I am going to cut to the chase here – tonight is the first opportunity for senior students to participate in the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education final phase of data collection.  It all starts at 6 PM in Hanson 102.  Please encourage your senior students to participate.  And remember – tell them that the first 400 participants get a $25 gift card to the Augie bookstore.

 

Instead of telling you why I think that the Wabash National Study might be so valuable to Augustana College, I thought I’d show you.  Over the course of this year, I’ve written 21 columns; almost all of them trying to help us think about ways that we can use our institutional data to improve what we do.  Nine of these columns examine data that is a part of the Wabash National Study.  Just in case you’ve forgotten, I’ve listed them below and provided links to the full column.

 

• Examining our students’ patterns of preparedness for class (September 19^th)
• Peer support for co-curricular performances and presentations (September 26^th)
• Quality of student relationships with faculty and administrators (October 10^th)
• The diffusion of our students’ co-curricular involvement (October 24^th)
• Declines in students’ intrinsic motivation for academic work (November 14^th)
• Improved NSSE benchmark scores from 2006 and 2009 (November 21^st)
• Changes in our students’ sense of their own spirituality (December 5^th)
• The positive effect of reflective learning (January 23^th)
• The impact of organized teaching on student sleep patterns (January 30^th)

 

And these columns are only a miniscule sampling of the kinds of questions that could be answered using this dataset.  Moreover, if we can get enough seniors to participate, we could answer these same questions – and many others – within the context of each major.  This is the kind of data that would be gold for anyone thinking about how they can make their major experience the best it possibly can be.

 

I hope this demonstrates a little bit of why I hope you will help promote this study and encourage your students to participate.  If you have any questions about it, please don’t hesitate to email me.

 

Make it a great day,

 

Mark