Hyperlinking to Avoid Transfer Shock 1
Hyperlinking to Avoid Transfer Shock
Merrilee CunninghamRuth Robbins
University of Houston Downtown
Deborah Buell
Shea Writing and Training Solutions, Inc.
Houston, TX
Erin Hodges
University of Houston Downtown
Hyperlinking to Avoid Transfer Shock1
Abstract
Manycolleges and universities have used their website to enhance academic performance for different student groups such as returning students, minority students, and transfer students. A few institutions have even set up special sites for transfer students. Moreover, four-year colleges and universities are increasingly making transfer student information an integral part of their website as a response to multi-institutional enrollment trends. Enrollment research shows that the proportion of students who attend more than one higher education institution (at the same time or sequentially) has gone up from less than 40% of collegiate students in 1970 to more than 60% today (Bers, Filkins, & McLaughlin, 2001). In light of this, every institution ought to conduct institutional research, use statewide research, and participate in joint community college – university research. This paper is about the transfer student in the context of the higher education website, its function for the transfer student, best usage models and collection and analysis of data from the state of Texasto assess the level of linkage between the community college and the four-year colleges and universities.
Hyperlinking to Avoid Transfer Shock
Manycolleges and universities have used their website to enhance academic performance for different student groups such as returning students, minority students, and transfer students. A few institutions have even set up special sites for transfer students. Moreover, four-year colleges and universities are increasingly making transfer student information an integral part of their website as a response to multi-institutional enrollment trends. Enrollment research shows that the proportion of students who attend more than one higher education institution (at the same time or sequentially) has gone up from less than 40% of collegiate students in 1970 to more than 60% today (Bers, Filkins, & McLaughlin, 2001). In light of this, every institution ought to conduct institutional research, use statewide research, and participate in joint community college – university research. This paper is about the transfer student in the context of the higher education website, its function for the transfer student, best usage models and collection and analysis of data from the state of Texas to assess the level of linkage between the community college and the four-year colleges and universities.
Arthur M. Cohen notes that students who transfer with greater numbers of community college credits do better than those who transfer with fewer college hours (Cohen & Brawer, 2002, 64). Very often, however, when a student moves from a community college to a four-year college, he or she has not completed an associate's degree, suffers social dislocation and anxiety about separation from friends and family, must travel greater distances, moves out of her community, has new financial considerations to deal with, may be concerned about the relative lack of remedial help available, and often goes from a relatively homogenous student body to a student body that represents a greater cross-section of a town or city. A community college represents an egalitarian community in its lack of admissions requirementswhich may make its training suspect at non-open door four-year colleges or universities. As W. Norton Grubb notes in “Honored but Invisible: An Inside Look at Teaching in Community Colleges” (Grubb, 1999, 237) "Sometimes the exigencies of trying to get students through a program take precedence over any standards set by transfer requirements. This observation leads to an obvious explanation for transfer shock." A four-year college may be much larger, more anonymous, and the familiarity with community college procedures may not help the student at a four-year institution or many actually disadvantage the transfer student. Some of the problems now faced by community college transfer students at four-year colleges would not be faced by students who were sufficiently oriented to their new environment. Some of the problems are as follows: (1) inability to understand university policies and procedures; (2) lack of familiarity with university policies and procedures; (3) alienation caused by classroom cliques;(4) difficulties in understanding new university academy and faculty requirements including registration, financial aid, drop periods, degree requirements, and advisement(Diaz,1992). In all actuality, these are just a few of the problems that a transfer student is likely to have. Scholars have noticed additional problems that are directly related to the disciplines of the courses taken by a first-semester transfer student. Ceida, Kaylor and Rewey noticed that math and science GPA's go down when a student transfers from the community college to the four-year college(P. 10). Many transfer students from two-year colleges are used to a directive, nurturing environment, not found as easily in four-year colleges. Community college faculties were letters grade more lenient in grading English themes than faculty from four-year colleges. Fortunately, scholars have pointed out that there are many potential tools to help solve problems caused by the transfer process. Let's look at some of the work that university systems have done to tackle these very real problems related to transfer shock as a student moves from a two-year community college to a four-year college or university.
Some of the recommendations for attacking the problems of transfer shock of the California study divide the responsibilities for addressing transfer shock between the community colleges and the four-year segments. The Report of the Institutional Self-Study of The University of North Carolina at Ashville actually lists many of the following suggestions and divides the responsibilities for alleviating transfer shock between the school that the student is transferring from and the school that the student is transferring to. The studies recommend that the community college should do the following: (1)Implement advisor training programs both institutional and in concert with local four-year institutions; (2) Install a computerized transfer course equivalency system; (3) Prepare the student before the transfer phase; (4) Develop better procedures to clarify transfer-oriented students at entrance; (5) Place greater emphasis on counseling, testing and remedial programs designed to increase the ability of students who transfer; (6) Develop better affirmative action and financial aid programs aimed at identifying and assisting traditionally under-represented students in transfer programs; (7) Encourage the creation of linkages between community college and university websites by using the teaching and learning center website - transfer student section - Transfer Resources; (8) Sponsor transfer readiness eventsand follow-up study and review support programs.
The four year-college would have the responsibility for the following segments:
(1) Implement an advisor training program both in cooperation with local community colleges and in house (2) Install a computerized transfer course equivalency system
(3) Prepare students before the transfer phase with a summer orientation program that includes use of the university website, transfer student website and computer facilities.
(4) Cooperate in the development of improved advisory programs, especially in biology, chemistry, math, physics, accounting, English and economics, areas where the student is likely to experience transfer shock. (5) Develop inter-institutional counseling and orientation for transfer students (6) Encourage the creation of linkages between community college and university websites by using the teaching and learning center website - transfer student section and hyperlinking. (7) Maintain a regularly updated calendar on the Teaching and Learning Website so that a student can expect to be able to follow it as a compassing guideline. (8) Organizer transfer student cohort group enrichment program (9) Identify mentoring faculty (10) Install a merit rewards program (11) Implement policies that encourage a good institutional fit (If you don't have a nursing school, shouldn't you advise a student who wants to be a nurse to go to a college where his major is available?) (12) Encourage articulation agreements between local community colleges and four-year colleges(Green,2001). Theoretically then, major work has already been done dealing with transfer shock. The Ford Foundation grant to the NationalCenter for Educational Alliances to develop transfer centers in urban community colleges (Zamini, 2001, 18). One best practices model would be The Glendale Community College Program in California. (
Oregon has a Joint Boards Articulation Commission including members from Linn-Benton Community College, Oregon University System, Oregon State University, Chemeketa Community College, Oregon Institute of Technology, Southern Oregon University and the Community Colleges and Workforce Development Board and the minutes of the meetings are available on the web (Oregon University System, 2001, March 14). Those minutes include a very interesting draft of Principles for Practice: Transfer Student Admission and the Proficiency-based Admission Standards System.
If the states of California, Oregon, Illinois and North Carolina are leaders in the area of transfer shock, the state of Texas has work to be done. One of the elements that these California and Oregon programs have in common is hyperlinking. Certainly, a tremendously important element of facilitating the student transfer is hyperlinking between the local community colleges and the colleges and universities in the surrounding area. One could argue that hyperlinking is a simple method of aiding the student who is attempting to conform his or her work towards an Associate's degree to his or her later work for a Bachelor's. Thus it becomes a useful indicator of fairly primitive cooperation between junior colleges and local four-year colleges or universities. In our study (see Table 1), we examined 33 community colleges’ website homepages to determine if they included any hyperlinks to information on transferring to four-year schools or if they contained in other informative on-line locations references to transfer to four-year schools. Specifically, the following questions were asked: (1) Are there hyperlinks regarding transfer to 4 year schools on the website’s main page? (2) Is this school a part of a community college system? (3) Is this school in a small town, medium size town (such as Corpus Christi, Waco, Harlingen, Midland, Laredo, or McAllen), or large city (such as Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, or Austin).
Table 1
School / Are there Hyperlinks? / CommunityCollegeSchool? / Small town, Medium or LargeTownNorthwest Vista / NO / YES / LARGE CITY
St. Phillip’s College / NO / YES / LARGE CITY
Alvin Community / NO / NO / SMALLTOWN
AngelinaCollege / NO / NO / SMALLTOWN
Austin Community / NO / NO / LARGE CITY
BrazosportCollege / NO / NO / SMALLTOWN
Coastal Bend / NO / NO / SMALLTOWN
CollinCountyCC / NO / NO / SMALLTOWN
CedarValley / NO / YES / LARGE CITY
El CentroCollege / NO / YES / LARGE CITY
NorthLakeCollege / NO / YES / LARGE CITY
Del Mar College / NO / NO / MEDIUMCITY
FrankPhillipsCollege / NO / NO / SMALLTOWN
GraysonCountyCollege / NO / NO / SMALLTOWN
HoustonCommunity College System / NO / YES / LARGE CITY
JacksonvilleCollege / NO / NO / SMALLTOWN
LaredoCommunity College / NO / NO / MEDIUMCITY
LonMorrisCollege / NO / NO / SMALLTOWN
MidlandCollege / NO / NO / MEDIUMCITY
North Central Texas / NO / NO / SMALLTOWN
TomballCollege / NO / YES / SMALLTOWN
OdessaCollege / NO / NO / MEDIUMCITY
ParisJunior College / NO / NO / SMALLTOWN
LamarState College – Orange / NO / NO / SMALLTOWN
SouthTexasCommunity College / NO / NO / MEDIUMCITY
San Jacinto College District / NO / NO / LARGE CITY
TexarkanaCollege / NO / NO / SMALLTOWN
TexasStateTechnicalCollegeHarlingen / NO / YES / MEDIUMCITY
TexasStateTechnicalCollegeWaco / NO / YES / MEDIUMCITY
TrinityValleyCommunity College / NO / NO / SMALLTOWN
TylerJunior College / NO / NO / SMALLTOWN
VictoriaCollege / NO / NO / SMALLTOWN
WesternTexasCollege / NO / NO / SMALLTOWN
Of the 33 schools, 9 of the 33 were within a community college system and 24 of the 33 schools were not listed as being a part of a community college system; 18 of the 33 schools were in small towns, 7 were in medium size towns and 8 schools were in large cities. None of the homepages for the schools which were viewed was found to contain any such hyperlink to information on transferring to four-year schools or any other informative reference to transfer to four-year schools. Unfortunately, while we have gone a long way theoretically, in the real world of academia, we are only beginning to cooperate with our fellow institutions for the benefit of our students.
If students could use hyperlinks, they could plan their transfers more efficiently. It would assist students if community college webmasters have a section of their website called "Transfer Resources" that asks the simple question: "Do your plans include transferring to a local four-year college after community college?" If they do, then pathways need to be put into place to help the transferring student find out about financial aid, transfer admission, catalogues, camps, virtual tours, and credit. Links between the website at the four-year college and the community college can match the community college courses that the student intends to take with those transferable to the four or five most likely landing spots of the community college student. Names like "UH Transfer Assistance," "UH Mentor," "UH Pathways," UH Compass" clue the student in on what he or she is going to see and a link from the community college site gets them there early. If a community college student is not transferring locally, a box could be provided with "Transferring to a Private, IndependentCollege or to a College Outside of the State of Texas." "Here are some websites that you will find helpful" could save the day. California has a fabulous website like this called "California Colleges.edu." It will connect the transferring student to every college in the state of California, public and private.
Academics have long studied that moment when students transition from one kind of academic environment, like a high school to a community college, a high school to a university or a community college to university and they have studied the transfer shock, particularly in math and science courses, that accompanies those moments of transfer to what may be larger classes, less accessible instructors, and a relatively anonymous environment.
These websites offer great advice about how to succeed in the new educational environment. They suggest that the student join clubs to connect, volunteer for research projects, and visit her professor during his or her office hours. Indeed, one of my favorite "transfer shock" websites has a wonderful picture of lightning hitting a campus with the words "avoiding transfer shock" next to the lightning. Almost any four-year college that one transfers to should have a transfer orientation program to help the transfer student meet key people who can help them find their way into the right classes, adjust to the different university or college ambience, take placement tests and use the library and other facilities at their new intellectual home. But orientation, even if the students shows up for it, typically last only a day or two, and students often forget. Meeting with an advisor can help the student understand what to do immediately and in the long run, as well as, introduce the student to the infrastructure of the institution. Making the successful transfer to the senior institution requires that the student have a transfer-friendly websiteso he or she can know where to go for what, who can and will help, when something has to be done. These are simply the tools for enhancing the academic performance and comfort level for all transfer students, minority, returning, and otherwise.
It is important to realize that there are tools to remove the barriers to successful transfer. Many universities offer a computer checklist to make sure that the student has covered all the bases. EasternKentuckyUniversity has a wonderful on-line transfer student page. Transfer students can go through a list of different needs including what transfer shock is, possible differences between Eastern Kentucky and the student's last school, pre-registration periods and sequencing, an academic road map, 60 hour recommendations, and the University Writing Requirement. The Transfer Student Page takes the student on-line through key areas of the undergraduate catalogue, the semester's pre-registration schedule book, and the student handbook. There is also an excellent section on scheduling classes, working with your advisor, the drop-add period, MWF and TR class patterns, withdrawing from a class and other areas. There is even a section on Academic Success; the Dean's List; Good Standing; Warning: Probation; Academic Dismissal and Developmental Dismissal. What four-year colleges are looking for is a successful transfer model for computer assisted orientationduring the first semester. Although advisors are an important resource for transfer students, so is the section of the university website that is especially developed for transfer students. Though the student's major may be a more important indicator of the likelihood of transfer shock than even the distance that the student travels from his old school to his new school, even that can be ameliorated with the proper preparation and the community college linkage to the transfer student website.
Community college grade inflation may tend to make the four-yearcollege's indigenous