Nicole Mello

Ms. Knudson
UWRT 1102
31 March 2015
Inquiry at Work
The University of Texas did a huge experiment of why lower class students are
not earning a degree and dropping out. The professors in this experiment noticed that
students who were failing were in certain ethnic, racial, and geographical areas. The
white students who came from high-income families were the students who had a higher
percentage of staying in school and getting their degrees. The question that UT had was
how to get these lower class students from dropping out. Laude who was a professor that
taught Chemistry 301 decided to place these lower class students in a smaller classroom
size. He gave these students advisors, upper-class tutors, and extra study sessions. Laude
noticed at the end of the semester that the students in these smaller classrooms did the
same as the students in his larger class. After seeing the success of these smaller
classrooms Laude got promoted to senior vice-provost for enrollment and graduation
management. With this promotion he is now in charge of improving UTs four-year
graduation rate. The other question was students that came from schools with lower SAT
scores that were top in their class in high school were now doing badly in college. Laude
wanted to find a way that would help him predict for the incoming freshman class who
would graduate in four years and who would not. The Universities Institutional Research
team made at program that would consider fourteen variables including families income,
low SAT scores, parents educational background, and more. Once the program separated

the students based on these variables it would say how likely the student would graduate
in four years. Laude then figured out from the database the students who would need
extra guidance. He placed these students in smaller classrooms and provided extra
tutoring for them.
My thoughts about this article is that it was interesting to see how out of 7,000
students coming into the Freshman class, Laude was able to pick the students who would
struggle and provide them with a smaller class and more tutoring. I think this program is
helpful; it gives kids who are not in the same lifestyle as most students in college the
opportunity to graduate on time. It helps the underprivileged students have some selfconfidence and gives them an opportunity to succeed in college where they might have
not before.
After reading the article I then proceed to watch the video about a game called Gone
Home. In the video the player goes through the game to find clues. The objective of the
game is to explore clues in the house and figure out a mystery. It helps players find
objects that open up to new objects in the house to help solve the mystery. This game is a
completely different approach from the inquiry process that was used in the article of UT.
UTs inquiry process was to find out who the underprivileged students were and to help
them succeed in college. In the video game the inquiry approach was to find clues. After
the players found a clue they would try to figure out what happened to the family in the
game. UTs inquiry process was more of statistics related where as the game was more of
a mystery. I personally thought that UTs inquiry process was more interesting than the
game. In UTs inquiry process you found out how they determined who the students that
were expected not to graduate on time or drop out of college. In the game it was more of

what goes through one persons mind while playing the game. There are no steps or rules;
it is just a persons opinion and thought process.