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Session 1592

Taming Data: Collect, Compare and Report Results Using AWE ADAPT

Barbara Bogue, Charu Sharma, Rose M. Marra, Mieke Schuurman The Pennsylvania State University, The Pennsylvania State University, University of Missouri, Columbia, The Pennsylvania State University

Tracking data to assess outcomes of recruitment and retention activities is a critical component of overall assessment of program recruitment and retention activities. Without more sophisticated data collection to support survey results, effective evaluation based on outcomes is not possible. Other measures beyond formative surveys are needed. In engineering outreach programs for underrepresented students this provides a particular challenge. While faculty developing courses and curricula can use student grades as one type of outcomes measure, recruiting events and retention activities need additional data to understand whether or not objectives and goals of programming are being met. Or, put simply, “What is working; what is not?” The most straightforward way to do this is to document activities thoroughly to gain an understanding who is participating, how often, and whether participation in particular activities correlates with higher retention and recruitment results.

Even when data beyond survey results are collected, they are not always easy to use. Taming unruly data is a common problem for all who coordinate student activities and direct recruitment and retention programs. It has also become a compelling need for engineering administrators and faculty in general with the advent of ABET outcomes based assessment. When the time comes to write up work for journals or conferences; provide a report to supervisors or funders on the demographics of participates; compare participants across yearly offerings; tally up total participation in a suite of activities; or check to see if girls being recruited enroll or women engaging in activities are retained, data are too often missing in action or scattered. Faculty, administrators, directors and coordinators typically find themselves scouring hard and virtual drives, trying to remember which student might have entered data, or digging up hard copy information that has not yet been entered and analyzed. Additional challenges may be to force fit data fields so that data can be translated into a common software program or cross comparing activity participation within a given program.

The root causes for this situation are numerous and common: understaffed and under-resourced programs(9,14), multiple people entering data in a variety of formats, data fields and names recreated for each activity, and generally treating assessment as an add on, rather than as an integral part of activity, workshop or course development.

This paper describes ADAPT, the AWE Database for Activity and Participant Tracking, a tool to enter and collect data important for assessment and program reporting in one place and one format for easy retrieval. ADAPT will retrieve information for reports, provide a basis for

“Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education and Annual Conference & Exposition” Copyright , American Society for Engineering Education

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Marra, R., & Sharma, C., & Schuurman, M., & Bogue, B. (2005, June), Taming Data: Collect, Compare And Report Data Using Awe Adapt Paper presented at 2005 Annual Conference, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--14311