Research Blog #3: Three Academic Sources

Research Blog #3: Three Academic Sources Post a list of at least three academic sources that you have found and, ideally, looked at or looked into. Explain how these sources are helping you to refine your topic.

• Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa
• MLA Citation: Arum, Richard, and Roksa, Josipa . Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. The University of Chicago Press, 2011.
• This book is about how more college students today are not sure about how their future career paths, and how academic effort among college students has declined in the recent decades. "Many students entering higher education today seem to understand that college education is important but have little specific information about commitment to a particular vision of the future" (Arum & Roksa 34). At this age, students are still unsure of what they would like to do in their future. There is a section in this book titled, "Other Studies of Learning and Student Trajectories Through College." It discusses how when students chose to develop their social lives over their academic career, they become even more unclear on their future. Arum and Roksa refer to this as "motivated but directionless. I plan to use this source to identify reasons behind the lack of motivation in students, and if there may be a possible solution.

• "Taking Retention Seriously: Rethinking the First Year of College" by Vincent Tito, Syracuse University
• MLA Citation: Vincent Tinto (1999) Taking Retention Seriously: Rethinking the First Year of College. NACADA Journal: Fall, Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 5-9.
• This article focuses on the fact that many college campuses do not have programs for first-year students that will get them actively involved in their education. "Students need to understand the road map to completion and know how to use it to decide upon and achieve personal goals" (Tito 5). He argues that if students were aware of the academic path they needed in order to complete college, that they would be better off achieving these goals.  He also believes that setting students up in learning communities in which they can learn inside and outside the classroom together helps the student bridge the divide between academic classes and social life. For many students, social life has a big impact on academics. Perhaps, if the student is more engaged in their learning they may be more likely to come to a decision about their future.

• Issues in Advising the Undecided College Student: "A Profile of Undecided College Students." By Willard C. Lewallen
• MLA Citation: Lewallen, Willard C. “A Profile of Undecided College Students.” Issues in Advising the Undecided College Student, 1994.
• This chapter specifically discusses the profile of the Undecided Student. Other chapters within the book may be helpful in narrowing my topic such as: "Undecided Students in Community Colleges," "Major-Changers: A Special Type of Undecided Student" and "Are Undecided Students Here to Stay?" However, I find the first chapter specifically interesting because it starts to discuss the different attitudes of students who are undecided: some are positive and curious while others are negative and anxious. I found this first chapter specifically interesting because it stated that the first concern of undecided students began as early as the 1920s. "While the term undecided is generally accepted and understood, there has been no general approach to operationalizing a definition for research purposes. The manner in which students are determined to be undecided has varied considerably" (Lewallen 6). To this day, there is still not a definition for being undecided because there are so many different kinds of undecided.