Why Do We Want to Know More About All Movers? How Can We Do This?
Everything we have highlighted in this section of the Annual Review has been about expanding our understanding of students moving in multiple directions among BC public post-secondary institutions. It is important to ask why BCCAT has an interest in understanding such mobility. What benefits could be gained by developing a more in-depth understanding of both student movement and the transfer behaviour of those who move?
| In order to help answer these questions, BCCAT staff prepared a document entitled A Rationale for Expanding our Understanding of Student Mobility. The document provides a number of reasons why we would want to know more about students who move among institutions, and it does so from the perspectives of institutions, the post-secondary system, and students. The document has been shared with several post-secondary groups to help further the discussion on expanding what we know about the broader mobile population. | If transfer information was available on these students from every institution, then students, institutions, and the BC system could all benefit. |
The Rationale document points out that, although the STP has done a great job of showing us the changing mobility patterns, little is known about the transfer behaviour of the bulk of these student movers because research universities are the only institutions that are currently able to identify traditional transfer students. If transfer information was available on these students from every institution, then students, institutions, and the BC system could all benefit. BCCAT staff met throughout 2010-11 with groups such as the BC Registrars' Association and the Central Data Warehouse's Data Standards and Definitions Committee to begin exploring the feasibility of and support for adding additional data on mobile students' transfer behaviour to central data structures.
BCCAT also met with relevant groups to explore the feasibility of developing a survey to find out about the intentions and experiences of this large group of student movers. Work on expanding transfer data and surveying student movers will continue in 2011-12.
