Browsing by Author "Elobaid, Rafida M."
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Item Impact of the First-Year Seminar Course on Student GPA and Retention Rate across Colleges in Qatar University(Society for Research and Knowledge Management, 2023-05) Elobaid, Manal; Elobaid, Rafida M.; Romdhani, Lamia; Yehya, ArijThe first year is known to be challenging for students at university. If students fail to transition to college successfully, it can result in a low GPA and they may eventually drop out of university. Fortunately, higher education systems opt to add various types of support for students during this important transition. One possible support is to implement a first-year seminar course, a hybrid-course which teaches academic and non-academic skills that help students to be successful. Optimally, teaching students' skills for college success might help them manage their academic needs and increase retention rates. Following this proposal for best practice, Qatar University added a compulsory first-year seminar course in six colleges across different programs. The course included cognitive, non-cognitive and performance skills. In this retrospective study, we assessed the impact of this course on the retention rate at the university and students' academic performance over time. We reviewed a large sample of over 3000 students who started their college journey at Qatar University over four consecutives semesters. Students were classified into two groups to allow for comparison between those who took the first-year seminar course and those who did not take it, in terms of their retention rates and GPA. Our findings show that students who successfully completed the course had a higher retention rate, especially in the first semester. Furthermore, the GPA, for those who took the course and continued to attend the university, was higher across semesters. In conclusion, within our sample, the first-year seminar course was successful in supporting student success as evidenced by higher GPAs, and an increased retention rate. © Authors.Item Simulation estimation of goodness-of-fit test for right skewed distributions(Asian Network for Scientific Information, 2017) Elobaid, Rafida M.; Elshareif, ElgilaniObjective: This study derives a goodness-of-fit test based on chi-square statistic using simulation and examines the values of the χ2 test statistic behavior with the level of skewness for two different distributions, namely chi-square and inverse Gaussian. Methodology: For this purpose, simulation estimation was conducted to generate random numbers from different skewed distributions. Different sample sizes and skewness values were considered and the corresponding values of the χ2 test statistic were derived. Results: The results show a statistically significant evidence for an inverse relationship between the value of χ2 test and the level of skewness for all distributions, i.e. the value of χ2 test statistic decreases as the value of skewness increases and vice versa. The research results also show that the method, estimation by simulation, produces an estimator which is shown to have asymptotic assumed distribution with large sample size. Conclusion: These results are relevant to theories in which shape and skewness measure can be used to determine the validity of the assumed right skewed distribution to fit the data well. The results also have practical implications for portfolio managers who are managing funds to optimize risk-adjusted performance and individual investors who prefer positive skewness in rates of return. © 2017 Rafida M. Elobaid and Elgilani Elshareif.