KENTUCKY STATE UNIVERSITY Regular Meeting of the Board of Regents Academic Affairs Committee January 21, 2016 Cooperative Extension Building, Conference Room Frankfort, Kentucky
I. Fall Term 2015 Midterm Grades Analysis
The primary purpose for examining the midterm course grades is to provide a checkpoint for students, faculty, and University support units to assess student academic strengths and areas of need.
This report provides an overview of the fall 2015 midterm grades describing overall students' midterm grades for 2015, specifically highlighting the 2015 first-year cohort. In addition, there are comparisons with the fall 2014 midterm grades.
The Office of Institutional Research provided the total raw data counts by grade, instructor, student class, and course. The Office of Academic Assessment and Evaluation conducted further analyses using a simple t-Test for independent means to determine if there were significant differences of midterm grade outcomes between 2015 and 2014 fall undergraduate students.
Overall results for the 2015 midterm grade analyses reveal significant progress, compared to the 2014 midterm earned grades. However, a deeper exploration to inform pedagogical techniques and student behavioral correlations with earned grades is suggested. The Office of Assessment and Evaluation explored the following questions:
is there an increase in satisfactory grades earned (C or better);
is there a decrease in the number of earned Ds, Fs, and Ws;
is there an increase in satisfactory grades for the 2015 first-year cohort compared to the 2014 first-year cohort;
what are the courses with students earning the majority of Ds, Fs and Ws, and
is there an increase in satisfactory midterm grades for fall 2015 compared to fall 2014?
The total data counts reveal that for the fall 2015 midterm grades, there were more A grades earned (n=2228; 37%) overall, than Ds, Fs, and W grades combined (n=1205; 20%) (Table 1).
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