student retention: critical path guidance dr roy allen
TRANSCRIPT
STUDENT
RETENTI
ON:
CRITIC
AL PAT
H GUID
ANCE
DR
RO
Y A
L L EN
Why do students struggle to stay the course?:
Financial;
Social;
Personal;
Academic.
So no universal panacea
Academic issues:
Failing
Why?
We ASSUME they know and do
Would providing “critical path” information help?
e.g., assignments, courses, prerequisites, programmes
Work not adequate: Insufficient effort Not starting soon enough
But is it made explicit?
Network diagram (PERT chart)
Using this, it's possible to work out which tasks can be delayed without affecting the end date of the project, and which ones can't. The tasks which cannot be delayed are said to be Critical, and the path that can be traced through them on the Network Diagram is called the Critical Path
Introduce start date (Gantt Chart)
Application in Academia
Plainly no parallel processes
But components and timescales (effort),
For example. for a Critical Review (3-4000 words) - pilot
Week No. Task Suggested hours2 Review the topics from MyAberdeen; read some of the suggested
references.10
3 & 4 Carry out library search. Select sufficient relevant articles; read enough to at least understand the topic (abstracts?), if not the details; prepare a brief outline of the structure of your critical review.
10
5 & 6 Read each of the selected articles in detail and complete a draft of your critical review.
20
7 Do nothing 8 Re-read your draft, make corrections/revisions and add anything from
the week 7 tutorial.10
12 Review feedback and identify strategies for future improvements. 2
MyAberdeen
Ideally these would have been put into the calendar but . . .
Announcements
Posted on: Monday, 4 February 2013Task(s): Review the topics from MyAberdeen,
Read some of the suggested references
Suggested task hours: 10
Course Link /Course Materials/Critical Review course Posted by: Roy AllenPosted to: PS4530 & PS4529 (2012-13): Senior Honours Psychology B
9.00 – 10.00
10.00 – 11.00
11.00 – 12.00
12.00 – 1.00
1.00 – 2.00
2.00 – 3.00
3.00 – 4.00
4.00 – 5.00
Monday
Week commencing 29th April 2013
PS1509Lecture
ALTDr Pilz
Sensation &
Perception
PS1509WorkshopG38Dr Bishop
PS1510LectureFN1Dr IrwinSurveys
LunchPH1520Essay - 1500 wordDatabase searchand reading articles
LS1520RevisionLaw LibraryPreparing for MCQ test
SCEF comments since Monday (of 9 completed forms):
I didn't find them particularly helpful as I make my own task schedules and often they over or underestimated the amount of work I had planned for the critical review. In all honesty I just ignored them and stuck my own timetable. quite useful. This was quite helpful in terms of keeping us on track and the expectations of the length of time devoted to this course. Yes this would definitely be useful for other courses. I found this very useful and kept me up to date with things that i needed to do and such. could have been useful last year (third year) when we had to have things submitted/done on a very regular basis.
Yes, it was helpful.