variables, Graduation Rates and Performance rates Introduction This analysis will investigate the contribution of first year international student orientation†¦show more content†¦Transition and retention strategies are crucial to student graduation (Mayhew, Vanderlinden, and Kim, 2010). Orientation programs have been reported by researchers for the past 30 years as, critical to student transition and retention. Orientation is a high impact approach for increasing student social and academic integration (Mullendore, 2011). These programs provide the unique opportunity for students to interact with the campus social and academic community. Mori (2000), Andred (2006) and Kwai (2012) state that the university practices and academic literature rarely focus attention on international student’s transition, graduation and retention. This analysis will examine if new international student orientation has any significant contribution to university performance as measured by international student graduation rates. Preliminary data analysis was completed to examine the relationship between international student graduation rates and three variables: the presence of a designated office for orientation, number of topics covered during orientation, and orientation program length (number of days). The methods used for analysis include, one-way ANOVA and linear regression. The next section will discuss in detail the data collection process, and the rationale for variable and method selections. The result will be given, and the implication and limitation of the data analysis will be discussed. Analysis Data sources The collected data set