Essay On At-Risk Prevention Study

Designing an At-Risk Prevention Study using Supplemental Instruction

1. Introduction

a. Certain groups of students in college today are at much higher risk of course failure and drop out than others. According to Tough “Who Gets to Graduate” two big risk factors in college retention and graduation are education (SAT) and the student’s family income.

b. The SAT scores are likely to predict college graduation because somehow it showed if the student is ready for college. However, a poor student with high SAT scores is less likely to graduate compared with a rich student with low SAT scores because the student familial income is more influential than the SAT scores.

c. One intervention from the article used at universities to address college failure and dropout of at-risk students is a student success program that follow the Texas Interdisciplinary Plan (TIP) model that offer small classes, peer mentoring, extra tutoring help, engaged faculty advisers and community-building exercises.

d. The hypothesis being addressed in the study is that high-achieving, low income students might make it into college, but they aren’t graduating at the rate that wealthy students are.

2. Method

a. (i) The participants are the students in Psy 102 in City College

(II) The three variables: (1)TA visits, (2)outside work, and (3)inconsistency of attendance in SI sessions can be controlled by assigning one mandatory TA visit per test. This would prioritize the students outside work and schedule strategically their workload. In addition, the inconsistency of attendance in SI could be controlled by the possibility of rewrite papers. Two other variables that need to be controlled in the study is the amount of weekly homework turned in and extra credit completion. The amount of weekly homework turned in could be low because the at-risk students should have to complete these assignments in the SI sessions. The extra credit completion should be encouraging to be complete in the SI