Learning Qualitative Analysis And Sentiment Analysis As A Service Learning Student

My college contains a class called Service Learning Honors (SLS 2940H) in which a student is matched with a community partner, and then proceeds to volunteer to the organization throughout the semester. I was matched with my college Learning Assessment Office, which is responsible to ensure students are learning in the best way possible in the classrooms. Using cycles (a two-year cycle of learning outcomes creation or review; assessment of those outcomes; and implementation of improvement strategies; I have attached a picture of how the cycle works into more detail below) and data-driven decisions, the office has greatly improved teaching approaches, ensuring that more people pass the classes and actually learn the content taught. As someone who loves data, this opportunity overjoyed me. Not only would I be able to practice and enhance my skills in data analysis, I would also be helping people in my school.

My role in the office was as a qualitative data researcher. I conducted data analysis, sentiment analysis in qualitative data, qualitative coding, created spreadsheets, created and wrote reports, and attended meetings with faculty and staff in which we discussed the cycles and how to proceed with the projects. I have also presented my findings in meetings college-wide and was the first student to be a panelist in their annual symposiums. My main role, however, was to find how satisfied the faculty and staff involved were, and how the office could improve their satisfaction and productivity.

Qualitative Analysis

On my first project with the Learning Assessment Office, my supervisor wanted to show me that even though a computer can find many insights, so can the human mind. She wanted to show me how to create qualitative analysis, and then incorporate it into my project, which was to analyze qualitative responses from a questionnaire filled out by faculty and staff. Instead of using machine learning, she taught me how to create my own codes, and how to look for patterns and sentiments in them. It was challenging at first, but by practice I was able to become more comfortable with it. By doing this type of work, I was able to explore many themes, and dive-in deep into specific codes, which was so interesting and made me able to learn so much about what I was analyzing that might have been overlooked otherwise.

I have then used this new skill in many of my tasks, which included coding focus groups and forms. And then, creating presentations with my findings.

Sentiment Analysis in Qualitative Data

When I first entered the office, I showed my supervisors the portfolio I was working on (which can be found on my website), which included a sentiment analysis on the poetry of Emily Dickinson, as well as word-recurrence in her works. The intent was to prove that not all of her poems have a negative connotation (you can read more about this project here), as most people think. The supervisors thought that incorporating sentiment analysis in their work could bring many benefits to the office, so we started slowly creating projects that measured emotions in responses to survey data. By analyzing those, we were able to find many great insights on satisfaction of faculty and staff. This is a better way of measuring in comparison to quantitative data because instead of asking the staff questions that ask for them to measure their satisfaction, which they might not be comfortable to answer, we use raw language to identify it. This showed to be a very successful approach, which led to many projects using this analyzer.

Future Applications

By introducing sentiment analysis to the office and mixing it with qualitative research, I have made an important contribution to the team. I have shown them how the human mind and computers can collaborate in finding answers and insights that can exponentially help in many issues. Because of my innovative work, I have been asked to be an intern this Spring 2024 Semester, in which I will continue my work. However, I not only plan to keep doing what I have already done, I want to create more innovation to such an important organization. I have many ideas, but the one I am most excited for is to integrate machine learning into my practice, and I cannot wait to start.

How Does Service Learning Help in Professional Growth?

This opportunity has led me to further develop many skills such as Python and its many libraries, reporting, qualitative analysis, and much more. Meanwhile, working in soft skills such as time-management, public-speaking, adaptability, problem-solving, and initiative to create something new. Those are fundamental skills to any professional regardless of job title; they transcend to any area, any career, any task.

In these 5 months, I have learned how important experiences like this are to students, and how we have to stress them to people.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge all that helped in this journey, including my professor who guided me throughout the process and my two supervisors who gave me constructive feedback and helped me when I got stuck. In addition, my Honors College, for giving such incredible learning opportunities to students to make a difference and left their mark in the world.