Theses and Dissertations

Date of Award

5-2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Communication

First Advisor

Dr. Jennifer Lemanski

Second Advisor

Dr. Cory Cunningham

Third Advisor

Dr. Youngjoon Lim

Abstract

The sophomore year of college can be challenging for many students specifically Latina/o students. New initiatives are being created to increase Latina/o enrollment, retention, and completion of higher education with research indicating Latinas/os are successful academically when they had a mentor or perceived someone on campus cared about them. Mentoring programs use various tools to communicate, but computer-mediated communication (CMC) tools have not been examined in Latina/o peer mentoring relationships.

The current research study examined secondary data to see if Latina/o sophomore college students in a peer mentoring program were academically successful when using CMC to communicate with their mentor. Results were mixed; more students used CMC than face-to-face when communicating with their mentor and those who used CMC had a higher chance of being retained, but GPA was not correlated to CMC use. Additional analysis revealed mentoring to have a significant impact on GPA when compared to non-mentored students.

Comments

Copyright 2016 Carly C. Peden. All Rights Reserved.

https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/using-computer-mediated-communication-as-tool/docview/1810996048/se-2?accountid=7119

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