Allison Byrd presented preliminary findings from her dissertation at the Southern Region meeting of the American Association for Agricultural Education (SR-AAAE), held February 4-6 in Atlanta, Georgia.
With help from her coauthors and dissertation committee members Dr. Alexa Lamm, Dr. Kevan Lamm, Dr. Jessica Holt, and Dr. Rochelle Sapp, Allison surveyed graduate students at the University of Georgia to understand their personal characteristics and the communication tools they used when searching for graduate programs. As part of Allison’s larger dissertation study, the goal of the research presented at SR-AAAE was to help understand prospective graduate students and how to strategically communicate with them based on their specific needs.
The findings revealed that, of the 121 respondents, the communication tools most used were departmental websites, graduate school websites, email communication, and individual faculty members’ lab websites. Respondents were also asked to indicate how much time they would dedicate to utilizing each communication channel when presented with a variety of communication tools and only 8 hours to search for graduate programs. The most frequently used communication channels were departmental websites, graduate school websites, and individual faculty members’ lab websites.
To better understand how graduate students’ personal characteristics were associated with their frequency of communication tool use, researchers ran the tests to determine if there were associations between frequency of use of departmental websites, graduate school websites, and individual faculty members’ lab websites and the following student characteristics:
- Enrollment status: Full-time students vs. part-time students
- Degree level: Master’s students vs. Ph.D. students
- Funding type: Assistantship or fellowship funding vs. Tuition assistance from state (TAP) or self-funding
The findings revealed there were no strong associations between departmental websites and student characteristics. Part-time students and TAP/self-funded students spent more time on graduate school websites. Full-time students, Ph.D. students, and students receiving assistantship or fellowship funding spent more time on individual faculty members’ lab websites.
The findings in this study were preliminary because she surveyed over 1,000 respondents from eight other colleges of agriculture across the United States whose responses will be included in her dissertation findings.
SR-AAAE was held in conjunction with the Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists annual meeting. To learn about additional Lamm Lab presentations held at this convergence of conferences, see our post on the Southern Region meeting of the American Society for Horticultural Sciences, the Southern Rural Sociological Association, and multiple posts about the National Agricultural Communications Symposium including the following:
- Professional Development on Using Art to Communicate Science
- Poster Session and Professional Development on work by the Real Pork Trust Consortium
- Dissertation Research by Kristin Gibson
- Thesis Research by Olivia Erskine
