Introduction
The Graduate Programs Office has recently restructured and has developed tools, personnel, and strategies to increase retention, persistence, and graduation among students in the business school’s graduate programs. A significant part of this restructuring has been to professionalize advising services to its students by providing quality, personal advising to each graduate student. This level of focused, professional advising is critical in ensuring the best possible outcomes for students (Jones 2018). One of the ways to measure the effectiveness of these advising strategies is to survey students about their level of satisfaction with their advising experience. Such a survey was conducted of recent graduates from 2021-2022. The results of that survey are analysed herein to more fully understand the student responses and the relationships between student responses and program goals.
Prepare
To help understand the connections between program goals and student perceptions of their experience in the program, the student responses were analyzed.
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Import Data
The imported data is from the Advisor Satisfaction Survey
# A tibble: 2,093 × 2
bigram n
<chr> <int>
1 <NA> 93
2 my advisor 33
3 has been 21
4 i have 18
5 advisor is 11
6 have been 11
7 my questions 11
8 helpful and 10
9 in the 10
10 questions and 10
# ℹ 2,083 more rows
There are over 2,000 common bigrams
Remove the Stop Words
Specific stop words (custom) added to remove advisor names
# A tibble: 196 × 3
word1 word2 n
<chr> <chr> <int>
1 <NA> <NA> 93
2 mba program 4
3 timely manner 4
4 excellent job 3
5 extremely knowledgeable 3
6 international residency 3
7 phone call 3
8 extremely helpful 2
9 extremely supportive 2
10 graduate program 2
# ℹ 186 more rows
# A tibble: 307 × 13
StartDate EndDate Status IPAddress Progress
<dttm> <dttm> <chr> <chr> <dbl>
1 2021-02-03 18:32:32 2021-02-03 18:36:29 IP Address 134.102.11.231 20
2 2021-02-24 09:06:04 2021-02-24 09:06:52 IP Address 104.129.205.14 100
3 2021-03-08 20:24:34 2021-03-08 20:27:21 IP Address 45.37.57.111 100
4 2021-03-24 05:58:44 2021-03-24 05:59:15 IP Address 76.252.168.152 100
5 2021-03-30 13:33:33 2021-03-30 13:39:04 IP Address 174.106.74.87 100
6 2021-03-30 13:33:33 2021-03-30 13:39:04 IP Address 174.106.74.87 100
7 2021-03-30 13:33:33 2021-03-30 13:39:04 IP Address 174.106.74.87 100
8 2021-03-30 13:33:33 2021-03-30 13:39:04 IP Address 174.106.74.87 100
9 2021-03-30 13:33:33 2021-03-30 13:39:04 IP Address 174.106.74.87 100
10 2021-04-02 06:32:20 2021-04-02 06:34:23 IP Address 98.122.161.241 100
# ℹ 297 more rows
# ℹ 8 more variables: `Duration (in seconds)` <dbl>, Finished <chr>,
# RecordedDate <dttm>, `Appointment Type` <chr>, Satisfaction_Level <chr>,
# Will_Recommend <dbl>, Additional_Comments <chr>, bigram <chr>
Visualization
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IGRAPH b6eecd5 DN-- 252 196 --
+ attr: name (v/c), n (e/n)
+ edges from b6eecd5 (vertex names):
[1] NA ->NA mba ->program
[3] timely ->manner excellent ->job
[5] extremely ->knowledgeable international->residency
[7] phone ->call extremely ->helpful
[9] extremely ->supportive graduate ->program
[11] helpful ->professional super ->helpful
[13] absolute ->waste academic ->future
[15] accurate ->reply adult ->learner
+ ... omitted several edges
Warning in graph_from_data_frame(.): In `d' `NA' elements were replaced with
string "NA"
IGRAPH 03a822e DN-- 18 12 --
+ attr: name (v/c), n (e/n)
+ edges from 03a822e (vertex names):
[1] NA ->NA mba ->program
[3] timely ->manner excellent ->job
[5] extremely ->knowledgeable international->residency
[7] phone ->call extremely ->helpful
[9] extremely ->supportive graduate ->program
[11] helpful ->professional super ->helpful
Warning in geom_edge_link(aes(edge_alpha = n), show.legend = FALSE, arrow = a,
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Analysis
The connections that are apparent from this visualization is that advisors are largely supportive, knowledgeable, and helpful. This creates a direct relevancy from the MBA program to graduation. Students consistently express that their interactions with their advisors are timely, helpful, and professional. This expression aligns with the program goals to create a unique, hands-on experience even for students in an online environment. The delivery of courses is not part of the advising process, but it is apparent that advisors facilitate student success and satisfaction with their program experience.
References
Jones, Kyle M. L. 2018.
“Advising the Whole Student: eAdvising Analytics and the Contextual Suppression of Advisor Values.” Education and Information Technologies 24 (1): 437–58.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-018-9781-8.
