Education Commons^™

The Impact Of Undergraduate Research And Student Characteristics On Student Success Metrics At An Urban, Minority Serving, Commuter, Public Institution, Sheila I. Baron, Pamela Brown, Tammie Cumming, Michelle Mengeling

Publications and Research

Challenges to establishing and maintaining undergraduate research programs include how to demonstrate impact as evidence for future funding, establish eligibility criteria when resources are limited, and assess new components. To address these challenges, undergraduate researcher GPA, credit accumulation and time to graduation were evaluated longitudinally, at an urban, public, minority and Hispanic serving, commuter college. Students who participated in undergraduate research and matched peers were also compared. Evaluation revealed that all groups benefited from participation in undergraduate research, whether they had full- or part-time status, were STEM or non-STEM majors, or participated in single or multiple semesters of research. Addition …

Modernizing The Reading Clinic Through Research And Exploration, Evan T. Ortlieb, Gina M. Doepker

Gina Doepker

Reading clinics are not only necessary, but pertinent in the age of educational assessment, accountability, and best practices. Assessing and individualizing instruction are only facets of what encompasses a reading clinic; the structure of a reading clinic must be representative of the needs of students today. A 10-step model for creating and maintaining a successful reading clinic for students will be discussed to ensure maximal learning for both preservice tutors and their tutees. Unique features include expanding literacy opportunities with technology, meta-monitoring of tutoring sessions, and facilitating continual professional development for preservice educators. Attendees will acquire knowledge of characteristics of …

What Impacts Do Oer Have On Students? Students Share Their Experiences With A Health Psychology Oer At New York City College Of Technology, Cailean Cooney

Publications and Research

This article reports findings from a study conducted with students in three sections of a Health Psychology course that replaced a traditional textbook with open educational resources (OER) as the primary course material. The purpose of the study was to learn how OER impacted students. Data were collected in Fall 2015 with students from New York City College of Technology (City Tech), of the City University of New York (CUNY), a comprehensive college located in Brooklyn. Students were assigned the OER by their course instructor, who developed it as part of a library funded OER pilot initiative. Two research instruments …

Various Forms Of Student Engagement And Student Learning, Dan Richard, Melissa Newberry

Dan Richard

Previous research indicates that student engagement is multi-dimensional. Numerous engaged or active learning strategies (e.g., think-pair-share, problem-based learning, interactive games) emphasize some dimensions of student engagement but not others. The current project assesses the learning impact of a diversity of active learning strategies employing various dimensions of student engagement within three sections of a course in Social Psychology. Direct assessment of student performance on multiple-choice exams as well as indirect assessment of student preferences for learning activities will be addressed. In this session, participants will review original research on student engagement, receive examples of course activities, evaluate these activities on …

Prior Mentoring And Computer-Mediated Experiences Influence On Willingness To Engage In E-Mentoring, Marty Thomas, Ellen Ensher

Ellen Ensher

The practice of mentoring has proliferated tremendously and occurs in many different forms. The advent of Internet technology offers some new possibilities to traditional face-to-face mentoring relationships in which mentoring relationships are not constrained by physical proximity (e-mentoring). This presentation will describe the results of a research study involving the relationship between willingness to participate in e-mentoring relationships and prior mentoring and CMC experiences. The researchers considered three hypotheses: 1) positive prior mentoring experiences will increase the likelihood of participating in e-mentoring; 2) positive prior experiences with CMC will increase the likelihood of participating in e-mentoring; 3) the form of …

Why This Flip Wasn't A Flop: What The Numbers Don't Tell You About Flipped Classes, Heather Noel Fedesco, Troy Cary

IMPACT Publications

This paper details the conversion of a large, required Civil Engineering fluid mechanics course into a more student-centered, active learning-oriented course through the flipping of one lecture per week. In the flipped class, students collaboratively solve homework problems in groups while receiving “expert” feedback from instructors and TAs. To offset the lost lectures, some course material that has been delivered in traditional lectures has been placed online in the form of short videos and textbook readings, with low-stakes quizzes for assessment.

Student learning gains were quantitatively assessed by comparing quiz and final exam scores for three semesters (1 pre-flip and …

“I Am More Productive In The Library Because It’S Quiet”: Commuter Students In The College Library, Mariana Regalado, Maura A. Smale

Publications and Research

This article discusses commuter students’ experiences with the academic library, drawn from a qualitative study at the City University of New York. Undergraduates at six community and baccalaureate colleges were interviewed to explore how they fit schoolwork into their days, and the challenges and opportunities they encountered. Students identified physical and environmental features that informed their ability to successfully engage in academic work in the library. They valued the library as a distraction-free place for academic work, in contrast to the constraints they experienced in other places—including in their homes and on the commute.

A Socratic Café For Critical Inquiry, Jody Piro, Gina Anderson

Jody Piro

This presentation will explore the completed research inquiry that developed from our overt attempt to promote critical thinking in an online forum. The implications for advancing critical inquiry in online formats for interdisciplinary university content areas will be addressed. The objectives of this session are twofold: 1) to introduce participants to the nine intellectual standards (Elder & Paul, 2007) used to analyze the critical thinking and Socratic questioning in our research, and 2) to discuss the structuring of critical analysis in participants' own classrooms. Participants can expect to participate in a cooperative learning activity to practice the use of Intellectual …

Building-Up Student Success, Maria Babiuc-Hamilton

Maria C. Babiuc-Hamilton

Students' ability to think critically is essential in achieving success not only in college, but also later in their jobs. In order to increase students' long term performance, the general education program at our university was completely restructured to allow the introduction of three required credit hours in critical thinking across curriculum at the freshmen level. The dissemination of the learning outcomes is complicated, because this course is not content driven. The solution is for students to including a meta-cognitive reflection with their assignments, describing their personal academic plan and their experience with the learning process. This proposal presents the …

Two Methods In Teaching Introductory Physics, With Emphasis On The Effect In Gender Performance, Maria Babiuc-Hamilton

Maria C. Babiuc-Hamilton

Reports show that females are underrepresented in physics, and their average scores are lower than males. This proposal is targeted towards improving the performance of female students studying physics. Two different pedagogical approaches in teaching introductory level physics will be compared: the lecture-based method, enhanced with multimedia, and the active learning laboratories based on the Physics Suite. We analyze which method is more efficient in fostering the success of female students. The expected benefit of this project is that it will improve the understanding on how different pedagogical methods can influence female students to perform better in physics. It will …

Implementing A Blended Model Of Mathematics Instruction – Issues And Outcomes, Natasha Brewley, Alvina Atkinson, Barry Biddlecomb

SoTL Commons Conference

The session will present issues and results from the implementation of a blended instruction model at the authors' institution. The blended instruction model involves coming together as a class less often and encourages student learning by making them more responsible for their learning outside of the classroom. In addition to describing the authors' home institution, this presentation will have three objectives: (1) Describe the blended instructional model (What is Blended learning and what does it look like?), (2) Present student evaluations. (What have students said about taking a course like this?), and (3) Present quantitative comparisons between blended and traditional …

An Empirical Investigation Of Student Evaluations Of Instruction - The Relative Importance Of Factors, Satish Nargundkar, Milind Shrikhande

Managerial Sciences Faculty Publications

We analyzed over 100,000 student evaluations of instruction over four years in the college of business at a major public university. We found that the original instrument that was validated about 20 years ago is still valid, with factor analysis showing that the six underlying dimensions used in the instrument remained relatively intact. Also, we found that the relative importance of those six factors in the overall assessment of instruction changed over the past two decades, reflecting changes in the expectations of the current millennial generation of students. The results were consistent across four subgroups studied – Undergraduate Core, Undergraduate …

Effects Of Student-Centered, Inquiry-Based Teaching On Performance, Attitudes, And Efficacy, Brad Bailey, Karen Briggs, Tom Cooper

SoTL Commons Conference

As part of research supported by the Educational Advancement Foundation, the authors conducted a quasi-experimental study comparing the effects of a student-centered and inquiry-based teaching technique, known as a Modified Moore Method or MMM, with those of lecture-based teaching methods. To study the students' attitudes, beliefs and self-efficacy and performance, the students were asked to complete a survey twice each semester and take a common final exam. This panel session includes a description of what MMM entails, what the students and instructors do both in class and out, and how MMM could be used in other classes. We will discuss …

Empowering The Scholarship Of Teaching And Learning: Towards An Authentic Practice, Carolin Kreber

SoTL Commons Conference

In this presentation my aim is to look at the different kinds of questions that can be asked as part of the scholarship of teaching and learning and the different types of knowledge these questions might generate. I will explore and unpack the meaning of the now common notion of ‘SoTL research’ and compare it to an alternative or complementary notion of scholarship, that of ‘SoTL practice’. The latter I will argue is not just characterized by context-specific inquiries into the effectiveness of certain teaching strategies in bringing about particular learning outcomes but by questions that are directed at values …

How Do You Get Student Buy-In To A "Wonderful (To You)" Teaching Innovation?, Wendy L. Keeney-Kennicutt, Adalet Baris Gunersel, Nancy J. Simpson

SoTL Commons Conference

One difficulty in adopting new classroom tools is persuading students to accept an educational technique out of their comfort zone. Our study investigated student perceptions when Calibrated Peer Review (CPR)™, a web-based program that uses writing for learning and assessing, was introduced into a general chemistry college classroom, and the strategies that helped convert initial intense opposition into acceptance and engagement. We will share the mistakes made, the reasons for students' like or dislike of CPR, the 4 year path taken to understand the issues and modify its implementation for a more positive classroom experience, and why the instructor persisted …

Digital Recordings And Assessment: An Alternative For Measuring Oral Proficiency, Peter B. Swanson, Patricia Early

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Technology For Oral Assessment, Patricia Early, Peter B. Swanson

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

With recent developments in multimedia recording, researchers have begun to investigate the use of technology in oral proficiency assessment. This article addresses the benefits and ease of using seven different multimedia tools to assess P-16 students’ oral language proficiency and compares traditional methods of in-class oral language assessment to out-of-class recordings. Additionally, the authors discuss the potential benefits of using technology to lower students’ affective filter, to provide teachers with a digital portfolio of student progress, and to increase instructional and preparation time.