Student Involvement
The other project I worked on was through the UCF Quality Enhancement Plan, where I, along with one other undergraduate student, began to study aspects of student involvement. In our initial research, we found a great deal of evidence supporting the value and importance of extra- and co-curricular involvement. However, despite the proven benefits associated with student involvement, there is limited research – specifically at UCF – concerning why many students are not participating in activities outside of the classroom. We created a survey to be distributed to a cross-section of undergraduate students at UCF to determine what barriers to student involvement exist.
A challenge that we did not anticipate when beginning this project was seeking IRB approval. All research that involves human subjects must undergo approval to ensure the safety of all participants. Even though we would just be distributing surveys, we were still required to file an IRB approval protocol, which neither of us had done before. This gave us the opportunity to think critically about aspects of research we hadn’t considered, such as how we would distribute the surveys to minimize bias, how many participants we would need to obtain statistically significant results, and how we would manage the data to maintain confidentiality. In reporting all of this, it gave us practice in writing in a technical, descriptive way. We worked hard to make sure it was clear, concise, and thorough for those reviewing our IRB submission. In addition to writing for the IRB, we also had to construct the survey that we would distribute. This required an entirely different writing style, as we had to ensure that none of the questions were biased or unclear. We didn’t want respondents to give the answer that they thought we wanted, but rather the answer they felt was closest to their experiences.
Click here to see our poster - Connecting the Dots: Identifying Particular Challenges which Correlate with a Decreased Likelihood of Student Extra- and Co-Curricular Involvement.
A challenge that we did not anticipate when beginning this project was seeking IRB approval. All research that involves human subjects must undergo approval to ensure the safety of all participants. Even though we would just be distributing surveys, we were still required to file an IRB approval protocol, which neither of us had done before. This gave us the opportunity to think critically about aspects of research we hadn’t considered, such as how we would distribute the surveys to minimize bias, how many participants we would need to obtain statistically significant results, and how we would manage the data to maintain confidentiality. In reporting all of this, it gave us practice in writing in a technical, descriptive way. We worked hard to make sure it was clear, concise, and thorough for those reviewing our IRB submission. In addition to writing for the IRB, we also had to construct the survey that we would distribute. This required an entirely different writing style, as we had to ensure that none of the questions were biased or unclear. We didn’t want respondents to give the answer that they thought we wanted, but rather the answer they felt was closest to their experiences.
Click here to see our poster - Connecting the Dots: Identifying Particular Challenges which Correlate with a Decreased Likelihood of Student Extra- and Co-Curricular Involvement.