TPC-Journal-V2-Issue1

The Professional Counselor \Volume 2, Issue 1 87 Limitations Because this study is field research, there are a few limitations to discuss. First, participants were undergraduates taking a career planning course from one university. The advantage to using this approach was consistency of teaching content, training and quality control of teaching personnel, administration of tests, and assignments, thus reducing the possibility that course differences were responsible for random error variance. But, because these results come from only one university’s career course, caution should be exercised when generalizing them to other courses. Second, participants were not randomly selected. In fact, random assignment was impossible given the students’ autonomy in selecting this course. Random selection is seldom an option in field research at an educational institution, but this fact does restrict the robustness and generalizability of results to other populations (Babbie, 2001). Third, participants in the study may have been experiencing more career-related difficulties than other students who did not elect to take the course. It is to be expected that participants perceived a career course as more important to their progress than nonparticipants, which limits generalizability of these findings (Smith & Glass, 1987). Fourth, because the data were collected over a six-year period, it is difficult to determine the effect of historical events on the behavior and attitudes of participants (Smith & Glass, 1987; Van Dalen, 1979). For example, students from the initial semester of the study took the class at the height of the tech bubble, while others took the class in the shadows of the 9-11 tragedy. Although we were not able to control for these events, we acknowledge that researchers and practitioners must be aware of the influence of external events upon any college course. Implications There are several implications regarding the findings of this study. The significant differences found between schedule formats in the outcomes of EG and XG serve to remind instructors, those who supervise them, and those managing career courses about the potential impact of this variable. For example, these findings indicate that classes meeting one time per week for three hours are not characterized by higher earned grades, and by implication this means student learning. Additional studies should isolate and evaluate format variables such as length of the entire course, number of classes per week, and length of individual classes so that those evaluating teachers might consider this in their evaluations. At the same time, the absence of any differences in student evaluations of teaching across the four schedule formats is reassuring for those teaching and supervising instructors, at least in a course that was as highly structured and standardized as the one in this study. Career services providers, curriculum designers, administrators, and instructors may wish to consider these findings when making decisions about the design and delivery of career courses, especially for high-risk freshmen (Osborn et al., 2007). Students meeting for four classes a week over a 6-week semester earned and expected significantly higher grades overall than students meeting over a 16-week semester. Taking the 6-week intensive course during the summer term before beginning the freshman year could both increase students’ chances of academic success and their confidence in navigating the college experience. References Arreola, R. A. (1973). A cross-institutional factor structure replication of the Michigan State University SIRS faculty evaluation model. College Student Journal, 7 , 38–42. Babbie, E. (2001). The practice of social research . Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning. Baxter, E. P. (1991). The TEVAL experience, 1983–88: The impact of a student evaluation of teaching scheme on university teachers. Studies in Higher Education, 16, 151–179 . Blustein, D. L. (1989). The role of career exploration in the career decision making of college students. Journal of College Student Development, 30, 111–117. Brown, S. D., & Ryan Krane, N. E. (2000). Four (or five) sessions and a cloud of dust: Old assumptions and new observations about career counseling. In S. D. Brown & R. W. Lent (Eds.), Handbook of counseling psychology