2014 Charleston Conference Charleston Neapolitan Session Saturday, Nov 8, 9:45 AM

1. The Punishment for Dreamers:
Big Data, Retention, and Academic Libraries
Adam L. Murray
Dean of University Libraries
Murray State University

2. amurray@murraystate.edu @adammurray12

3. “A dreamer is one who can only find his
way by moonlight, and his punishment is
that he sees the dawn before the rest of the
world.”
Oscar Wilde

4. Challenges Facing Higher Education
Decreasing state funding
Increasing expectation for
universal access
Pressures to keep costs
contained and tuition low
Increased need for remediation
Idealized social experience
Credentialing agent for career
advancement
Dissatisfaction with student
learning outcomes
Accreditation is a constantly
moving target

5. The Financial Crunch
State Funding + (Tuition X Enrolled Students) + Grants/External Funding
 Nationally, State funding has dropped
from $88.8 billion in 2007 to $78.8
billion in 2013.
 Getting students enrolled, and keeping
them enrolled becomes a high-stakes
endeavor
 Percentage of educational revenue
derived from tuition has climbed from
23.8% to nearly 50% nationally.
State Higher Education Executive Officers
Association

6. Enrollment & Retention
 Declining populations of traditional college students
• Competition for traditional college students
• Facilities and services which serve to increase tuition
• Increased focus on non-traditional students with an impact on the
curriculum
• Increased numbers of enrolled students who are not college ready
 Cost of recruiting students is higher than the cost of retaining students

7. Performance-based Funding
39 states are involved with
performance-based funding (as of
September, 2013)
Typical metrics include
• Degrees awarded
• Graduation rates
• Transfer rates
• Time and credits to degree
Retention becomes a critical funding
consideration at 2 levels
• Lost tuition & auxiliaries revenue
• Impact on institutional state
appropriations

8. Why does this matter to academic libraries?
How could you justify keeping vacant faculty or staff lines in the library
instead of being repurposed in a more obviously revenue-generating area of
the university?
How can you make a better argument for improved collections funding?
How can you argue for favorable positioning for renovations or new
construction in campus master plans?

9. Why retention?
 Oakleaf’s Study:
• Student enrollment
• Student retention & graduation rates
• Student success
• Student achievement
• Student learning
• Student experience
• Faculty research productivity
• Faculty grant proposals and funding
• Faculty teaching
• Institutional reputation/prestige

10. Why retention?
 Doesn’t rely on self-reported
or anecdotal data
 Provide evidence of powerful
correlations that can be
directly tied to institutional
performance and well-being

11. Theories of Student Retention
Bean
(psychological)
Tinto
(sociological)

12. Tinto’s Model of Student Integration
 Grounded in cost/benefit analysis
economics and Durkheim’s theory of suicide
 Insufficient interactions with others and
insufficient congruency with prevailing value
patterns
 Academic integration – goal commitment
 Social integration – institutional commitment
Weaknesses: does not account for
non-traditional students, minorities,
and the impact of external
influences

13. Bean’s Model of Student Motivation
 Dropping out is a behavior, and behaviors are
psychologically motivated
 Four domains: academic performance; background
variables; intent to leave; and environmental
variables
 Accounts for impact of finances, employment,
external encouragement/support, family
responsibilities, and opportunities to transfer
Weakness: drop-out behavior
as a pathology

14. Engagement
Level of investment in higher education in which students spend significant
time and energy on educationally purposeful activities. (Kuh et al., 2008)
Ten educationally purposeful activities which have been labeled as “high-impact
practices” by the American Association of Colleges and Universities

15. High-impact Practices
1. First-year seminars and experiences
2. Common intellectual experiences
3. Learning communities
4. Writing-intensive courses
5. Collaborative assignments and projects
6. Undergraduate research
7. Diversity and global learning experiences
8. Service learning
9. Internships
10.Capstone courses and projects

16. High-impact Practices & Academic Libraries
 Majority of time associated with the high-impact practices takes place
in informal academic environments, such as the library
 Requires integration of ideas or information from various sources
 Including diverse perspective in class discussions or writing
 Discussing ideas with faculty members outside of class
 Discussing ideas with others outside of class
 Making judgments about the value of information
(Kuh, 2008; Nelson et al., 2008)

17. Retention & Academic Libraries
 Tend to focus on studies of space or collection
utilization, correlations with expenditures, and the
impact of instruction
Notable studies
• Haddow and Joseph, 2010
• Haddow, 2013
• Soria, Fransen, and Nackerud, 2013
• Soria, Fransen, and Nackerud, 2014
 Library use – and use of particular library services –
tend to correlate with higher retention rates than non-use

18. The Murray State Assessment in Action Study
 Data collection began in 2012: seeking to calculate correlations
between library use and student success metrics
 Assessment in Action (ACRL) – correlations between library use,
time of semester, and retention
 Led by Ashley Ireland, Director of User and Instruction Services
 Data analysis completed by Dr. Jana Hackathorn

19. The Murray State Study
 Data elements
• Checking out an item
• Logging into a library computer lab
• Logging into an electronic resource
• Logging into ILLiad
• Participation in an Instruction Session
• Enrollment in a credit-bearing Information Literacy course
 Binary Logistic Regression to calculate Odds Ratio

20. Findings of the Murray State Study
 Overall, library users are twice as likely to be retained as non-users. Use of
the library resources and services increased the odds of retention by 96%.
 Checking out items increased likelihood of retention 36%
 Logging into electronic resources, particularly later in the semester,
increased odds of retention by 24%
 P< .001
 RS = .079. This accounts for 8% of all possible reasons a student might be
retained.

21. Alignment with High-impact Practices
To better understand the perspectives of library deans on
the role of academic libraries in student retention using
the 10 high-impact practices as a conceptual framework
Exploratory study of 271 library deans at public Master’s
institutions (sample = 68)
Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation coefficients, and
frequency distributions

22. Library Collections Library Instruction Library Facilities
First-year seminars
Common intellectual
experiences
Learning communities
Writing-intensive courses
Collaborative assignments
Undergraduate research
Diversity and global
learning
Service learning
Internships
Capstone courses

23. Library Collections Library Instruction Library Facilities
First-year seminars 0.414** 0.392** 0.473**
Common intellectual experiences 0.514** 0.474** 0.385**
Learning communities 0.598** 0.687** 0.472**
Writing-intensive courses 0.414** 0.427** 0.534**
Collaborative assignments 0.651** 0.722** 0.635**
Undergraduate research 0.505** 0.581** 0.533**
Diversity and global learning 0.436** 0.499** 0.608**
Service learning 0.569** 0.509** 0.454**
Internships 0.473** 0.429** 0.534**
Capstone courses 0.564** 0.512** 0.553**
** Denotes a significant correlation (p<0.01)

24. Key Findings  At minimum, a moderately strong positive correlation
existed between ratings given by respondents to each
library scale and to each of the 10 high-impact
practices
 Library instruction displayed a particularly strong
correlation with learning communities and
collaborative assignments
 Collaborative assignments had an overall higher
correlation with each of the library scales
 Library facilities displayed a strong positive correlation
with diversity and global learning

25. Other Findings
NO methods of documenting impact
 Few methods of communicating impact beyond the Annual
Report
 Continued overreliance on student learning outcomes as an
indirect measure of impact
 Continued overreliance on self-reported, anecdotal, and
satisfaction data

26. Take-aways
 Enough with relying only on indirect measures
 In the era of big data, direct measures are becoming
much more feasible
 Conduct an assessment audit to align data, outcomes, and institutional priorities
 Develop visualizations of your different services/resources, assessment strategies, and their
connections to outcomes and institutional priorities
 Stop confusing student learning outcomes with measures of retention or graduation

27. Take-aways
 USE what you find!
 Close the loop within the library
• Communicate your findings to library faculty/staff
• Refine services and resources based on your findings
 Find new ways to communicate your findings externally. Put together a plan that accounts for all
stakeholders:
• Students
• Faculty/staff
• Deans
• Provost
• President
• Board

28. Concerns
Privacy
Security
IRB & Registrar

29. “A dreamer is one who can only find his
way by moonlight, and his punishment
is that he sees the dawn before the rest
of the world.”
Oscar Wilde
In the age of big data, increasing
accountability, and tightened budgets, we
have to “see the dawn” of new methods for
library assessment.

30. Friedel, J., Thornton, Z., D’Amico, M., & Katsinas, S. (2013). Performance-based funding: The national landscape. Education Policy Center.
Accessed October 23, 2014: http://uaedpolicy.ua.edu/uploads/2/1/3/2/21326282/pbf_9-17_web.pdf
Haddow, G. (2013). Academic library use and student retention: A quantitative analysis. Library & Information Science Research, 35(2), 127-136.
Haddow, G., & Joseph, J. (2010). Loans, logins, and lasting the course: Academic library use and student retention. Australian Academic &
Research Libraries, 41(4), 233-244.
Pernsteiner, G. & Carlson, A. (2014). SHEEO releases state higher education finance FY 2013. State Higher Education Executive Officers
Association. Accessed October 23, 2014:
http://www.sheeo.org/sites/default/files/publications/SHEF_FY13_%20Press%20Release_FINAL_041514.pdf
Soria, K., Fransen, J., & Nackerud, S. (2013). Library use and undergraduate student outcomes: New evidence for students' retention and
academic success. Portal: Libraries and the Academy, 13(2), 33-45.
Soria, K., Fransen, J., & Nackerud, S. (2014). Stacks, serials, search engines, and
students’ success: First-year undergraduate students’ library use, academic achievement, and retention. The Journal of Academic Librarianship,
40(1), 84-91.

31. @adammurray12
amurray@murraystate.edu
Thank you!