MEMORANDUM
FROM:
TO:
DATE:
Vincent Lindemann, Stephanie Guevera, Julian Jackson
Jared Grogan
March 27, 2015
SUBJECT:
FEASIBILITY OF USING STUDY GROUPS TO IMPROVE GRADUATION RATE
AT WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY
Introduction
The issue we will be tackling is the incredibly low graduation rate for Wayne
State students. The four-year graduation rate is particularly bad at 10%. In order to
accomplish this daunting task, we will be doing a feasibility study. This study will look at
various methods that can be used to improve study groups at Wayne State
University. Study groups are useful tools for students. Instead of studying alone, it
allows them to pool information and gives them a greater chance to make it through
classes. This gives them the ability to progress through classes faster and, as a result,
graduate faster. This greatly benefits Wayne State because when students graduate
faster, the government provides them with more funding. More funding means better
financial aid for the students. This leads to more students coming to Wayne State
University and more prestige for the university overall. Thus, if study groups were more
accessible to students, graduation rates would surely improve.
A feasibility study is the best choice because we want analysis a couple
possibilities and investigate the viability of each potential solution. If all of our ideas can
be implemented in some way, our feasibility study will help us determine which one
would be the most effective. If none of our ideas end up working out, then we will know
that study groups are not as effective as we had originally thought. The most challenging
part of this study will be finding the option with the lowest cost and the highest benefit.
This would be something that could not be passed up on by the people in charge.
Wayne State’s poor graduation rate is a multi-faceted problem. The university
accepts students from nearby schools that are very poorly funded. This leads to a bad
education for the students. Such a poor education sets these students up for failure
when they make it to Wayne State. The more simple solution would be to accept
students based on GPA alone. The incredibly complex solution would be to reform
Detroit’s public school system. Our project falls between these two extremes.
Our goal is to decide if improving Blackboard’s existing study group method,
using the independent app StudyRoom, or creating our own study group app in
association with the university would be the best way to get more students using study
groups and, in turn, improving the graduation rate.
Objective
The purpose of this study is to improve graduation rates at Wayne State
University by improving study groups and how they can be formed. We will look at three
methods that could potentially accomplish this task. The first method would be to
upgrade the "Groups" feature on Blackboard. This feature is rarely used by students
because of its poor design. If "Groups" was made to be more user friendly and the
teachers were to promote its use to their students, "Groups" would be a viable option
to getting students to meet and work together. Since "Groups" is already a part of
Wayne State's infrastructure, it should be the easiest to implement.
The next method is to bring StudyRoom to Wayne State's campus. StudyRoom is
a social media site like Facebook that is built with university students in mind. It allows
students to connect with others in their class in various ways. They can share notes, ask
questions, and just generally help one another to get through their classes. It is what
other online study groups strive to be. If we could get students to flock to this site en
Mass, then we could possibly see an improvement in the graduation rate.
The third method is for Wayne State to create its own study group app. This app
could group students together based on subject or specific class, arrange meeting times,
and provide tutors that would ensure the study groups are effective. Wayne State
creating the app would ensure that the app gains access to Wayne State's user
database. This will decrease the hassle of students having to input their credentials
before being able to use the app. Wayne State would also be more likely to promote the
app on pipeline or through email if it was created in-house. While this is the most
ambitious choice, it may be the one that Wayne State would most likely agree to.
Our group would prefer it if one of our methods proved to be successful in
increasing the graduation rate at Wayne State University. Finding out that study groups
are ineffective would be a huge disappointment.
Reader Profile
The task we will help the reader perform is understanding how study groups
positively affect the graduation rate. The reader will want to know how much the
project will cost, how it can be implemented, and how we will grow a sizable user base.
The reader will likely search for key points pertaining to the questions above. The reader
will also look for references to credible sources that back up our claims.
The reader will compare the results of each individual method and see which
one makes the most sense to implement. If the results show a negligible improvement,
they will most likely reject the feasibility report altogether.
The reader most likely wants to improve the graduation rate, which is exactly
what we want. They might not see how study groups would accomplish this, which is
why we must thoroughly research our topic and back up what we say with welldocumented facts. Hopefully, the reader views us as aspiring students that want to
make Wayne State a better university. If they view us in a favorable light, they will be
more willing to hear us out.
Primary and Secondary Audiences
One of our primary audiences is the Student Senate. This group gets a lot of stuff
done for students on campus. They would also most likely be the ones to implement our
ideas. If we could appeal to the student senate, our chances of implementing our ideas
would greatly increase. Another potential audience is the Dean of Students. Gaining the
support of the Dean of Students would give us access to various student organizations,
like sororities and fraternities. Doing so would help build our initial user base. Without
the student’s interest, this whole thing would fall apart.
Our third and fourth primary audiences are the Academic Senate and the
provost. The Academic Senate is the ruling body for the faculty, and the Provost is the
head of all academic departments. Gaining either of these audiences' support would be
huge. If we got the Academic Senate on our side, it could mean having the faculty
promote our study group method to their students. If the Provost supported us, we
would have approval of the departments themselves. Doing so would be crucial to our
potential success. We would need their full cooperation to implement our ambitious
ideas and make them a reality.
Of course, our instructor, Jared Grogan, is the secondary audience. We need to
make sure we closely follow his guidelines in order to create the best feasibility study
possible. Following his instructions will lead to other audiences taking what we say
seriously. This will help us get our point across and potentially lead to one of our ideas
getting implemented.
Context
Our feasibility study will be used to address the issue of Wayne State University’s
obscenely low graduation rate. We, as students of Wayne State University, are
concerned with the graduation rate because it is a bad reflection of the school we
attend. Wayne State University is a Research 1 college with some of the top profession
schools in the nation, but all of the exemplary qualities are overshadowed by the fact
that only 10.1% of students can manage to graduate within 4 years. Our feasibility
report will offer 3 potential viable solutions to this problem by submitting research
attempting to prove that improved studying programs will lead students to better
academic success.
Ethical Treatment of Stakeholders
The students are the major stakeholders of our feasibility study. Our work will
directly benefit the students the most. We need to make sure to help the students and
not harm them. We feel that most of our stakeholders would support what we are
trying to do, because there doesn't seem to be a downside to them. Our primary
audiences might feel differently, but for the stakeholders, it would be a win-win
situation.
Primary and Secondary Research
Primary research will be a crucial step in building our feasibility study. Some of
the possible types of primary research we could use are surveys, questionnaires,
interviews, observation, focus groups, and demonstrations. We have decided that
directly interviewing faculty, advisors, and students would be a great way to gather the
information we need. Surveys and questionnaires will also be incorporated and analyzed
to determine the opinions that students and faculty have on study habits, study groups,
learning communities, and the usability of Blackboard at Wayne State. For our
secondary research, we will look into how other schools manage to maintain high
graduation rates, how we can improve or update Blackboard, and why the graduation
rate is so low to begin with.
One of the methods we will use to do secondary research is to make refined and
concise searches via Google and Google Scholar. Using Google is a no-brainer because of
how comprehensive their databases are. We will also use Wayne State's extensive
library database to find articles and studies relevant to our topic. In addition, we will
search the top news websites for articles that deal with recent events. This will help us
make our topic more relevant to the reader and keep them interested for a longer
period of time.
We came up with a good number of research questions that we hope to answer as this
project moves along:
1 How would study groups positively affect Wayne state and student study practices?
2 How would improving existing Wayne state technologies, such as black board
improve collaborative study habits of students?
3 How would the stream lining of study groups affect (positive / negative) the
graduation rate at Wayne state.
4 What are the benefits of creating a new app specific to Wayne state students and
study groups as opposed to using an existing one?
5 How would the school get students to use the StudyRoom app if they chose to
implement it?
6 If WSU created a personal app, who would manage it and what would be the cost?
We also found some secondary sources that could be used in our feasibility study:
1 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0742051X07000066 - This
scientific research report discusses the effects learning communities have on
teaching practices and student learning. Being able to pinpoint exactly how
learning communities and study groups affect students will allow us to focus our
research methods even tighter.
2 http://heer.qaa.ac.uk/SearchForSummaries/Summaries/Pages/AWP182.aspx - This
report talks about graduation rates and how to improve them. If we can learn
the causes for higher and lower graduation rates, we should be able to find the
solutions to Wayne State's problematic graduation rate.
3 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2160732 - This magazine article discusses how to
implement technology into education. It will be useful for when we want to pitch
an idea for an app to Wayne State.
4 https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=pmIXBwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT7&d
q=learning+communities+2005..2015&ots=Xua8jvdpYL&sig=vEpcUdk1Vt1y64ue
VmgKsuNydZg#v=onepage&q=learning%20communities%202005..2015&f=true This book is yet another valuable source that discusses learning communities and
their benefits. We will need this to understand why students gravitate towards
group learning.
5 http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/5642.aspx - This article talks about what makes
study groups an effective means of learning. Although we already believe that
study groups are highly beneficial to students, it wouldn't hurt to have a few
scholarly articles back us up.
6 http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/Images/Creating%20and%20Sustaining%20PLC
s_tcm4-631034.pdf - This pdf details the ways of crafting a successful learning
community. By learning how to create learning communities, we will know how
to fix Blackboard's Groups feature to better resemble something students would
want to use.
Team Duties and Responsibilities
Vincent Lindemann is the team leader. He is responsible for handing out tasks to
the other members and making sure everyone meets deadlines. He excels at revision
and will combine every group member’s work into a completed and polished project.
Stephanie Guevera will be in charge of the meeting minutes and finding viable and
reliable secondary sources. She is excellent at promoting group discussion and getting
everyone involved. Julian Jackson will overlook the creation of the surveys and
interviews that will be used as primary sources. He is very proficient at coming up with
ideas relevant to the topic at hand. This will come in handy when coming up with survey
questions that benefit our study the most.
Each individual member of the team is responsible for producing his or her fair
share of work. The other two members of the team will hold them accountable. If a
member is habitually absent or late, it will be their responsibility to read over the
meeting minutes and find what tasks they were given by the other two group members.
If a team member does not finish her/his work in the allotted time, they will need to
communicate with the rest of the group on when they can get their work done. If they
miss the second deadline, they will be given a strike. If they fail to communicate with
the group in the first place, they will be given a strike. Three strikes and that member
will be reported to Jared Grogan for trying (knowingly or unknowingly) to sabotage the
group. It will be up to Jared on whether or not the group member is given a warning or
is kicked out of the group altogether. If a group member submits poor quality work, the
other two members maintain the right to reject it and request immediate revision If the
behavior persists, the other two members maintain the right to report said member to
Professor Grogan to be reprimanded in any way he sees fit.
All researched information will be saved and linked on our citation page, which
can be accessed by link on our Project 3 wiki page. Under the link, an excerpt from the
source will be written that shows exactly what was taken from that source. To ensure all
information will be correctly documented and cited using APA style, we will use the
Purdue University Online Writing Lab website (or OWL for short). This website is
incredibly comprehensive when it comes to citations and how to correctly write in APA
format. It is the perfect tool for correctly formatting a feasibility study project.