Celebration of Scholars
Schedules and Tutors and Chi Squares - Oh My! A Statistical Analysis of Carthage's Brainard Writing Center Data
Name:
Cami Christopulos
Major: Marketing and Finance, Minor in Educational Studies
Hometown: Vernon Hills, IL
Faculty Sponsor:
Other Sponsors:
Type of research: Independent research
Abstract
The Brainard Writing Center strives to better its practices
in terms of scheduling tutors, assisting with certain academic divisions, and
addressing key writing issues. In working closely with the online scheduling
system for the Center, this researcher noticed issues in tutor scheduling that
resulted in less availability for clients to use the organization’s resources. There
was limited tutor knowledge in regards to discerning which academic divisions
were most represented in clients’ papers. Finally, the tutors desired to learn
which writing issues were most discussed in sessions so that they could best
prepare to address those issues with future cliental. This researcher aspired
to further investigate these topics in order to advance the availability and preparedness
of the Center’s tutors.
The research conducted addresses these items by
analyzing the Brainard Writing Center data over the past three years with
statistical analysis tools, including the chi-square test, Kruskal-Wallis test,
and Test of Hypothesis, One Proportion. The results of this research conclude
the need to modify the center’s schedule, increase tutor training on the
subject matter of the Western Heritage class, and keep tutors up to date in
terms of sentence level concern writing issues. The result have already impacted
the scheduling in the Center, as the Director of the Writing Center has
allocated three tutors to work during the hours of 12pm-4pm for the Spring 2014
semester.