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What is the profile of the student population that uses the Social Sciences Learning Center?

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Quantitative / Survey
Additional quantitative data will be obtained through the distribution of the survey instrument posted here.  This survey will be distributed to student users of the center over a three-week period during weeks 6-8 of the 16-week semester.  The instrument will provide critical data to answer key question 4.  Questions 1-5 focus on the quality and accessibility of the services in the center.  Questions 6-12 specifically address the quality of tutoring provided by the center.  Questions 13-18 assess students’ perceptions of how the tutoring impacts their academic abilities with questions 17 and 18 functioning as a pre- and post-tutoring assessment of confidence. These questions should provide data for both key questions 3 and 4.

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To what extent is the organizational structure of the center aiding or impeding its ability to deliver services to students?

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What are the perceptions of the center’s services by those students who use them?

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To what extent is use of the center’s services correlated to student confidence, retention, and success in social science classes?

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What type of services are students using and with what frequency?

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Qualitative / Focus Groups & Interviews
This portion of the evaluation will use two separate one-hour focus groups with ten students who have used the center’s services and another one-hour focus group with five tutors to gauge perceptions of the center’s effectiveness and the motivations for using its services, thus providing data for key questions 3 and 4.  To answer key question 5, further individual interviews will be conducted with the faculty coordinator and Associate Dean of Learning Assistance to assess their perceptions of the center’s organizational and reporting structure.

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The Social Sciences Learning Center at Pasadena City College is one of twelve student success centers located across the campus as part of a decentralized model of providing instructional support to students.  The learning center provides three major services to students who are enrolled in social science courses:  access to learning materials (textbooks, supplemental readings, etc.), subject-specific peer tutoring, and access to computers and printing.  The tutoring is provided in subjects including anthropology, economics, history, political science, psychology, religious studies, and sociology.

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Internal

recruiting, training, and hiring skilled tutors across all of the social sciences disciplines – several disciplines and core courses taught in the division are not represented by the tutor population (e.g., statistics for social sciences)

scheduling the tutors at times of high student demand

External

The college has moved to a decentralized success center system, but all funding and budgets are operated through a central office creating conflicting reporting structures

Operational control of the center is ill-defined in this model

The faculty director of the center only receives nine hours per week of release time to plan all center operations

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The purpose of this evaluation is to determine the effectiveness of both the services delivered to students by the center and the organizational and oversight structure of the center.  The results of the evaluation will be used to improve the services offered to students or create new services to respond to student needs.  The results may also be used to identify weaknesses in the organizational structure of the center and recommend improvements or restructuring.

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Quantitative / Archival
The quantitative portion of the design will use demographic and usage data obtained at the check-in counter over the course of one sixteen-week semester, which can be cross-referenced with student demographic data and success data such as course completion and success.  This means of data collection will provide answers to key questions 1 and 2 by creating a data profile of students using the center and the frequency of use of each of the services and may provide some data for key question 3 by linking individual student profiles to course retention and success.

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Entrance to the center

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Logic Model for SSLC

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1. Will students answer honestly the questions on the survey?
2. Are the survey questions adequate measures of student confidence, retention, and success?
3. Cross-referencing of user data with grades or retention data can be flawed because of "noise" (i.e., what assistance besides SSLC services are they getting/not getting; does the student have a history of dropping/failing classes).  Data analysis must be careful not to fall vicitm to correlation-causation fallacy.
4. Are students who use the center likely to succeed anyway due to high motivation?
5. Will the key stakeholders interviewed (faculty coordinator and Associate Dean) feel comfortable honestly expressing concerns about funding and organizational structure if the analysis is being shared with stakeholders (VP and President) who have power over their budget and employment?

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Check-in desk and interior of center

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Evaluation Matrix to link key questions to data collection

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Survey to be distributed to student users