by:
Alaina Castor, Graduate Student, Psychological Science, B.A. Psychology
Giang Hang, Undergraduate, Cellular & Molecular Biology, Minor, Psychology
Emilee Hunt: Graduate Student, Social Work; B.A. Multicultural and Gender Studies
Nathaniel Miles Millard, PhD, Coordinator, Undergraduate Research and Assessment
For a few years now, we have been a small research team, consisting of 2-4 students and one faculty member, looking at data from our First-Year Experience (FYE) program at California State University Chico. The students who worked for the Research and Assessment “arm” of our FYE program fell in love with the theories of student success. Most started in our program as a student taking our innovative courses, then worked for us, often as embedded peer mentors helping other first-year students. Using theories of student success, we would problem solve how to help students engage better, participate more fully, and feel like they belong at Chico State and in the classroom. A few of these students became our researchers. Some were grad students hired through Adelante, a program designed to help underserved students think about going to grad school.
When the pandemic hit, our small team did like many of us are still doing, and met through Zoom to keep doing research knowing that so many of our students were now struggling in totally new ways. Our Dean reached out to us with data she had about virtual learning at Chico State. She had student focus groups, and live chat records from help lines, and surveys from various college representatives and support groups. Many of them were asking similar questions about what was working and what was not working. She asked if our team of students could analyze the data and give a presentation.
The data was mostly raw data, with some aggregated reports. We used Grounded Theory Methodology and started to read through all the data, allowing themes to emerge on their own. Via Google jamboards, using virtual sticky notes, our team wrote down all the different themes that emerged. We already knew much of the literature around student success. We spent hours on Zoom grouping themes together and debating how and why certain ideas work together. Is Zoom fatigue a mental health issue? What about difficulty concentrating or motivating? Look at how many students feel this experience as a loss: loss of the real college experience, loss of friends, loss of family? We are all so isolated.
We dedicated about 6-8 hours each week for three weeks to this work while trying to keep up with our other research work. At the end of three weeks we had a presentation. We presented once to our Dean and a few others, then were asked to present again at a workshop for faculty working to be better at virtual learning and then again during a student success conference for all faculty and administrators. Our findings are a lot about communication and making sure students know the resources available and that those resources are easy to find.
Our presentation made its way to the executive committee on campus. In the end, more than thirty changes were made to university practices and policies, based on the data we provided. Some were very easy, such as small changes to the visibility of mental health services on campus. Some take money and resources like providing better access to wifi, and some are systemic looking at how we show the compassion we have for our students.
In the end, when we finished, our small research team got together to look over all that had happened. Most of our research is about inequities in our education system and the pedagogy we have created to remove those inequities. We have been talking about how research is a type of activism. We have seen how inequities have grown in our town, first from fires, and now from a virus, we keep seeing how not everyone actually has an equal opportunity. We try to provide numbers, and in those numbers we find the stories that help us get to the larger Truths about our society and the ways we might fix those. Like protests, research doesn’t actually create the change, it raises awareness and hopes to create more conversations about the ways we can help each other. It is amazing that a small group of students can take data and turn that into a message that can help create policy change. And those policies, even if they help just one student have the confidence to persevere or one student to feel like they do belong, feels like a success.