WELCOME!

Our Mission

First Year Programs fosters a successful undergraduate student experience through strategic programming that focuses on positive academic transitions and the development of learning communities. Through partnerships with faculty, staff, alumni, and student leaders our programs create the space for students to define how they will engage, learn, and thrive at the University of Washington.

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Intentionality • Collaboration • Diversity and Inclusion

Freshman Fig Video

Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bPWur68rHfB-qNtuIB58VTBRt6hHcG-B/view?usp=sharing

Agenda

Classroom

FYE: Peer Education

Student Learning

About FIGS

About FIGS

• Connect with an experienced student who will help with your Transition to the UW
• ​Engage in Critical Thinking and begin to build a strong Academic foundation
• Experience a small Community within a large University
• Explore Professional Pathways

Current Initiatives

• Winter Quarter Transfer FIG

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• Pilot of Direct to College Engineering FIGs

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• Teaching to Transition: FYE Curriculum

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TABLE INTROS

FACULTY PANEL

Faculty Panel

• Eric Ames, Professor and Chair, Comparative Literature, Cinema, and Media
• Andrea Carroll, Senior Lecturer, Chemistry
• Ben Wiggins, Faculty Coordinator for Instruction and Lecturer, Biology

TABLE DISCUSSION #2

What were some highlights from the panel for you?

This topic was discussed early in the panel, what are some trends you see in your work with first-year students?

How should the FIG program adapt to direct admissions in some programs?

FIG 30 RESEARCH

Helping students FIG-ure it out: a mixed methods look at first-year interest groups at the UW

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April 6th, 2018

Lovenoor (Lavi) Aulck

laulck@uw.edu

Outline

• Intro/about me
• Data overview

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About me

• I’m a 4^th year PhD student in UW’s DataLab working with Jevin West (BS)
• My research focus is on using large-scale data to better understand social dynamics. Currently, most of my work is in Educational Data Mining

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FIG 30^th Anniversary. April 6^th, 2018

Study objectives and research questions

• FIGs were assessed by UW’s Office of Educational Assessment in 2009
• Centered around a single FIG cohort (about 2800 students)
• Focused on how the program was doing with regards to strategic aims; not on the effect of the program on students

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Research questions for this project

• What is the impact of FIGs on students’ educational pursuits?
• Do students in FIGs graduate and/or re-enroll at higher rates than their peers?
• Which aspects of FIGs do students find most useful/beneficial?

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FIG 30^th Anniversary. April 6^th, 2018

Definitions

• Graduate
• someone who earns a baccalaureate degree from the UW within 6 calendar years of first enrollment

Re-enrollee

• someone who completes at least one additional class within one calendar year of the end of their first year at UW

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FIG 30^th Anniversary. April 6^th, 2018

The data

• Complete registrar transcript, application, and demographic records
• Students who first enrolled as freshmen at the UW between 1998-2010
• About 58K students
• Of these students, about 32.5K (56.2%) enrolled in a FIG
• FIG exit surveys from students who enrolled in FIGs between 2010-2015
• Coordinated by UW First Year Programs
• About 14K responses from students (about 12K usable)
• Mostly open-ended text responses. We have hand-coded much of this now ☺

Additional data sources

• US Census data linked by student application ZIP code
• Enrollment planning services data from the Collegeboard

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FIG 30^th Anniversary. April 6^th, 2018

The good and not-so-good

• The good
• Near even split in FIG and non-FIG students
• Variable amount of FIG cluster credits can allow for some interesting insights
• How does the number of FIG cluster credits relate to the metrics of interest?
• Transcript records are complete
• The not-so-good
• Survey responses can be linked to transcript data but times don’t overlap
• Students self select into FIG and non-FIG groups; no real randomization

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FIG 30^th Anniversary. April 6^th, 2018

Methods

• Propensity score matching using transcript/demographic data
• Using all demographic features available (gender, age, race, etc)
• Using high school information (distance from UW, AP classes, SAT scores, etc)
• Using information pulled from application ZIP code (linked to US census data)
• Using information from enrollment planning services
• About 200 covariates in total
• LDA to generate initial codebook for survey data
• Hand-coded/tagged individual responses thereafter (yes, all 12K of them)

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FIG 30^th Anniversary. April 6^th, 2018

FIG rates

• Counts of FIG students over time

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• Proportion of incoming freshmen taking a FIG over time

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FIG 30^th Anniversary. April 6^th, 2018

Demographics

• Some differences in demographics between students.

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• Female and Caucasian students are over-represented in FIGs; Male, Asian, and race-unidentified students are under-represented in FIGs

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FIG 30^th Anniversary. April 6^th, 2018

Propensity scores

• The idea: matching students on the probability they will enter a FIG
• Logistic regression model using demographic and pre-entry student data
• Treatment: students in FIGs and control: students not in FIGs
• Matches stratified by year of entry to UW and interest in STEM

Three different matching strategies employed

• With replacement; no limit on the number of matches (No Limit)
• With replacement; each treatment matched to only one control (Limit)
• Without replacement; each treatment matched to only control (No Rep)

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FIG 30^th Anniversary. April 6^th, 2018

Variables used in propensity scores

• Demographic variable examples
• Standard demographics: age at start, gender, race, ethnicity, resident status
• Other demographics: veteran status, athlete status, guardians’ schooling level
• ZIP code information: %age of people completing high school and college in ZIP, distance from ZIP to UW, avg. income in ZIP code

High school information examples

• High school academics: high school GPA; level of math in HS; years of math, science, social science, English, arts, and foreign language in HS
• Pre-college information: SAT scores, running start designations, number of credits transferred to UW
• Enrollment planning information examples
• High school level information: Parent’s income, parent’s education, student college aspirations (size, location, etc), student career aspirations

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FIG 30^th Anniversary. April 6^th, 2018

Propensity scores

(1) For each FIG student, limit control population to students who entered in same year with same STEM aspiration

(2) Take matches from control population. Matches found within a fixed caliper (in this case 1.62%) of propensity score from student in (1)

(3) Matched students comprise the comparison group. Either averaged across matches or matched one to one

FIG 30^th Anniversary. April 6^th, 2018

Strata for matching

Students By Entering Year

Students By STEM

and Non-STEM

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Results

Graduation Rates

(avg: 78.5%)

Re-Enrollment Rates

(avg: 92.5%)

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Additional results

Hispanic Students

(N = 1556)

Under Rep. Students

(N = 1410)

• Hispanic and under represented students were re-matched
• Using same strategies as before but only for races/ethnicities of interest

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FIG 30^th Anniversary. April 6^th, 2018

Additional results

Hispanic Students

(N = 1556)

Under Rep. Students

(N = 1410)

• Hispanic and under represented students were re-matched
• Using same strategies as before but only for races/ethnicities of interest

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FIG 30^th Anniversary. April 6^th, 2018

Additional results

Matched Students (N = 2078)

• In addition, also matched students if they took the same exact classes
• Matched FIG and non-FIG students for quarter that FIG student was in FIG

FIG 30^th Anniversary. April 6^th, 2018

What is valuable about FIGs?

• Some answers from student surveys
• Students were asked “what was the most valuable aspect of the FIG to you?”
• Responses were open-ended text and were hand-coded
• Very little difference between groups as far as proportions of tags

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Popular responses

• Over 51% of responses mentioned meeting new people/making friends, of which 11% mentioned friends with similar interests.

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“The opportunity to get to know people with the same interests as me, because sometimes it can be very hard to find people you can relate to. ”

“I really liked that it made my transition to college a lot less stressful and scary. It was a great way to meet people right away.”

“I liked meeting new people and friends. It was a great way to meet really cool people when you first move to UW, and a lot of them I am really good friends with now. The social aspect of the FIG was easily the most valuable.”

FIG 30^th Anniversary. April 6^th, 2018

Popular responses

• Over 23% of students mentioned having people in the same classes and/or forming study groups.

“I enjoyed having a group of people that had the same classes as me and that I could discuss the classes with.”

“Being with a group of 25 students or so made classes seem smaller because I knew people. It helped me develop friendships and study groups right off the bat…”

“The most valuable part of the FIG to me was being with a group of people who were taking the same classes as myself. This helped a lot with finding study groups and people I get along with.”

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FIG 30^th Anniversary. April 6^th, 2018

Popular responses

• About 13% of students mentioned that it helped them learn survival skills, about the UW, and about campus resources

“The most valuable part was learning about the libraries. Coming to UW, it is expected that you know everything about the libraries from the beginning, but that is definitely not the case…”

“Getting introduced to the UW because I felt pretty overwhelmed coming in, so it was pretty helpful.”

“I thought that the most valuable part was give background information and insight into all the programs and things offered at the university. It helped because I don’t think I would have made a personal effort to learn or know about all the resources out there.”

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Popular responses

• About 9% of students specifically mentioned their FIG leader in their responses

“I liked having older students run the class because they gave us advice and they were relatable because they were close to our age”

“I enjoyed getting to know my FIG teacher because she knows so much about the UW and is able to give me guidance on issues when no one else I know would have been able to help.”

“I found the anecdotal advice from a real undergraduate student to be the most helpful. A lot of the general information provided by the class was easily available if students had the motivation, but the real life advice from the fig leader was much more realistic and practical, which was helpful and refreshing.”

FIG 30^th Anniversary. April 6^th, 2018

Popular responses

• About 3.5% of students mentioned being part of a community and about 5% mentioned the FIG helping them transition

“I believe it was a great way to start my career off at the UW. It makes you realize what you are a part of and gives you somewhat of a comfort to see the same faces everyday and know they are freshman in the exact same situation as you are.”

“The most valuable part was just the sense of belonging into a smaller academic community within a large campus. The transition from high school to college can be overwhelming”

“The most valuable part of the FIG program for me was the sense of community and connection that it brought upon. This was important to me because the transition from high school to college was a bit of a shocker for me in the beginning.”

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FIG 30^th Anniversary. April 6^th, 2018

Popular responses

• About 1.5% said there was no positive aspect to the FIG experience

“My fig sucked because no one took it seriously except for the leader.”

“I know I seem very cynical in my evaluation, but I think the FIG program was absolutely the worst decision I could have made. I am now struggling to catch up in credits lost due to taking only 12 credits this quarter...”

“I hate to be a downer, but I (didn’t) really find much of value in my FIG class. I did meet some nice people, but besides that it was a bit of a waste of time...”

"No part of the FIG program was valuable to me at all. Every single assignment for the general studies course seemed superfluous. I didn't enjoy having the same people in my classes over and over because it really lowered my chances of finding a better variety of friends."

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FIG 30^th Anniversary. April 6^th, 2018

Questions?

www.coursector.org

www.lovenooraulck.com

Lovenoor Aulck – laulck@uw.edu

FIG 30^th Anniversary. April 6^th, 2018

Data Overview

• Current dataset: Spans 20+ years at the University of Washington with information on over 300K students, 200K degrees awarded, and millions of transcript records
• Includes: all courses taken by all students from mid-90s onwards, all demographic information, all degrees awarded, and application history for students

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• Working at scales never before seen in educational data mining and with transcript data that is rarely used for research purposes

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FIG 30^th Anniversary. April 6^th, 2018

TABLE DISCUSSION #3

What do these findings tell you about the FIG program/FIG Leaders/FIG students?

What is missing from the data that would provide more information about the impact of the FIG program?

What should be done with these new findings?

PEER EDUCATION 101

FYE Curriculum

• Discover both academic and campus resources that will assist with transition and support during their first year.
• Examine personal values, identities, and how each person contributes to a diverse community.
• Analyze scholarly sources of information utilizing library resources.
• Use common academic language including Areas of Knowledge, open/minimum/competitive majors, credit hour, degree plan, and satisfactory academic progress.
• Reflect on current personal and professional goals and articulate how they are responsible for their own unique Husky experience.
• Develop relationships with peers and make connections within the larger campus community

Approach

What informs us?

• Tinto & Sense of Belonging
• Bloom’s Taxonomy
• Active learning
• Building off own experience
• Research
• Increase in inter/intrapersonal competence
• Better decision making behaviors
• Comprehensive + holistic experience = Transformative Activity

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Wawrzynski, M.R., LoConte, C.L., & Straker, E.J. (2011) Learning Outcomes for Peer Educators: The National Survey on Peer Education. New Directions for Student Services, 133, pp. 17-27.

Communication

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Interpersonal Interaction

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Learning and Reasoning

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Self-Awareness and Development

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Student Leader Competencies

Development in Action

• Assume that all students will grow from position
• Scaffolded opportunities for growth
• Positional goals around competencies
• Teaching night
• Returner “hiring” process
• One on ones with professional staff
• Mentor/mentee groups with returners
• Lesson plans

TABLE DISCUSSION #4

Is there value in all first-year students participating in learning communities?

What would other iterations of the FIG program look like (winter, spring, second-year)?

What will peer education look like in the next 30 years?

Wrap Up

• All documents available at fyp.washington.edu/fig30
• More information – contact a member of our team fyp.Washington.edu/about

Concluding Remarks