U NIT 8: FACULTY S UPPORT AND A SSESSMENT HE 513: Institutional Research and Strategic Planning Dr. Gina La Monica

U SE OF P OWER P OINT Review the PowerPoint presentation for the unit 8 assignment. Questions to discuss: What aspects of the presentation represent good design? What aspects represent poor design? How effective is the presentation of data in the example? How could it be improved?

U SE OF P OWER P OINT ( CONT.) Questions to discuss (cont.): How can PowerPoint presentations of research data be designed so they are more engaging? What alternative technologies can be used for presentations? What are your top 5 “pet peeves” when you watch presentations?

W RITING REQUIREMENTS Introduction – all papers unless otherwise noted must have an introduction. Conclusion – all papers unless otherwise noted must have an conclusion. Sections of The Paper – please review carefully the sections/parts that must be included in each assignment. Outlining these sections first before writing your paper works best so that you do not accidently omit a section.

W RITING R EQUIREMENTS ( CONT.) use only 1 or 2 quotes Limit Your Quotations – use only 1 or 2 quotes within a paper rather writing the information in your own words with a citation thereafter. Write in the 3 rd person Assume the reader doesn’t have any knowledge about the subject or assignment requirements.

T ITLE PAGE APA 6 th edition, page 41, sample title page Running head: EFFECTS OF AGE ON MEMORY Aligned to the far left, first page All other pages: EFFECTS OF AGE ON MEMORY (no running head) Page number: far right corner, 1 inch margin Levels of headings, page 62 Most are boldfaced, 1 st is centered, 2 nd is left centered, etc. Reference page, page 49, no bold for Reference and centered Review formatting for references.

C OURSE PROJECT Summarize the study and your outcomes from the study A paper and a PowerPoint presentation that can be shared with the class. You will summarize the results of your study and interpret your findings. You will make recommendations and/or suggest links to strategic planning for the institution, as appropriate.

C OURSE PROJECT ( CONT.) General Guidelines For your research, you may use course materials and at least five (5) refereed journal articles to explain your study in the context of current research and contemporary institutional research practice. To make sure you are on the right track, you will submit your project in segments throughout the course as indicated in the course syllabus. The assessment will consist of your instructor providing basic feedback for improvement and determining if you are on the right track. The instructor must approve your topic prior to you collecting or analyzing data.

C OURSE PROJECT ( CONT.) Assembling Your Course Project A Word template is provided for you in Doc Sharing. You must use this template to submit your project in its various stages. Identify a topic. As you become more familiar with the various roles of an institutional researcher, determine one area of data gathering that interests you. You will submit your topic in Unit 3 of the course for approval. Organize your information. For the paper: As you come across an appropriate article, you may want to put it in a file so you have immediate access to it when you develop your project. Additionally, when you read an article, look at its “Reference” page. There may be some citation in it that you can access for your paper.

C OURSE PROJECT ( CONT.) Assembling Your Course Project (cont.) Organize your information. (cont.) For the PowerPoint: Your required reading, Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes shares information about qualities of good presentations. This resource is available from the Extra Extra tab. Remember that your PowerPoint slides will be posted for your classmates to review so create a concise summary of your study with a maximum of 10 slides. Continue to explore. It is important that you select a topic that a) would likely be a study conducted in institutional research, and b) makes it feasible to obtain or collect appropriate data for your study.

C OURSE PROJECT ( CONT.) Structure of the Paper Your paper will resemble a manuscript to be submitted to a scholarly journal. Please remember to use the template provided in Doc Sharing. It should be in APA format and should be organized in the following way: Paper Topic: (Week 3) Provide an overview of your topic in a few sentences. The topic should be presented in the form of a research question, with your strategy or methodology for collecting data. Abstract: (Week 9 – Final Submission) In 150 words or fewer, summarize the purpose of your study, what you did, the major findings, and recommendations. Although it is the first item in your paper, it should be the last item that you write. Please see the following web site for guidance:

C OURSE PROJECT ( CONT.) Structure of the Paper (cont.) Introduction: (Week 4) This section provides the purpose of the research study, explaining why it is of interest to a college or university, what information it should produce, and/or why institutional researchers study this topic. This short section can include the research question(s) expected to be answered by the study or potential applications of expected information. Review of the Literature: (Week 4) This area of the paper demonstrates the importance of your study and what prior research or theories on the topic have shown. You can describe the study's potential value to an institution through examples you have found in your readings and journal articles.

C OURSE PROJECT ( CONT.) Structure of the Paper (cont.) Review of the Literature: (Week 4) (cont.) Also, make sure you have at least five (5) scholarly articles from the library that you use to frame your study. Scholarly articles are ones that are published in refereed journals available from the library or in full- text journals. Sources such as Wikipedia, blogs, and random web sites are not journals and cannot be used for this assignment.

C OURSE PROJECT ( CONT.) Structure of the Paper (cont.) Methods: (Week 6) The methods section should contain the following four sections as sub-headings, after an introductory paragraph that should describe your research question. sample or data – explain the source for the information that you are analyzing. For example, “Data from the ABC University Office of Institutional Research were used for this study. These included enrollment reports for these years…” If you are conducting a survey yourself, describe who participated in the study. The description of the sample tells how many people participated, their gender, ages, and any other important information. Also include proof that you satisfied the IRB process of the institution.

C OURSE PROJECT ( CONT.) Structure of the Paper (cont.) Methods: (Week 6) (cont.) design of the study – Consider these questions: How was the information collected? Were there any issues about the data to consider? Why did you choose this information? study time frame – How many years of data were used or how many weeks was the survey underway? statistical analyses – How have you analyzed the data? What descriptive analyses did you perform and why? This can be in the form of tables with percentages, which are easily accomplished in Excel. Please see the sample Excel file in Doc Sharing. You can cut and paste tables from Excel directly into Word.

C OURSE PROJECT ( CONT.) Structure of the Paper (cont.) Results: (Week 7) What did the statistical analyses show, what do they mean, and are they important? This section describes any data analyses and what they revealed. It reports whether the results are statistically significant. This section summarizes the data using tables, charts, and graphs.

C OURSE PROJECT ( CONT.) Structure of the Paper (cont.) Interpretation/Conclusions: (Final Submission – Week 9) How do the results of your study address the original research questions or the information that you expected to find? If you conducted a survey study, this section describes the degree to which the findings can be generalized to a larger population and identifies that population. If appropriate, address these questions: How do the findings contribute to the body of knowledge in the topic you studied? How do the findings address institutional information needs, decision making, or strategic planning?

C OURSE PROJECT ( CONT.) Structure of the Paper (cont.) Implications/Recommendations: (Final Submission – Week 9) This short section makes specific recommendations; these will vary depending on your topic, but will relate to decisions that administrators have to make (e.g., budget allocation, hiring of faculty, and so forth). You will also discuss strategic planning implications or recommendations that follow from your research. If indicated, include implications for future research that would expand on what your study found and would be useful to the institution.

C OURSE PROJECT ( CONT.) Structure of the Paper (cont.) References: After the information is related, you must provide a reference page to reveal the sources where you obtained your information. Please use APA format for all citations and references. Remember that you only list a reference if you cited it in the text. Make certain you use headings to separate major sections of the paper. Your paper should be approximately 6 to 8 pages in length.

C OURSE PROJECT ( CONT.) Structure of the PowerPoint Design your PowerPoint to present the most salient aspects of your study. It will follow good practice in terms of structure and amount of information per slide. Please see the resource Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes for guidance on designing your PowerPoint. Title Slide Introduction: What did you study and why did you study it? Why is it important to an institution of higher education? Background: Use bullet points to succinctly summarize the most important things you found in your readings.

C OURSE PROJECT ( CONT.) Structure of the PowerPoint (cont.) Research Design: What or whom did you study? How did you study it or them? (This might need 2 slides.) Results and Conclusions: This part should include slides that have one or more graphs or charts that depict what you found. Implications and Recommendations: Present these as bullet points. Maximum number of slides is 10.

C OURSE PROJECT ( CONT.) Schedule Week 3: Select the topic for your study and submit it to your instructor for review and approval. If you choose to collect your own data, you must provide proof that you satisfied the institution’s IRB process. Week 4: Begin reading articles and determining where to get your data as soon as you have a fairly clear idea about what you want the study to examine. Prepare your introduction and review of the literature and submit to the assignment Dropbox. Week 6: Submit your methods section and begin analyzing your data. Please see the example in Excel provided in Doc Sharing.

C OURSE PROJECT ( CONT.) Schedule (cont.) Week 7: Submit your results section. Weeks 8 and 9: Prepare a draft of your PowerPoint, leaving room for any parts that you have not yet firmed up in the paper. Week 9: Finalize your paper by making sure your introduction and conclusions are appropriate, and creating your abstract and references sections. Complete a thorough edit according to proper grammar, syntax, punctuation, and APA standards. Finalize your PowerPoint presentation by having someone else review it for clarity or by presenting it to other people to get their feedback. When you have completed your PowerPoint presentation and paper, submit them in the Dropbox titled Course Project.

C OURSE PROJECT ( CONT.) Developing You Paper As you develop your paper, you can compare your progress against the rubrics for this project, which are located on the Grading Rubrics page on Course Home. This course project addresses the unit learning outcomes: Construct a study of institutional research data that could be used to inform resource allocation and policy development or change. Discuss the implications of institutional research analyses on strategic planning and institutional decision making.

G ENERAL INFORMATION Questions?