Date of Award
1-1-2023
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Ed.D. in Education
First Advisor
Amy Wells Dolan
Second Advisor
David Rock
Third Advisor
Whitney Webb
School
University of Mississippi
Relational Format
dissertation/thesis
Abstract
First-year seminar courses have become increasingly popular for colleges and universities as they are expected to help aid in the transition to college and help students persist to graduation (Culver & Bowman, 2020).
Utilizing pre-existing data from the Office of Institutional Research Effectiveness and Planning (IREP), the scholar-practitioner evaluated EDHE 105, the freshman academic orientation course, at the University of Mississippi. The anonymized data file included demographic information of residency, gender, and ethnicity, high school grade point average, ACT composite scores, enrollment in EDHE 105, athlete and honors designations, first-semester grade point average, fourth-semester grade point average, fourth-semester hours attempted, fourth-semester hours earned, and fourth-semester enrollment status for the 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 freshmen cohorts. Student-athletes and Honors College students were removed from the working data as they are not typically advised to enroll in the course during their first fall semester for various reasons.
EDHE 105 is a course offered to students during their first semester at the University of Mississippi. The researcher analyzed the demographics for students who enrolled in EDHE 105 for the 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 freshmen cohorts as well as reviewed those student cohorts at the end of their sophomore year to see how many credits they completed overall and their grade point averages, comparing those who took EDHE 105 and those who did not. Additionally, the researcher investigated if there was a relationship between those who took EDHE 105 and were not enrolled during their fourth semester and those who did not take EDHE 105 and were not enrolled during their fourth semester.
The findings for this study included results from the descriptive data and three research questions and hypotheses. The findings revealed that students who did not take EDHE 105 had a higher grade-point-average (3.14 compared to 3.02) and more credits completed (67 compared to 64) at the end of their sophomore year. The findings also revealed that there is no relationship between those who took EDHE 105 and left the institution prior to the end of sophomore year and those who did not take EDHE 105 and left prior to the end of sophomore year.
Recommended Citation
Durham, Rachael, "The University of Mississippi’s First-Year Experience Course: A Quantitative Analysis" (2023). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2675.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/2675