Are We Doing Any Good? A Value-Added Analysis of UBC’s Science One Program
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Science One is a full academic year interdisciplinary alternative to the traditional first-year experience in the Faculty of Science at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Anecdotal reports suggest that alumni/ae of the program do very well in upper-level classes and many become successful graduate and medical students. The high faculty/student ratio makes the program an expensive one, however, and thus we have sought rigorous evidence of the benefits to our students. Our approach has been a value-added one; we have compared high-school and upper-level undergraduate grades for students in all UBC's first-year science programs. We have found a clear signal that there is a large benefit to participating in Science One, and conclude that this arises from a combination of the recruitment of enthusiastic students who are up for a challenge, the Science One admissions process, and taking the program itself. Science One consiste en une année scolaire interdisciplinaire complète qui représente une variante de l’expérience traditionnelle vécue en première année à la Faculté des sciences de l’Université de la Colombie-Britannique (UBC). Des rapports isolés suggèrent que les anciens étudiants du programme obtiennent de très bons résultats dans les cours de niveau supérieur et plusieurs obtiennent leur diplôme avec succès et étudient en médecine. Cependant, le ratio élevé enseignant/étudiant fait en sorte que le programme coûte cher, c’est pourquoi les auteurs ont cherché à obtenir des données probantes sur les avantages qu’il présente pour leurs étudiants. Ils ont employé la méthode de la valeur ajoutée; ont comparé les notes obtenues au secondaire et celles des étudiants de premier cycle inscrits à des cours de niveau supérieur dans tous les programmes scientifiques offerts à l’UBC. Ils ont découvert que la participation à Science One est très bénéfique et ont conclu que cela résulte d’une combinaison entre le recrutement d’étudiants enthousiastes qui souhaitent relever un défi, le processus d’admission à Science One et le fait de suivre le programme.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.011 | 0.072 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.009 | 0.010 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.010 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".