Information asymmetries in web‐based information for engineering transfer students

Background Transfer students in engineering must navigate a myriad of information sources to obtain accurate information on how to matriculate into a 4‐year institution. Although some institutional and state‐level initiatives attempt to streamline the transfer process, students still report difficulties. Purpose This article explores the extent to which web‐based transfer information is fragmented across institutional websites and written using communicative strategies that could limit comprehension. Accordingly, this study characterizes information asymmetries—gaps in information—that affect transfer students in terms of two constructs: fragmentation and language. Method We employed a convergent fully integrated mixed‐methods design with a stratified random sample of 38 US engineering degree‐granting institutions. The connections between the webpages were transformed into networks and clustered using k‐means and partitioning around medoids with measures of dispersion and centrality. A purposeful nested sample of 16 institutions was taken based on the clusters and explored using a two‐cycle mixed‐methods coding protocol to understand how fragmentation and language interact to create information asymmetries. The resulting themes from each construct were integrated to develop narratives across the sampled institutions. Conclusions We found the web‐based information for transfer students to be a messy web of loosely connected structures with language that complicates understanding. We identified four fragmentation themes illustrating how transfer information is organized and six language themes capturing linguistic patterns across the webpages. We offer strategies for researchers and practitioners based on the narratives we developed.