ERMII: First readings questions

Due : Thursday 1/20/2000

To answer these questions, read the distributed paper “Evaluating Academic Advising in a Multiversity Setting” by Hanson and Raney. Your typed answers should not take much more than a page. However, they should reflect deep thought on your part. On Thursday in class, we will discuss your answers to these questions and begin to talk about how one could evaluated academic advising at CMU.

1. Given the large number of respondents to the survey, do you think that the 39% response rate is a problem? What evidence is there that it may or may not be?

Thought questions: What’s more important, the overall number of responses, or the response rate? Would they have done better to approach a smaller sample of students and attempt to increase the response rate?

2. “Overall 72% of the respondents indicated that they had been advised.” Ignoring the possible nonresponse problem, do you think this figure is an accurate representation of students’ usage of academic advising services?

3. What do you think was the purpose of the focus groups? Did they accomplish this purpose?

4. Summative evaluations are intended to measure the quality of a program or service. Formative evaluations are intended, in addition, to provide guidance about how to improve the program or service. How do you think this study stacks up as a summative evaluation of academic advising at the University of Texas Austin? What about as a formative evaluation? What are its weakness on both of these dimensions?

Extra credit: What is a “multiversity?”