FINAL FINAL BLOG

Hello World!!

For the final blog, I thought I would wrap this final project up. It took quite a while to go through the articles and review them all but I feel I learned a lot on the subject matter. It ended up being a 7 page report which I'm not sure if that's long or short but I felt it was solid in content. Anyway I thought the best way to show this was to show you my final class discussion.

Research Question:
How has Academic Progress Rate (APR) affected Division 1 NCAA men’s basketball teams?

Research Topic:
I chose to research the Academic Progress Rate because as you recruit student athletes you learn how important this is to the success of your program. Working as Director of Basketball Operations for Men’s Basketball at Idaho State University, it is important for me to know what factors go into this programs and stay on top of calculating our teams APR to remain successful and keep our scholarships.

Search Strategies:
In the beginning of my search, I tended to be more general in my statements (ie. APR, NCAA APR), but then once I found a few articles, I tried to narrow the search. I used truncation, quotation marks, proximity searching, and advance searches through Google. I also think that as I searched and read through articles, it leads you to other ideas to search (ie. ESPN Basketball Rankings, Idaho State University). I found that in my search there was a lot of credible information from organizations and institutions, but there are also many blogs that highlight personal opinions about the subject as well.

Findings:
I learned a lot from this final project. It is interesting to research articles that came out during the inception of the Academic Progress Programs, versus articles that are out more recently with more than four years of data to compare. A lot of the early articles had a negative slant about the program because many top programs were failing as far as academics. But, with more data to compare over the years, schools are focusing on academics and sports such as football, basketball, and baseball have all shown improvement. There is a lot of work that goes into this program from the institutions to the NCAA.

In closing, as I sit here waiting for my flight home in Milwaukee Wisconsin Ive grown a greater appreciation of the Internet and its many uses. We can do so many things, which makes me wonder why can't my flight ever be on time!!!

Take Care, and as always....
Stay Classy
CVF