Sylvia I enjoyed reading your paper. A detailed overview of interventions and online student success was provided. Interventions are critical during the first year of college; however it’s a good practice to not overwhelm the student with interventions. Many students have developed misguided perceptions of the workplace based upon higher learning based interventions. Many students begin to expect employer based interventions because they became accustom to this practice while in college. Online learning has certainly significantly increased over the years; however we must continue to focus on providing students with real world practices. Rather than focus on interventions to keep students in school, it’s critical to focus more on employable skills. What is needed to develop students skills rather than on chasing students to remain in schools. The nontraditional and career college programs are failing because their focus was on keeping students in school rather than on building their employable, professional and personal skills. As educators its time we get back to basics on what’s important in higher education.

Sylvia,

I appreciate the opportunity to review your paper.  My feedback is as follows:

1.  Overall:  the use of some jargon seems unscholarly.  For example, the use of the word "hottest" in the abstract and "obtain a good paying job" in the Introduction.   Suggest you rewrite the phrase "to determine what research says" in the abstract to something more formal and research-appropriate (my dissertation coach would point out this is a classic case of anthropomorphism, i.e. research can't "say" anything!).  Also, your abstract does not define "Response to Intervention" and I think this is crucial for the reader.

2.  Check your APA citation throughout the paper.  In the opening paragraph of the literature review, your citation for Allen & Seaman is within the quotes and should be outside of the quotes -- further, direct quotes require page numbers. Same on pages 3, 6 and 7, though you have a page references here.  

3.  Introduction:  The first sentence "In the world of education and in school classroom, students are encouraged to stay in school, get a good education, finish college with a degree in order to obtain a good paying job" is completely unsubstantiated opinion ( and the "and in school classroom" is awkward construction).   Do schools encourage students to stay in school? Are you ignoring intrinsic motivation of the students.  Do all students go back to school to obtain a good paying job? What about the adult students who have a good paying job that want to increase their competitiveness, re-tool for a different career or the full-time parent looking for some mental challenge after their children depart the home?

Further, you state the first year in college is the "most critical time" -- what research supports this assertion? Why not the senior year? Or the junior year?  Note the statement "It the first class, the first year in college that will determine..." is grammatically incorrect and potentially unsubstantiated in research.

4. Grammar and constructs

Page 3:  the sentence "Enrollment increases, however completion of degree programs decrease" is grammatically flawed and not understandable.

Page 5:  "Educators are to identify what their students’ learning style and provide the access for students to improve learning. "  Grammatically incorrect

Page 5: capitalize "facebook" and "skype"

Page 5:  Depending on the online course will also depend on the type of resource or tool to use to meet student’s learning style." Grammatically incorrect.

Page 7: The sentence that begins "As well as choosing.." is grammatically incorrect.

Suggest additional proofreading.

5.  You may want to consider defining "intervention" early in the paper.

6. Response to Intervention is not just about students halting their education -- it deals with strategies intended to help students avoid falling behind or transitioning to other educational areas.  Did you make this clear in your paper?

7.  A quick glance at a text by Haager, Klingner and Vaughn indicates approximately 39 scholarly articles on this topic.  You state you are doing a literature review but you only have 7 sources cited -- do you feel you've done substantive enough research of the existing literature here?

I applaud your effort here -- your concept is valid and of interest. 

Regards,

Michael Powers, PhD

Sylvia,

The topic of your paper is very interesting! As you stated, Response to Intervention is utilized in many K-12 settings, but I have never experienced it in post-secondary settings. This topic could be a great way to help prevent student failures and dropout rates in online programs. My suggestions for your paper are as followed:

1. The paper is not written in proper APA format. There are too many direct quotes. I would only use direct quotes when the author makes a profound statement that supports your claims or statements. Most of the information you provided could have been paraphrased.

2. There are many grammatical errors that make the paper hard to read. Be sure to use professional language when writing formal papers. The acronym for Response to Intervention is different throughout the paper.

3. Based on the topic of your paper, I would suggest addressing the following areas.
• Discuss the growth of student enrollment in online programs.
• Address the problems that students have while attending online programs.
• What are the current strategies that online universities have in place to support students.
• What is RtI?
• How can it be used to support students that are enrolled in online programs?

4. Each bullet point should be supported with research from peer reviewed articles as well as textbooks that are less than 5 years old. The review of these topics should describe, summarize, evaluate, and clarify what you are trying to convey to your audience. Moreover, the findings you add to your literature review should encourage online programs to use the RtI method to increase student success.

Thank you for allowing me to review your paper. I sincerely appreciate the opportunity. Good luck on your future endeavors.

HI! Sylvia,

It was clear this was an "informative" paper on "student intervention tools through resources", however, there was not any evidence based information provided on the  "numbers/statistics" on  the effectiveness of each of the intervention tools mentioned in the paper. Additionally, there was not a criteria to define an intervention tool as an "intervention tool"  and specifics on the ways the tool is helpful in retaining students. Additionally, it would be helpful if survey statistics on the tools that students thought were the most helpful needed to be included as an avenue of persuasion for the reading audience.

Furthermore, there were many writing errors beginning on page 2 in the abstract with the word "profession(s), the letter "s" should be added, "Adult students of all ages, profession"(the beginning of sentence three). On page 3, in the introduction in the second sentence there is a need for more formal language instead of "get a good education", "obtain a good paying job", variety and originality in words would make this more formal and collegiate in style. Also, further down the paper in the introduction in sentence two, the word "education" should be "educational" and at the beginning of sentence three the word "It" should be "In", and at the end of sentence three "student will continue or not continue in their education", should be , "the student will continue or not in their education."

Overall, the paper provided some supportive details on the types of learners that exist and the student retention intervention tools (provided they are defined more clearly with evidence of their usefulness in student retention).

Pinara D. Black Smith, M.P.A., M.A.