Digital Commons Network^™

The Domain-Generality And Durability Of Efficient Learning, Christopher Zerr

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

People differ in how quickly they learn information and how long they remember it, and a common finding in the literature is that a quicker rate of learning coincides with better retention for the learned material. Zerr and colleagues (2017) termed the relation between learning rate and retention as learning efficiency, with more efficient learning representing both a faster acquisition rate and better memory performance after a delay. Zerr et al. also demonstrated in separate experiments that how efficiently someone learns is stable across a range of days and years. The current thesis includes two experiments addressing additional questions …

Kids Inspire Kids For Steam, Kristof Fenyvesi, Tony Houghton, José Manuel Diego-Mantecón, Elizabeth Crilly, Adrian Oldknow, Zsolt Lavicza, Teresa F. Blanco

The STEAM Journal

The goal of the Kids Inspiring Kids in STEAM (KIKS) project was to raise students’ awareness towards the multi- and transdisciplinary connections between the STEAM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts & Mathematics), and make the learning about topics and phenomena from these fields more enjoyable. In order to achieve these goals, KIKS project has popularized the STEAM-concept by projects based on the students inspiring other students-approach and by utilizing new technologies, tools, open educational resources, and everyday items and materials. Through the students-inspiring-other-students-approach, we have aimed to get participating students developing STEAM activities for other students in their own local …

Creativity, Laterality And Critical State Balance In Learning, Jenny Rock, Asher Flatt

The STEAM Journal

Understanding the intersecting cognitive pathways that are integral to ways of thinking, creating and functioning in both art and science is an important grounding for a STEAM educational approach. We combine three divergent concepts, including creativity, hemisphere laterality, and critical state theory, to argue for a more balanced approach to learning as part of a modern meaning-centered education in STEAM. Reviewing the concept of hemisphere laterality, or how the two hemispheres of our brain have different (though not disconnected) ways of processing sensory information, we note how these two means of interpreting the world have become unbalanced in traditional modes …

The Relationship Between Student Participation In A 1:1 Laptop Initiative And Academic Achievement In A 9-12 Upper Middle Class Suburban New Jersey Public School District, Brian P. Gatens

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

The use of laptop computers in 1:1 settings is becoming increasingly prevalent in America’s schools. As greater numbers of students are using this technology, establishing its benefits and costs is paramount, especially in light of so many demanding fiscal situations. This study used quantitative research and analysis to measure the benefits and costs of such an expansive distribution of technology. It seeks to answer the question of the worth of such a large-scale adoption.

This study explored the relationship between the use of a laptop computer on a 1:1 basis for the purpose of academic instruction and its connection …

Teaching Students How To Make Their Dreams Come True: An Autoethnography Of Developing And Teaching The Dream Research Methods Course, E. James Baesler

The Qualitative Report

How to make students’ dreams come true is the central focus of this autoethnography that chronicles the story of the transformation of a traditional undergraduate communication research methods course into a new and creative dream research methods course. Pedagogical and institutional issues in teaching the traditional methods course join personal influences in my life story to birth the new dream research methods course. The content and format of the new course are described chronologically using personal stories, student perspectives, advice to teachers, and reflection questions. I encourage teachers, by experimenting with the ideas in the dream research methods course, to …

Dorsal Striatum Mediates Deliberate Decision Making, Not Late-Stage, Stimulus–Response Learning, Nole M. Hiebert, Adrian M. Owen, Ken N. Seergobin, Penny A. Macdonald

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

We investigated a controversy regarding the role of the dorsal striatum (DS) in deliberate decision-making versus late-stage, stimulus–response learning to the point of automatization. Participants learned to associate abstract images with right or left button presses explicitly before strengthening these associations through stimulus–response trials with (i.e., Session 1) and without (i.e., Session 2) feedback. In Session 1, trials were divided into response-selection and feedback events to separately assess decision versus learning processes. Session 3 evaluated stimulus–response automaticity using a location Stroop task. DS activity correlated with response-selection and not feedback events in Phase 1 (i.e., Blocks 1–3), Session 1. Longer …

Homework Practices That Need A Change, Kim Ontiveros

Dissertations

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this change policy is to bring to light an issue that is facing schools, teachers and students nationwide. Homework plagues students and families every night throughout the school year. It impedes on their family time, creates frustration for students and parents, all the while not producing the sense of achievement most people would think. Kohn (2012), Parker (2014), and Shumaker (2016) support the idea the elementary students do not sustain achievement or measurable learning because of homework. A change in district policy would allow for more flexibility in the process, procedures and learning that should take …

Play It Forward: Cooperative Learning & Structured Play During Recess, Tyler Elwin, Mary Rossi

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Cooperative learning and structured play (CLASP) are two things that have gone unappreciated in the modern educational setting. This is an important issue for many local low-income schools as the dropout rate is so high. CLASP ideals come with a wide array of positive outcomes that look to brighten the futures of affected youth. CLASP provides an incredible number of scholarly benefits: increased school involvement, higher GPA, improved interpersonal relationships, increased ability to work as a team, etc. This capstone identifies these critical benefits and addresses the best way to properly utilize CLASP within the school setting. The three primary …

Simulation As A Multidisciplinary Team Approach In Health Care Programs In An Urban University Setting, Geraldine Fike, Dawn Blue, Guillermo Escalante, Phoebe (Yeon) S. Kim, Jose A. Munoz

Health Science and Human Ecology Faculty Publications

The poster provided here showcases results from a simulation study that began in the Spring Quarter of 2017 at CSU San Bernardino. The results presented here are based on four simulations conducted on campus in our nursing lab space. We incorporated the participation of 44 students in our study.

Patients are cared for by a nurse and multidisciplinary teams which may include physical therapists, social workers, and public health workers; however, students in health care programs usually will not experience necessary scenarios developing needed skills. Although needed skills are learned within the walls of the university they remain in a …

Undergraduate Research As A Form Of Learning, Amelia Welch

The Plymouth Student Scientist

Guest editorial: Amelia Welch, Final Year Student, Marine Biology, Plymouth University

Letting Students Speak: Making The Classroom Student-Centered Through Multimodal Projects, Claire Lutkewitte

CAHSS Faculty Presentations, Proceedings, Lectures, and Symposia

No abstract provided.

Full-Time Teleworkers Sensemaking Process For Informal Communication, Sheila A. Gobes-Ryan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Organizations have traditionally accomplished connectivity among their workers by co-locating them in shared organizational workplaces. However, information and communication technologies (ICTs) are offering alternative ways to accomplish this kind of connection. This change raises important questions about what it is possible to accomplish through such mediated communicative connections, and if there are work activities that are best accomplished face-to-face. Practitioners and researchers have historically identified informal communication as a process essential to organizational success that is difficult or impossible to accomplish outside of shared physical environments. This study documents the ways full-time teleworkers are accomplishing informal communication without being in …

Prompting Deliberation About Nanotechnology: Information, Instruction, And Discussion Effects On Individual Engagement And Knowledge, Lisa M. Pytlikzillig, Myiah J. Hutchens, Peter Muhlberger, Alan Tomkins

Lisa PytlikZillig Publications

Deliberative (and educational) theories typically predict knowledge gains will be enhanced by information structure and discussion. In two studies, we experimentally manipulated key features of deliberative public engagement (information, instructions, and discussion) and measured impacts on cognitive-affective engagement and knowledge about nanotechnology. We also examined the direct and moderating impacts of individual differences in need for cognition and gender. Findings indicated little impact of information (organized by topic or by pro-con relevance). Instructions (prompts to think critically) decreased engagement in Study 1, and increased it in Study 2, but did not impact postknowledge. Group discussion had strong positive benefits for …

Values Of E-Government In Implementation Of The Strategy Of Action For The Further Development Of The Republic Of Uzbekistan, E. Abdullaev

Review of law sciences

In the article the author focuses on the role of electronic government in Strategy of actions, he also writes about special features of e-government, its development, and experience of other countries in this sphere and learns their practice on e-government from legal, scientific-theoretical and practical points of view.

Adventure Education And Learning Communities: Linking Classroom Learning With Everyday Life, Andrew J. Bobilya, Lynn D. Akey

Lynn D. Akey, Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

Educational Outcomes Of Small-Group Discussion Versus Traditional Lecture Format In Dental Students' Learning And Skills Acquisition., Ana Arias, Raymond Scott, Ove A. Peters, Elizabeth Mcclain, Alan H. Gluskin

Ove Peters

The aim of this prospective quantitative study was to compare the effect of different instructional formats on dental students' skills and knowledge acquisition for access cavity preparation. All first-year dental students were invited to participate in this study conducted during the four consecutive two-week endodontic rotation courses at the University of the Pacific Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry in spring semester 2015. Four alphabetically distributed intact groups of students were randomly allocated to two groups (n=70 each) that participated in either small-group discussion or a traditional lecture on access preparation. The first outcome measure was skill acquisition, measured by …

Altering Assessment For Greater Achievement: An Evaluation Of Students’ Attitudes And Level Of Engagement With Mtuner, Lindsay Shaw

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With technology at the fingertips of most undergraduate students, it has been difficult for instructors to fully engage them in the classroom, which has resulted in the creation of several innovative interventions, such as mTuner. mTuner integrates several cognitive learning strategies within an assessment, with the goal of actually enhancing learning, as opposed to just measuring it. In the current study, students’ attitudes, level of engagement, and performance were evaluated, with specific explorations into academic entitlement (AE), test anxiety (TA), learning orientation (LO) and grade orientation (GO). Results indicated that students had very positive attitudes toward mTuner, especially in comparison …

Identification Of Genes That Maintain Behavioral And Structural Plasticity During Sleep Loss, Laurent Seugnet, Stephane Dissel, Matthew S. Thimgan, Lijuan Cao, Paul J. Shaw

Biological Sciences Faculty Research & Creative Works

Although patients with primary insomnia experience sleep disruption, they are able to maintain normal performance on a variety of cognitive tasks. This observation suggests that insomnia may be a condition where predisposing factors simultaneously increase the risk for insomnia and also mitigate against the deleterious consequences of waking. To gain insight into processes that might regulate sleep and buffer neuronal circuits during sleep loss, we manipulated three genes, fat facet (faf), highwire (hiw) and the GABA receptor Resistance to dieldrin (Rdl), that were differentially modulated in a Drosophila model of insomnia. Our results indicate …

Vocabulary Learning Benefits From Rem After Slow-Wave Sleep., Laura J Batterink, Carmen E Westerberg, Ken A Paller

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

Memory reactivation during slow-wave sleep (SWS) influences the consolidation of recently acquired knowledge. This reactivation occurs spontaneously during sleep but can also be triggered by presenting learning-related cues, a technique known as targeted memory reactivation (TMR). Here we examined whether TMR can improve vocabulary learning. Participants learned the meanings of 60 novel words. Auditory cues for half the words were subsequently presented during SWS in an afternoon nap. Memory performance for cued versus uncued words did not differ at the group level but was systematically influenced by REM sleep duration. Participants who obtained relatively greater amounts of REM showed a …

Comparison Of Student Performance, Student Perception, And Teacher Satisfaction With Traditional Versus Flipped Classroom Models, Zafer Unal, Aslihan Unal

Department of Elementary and Special Education Faculty Publications

As new technologies become available, they are often embraced in educational innovation to enhance traditional instruction. The flipped teaching model is one of the most recent and popular technology-infused teaching models in which learning new concepts takes place at home while practice is conducted in the classroom. The purpose of this study was to investigate how using the flipped teaching model affects student performance, perceptions, and teacher satisfaction in comparison to the traditional model. Sixteen teachers implemented the flipped teaching model in their classrooms and reported the results of the flipped teaching model for the first time. Pretests and posttests …

The Effects Of Implementing An Online Professional Learning Community For Teachers Of Gifted And Talented Courses: An Action Research Study, Chelsey A. Mintz

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this action research study was to examine the effects of implementing an online professional learning community (PLC) designed explicitly for teachers of gifted and talented (GT) English language arts (ELA) courses. The present action research (AR) is a limited mixed design study, including quantitative and qualitative elements, to discover the effects on collaboration and professional growth focused on best practices for GT instruction. The quantitative data were collected through surveys, which included Likert scales and nominal items and were analyzed through descriptive statistics. The qualitative data were collected through guided and semi-structured interview questions and transcribed before …

Session 10: Learning And Critical Thinking Part 2, Shelly Mumma, Carole Basak

Gateway's Pilot Year

On Tuesday (the session prior to this), you will hand out room assignments to the students in your section about where they should go for this meeting. They will go directly to that meeting room. There will 8 different meeting rooms - 1 for each academic division plus one for undecided students. In each room, there will be a faculty member(s), tutor(s) or TA(s) for subjects in that division, and (maybe) a staff member from Academic Support Services

Session 9: Learning And Critical Thinking Part 1, Maryellen Olson, Robert Pyne

Gateway's Pilot Year

Students and leaders will discuss what assistance might be needed and where to obtain that assistance via imagined scenarios. They will then discuss the topic of critical thinking.

Developing Grounded Goals Through Instant Replay Learning, Lisa Meeden, Douglas S. Blank

Computer Science Faculty Research and Scholarship

This paper describes and tests a developmental architecture that enables a robot to explore its world, to find and remember interesting states, to associate these states with grounded goal representations, and to generate action sequences so that it can re-visit these states of interest. The model is composed of feed-forward neural networks that learn to make predictions at two levels through a dual mechanism of motor babbling for discovering the interesting goal states and instant replay learning for developing the grounded goal representations. We compare the performance of the model with grounded goal representations versus random goal representations, and find …

Bookbox, Suraksha Chandrasekhar (Dmm), Anna Marinina (Computer Science), Gabrielle Schwartz (Mba, Marketing/Business Analytics), Erica Lomando (Interior Design), Sarah Von Lange (Health Sciences)

Nexus Maximus

Bookbox is an app that unites the world through books. With a motto of "Donate a book, start a new chapter" Bookbox aims to facilitate the flow of donated books to refugees in Syrian refugee camps, with a goal of promoting education, self-learning and the will to build a future.

Nexus Maximus IV

The Challenge: Innovation for Refugees and Displaced Populations

One of the great challenges of our time is how to help refugees and displaced populations, and how to prevent the causes in the first place. Every minute, 24 people around the world are forced to flee their homes. …

Spaced And Expanded Practice: An Investigation Of Methods To Enhance Retention, Katherine Kalenberg

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

In order to promote quality instruction and maximized student learning, it is essential for schools to integrate the most practical, effective, and efficient teaching methods into the curriculum. The purpose of this research was to investigate the effect of various spacing patterns between practice sessions on retention of information. This study investigated the effects of practice at consistent intervals (spaced practice), practice at increasing intervals (expanded practice), and no practice. Participants were taught a set of eight unknown math words and definitions using incremental rehearsal (IR). After the teaching session, students in expanded and spaced practice conditions participated in three …

Combined Mnemonic Strategy Training And High-Definition Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation For Memory Deficits In Mild Cognitive Impairment, Benjamin M. Hampstead, Krishnankutty Sathian, Marom Bikson, Anthony Y. Stringer

Publications and Research

Introduction: Memory deficits characterize Alzheimer’s dementia and the clinical precursor stage known as mild cognitive impairment. Nonpharmacologic interventions hold promise for enhancing functioning in these patients, potentially delaying functional impairment that denotes transition to dementia. Previous findings revealed that mnemonic strategy training (MST) enhances long-term retention of trained stimuli and is accompanied by increased blood oxygen level–dependent signal in the lateral frontal and parietal cortices as well as in the hippocampus. The present study was designed to enhance MST generalization, and the range of patients who benefit, via concurrent delivery of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS).

Methods: This protocol describes …

Roles Of Gabab, Muscarinic And Nicotinic Receptor Signaling In The Acquisition And Expression Of Fructose And Fat-Conditioned Flavor Preferences And Acquisition Of Quinine-Conditioned Flavor Avoidances In Rats, Francis M. Rotella

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In addition to increased intake of sweet solutions by mammals, learning, particularly classically-conditioned “Pavlovian-like” learning, also plays an important role. An orosensory conditioned flavor preference (CFP) can be elicited by pairing one novel flavor (conditioned stimulus, CS+) with a fructose solution and a second novel flavor (CS-) with a saccharin solution. Rats will prefer the CS+ flavor in a subsequent 2-bottle choice test with both flavors mixed in saccharin. Previous pharmacological analyses revealed that systemic administration of dopamine (DA) D1 and D2 as well as NMDA, but not opioid, receptor antagonists eliminated the acquisition (learning) of fructose-CFP. Further, expression of …

Mechanisms Of Navigation In Fiddler Crabs: An Analysis Of Allocentric And Egocentric Contributions, Stephen G. Volz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Navigation in biological systems is a complex task-set that involves learning processes and may include constructing representations of features of their environment. Across the animal kingdom, different learning mechanisms have evolved to similar spatial problems. The extent to which mechanisms are conserved across taxa are an important research area that can guide our understanding of the cognitive dimensions of navigation. Recent studies of mammals, birds, and arthropods has found that these animals often attend to multiple forms of sensory cues, and to either integrate the solutions generated by these cues, or at times prefer one form of cue over another. …

Video Simulation As An Educational Strategy To Increase Knowledge And Perceived Knowledge In Novice Nurse Anesthesia Trainees, Rachel A. Kozlowski, Jennifer A. Kurdika

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

Background: Video simulation is gaining popularity as an alternative method of teaching and can play an important role in nurse anesthesia education.

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of an educational video simulation on acquisition of knowledge and perceived knowledge of anesthesia induction in novice nurse anesthesia trainees (NATs).

Method: A single group pre-test post-test design was used to compare knowledge and perceived knowledge on standard and rapid sequencing induction of anesthesia. Pre test scores on knowledge and perceived knowledge were obtained and followed by a viewing of pre-recorded video simulation on standard and rapid …