PRESENTATION TITLE. Undeclared Students Paths to Major Declaration: A Data Mining Study. Afshin Karimi Sunny Moon, PhD Joshua Loudon Brian Stern

Transcription

1 PRESENTATION TITLE Undeclared Students Paths to Major Declaration: A Data Mining Study Afshin Karimi Sunny Moon, PhD Joshua Loudon Brian Stern 2015 CAIR Conference San Francisco, CA 11/5/2015

2 Our University at a glance

3 38,948 33,042 4,401 3,991 students enrolled undergrads first-time freshmen new transfers Data as of Fall 2015

4 Slide Title

5 Degrees Earned Bachelor s Degrees Earned Master s Degrees Earned EDD / DNP Degrees Earned Total Degrees Earned 7,725 1, ,454 Bachelors degrees by admitted as: 38% first-time freshmen, 61 % UG transfer, and < 1% 2 nd BA. 56% were among the first generation of their families to earn a Bachelor s degree

6 Freshmen: Retention /Graduation Rates One-Year Retention Rate Trend First-Time Full-Time Freshmen Ethnic Grouping Fa06 Fa07 Fa08 Fa09 Fa10 Fa11 Fa12 Fa13 Fa14 Non-Underrepresented 81% 81% 83% 86% 86% 89% 90% 89% 88% Underrepresented 76% 77% 77% 81% 83% 88% 87% 88% 89% Total 79% 79% 80% 84% 85% 88% 89% 89% 88% Six-Year Graduation Rate Trend First-Time Full-Time Freshmen Ethnic Grouping Fa02 Fa03 Fa04 Fa05 Fa06 Fa07 Fa08 Fa09 Non-Underrepresented 52% 55% 55% 52% 56% 56% 61% 65% Underrepresented 44% 45% 45% 46% 44% 49% 49% 57% Total 49% 52% 51% 50% 51% 53% 56% 62% 6

7 Year Term Undeclared Students (# and HS GPA) Undeclared Students N All Students Undeclared Freshmen All Freshmen N HS GPA Mean N HS GPA Mean fall ,277 36, ,519 fall ,773 36, ,845 fall ,833 35, ,749 fall ,600 36, ,089 fall ,507 37, ,419 fall ,187 38, ,512 fall ,997 38, ,243 fall ,050 38, ,286 N

8 How many students are completely undecided? 25 Year Longitudinal Study of 19,000 Students All who wander are not lost. The Lord of the Rings 43% 31% 22% 4% Completely Undecided Tentatively Decided Have Idea, but Not Ready to Decide Other Gordon, V. N., & Steele, G. E. (2003). Undecided first-year students: A 25-year longitudinal study. Journal of The First-Year Experience, 15(1),

9 The Orientation Survey 88% of the incoming students agreed that future opportunities and career goals are guiding factors for choosing a major 42% of incoming undeclared freshmen felt underprepared by entering the University without a declared major 76% of students feared their choosing a major could limit future career opportunities What are your perceptions of being Undeclared? Negative comments included fear of falling behind, feelings of anxiety, worry, frustration and lack of direction 46% 54% Positive comments included having more time to discover interests, careers and have experiences

10 1.Please rate your comfort level with being Undeclared BEFORE the Major Exploration presentation. 2.Please rate your comfort level with being Undeclared AFTER the Major Exploration presentation % % Pre-Activity Post-Activity 33% % 16% 17% % 4% 2% 0% Poor Below Average Average Above Average Excellent Academic Advisement Center UH 123 (657)

11 61.9% Undeclared Grad Rates Fall 2009 FTF cohort 60.5% CSUF Success Rates Fall 2009 FTF cohort Graduated or still enrolled 75% 75% CSUF Average Undeclared Time to Degree Completion (years) Fall 2009 FTF cohort 69% 71% 64% 71% 66% 70% CSUF Average Undeclared CSUF Institutional Research and Analytical Studies,

12 CSUF Undeclared Demographics 52% Current 0% 18% 2% 3% 4% 17% 4% AmInd Asian/PI Black Hispanic Intl Multi White Unknown CSUF Undeclared Gender Current 58% 42% Female Male

13 Students who Recently Declared a Major Survey Was there a specific General Education course that helped you decide on your major? 33% 67% Yes No Undeclared students don t only take GE courses, so we wanted to know if their decisions were based on non-ge courses too. We also wanted to look at attrition

14 30% College of Declared Major for Undeclared Students (fall 10, 11, 12 Undeclared FTF cohorts) 25% 20% 15% 3 10% 5% 0% Top Majors Declared by (fall 10, 11, 12) Undeclared Students Business Administration (15.9%) Health Sciences (10.4%) Kinesiology (7.3%) Child & Adolescent Studies (5.1%) Biology (4.5%)

15 College of Major for Undeclared FTF Students: Tracked for 3 Years

16 Major/Dept. of Undeclared FTF Students: Tracked for 3 Years

17 Questions Phase 1: What are the association rules between courses students do well in and the majors they eventually declare? Phase 2: What are the association rules between courses students do poorly in and students attrition?

18 Association Rules Mining Exploratory data mining method that finds frequently cooccurring items in a transactional database Proposed by Agrawal et al (1993); used initially in Market Basket Analysis Commonly implemented using the Apriori algorithm Statistical strengths of the rules specified using Support and Confidence measures

19 Association Rules Actionable: rules that contain useful and practical values Trivial: rules and information already known to people familiar with the business domain Inexplicable or Irrelevant: rules that don t reveal any practical information or are irrelevant to the problem Trivial and Inexplicable rules occur most frequently

20 Phase 1: Data 3 Cohorts of undeclared first-time freshmen combined (fall 10, 11, 12 cohorts) who persisted through major declaration or for 3 years Track the courses taken by those students until major declaration (up to 6 semesters maximum) Examine courses that these students got a grade of B or better

21 Phase 1 Data Continued Rows: 1,362 undeclared students (from fall 10, 11, 12 cohorts) Columns: Courses that these students took (415 courses) prior to major declaration PLUS the 55 academic majors offered at the University Cell values 1 means student received a grade of B or better (or for the major columns, it means that major was declared by the student) 0 means student either received a grade lower than B or did not enroll in the course (for major columns, it means that major was not selected by student)

22 Model s Input Data id ACCT201A ACCT201B AFAM107 AFAM190 AFAM210 AFAM335 AFAM356 AMST101 AMST201 AMST300 AMST301 AMST320 AMST395 ANTH100 ANTH101 ANTH102 ANTH103 ANTH300 ANTH301 ANTH304 ANTH305 ANTH306 ANTH311 ANTH

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24 RapidMiner s Phase 1 Output: Relationships Between Course Grades and Major Declarations

25 RapidMiner s Phase 1 Output Translated

26 Phase 2: Data 3 Cohorts of undeclared first-time freshmen combined (fall 10, 11, 12 cohorts) who failed at least one course sometimes in their first two years Track their course taking patterns of the above students for two years and note the courses in which they got a grade of C- or less (including NC and WU)

27 Phase 2 Data Continued Rows: 1,376 undeclared students (from fall 10, 11, 12 cohorts) who failed at least one course sometimes during their first two years Columns: Courses that these students failed during their first two years at college (488 different courses) PLUS 2YearAttrition columns (489 columns total) Cell values 1 means student received a grade of C- or less (or for the attrition column, it means that student was not retained) 0 means student either received a grade of C or better or did not enroll in the course (for attrition column, it means student was retained)

28 RapidMiner s Phase 2 Output: Relationships Between Course Grades and 2 Year Attrition

29 RapidMiner s Phase 2 Output Translated (2 Yr Attrition)

30 Final Thoughts The found rules don t imply causation or correlation; simply association rules with certain measures of statistical strength Method is exploratory, not predictive (Phase 2) applicable to other student populations Procedure can be repeated using 3-itemsets to include twoto-one rules No Data Mining expertise needed

31 Questions/Comments?