What were the challenges of this project, and what did I learn?
There were many challenges in this project.
The first was timing and time consumption. Finding time within a busy schedule to:
Email instructors.
Hear back from instructors about their thoughts/ideas/ follow up questions.
Schedule times to administer the survey.
The second challenge:
I needed to research the idea of an unbased survey:
Distinguish what ideas and thoughts were important to m capstone(the focus was migrant student basic needs/acceptance on campus).
Find an ease for minimal data reception errors.
Decide what type of questions would be best used in this setting for TS, ELA students.
The third challenge:
Administering that survey was a challenging, but fun task:
I gave a speech at the beginning of each class time, that informed the students why I was there (most only understood small bits of what I was saying as there were some beginning English learners compared to third years).
Translating the 9 questions with google translate, other apps students had on phones, simpler terminology.
Roughly 15-30 minutes translating the questions, answering follow up questions for clarity, and working with the TS instructors as they do know their classes better than a stranger.
Lastly, the 4th challenge was deciphering the data. I do not have bullet points for this but it all comes down to time and evaluating from paper to an excel spreadsheet. It took several hours, but ultimately was worth it to see the results in one area, compared to the paper form. I had chose the paper form over an online survey for a few reasons, primarily though, I wanted ease of translation.
In this, I learned quite a bit about asking questions that pertained to the student, and not the "want" of the researcher (me). I had no agenda in this, I was just fully interested in what the students had to say about their experience and needs. this is precisely why investigating a good practice was such a great idea. I even sought help from other staff and faculty. I will say, that the Transitional Studies instructors really taught like they loved what they were doing, and I really dig that. I also learned that though most of the students had their needs met, some felt quite disconnected. Be that because they were displaced from their homes, or because they were being forced to be there on conditions of getting help from the state. I also learned that it seemed difficult for these students to find comfort in my being in the class with them at the start, but towards the end of administering the survey we were smiling, asking probing questions together and trying our best to communicate with a language barrier(shout out to google here, and thank goodness for technology). Lastly, though the responses weren't "the worst", I did notice in some ways what the administration at the college could do better in order to raise comfort levels of the students. I think that these students deserve more one on one time, and this is tough with the instructor to student ratio, and they also need to know that there are resources that can help them in the EvCC community as well as surrounding Snohomish county.