Digital Commons Network^™

Predictors Of Student Reenrollment And Graduation During The Covid-19 Pandemic: Student Characteristics And Circumstances, David Wutchiett, A. W. Logue

Publications and Research

The COVID-19 pandemic decreased college enrollment and disrupted academic progress, particularly among disadvantaged students and institutions. Just before the start of the pandemic in spring 2020, 31,511 undergraduate students attending colleges of The City University of New York responded to a survey detailing their circumstances. Lasso regression followed by mixed-effects logistic regression modeling were used to identify predictors of (1) fall 2020 reenrollment, (2) associate’s-degree graduation or transfer to a bachelor’s-degree program by associate’s-degree students by fall 2022, and (3) graduation with a bachelor’s-degree by bachelor’s-degree students by fall 2022. Part-time status, food insecurity, gender, and major predicted reenrollment and …

Using Smartphones To Innovate Laboratories In Introductory Physics Courses, E. Bernardini, M. Carli, M.Y. Elkhashab, Andrea Ferroglia, Miguel C. N. Fiolhais, L. Gabelli, H. Jessen Munch, Darya Krym, P. Mastrolia, Giovanni Ossola, O. Pantano, J. Postiglione, J.S. Poveda Correa, C. Sirignano, F. Soramel

Publications and Research

The SmartPhysics project involved two higher education institutions, one in Italy and one in the US, with the aim of exploring the use of smartphones for laboratory experiments in introductory Physics courses. Here we present and discuss two experiments that were developed in the project: the pendulum experiment, consisting in the measurement of the gravitational constant using a proximity stopwatch, and the ‘bouncing ball’ experiment, aimed at measuring the energy lost in inelastic collisions with a hard surface. Both experiments were tested with the students in the academic year 2021-22. Our results and didactical reflections contain suggestions for the use …

Using Formative Assessment And Feedback From Student Response Systems (Srs) To Revise Statistics Instruction And Promote Student Growth For All, Grace Pai

Publications and Research

Instructors are increasingly using interactive student response systems (SRS) to foster active learning and deepen student understanding in statistics education. Yet most studies focus on either the benefits of SRS or on how students can receive and use feedback, rather than on how instructors can use formative assessment data to inform instructional revisions for the purpose of enacting inclusive pedagogy to reach more learners. This article draws from a case study of an introductory statistics course at a community college to detail a framework for how an instructor can engage in what I call a reciprocal formative assessment and feedback …

La Voz Del Autor En El Discurso Médico Y Sus Implicaciones En Ele, David Sanchez-Jimenez

Publications and Research

La demanda de profesionales de la salud que pueden prestar atención lingüísticamente concordante al paciente en contextos multilingües explica el aumento de los cursos de español médico en el currículo de pregrado y posgrado en instituciones universitarias de Estados Unidos en las últimas décadas. El aprendizaje de los estudiantes matriculados en estos cursos requiere el conocimiento de las características retórico-discursivas propias de los principales géneros discursivos que estudian durante su carrera para fines específicos en el campo de la salud los alumnos universitarios de español, cuyo fin último será el de replicarlos eficazmente en su práctica profesional. Por ello, en …

Unshackling Our Youth Through Love And Mutual Recognition: Notes From An Undergraduate Class On School Discipline Inspired By Ta-Nehisi Coates And Bell Hooks, Gene Fellner, Mark Comesañas, Tahjuan Ferrell

Publications and Research

This research essay challenges educators to embrace mutual recognition when interacting with students. Our data are the words of the young people who participated with us in one particular undergraduate class on school discipline at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, in the United States in the fall of 2022. Tahjuan, who had been our student in the 7th grade in 2011, co-taught the class with us. In writing this essay and in teaching the class, we were inspired by a short passage fromTa-Nehisi Coates about the shackling young people of color endure and another, by bell hooks, that proposes …

We Didn't Know It Was That Bad: Unearthing Parent Perspectives On Universal Pre-K Policy, Maria S. Mavrides Calderon

Publications and Research

Families are the ultimate recipients of the effects of policy, but seldom get a seat at the policymaking table. This study investigated how parents perceive the impacts of unequal teacher compensation policies on New York City’s (NYC) Universal Pre-K (UPK) expansion. Utilizing Bronfenbrenner's (1979) ecological systems theory and Schneider and Ingram’s (1993) theory of social construction and policy design to create a rich conceptual framework, this qualitative study analyzed parents' voices through document and social media discourse analysis expanding from 2014 to 2021, and semi-structured interviews (n=15). Participants reflected the demographic diversity found in NYC, the largest school system in …

Adapting For Anti-Racism: Collaboratively Diversifying Faculty Open Professional Development, Stacy Katz, Sherry L. Deckman

Publications and Research

Higher education institutions have become increasingly interested in exploring the innovative learning opportunities afforded by open educational resources and practices (OER). These same institutions have begun to more seriously consider ways to eradicate racism. However, few institutions have considered the ways that OER may prove useful in dismantling anti-racism and how to prepare instructional faculty to do so. Given their expertise and research skills, librarians may be uniquely positioned to take on this role. In this paper, we explore one such online asynchronous effort–adaptation and implementation of the Open for Anti-Racism faculty workshop in Learning Management System – and offer …

Criteria For Assessing And Ensuring The Trustworthiness In Qualitative Research, Zia Ul Haq Kakar, Rizwana Rasheed, Aamir Rashid, Salma Akhter

Publications and Research

The trustworthiness of qualitative data has been debatable, yet it has strong support from its supporters. However, the importance and worth of qualitative data cannot be undermined. This paper presents a critical review of the trustworthiness of the qualitative data. The degree of trustworthiness of qualitative research can be measured by ensuring the credibility, transferability, dependability, and conformability of research design, process, and action. The guarantee of trustworthiness in qualitative research is more complex than in quantitative research due to its subjective nature. Many researchers and experts denied the generalizability of qualitative research. However, few researchers, like Guba (1985), developed …

The Role Of Linguistics In Education, Laiba Zia

Publications and Research

This research aims to uncover the critical nuances that shape global learning experiences by delving into multifaceted dynamics of linguistics in education. This investigation includes the analysis of language barriers, preservation efforts, policy challenges and organizational obstacles, illuminating the complex relationship between language and education. A fundamental question guiding this inquiry is how linguistics fundamentally shapes educational landscapes, focusing on understanding the diverse ways language impacts different aspects of education. Using a thorough approach with articles, surveys, and case studies, this research gathers insights from different sources. It delves into the perspectives of final-year medical students, recognizes the role of …

Language Bias On Campus: Dealing With English Language Bias Towards International Students, Masuma Begum

Publications and Research

Language bias poses a significant challenge for international students. Researchers focused on one group in particular, the students from China, and looked at the effects of language bias on their mental health, academic experiences, and interactions with visual question answering systems. This research analyses the multifaceted impact of language discrimination on campus, drawing attention to its implications on teachers' perceptions and students' well-being.

Instructional Engagement In Person And Online: Making The Case For Peer-Led Team Learning, A.E. Dreyfuss, Aaron Barlow, Ana Fraiman, James E. Becvar

Publications and Research

The transfer to the online environment in teaching necessitates artful communication so that students can gain from inquiry-based learning. As instructors use either in-person or online content delivery, Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) is one model that provides a solution to engage students in the learning process. The Peer Leaders, mentored by faculty, are the bridge between instructors and students. PLTL supports direct human interaction in both physical and digital environments for enhancing immersive learning and addresses the important task of preparing students for the 21st century.

Ai-Supported Academic Advising: Exploring Chatgpt’S Current State And Future Potential Toward Student Empowerment, Daisuke Akiba, Michelle C. Fraboni

Publications and Research

Artificial intelligence (AI), once a phenomenon primarily in the world of science fiction, has evolved rapidly in recent years, steadily infiltrating into our daily lives. ChatGPT, a freely accessible AI-powered large language model designed to generate human-like text responses to users, has been utilized in several areas, such as the healthcare industry, to facilitate interactive dissemination of information and decision-making. Academic advising has been essential in promoting success among university students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Unfortunately, however, student advising has been marred with problems, with the availability and accessibility of adequate advising being among the hurdles. The current study …

Network + Publication + Ecosystem: Curating Digital Pedagogy, Fostering Community, Rebecca Frost Davis, Matthew K. Gold, Katherine D. Harris

Publications and Research

We are excited to share our work on Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities (DPiH), which was published on the Humanities Commons in 2020 by the Modern Language Association after almost a decade of work. DPiH is a large-scale scholarly project that presents the stuff of teaching (syllabi, assignments, and resources) through a curated set of keywords such as “Poetry,” “Disability,” “Queer,” and “Annotation,” among many others. For each keyword, a curator or set of curators has selected and annotated ten pedagogical artifacts; created a curator’s selection statement; and presented …

Rethinking Graphic Design Pedagogy For The Cuny Academic Commons: On Process, Generosity, And Creative Collaboration In Mapping A Foundation Graphic Design Course For Faculty And Instructors, Suzanne Dell'orto

Publications and Research

The creation of an Open Education Resource with the CUNY Academic Commons for a foundation course in graphic communication at Bernard M. Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY) is a natural extension of the generous visual and written communication that is at the heart of Graphic Design. Graphic designers are inherently collaborative, working through a shared visual and written language to communicate. This Open Educational Resource (OER) serves as a base template to be shared department-wide with all instructors at CUNY and beyond to provide a framework for instruction for this studio course that is taught as a …

The Dialectic Transformation Of Teaching And Learning In Community Colleges Through Ungrading., Grace Pai, Jennifer Corby, Nicole Kras, Dusana Podlucká, Midori Yamamura

Publications and Research

As five Andrew J. Mellon Transformative Learning in the Hu-manities Faculty Fellows in the City University of New York, we capture in this essay the dialectical experience of ungrading our community college courses with our students. Drawing on case examples of implementing un-grading in a range of courses and a thematic analysis of our students’ reflec-tion submissions of being ungraded, we argue that ungrading is an effective pedagogical tool for debunking a deficits-based, outcomes-focused perspec-tive that is pervasive in studies on and of community college students. Through various ways of building student agency, self-reflection, and feed-back into our courses, we …

Explicit Instruction In A Second Grade Picturebook Author Study, Ted Kesler

Publications and Research

sing the Learning by Design multiliteracies framework, writing workshop was transformed into composing workshop. The researcher worked with a team of four second grade teachers in an urban public elementary school to redesign their Kevin Henkes author study to equally value art and design, guiding their students in creating their own narrative picturebooks. The researcher addresses the following two research questions: 1. What explicit instructional practices did the teachers enact? 2. What influence did these explicit instructional practices have on the second graders’ composing work? The researcher applied cross-case analysis, first to create an inventory of explicit instructional practices, and …

Online Technological Stem Education Project Management, Fangyang Shen, Janine Roccosalvo, Jun Zhang, Yun Tian, Yang Yi

Publications and Research

With a strong demand for online education and project management in deeper scope and larger scale to better fit COVID-19 pandemic situation, exploring new knowledge of online education to make it more effective became vital with the new challenges of STEM education. To resolve the above problem, this paper focuses on various aspects of online STEM education project management where the Enhanced Noyce Explorers, Scholars, Teachers (E-NEST) three-tiered structure was implemented during the COVID-19 period. Two City University of New York (CUNY) institutions, New York City College of Technology (City Tech) and Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) used the …

How Do Classroom-Turnover Times Depend On Lecture-Hall Size?, Joseph Benson, Mariya Bessonov, Korana Burke, Simone Cassani, Maria-Veronica Ciocanel, Daniel B. Cooney, Alexandria Volkening

Publications and Research

Academic spaces in colleges and universities span classrooms for 10 students to lecture halls that hold over 600 people. During the break between consecutive classes, students from the first class must leave and the new class must find their desks, regardless of whether the room holds 10 or 600 people. Here we address the question of how the size of large lecture halls affects classroom-turnover times, focusing on non-emergency settings. By adapting the established social-force model, we treat students as individuals who interact and move through classrooms to reach their destinations. We find that social interactions and the separation time …

Orbital Decay In The Classroom, Miguel C. N. Fiolhais, Luis Gonzalez-Urbina, Tomasz Milewski, Carlos Chaparro, Andrea Ferroglia

Publications and Research

The objective of this paper is to provide a pedagogical framework for the phenomenon of orbital decay of satellites in low Earth orbit. The dynamics of orbital decay are derived considering atmospheric drag as the only dissipative mechanism and using an educational approach suitable for undergraduate calculus-based physics and engineering courses. The resulting nonlinear first-order differential equation for the altitude as a function of time is solved numerically for the isothermal-barotropic atmospheric model with a fixed scale height. The model is validated using the uncontrolled reentry data of the Chinese space station Tiangong-1.

How Do Graduate Students Approach College Teaching? Influences Of Professional Development, Teaching Assistantships, And Big Five Personality Traits, Elizabeth S. Che, Patricia J. Brooks, Anna M. Schwartz, Ethlyn S. Saltzman, Ronald C. Whiteman

Publications and Research

Introduction: Graduate students engage in college teaching with varied attitudes and approaches. Their teaching practices may be influenced by professional development experiences related to pedagogy, and their personality traits.

Methods: Through an online survey of graduate students teaching undergraduate courses (N = 109, 69.7% women, M age = 30 years, 59% psychology), we examined whether self-reported participation in professional development related to pedagogy, teaching assistantship (TA) experience, academic discipline (psychology vs. other), and Big Five personality traits were associated with variation in teaching practices.

Results: Participation in professional development correlated positively with years of undergraduate teaching experience and with …

The Importance Of Data Privacy And Security During Emergency Remote Learning, Emma Antobam-Ntekudzi

Publications and Research

The COVID-19 pandemic forever changed the world. The virus’ rapid spread forced federal and local governments to enact quarantine mandates. On March 11, 2020, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (2022) announced COVID-19 as a pandemic. Two days later the United States declared an official nationwide emergency. Institutions were required to shut down and persons deemed non-essential participated in quarantine. Remote working became the standard, thus affecting all aspects of individual lives and institutions, especially education. Primarily in-person universities and colleges across the world scrambled to address the COVID-19 health concerns, comply with local shutdown rules, and attempt …

Pulling It All Together: Teaching Genre, Disciplinary And Career Literacies, And The Framework For Information Literacy In An Associate Degree Capstone Course, Linda Miles, Elisabeth Tappeiner

Publications and Research

We team teach a semester-long credit-bearing information literacy course for urban community college students in New York City’s South Bronx. It is a capstone course, designed to support students at the end of their first two years of college as they consider the next stage in their own development, be that transferring to a four-year institution or entering the workforce. For this course, we have constructed an approach to critical reading that combines explicit exploration of academic and disciplinary genres with an investigation into the processes of knowledge production and communication shared by the individuals who produce them. This chapter …

In Plain Sight: Oppressive Dynamics And Learning Challenges In Adult Esol Programs In The United States, David A. Housel

Publications and Research

A previous convergent mixed methods study conducted by the author revealed that, based on their preservice preparation and access to in-service professional development, instructors of adult emergent bi/multilingual learners (EBLs) in the United States often felt ill-equipped to address the oppressive dynamics and learning challenges that might manifest in their adult ESOL classrooms. This follow-up interview study explored the prevalence of these oppressive dynamics, such as racism, sexism, and linguicism, and learning challenges, such as neurodiversity, and investigated how preservice preparation, continuous professional development, program administration, and the field of TESOL might address these issues more consistently and equitably. Semi-structured …

Characteristics Of Effective Postsecondary Advising: How Often To Meet And What To Focus On, Grace Pai, Melissa De Feo

Publications and Research

Using data from a senior exit survey administered at public high schools in New York City, this study explores the relationship between quantity and quality of postsecondary advisement, parental/guardian involvement in postsecondary planning, and students’ likelihood of exiting high school with a full-time college plan. Results show receiving help in completing college applications, along with talking to a counselor and parents/guardians at least 3 times in their senior year, to be salient predictors of college-going.

Gender Differences In High School Students’ Perceived Values And Costs Of Learning Chemistry, Xiaoyang Gong, Bradley W. Bergey, Ying Jin, Kexin Mao, Yan Cheng

Publications and Research

Students’ perceived values and costs of learning chemistry influence their performance and intentions of choosing chemistry-related majors or careers. Based on Situated Expectancy-Value Theory, this study adopted a mixed method approach to examine the conceptualization of values and costs among Chinese high school students and identify their relations with chemistry test performance across gender. Qualitative content analyses revealed that students’ perceived values for chemistry could be categorized into five broad categories: utility value, epistemic value, intrinsic value, aesthetic value, and social value. Chi-square tests and multidimensional scaling revealed that boys and girls perceived values and costs in different ways: relational …

How A Community Engagement Model Of Near-Peer Counseling Impacts Student Mentors’ College Outcomes, Leigh Mccallen, Neshat Yazdani, Grace Pai, Janice Bloom, Lori Chajet, Michelle Fine

Publications and Research

This study examines how a community engagement model of near-peer counseling impacts counselors’ own college success as underrepresented students in higher education, here defined as one-year persistence in college. Near-peer mentors participated in a program provided by College Access: Research and Action (CARA), which trains young people to support peers in their home communities at New York City public high schools and City University of New York (CUNY) 2-year colleges through critical college application, enrollment, and retention milestones. Aggregated across 4 years of data, our results indicate CARA near-peer counselors are nearly twice as likely to persist in college (p < .001) as peers with similar demographic and academic characteristics not participating in CARA. Findings are replicated for students of color (2.09 times higher, p < .001) and economically disadvantaged students (1.78 times higher, p = .003). Implications for peer mentor program development through public university–community partnerships are discussed.

Preparing Preservice Teachers By Building Content And Pedagogical Knowledge Of Integrating Technologies, Patrice Morgan

Publications and Research

After the declaration of Covid-19 outbreak in March 2020, the system of education changed from traditional field experiences to virtual environment of online learning. As per the need of time, this paper discusses the methods of online learning that learners and educators use to keep up with the flow of education. With the complete incorporation of technology in the educating system, the challenges and training support provided to preservice and in-service teachers is the vital essence to deliver beneficial impacts. However, delivering education with proper expertise in specialized software such as Google Classrooms, Zoom, TV school, online portals, Microsoft teams, …

Mathematics Preparatory Workshops To Foster Student Success, Sandie Han, Diana Samaroo, Janet Liou-Mark, Lauri Aguirre

Publications and Research

Mathematics preparatory workshops were offered to college students at a diverse urban undergraduate institution. The goal was to prepare students for their mathematics course, by offering non-credit bearing and free preparatory workshops. The lack of adequate preparation for mathematics courses is a barrier for student engagement in future STEM courses. We believe that by providing preparatory workshops, we can improve not only the success but access for students in foundational mathematics courses. The workshops allowed students to engage with the course content in a rigorous and intensive manner prior to the start of the semester. Students who participated in the …

Productive Disruptions: Using Commonplace Books To Resist Eurocentrism, Andie Silva

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Opportunities In Study Abroad: Planning, Steps And Suggestions, Diana Saiki, Alyssa Dana Adomaitis

Publications and Research

Faculty lead field studies are supported at most universities, but they can be time consuming and daunting to plan. The benefits of study abroad experiences have been well documented (Livingmore, 2011). There is growing evidence that short term faculty lead field studies provide a positive outlook on the fashion industry (Boorady, et al., 2016). Furthermore, these experience enhance students’“cultural intelligence” or the ability to communicate with diverse cultures and work well in diverse cultural settings (e.g., Livermore, 2011, Rolling,Presley, & Thornton, 2018). There is some literature on faculty lead international experiences study the apparel industry, such as El Salvador (e.g.Ha-Brookshire,2008). …