Good Leavers and Bad Stayers: Exploring the Influence of Defining Student Success Outcomes with a Composite Measure of Performance and Persistence

Not all college “stayers” and “leavers” stay or leave for the same reason or with the same experience. However, traditional measures and studies of academic success have limited their scope to either performance or persistence as individual variables. This study explored whether a more nuanced definition of success as a composite of both performance and persistence (GPA and retention) produced different results than when using the variables separately. The influence of academic self-efficacy on student success served as the context for this exploration. The study used an existing incoming student survey dataset from a small private liberal arts college. Subjects were grouped into one of five categories based on academic performance and persistence after two terms: Good Performing Leavers, Good Performing Stayers, Bad Performing Leavers, Bad Performing Stayers, and Early Leavers. The relationship between academic self-efficacy and student success, using the individual and composite outcome variables, were explored. The results of the study were inconclusive with the composite measure resulting in only a slight increase in the number of significant relationship with self-efficacy items. Post hoc exploratory analysis that controlled for high school GPA and removed subjects who did not appear to have engaged in the survey resulted in some support for the original hypothesis. These and other suggestions are made for future investigations of this question

Review of \u3ci\u3eWaterloo and Trafalgar\u3c/i\u3e by Olivier Tallec

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Review of \u3ci\u3eThe Kindhearted Crocodile\u3c/i\u3e by Lucia Panzieri

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Review of \u3ci\u3eA Big Guy Took My Ball!\u3c/i\u3e by Mo Willems

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Review of \u3ci\u3eThe Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore\u3c/i\u3e by William Joyce

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Review of \u3ci\u3eThe Dark\u3c/i\u3e by Lemony Snicket

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Review of \u3ci\u3eThe Matchbox Diary\u3c/i\u3e by Paul Fleischman

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Review of \u3ci\u3eOn a Beam of Light:a Story of Albert Einstein\u3c/i\u3e by Jennifer Berne

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Review of \u3ci\u3eChu\u27s Day\u3c/i\u3e by Neil Gaiman

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Photon generation in an electromagnetic cavity with a time-dependent boundary

We report the observation of photon generation in a microwave cavity with a time-dependent boundary condition. Our system is a microfabricated quarter-wave coplanar waveguide cavity. The electrical length of the cavity is varied using the tunable inductance of a superconducting quantum interference device. It is measured in the quantum regime, where the temperature is significantly less than the resonance frequency (~ 5 GHz). When the length is modulated at approximately twice the static resonance frequency, spontaneous oscillations of the cavity field are observed. Time-resolved measurements of the dynamical state of the cavity show multiple stable states. The behavior is well described by theory. Connections to the dynamical Casimir effect are discussed.Comment: 5 pages, 3 Figure