This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project seeks to improve academic advisement for seven million community college students. Advisement is a major weakness in student progress toward degree completion. The research determines whether an Internet-based advisement instrument that takes into account a student's academic and other achievements can improve academic advisement. The instrument incorporates previously untapped knowledge from campus-wide and departmental counselors. It improves the success rate of students in STEM and other disciplines. It serves a broad range of traditional and non-traditional students. The recommendations are specific to the wide variety of courses of study available at individual campuses.
The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is the development of a system that embodies the knowledge of human advisors and counselors. Unlike prior instruments, this system incorporates actual student achievement in school, life experiences, and other relevant personal data in order to recommend appropriate majors. To do this, the research will identify, codify and convert "private" human advisor expertise in a knowledge-based system that can be more easily improved, evaluated, validated and verified than "human-based" systems. Recommendations will be specific to individual community colleges. MyCCMajors augments and supports advisor resources at these institutions.
MyCCMajors: Project Outcomes This Small Business Innovation Research Program Phase I project was funded to develop an innovative approach for providing advisement to 2-year college students. It is based on the belief that MyCCMajors, a software program, will emulate the advisement process conducted by human advisors. There is a pressing need for an improved academic advisement tool at 2,301 2-year college campuses enrolling 11 million full- and part-time students. Counselor positions at high school and 2-yr. college levels are being reduced and case load increased. Advisement at 2-year colleges is lacking. Students in large numbers do not engage with on-campus advisors. Students identify inadequate academic advising as their key challenge. MyCCMajors emulates an expect advisor working with a student who is undecided about a course of study. We interviewed 315 advisors and some other knowledgeable people from 120 to determine how to computerize their combined expertise. Evaluations by students and advisors were positive. 1. The pilot interview has been written and is online. 2. A substantial number of rules and weights have been implemented, but not yet fully tested or refined. a. 88% of advisors indicated that they agree (68%) or strongly agree (9%) that the interview asks the same questions they ask. This percentage is depressed because we included the responses of nine advisors who said they disagreed because the questions were much more detailed than they ask or have time to ask. b. 87% of advisors and 91% of students indicated agreement or strong agreement that the suggestions of career clusters were reasonable. c. 89% of advisors and 88% of students indicated agreement or strong agreement that the suggestions of specific occupations/disciplines were reasonable. d. 90% of advisors and 91% of students indicated agreement or strong agreement that MyCCMajors was easy to use. This shows MyCCMajors to be very promising technology. The program was being improved periodically through the short testing period between mid-June to mid-July. Through this period, significant omissions and corrections were corrected. Comparable evaluations now should be even better. Further iteration is needed to create a polished interview and to move from "reasonable" to "excellent" suggestions. Thus, we demonstrated that MyCCMajors shows itself to be a potentially effective supplement to existing advisement resources and shows a high degree of acceptance by students and advisors. It effectively suggests career categories and occupations for a large enough base of courses of study so that this number can be significantly expanded. The evaluations are thus far quite positive, but this is not a completed system. This is addressed and shown in the following section. A follow on development plan has been constructed. The goals of this plan are: 1. To further improve the knowledge base’s questions, weights and suggestions. 1.2 To obtain additional questions from advisors as entries for new courses of study entries are added. 1.3 To expand the list of occupations and disciplines concluded for from 330 to over 600. 2 To address important programming issues. 2.1 To implement three options for students to choose from. (We plan three different options for having students presented with suggestions for specific majors. In addition to the available generic list of suggestions now available and suitable for someone like a veteran not committed to a particular campus or region; we plan to have a) suggestions specific to one campus (suitable for a student who has access to only one campus); or b) suggestions for several campuses in a region for students who can commute to multiple campuses easily.) 2.2 To align the suggestions for our career clusters more closely with the career pathways concept recommended in National Science Foundation-funded publications. 3 To develop essential supportive content. 3.1 To prepare course of study information pages and extensive support information. 3.2 To develop career cluster video that describe issues presented by various career clusters. Task 4.2 To develop advisor support materials such as a student advisement report and administrative tools for advisors. 5 To verify, validate and evaluate the program. 5.1 Implement specific evaluation techniques. MyCCMajors receives continued written support and interest from individual campuses, three state coordinating boards for 2-yr. colleges, U.S. News and World Report, the Kauffman Foundation, the American Institute for Research and Community College Measures, and the largest lead sales company in the U.S. - Plattform Advertising, as well as individual campuses. MyCCMajors can achieve significant advances in advisement because it: 1. Provides "high tech, high touch" academic advisement 24/7 to all students. 2. Implements a methodology by which knowledge can be assembled integrated and evaluated. 3. Reduces initial interviews to 25% of the time needed for a verbal interview and is complete. 4. Strengthens the capability of novice advisors. 5. Provides a need-based mechanism for delivering information on related topics to students. 800x600 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4
