TY - JOUR
T1 - Analysis of social media forums to elicit narratives of graduate engineering student attrition
AU - Berdanier, Catherine G.P.
AU - Whitehair, Carey
AU - Kirn, Adam
AU - Satterfield, Derrick
N1 - Funding Information:
' story is one that confronts the sociological norms and expectations of academia. Language used in the post indicates that may not entirely fit within many of the norms of academia or engineering. For example, the mention of conducting queer science outreach events is an explicit refusal to accept the heteronormative and predominantly male engineering culture. The theme Perception by Others manifests not in the sense of how others think about the decision to leave or stay in academia; however, because this student does not know how others perceive them, they seem to be afraid for their physical and/or emotional safety (Quality of Life and Work). More than just an unhealthy culture, indicates that others' perceptions make them “now even more terrified” to be in their building. Although seems to have academic potential, having been awarded the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, and although this student is supported by their advisor (Advisor Role and Relationship), who “has been pretty wonderful,” is considering leaving graduate school. Harperssocks Harperssocks Harperssocks Harperssocks Harperssocks
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 ASEE
PY - 2020/1/1
Y1 - 2020/1/1
N2 - Background: Graduate engineering student attrition is prevalent, but most literature that studies graduate attrition is accomplished in disciplines outside of STEM or engineering, yielding an incomplete understanding of either attrition or persistence. Purpose/Hypothesis: The purpose of this article is to investigate the relationships between motivators of attrition for engineering graduate students. Design/Method: Data were collected using an online Web-scraping “bot” that mines data from the online forum Reddit. The anonymous textual forum threads collected were qualitatively analyzed through open-coding methods. Results: The emergent themes reveal the interconnectedness between the roles of the advisor, student perception of cost, their support network, goals, their perceptions of how others perceive them, and quality of life and work. Our model is flexible in that it illuminates underlying combinations of factors that can influence student attrition. Conclusion: This study provides a framework by which various stakeholders can approach the support and education of graduate students, including mentoring students both toward or away from graduate school per the student's goals.
AB - Background: Graduate engineering student attrition is prevalent, but most literature that studies graduate attrition is accomplished in disciplines outside of STEM or engineering, yielding an incomplete understanding of either attrition or persistence. Purpose/Hypothesis: The purpose of this article is to investigate the relationships between motivators of attrition for engineering graduate students. Design/Method: Data were collected using an online Web-scraping “bot” that mines data from the online forum Reddit. The anonymous textual forum threads collected were qualitatively analyzed through open-coding methods. Results: The emergent themes reveal the interconnectedness between the roles of the advisor, student perception of cost, their support network, goals, their perceptions of how others perceive them, and quality of life and work. Our model is flexible in that it illuminates underlying combinations of factors that can influence student attrition. Conclusion: This study provides a framework by which various stakeholders can approach the support and education of graduate students, including mentoring students both toward or away from graduate school per the student's goals.
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U2 - 10.1002/jee.20299
DO - 10.1002/jee.20299
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85076088466
SN - 1069-4730
VL - 109
SP - 125
EP - 147
JO - Engineering education
JF - Engineering education
IS - 1
ER -