Student Affairs Assessment Council Minutes
February 5, 2014
Attendance: Ozge Akcali, Jo Alexander, Daniel Cardenas Tina Clawson, Maureen Cochran, Jeff Kenney,
Pat Ketcham, Carolyn Killefer, Remi Nagata, Daniel Newhart, Juliana Recio, Rick Stoddart, Kent Sumner,
Melissa Yamamoto
Student Worker Learning Outcomes Project
Daniel led a discussion around creating an assessment or research question and provided a review of
literature relevant to the topic. Details of the presentation can be found here; these minutes represent
the discussion that occurred throughout the presentation.
Assessment & Research
 The literature makes distinct differentiations between the two but assessment & research can
fuel one another.
 Committing to the question is key; through to analysis and reporting
 What is assessment vs. research? (discussion)
o Assessment: what is
 Learn from outcome and applicable to only this program
 Needs assessments can be generalizable
o Research-what could be
 More generalizable
 More hypothesis driven
Review of Literature
Council members were asked to read the abstracts presented and to pick out 2 things that we can draw
from this article that would be useful.
Cheng & Alcantara, 2007:
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Looks at work as an experiential learning activity
Using grounded theory; learning from students & trying to come up with themes which may
later be used for research--starting with an exploratory frame (we are also working in an
exploratory frame in our project)
Grounded with students and their experience; what they want to learn, their aspirations
Curtis & Shani, 2002:
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Is this only about students working on campus or just working in general? -- would need to read
more of article
Looks at transferable skills coming out of their work and what it means to those students
Cost/benefit to working while in college (note: a lot of research says that 19 hours is the "magic
number”)
Looked at student perception of their grades are lower than their non-working peers
Curtis & Williams, 2002:
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Seems to focus on students articulating the value of their work
Leads us to the question of what the culture is like on that campus. At OSU, students are told
that they're a student first.
Dundes & Marx, 2006:
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"sweet spot" --19 hours
Is this really generalizable to all students? Is 10-19hrs a "sweet spot" on this campus?
How are hours measured? Do internships count as work hours or study?
Depends on the type of work-some students can do their homework at work, some positions
demand more attention to the work -- these are variables we should consider
Ehren & Sherman, 1987:
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Interesting point: if people work on campus, they are more likely to go to grad school
o is this generalizable to any position on campus or working in specific areas?
o Discussion point: What's your experience anecdotally? Have the students you employed
all gone to grad school?
 We need to consider selection bias; we want the best
 Area-specific (graphic designers go right into work; SLI students often go to grad
school; DAS students tend to change to technology-related field, then onto grad
school)
 Would we want to track students over time or take a snapshot?
Longitudinal study
Furr & Elling, 2000:
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Of course working more than 30 hours/week is hard!
Opportunity cost-new idea; if they're working, what can't they do?
First time we're seeing faculty interaction
Perception of faculty availability increases retention
Klum & Cramer, 2006:
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Different from other papers we've talked about--would require looking deeper
Those who work may have lower GPAs but they tend to be happier and graduate
Did they differentiate between levels of hours?
Shaw & Ogilvie, 2010:
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Generally speaking about experiential learning activities
Are there ways to create structured experiences within Blackboard for student workers?
Swanson, Boardbridge, & Kara, 2006:
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Link to wellbeing; student employment as a possible contributor to wellbeing
Athas, Oaks, Kennedy-Phillips, 2013:
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Linking of student employee outcomes and university goals (LGGs)
Regression-trying to predict
Article available online
Going in with assumption that there are some global outcomes
Discussion
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Looking at the literature, we can see that we need to narrow our focus
o on-campus employment or all employment?
o internships or paid?
o number hours worked
Benefits & detractions based on hours worked has already been examined. We want to know
what practices we can instill in order to create a positive experience
Mum has been working with Rick Stoddart on analyzing data around student workers in the
library; this data could possibly inform this study
Is there any research on 1st year employment vs other years & how that impacts retention?
How much is inherent that we're hiring high achievers? Is this student going to be successful
regardless? Many positions have GPA requirements. Depending on the research, we could try to
control for this.
What's the difference between those working on/off campus? Daniel thinks that one of the
surveys we do tracks this.
International students can only work on campus; how do we take this into consideration?
How does student employment contribute to student learning?
Next steps
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Marinate on this information for a discussion at the next meeting about where we want to go
and what our research or assessment question will be. Next meeting we will come up with
question, and objectives, and begin the process of moving forward.
Updates:
3-in-1 annual report
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Departmental Highlights are integrated into the Annual Report-matched to what Larry writes for
Sabah
Trying to come up with categories for student success rather than all open ended (with the
option of open ended)
Includes the Assessment Plan/Report as designed by the Assessment Council
Program Review section
Will send draft to Assessment Council to get feedback/critique; counting on you all to make this
make sense for everyone else.
Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Curriculum
This has been re-organized into rubric form based upon recommendations from the Assessment Council.
Daniel and Maureen will now be going through the rubric with a fine toothed comb to improve upon the
sequence of learning that is represented in the tool. In addition, they intend to add valuable information
that is missing in the areas of mixed methods and program evaluation.
Membership Description
No updates here, just wanted to assure you we will be returning to this and completing this spring.
Next Meeting:
February 19, 2014
9:00 am-10:30 am
MU Council Room