Education Commons^™

Psychometric Properties Of Postsecondary Students' Course Evaluations, Michael J. Drysdale

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Several experts in the area of postsecondary student evaluations of courses have concluded that they are stable or reliable measures as well as being measures that provide ways of making valid inferences regarding teacher effectiveness. Often these experts have offered these conclusions without supporting evidence. Surprisingly, a thorough review of the literature revealed very few reported test-retest reliability studies of course evaluations and the results from these studies are contradictory. In the area of validity, the conclusions offered by scholars who conducted meta-analyses of mutlisection course studies are inconsistent. This leads to the following two research questions:

1. What is …

From Active Learning To Activity: Getting Beyond Busy Work And Into Deep Learning, Wendy Holliday

Library Faculty & Staff Presentations

This session will report on an ethnographic study of an English composition class. The researcher observed the class for an entire semester and conducted focus groups and interviews with students and the instructor. The session will describe key activities from the class, including reflections on motivation and learning by both instructors and students. It will conclude with a discussion of how the research findings can help librarians design instruction that engages learners more deeply.

Misconstruals Or More? The Interactions Of Orbit Diagrams And Explanations Of The Seasons, Victor R. Lee

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

This paper examines a “misconstrual hypothesis” regarding diagrams of the Earth’s orbit around the sun and how middle school students explain the cause of the seasons. Drawing from 24 semi-structured interviews, I present qualitative analyses of students’ explanations of why temperatures vary in summer and winter and how those are influenced by the elliptical shape of perspective drawings of the Earth’s orbit, common to many science textbooks. The results of the analysis suggest that diagram interpretation does not necessarily follow what has been often predicted in the literature and that conceptualizations can shift quite rapidly as different diagram features are …

A Delay-Discounting Primer, Gregory J. Madden, Patrick S. Johnson

Psychology Faculty Publications

Given the importance of research findings and the potential of further research to aid in the prediction and control of impulsivity, the primary focus of this chapter (and this book) is on choice and the failure of future events to affect current decisions. In this primer chapter, we consider two types of impulsive choice: (a) preferring a smaller-sooner reward while forgoing a larger-later one and (b) preferring a larger-later aversive outcome over a smaller-sooner one. The first of these is exemplified by the toy-pilfering child with whom we opened this chapter. Taking the toy is immediately rewarded, but it is …

Discounting And Pathological Gambling, Nancy M. Petry, Gregory J. Madden

Psychology Faculty Publications

Pathological gambling is a disorder characterized by excessive gambling. It often occurs in conjunction with substance use disorders, and research is beginning to examine the association between these disorders, especially with regard to impulsivity and discounting. In this chapter, we initially review the diagnosis and prevalence rates of pathological gambling, including its comorbidity with substance use disorders. We then describe relations between personality measures of impulsivity and pathological gambling. Gamblers' patterns of choices on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and measures of delay and probability discounting are covered in depth, and we discuss the degree to which these choices are …