NWC Data drives curiosity and inquiry by Rachel Watson

Rachel's wondering...

rmimwatson — 2023-12-15 19:57:34 UTC

what are the demographics of the students in the DFWU numbers?

Fascinating data ! (Eric)

2023-12-15 20:01:30 UTC

A couple of perspectives come to mind as were alluded to in our discussion. 1) Adding more historical data for the previous 5 years if possible, 2) Running means of 3 or 5 years, 3) Keeping tabs on the 'covid years' (likely a new sit-com coming soon to Netflix (lol), 4) statistics associated with n such as SE or coefficients of variation (I love coefficients of variation).

Wondering about the similar DFWU rates in BIOL 1000 and BIOL 1010.... fascinating.

Will A&PI (ZOO 2010) rates change with Gen Biol 1010 pre/co-requisites (Fall 2023).

Count me in for however I can help. Data wrangling, cohort analyses, etc..

I think as Allan mentioned, that longitudinal data for transferring passing and DFWU students would be excellent.

Notice / Wonder

2023-12-15 20:01:38 UTC

The same courses that are an issue for our UW students (Pre-Professional included) are generally the same that are shown in this data.

This makes me wonder if there are demographic similarities. I also wonder if those students who struggle within those classes at our Community Colleges are actually transferring to UW. Do we lose them entirely?

Austin - data variance

2023-12-15 20:01:43 UTC

Thanks Lisa! Eric and I noticed that due to low enrollment, there can be significant variation from year to year for some classes. I would love to work together on finding some ways to capture variance in visualizations.

Austin wonders

2023-12-15 20:04:27 UTC

What trends are observed at similar schools to NWC for marginalized/underprivileged students in STEM? Perhaps we can generate some hypotheses from published data or literature to guide our exploration.

Variance (Austin)

2023-12-15 20:07:36 UTC

Thanks Lisa! I would be willing to help in any way I can with data analysis/visualization. In particular, as Eric mentioned, some method of visualizing or quantifying variance could be cool.

Lisa's notes

2023-12-15 20:12:15 UTC

I jotted down these things to keep in mind for future exploration:

Covid effect - possibly do pre-covid and post-covid comparisons
Plot coefficients of variation
Include all enrolled student in future and don't exclude courses with <8 enrolled. Include standard error to control for sample size.
What's the demography of students with DFWU vs Passing?
Did DFWU students go on to UW and succeed there?