Education Commons^™

Marin Beck Honors Portfolio, Marin Elisabeth Beck

Honors Capstone Portfolios

Marin Beck's honors portfolio captured in December 2014.

Katie Westermayer Honors Portfolio, Katie Lynn Westermayer

Honors Capstone Portfolios

Katie Westermayer's honors portfolio captured in December 2014.

Kristen Paulsen Honors Portfolio, Kristen Chastine Paulsen

Honors Capstone Portfolios

Kristen Paulsen's honors portfolio captured in December 2014.

Annie Humphers-Ginther Honors Portfolio, Anastasia June Humphers-Ginther

Honors Capstone Portfolios

Anastasia (Annie) Humphers-Ginther's honors portfolio captured in December 2014.

11-2014 Newsletter, Minnesota State University, Mankato. Library Services

Library Services Newsletters

Minnesota State University, Mankato, Library Services Newsletter for November 2014.

So, I Can't Just Do Homework?: Training And Using Student Workers To The Fullest, Jessi Zimmerman, Joni D. Myers, Anne Stenzel

Library Services Publications

Panelists for this discussion presentation will kick things off by talking about how they acquire their student workers, describing training plans, and sharing some tips and techniques about what has worked and what has been less successful. Attendees will be encouraged to participate in a dialogue about the topic and to compare notes about “best practices”.

Reaching Across The Aisle: The Benefits Of Interdisciplinary Work In Graduate School, Shelby Marie Afflerbach, Chelsea Chatham, Brittany Davis, Tracy M. Grimme, Kristie L. Campana, Jeffrey Buchanan

Psychology Department Publications

In this article, we outline our own experiences with an interdisciplinary project we participated in at Minnesota State University, Mankato.

09-2014 Newsletter, Minnesota State University, Mankato. Library Services

Library Services Newsletters

Minnesota State University, Mankato, Library Services Newsletter for September 2014.

Msu Students' Use Of The Msu Web Site, Kristin Ruder

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

As part of ongoing usability studies of the MSU Web site, survey data was collected from convenience samples of MSU students to evaluate their self-assessed expertise using the Internet as well as their use of and satisfaction with the MSU Web site.

Distinguishing Observed Inattentive Behaviors In The College Classroom As They Correlate To Brain Wave Activity Utilizing A Wireless Electroencephalograph, Christopher J. Aura, Matthew R. Stanton

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

A significant amount of research has been devoted to the behavioral correlates of inattention in children (A.P.A., 2000; Arnold, 2000; Gordon & Barkley, 1998). It is proposed by the authors that college students, in their several years of experience, are much more capable of masking these trademark behaviors. When a child loses interest they will begin to openly look around the room, shift in their seat, or chat with their neighbors (Sandberg, Rutter & Taylor, 1978; Arnold, 2000). College students however, are proposed to candidly fidget, shift in their seat, or even maintain eye contact with their instructor while “daydreaming”. …

Campus Paper Waste, Joshua E. Randall

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

The fall of 2004 at Minnesota State University, a new program called MavPrint was introduced. The user submits a document to be printed at a computer, the expense is deducted from their account, and then their document can be retrieved from any MavPrint station. In years past printing had been free, but seeing how according to Bryan Schneider, the director of Technical Services at Minnesota State University – Mankato, from the year 2003 to the year 2004 the printing costs for the University rose 200 percent, they felt it was time to make a change. MSU students printed out over …

Designing An Articulation-Agreement Database For The College Of Science And Engineering And Technology Advising Center, Stephanie Fasen, Susan Hendley, Tim Pham, Danish Zaman

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

During their academic careers, some college students transfer to different universities. To allow students to transfer seamlessly to other colleges, advisors at Minnesota universities create articulation agreements that list the classes that transfer between two universities. To use these documents, students and advisors must search through binders to find the correct articulation agreement and then manually review it. This is a time-consuming process for both students and advisors. To make this information more accessible, we created a web-based database that instantly produces a list of equivalent classes for majors offered at Minnesota St ate University, Mankato (MSU) and other Minnesota …

An Investigation Of Student Perspectives On Classroom Resource Usefulness, Joshua Randall, Lindsey Thompson

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

Central to the post-secondary education is the textbook, and central to complaints regarding post-secondary education is also the textbook. Textbook use and price are a serious issue at Minnesota State University, Mankato, and at other colleges and universities around the country. Concern regarding textbooks inspires students to become very vocal, filing complaint after complaint regarding the price, the quality, and the utilization of textbooks in the status quo. This is an issue that inflames the hearts (and empties the wallets) of many students, and therefore should be an issue of concern with the university. In two separate studies surveying students …

Reflections On The Conduct Of Research With Human Subjects Across Two Cultures, Kimberly Maas

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

This study examined the potential benefits, challenges, and barriers faced by university students and research colleagues who were involved in international partnerships for cross-cultural research projects between the USA and Russia. In scholarly investigations in the USA, research subjects must be informed of the precautions that will be taken to protect their safety and their privacy (Amdur & Bankfert, 2002). Particularly in Russia, there are no corresponding policies for working with human subjects that compare to the procedures followed by American university Institutional Review Boards. Furthermore, international partnerships have faced new challenges as a result of the restructuring of American …

Roommate Rants: Understanding Roommate Conflicts Among Msu Students, Kimberly Halpin

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

Roommates seem to go hand in hand with the college experience. Conflicts are inevitable in life and when a pair or small group of college students live together, conflict is likely to occur. The purpose of this study was to find out what conflicts roommates experience, how they communicate those conflicts, and how they resolve those conflicts. All conflicts would involve a Minnesota State University, Mankato (MSU) student and their roommate(s). An online survey, consisting of twenty questions, was created and administered to Dr. Kristen Treinen's SPEE 100: Fundamentals of Speech Communication class; twenty out of 750 students responded. The …

Modeling Student Engagement In The Classroom, Sarah Painter

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

Connections to Community is a multi-institutional study that looks at the influence of community on post-secondary, science and engineering students and their engagement in academic activity. This paper focuses specifically on student engagement within the classroom as a follow-up to a previous paper by Wendy Hoffman, Identifying Influential Variables of Student Academic Engagement (Hoffman, 2013). The goal of this work is to model student engagement in the classroom using classroom observation data that has been cleaned and then compare the results with those found in Hoffman’s paper which used pre-cleaning data. The cleaned data is used to create two data …

Mental Health Awareness Building Via Android Application, James Faraday, Joshua Martin

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

The goal of this project was to create a tool that provides students at Minnesota State University, Mankato with mental health information through a freely available smartphone application (App). Our approach used a software engineering design process that focused on who our customers are, what resources are available, and how we can best connect the two to improve student lives. We identified the stakeholders involved and worked with campus mental health professionals to help shape our App. While there is a broad range of mental health topics, we have focused on materials related to depression. The first process of the …

An Automatic Dialog System For Student Advising, Brian Mcmahan

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

Automatic dialog systems are an implementation of natural language processing theory with the goal of allowing the use of natural sentences to communicate with a computer system. The general purpose of this project was to design and implement an automatic dialog system for augmenting university student advising. Student advising is a relatively narrow domain of possible questions and responses. The automatic dialog system focused on prescriptive advising rather than developmental advising to further narrow the domain to scheduling and registration matters. A student advisor was interviewed and recorded during a mock advising session in order to model the interaction between …

Work In Progress - Peer Directed Learning In A Project Based Model, Andrew Mcnally

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

Iron Range Engineering is a new, unique, undergraduate program using problem-based learning. One guiding principle is student responsibility for learning. In order to facilitate learning, faculty and students alike have come up with several learning methods. Learning modes may include self-directed learning, peer-directed learning, one-on-one faculty directed learning, or industry mentored learning. Peer directed learning often manifests in the form of learning groups (a group of students learning similar competencies), led by either a faculty member or a student who has previously excelled in that competency and has taken an interest in pursuing advanced credit. Recently, Iron Range Engineering has …

Change In Cultural Competency Among Students During An Intentional Human Relations, Camille Mcnabb, Samantha Tupy

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

This study measured changes in the intercultural competency of undergraduate students in a course, Human Relations in a Multicultural Society. The hypothesis for this study was that the intentional, cross-cultural experiences in the course will have an impact on the cultural competency of each student. This course is taught each semester at a Midwestern public university. The study included 70 undergraduate students between 18 and 35 years old who voluntarily enrolled in the course and represented students in academic majors such elementary education, sports management, social work, mass communications, journalism, and pre- professional studies (e.g., mortuary science, veterinary medicine, therapy). …

Second-Language English Fluency Change In Native-Speaker Context, John Zehnder

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

This study examines the influence of social context on oral proficiency change among English language learners on the campus of an American university. Speech samples were taken from 2 rounds of interviews with 9 East Asian women. These were analyzed using the phonetic analysis program Praat in order to determine each speaker’s rate of stressed syllables at the beginning and end of the study. The change in these rates was used as a proxy for fluency change. This was then compared with each speaker’s social context. The results suggested that English language learners improve their fluency when they have at …

Statistical Models Of Self-Efficacy In Stem Students, Sarah Painter

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

Persistence through undergraduate education may be explained by self-efficacy. It is the belief in one’s self to persevere through challenges. Bandura stated four areas that are thought to influence self-efficacy: mastery experience, social persuasion, vicarious experience, and physiological state. In this study, we focused on general and academic self-efficacy in STEM students, in the hopes of learning more about the relationships between Bandura’s categories, demographics, and self-efficacy. Data was taken from two institutions: one, a large research focused university, and the other, a smaller teaching focused university. In the first phase, surveys on general self-efficacy were taken at both institutions …

Ethical Reasoning Development In Project-Based Learning, Elizabeth Pluskwik, Puteri S. Megat Hamari

Integrated Engineering Department Publications

This paper will describe the method of ethics instruction in a specific project-based learning program with the aim to improve the current level of moral reasoning skills in the engineering students enrolled in the program. The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) and the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) have endorsed efforts to improve the teaching of ethics in the engineering curriculum. Criterion 3-f of the ABET outcomes,specifically calls for student attainment of an understanding of ethical and professional responsibility. In response, engineering educators seek to develop curriculum to improve moral reasoning skills, which should lead to increased …

The Relationship Between Temperament And Changes In Cultural Competency Among Undergraduate Students, Kwame Opoku Akyeampong, Olufolajimi Onadipe

Undergraduate Research Symposium

The study examined the relationship between Temperament Type and changes in Cultural Competency among a group of university undergraduate students. For this study, Temperament Type (Keirsey, 1998) was considered to be a set of observable personality traits, e.g., communication, habits, behavior patterns, values, attitudes, talents, etc. Cultural Competency, according to Hammer and Bennett (2010), was defined as “the capability to accurately understand and adapt behavior to cultural difference and commonality.” The study responded to this research question: To what extent does Temperament Type affect changes in the Cultural Competency of undergraduates? Data was collected using two computer-based, online inventories. First …

The Relationship Between Temperament And Changes In Cultural Competency Among Undergraduate Students, Kwame Opoku Akyeampong, Olufolajimi Onadipe

Education Presentations at National and International Conferences

The study examined the relationship between Temperament Type and changes in Cultural Competency among a group of university undergraduate students. For this study, Temperament Type (Keirsey, 1998) was considered to be a set of observable personality traits, e.g., communication, habits, behavior patterns, values, attitudes, talents, etc. Cultural Competency, according to Hammer and Bennett (2010), was defined as “the capability to accurately understand and adapt behavior to cultural difference and commonality.” The study responded to this research question: To what extent does Temperament Type affect changes in the Cultural Competency of undergraduates? Data was collected using two computer-based, online inventories. First, …

04-2014 Newsletter, Minnesota State University, Mankato. Library Services

Library Services Newsletters

Minnesota State University, Mankato, Library Services Newsletter for April 2014.

03-2014 Newsletter, Minnesota State University, Mankato. Library Services

Library Services Newsletters

Minnesota State University, Mankato, Library Services Newsletter for March 2014.

2014 Minnesota Undergraduate Scholars Posters At St. Paul Abstract Booklet, Minnesota Undergraduate Scholars

Posters at St. Paul

Abstract booklet from the first Minnesota Undergraduate Scholars Posters at St. Paul event.

The multi-disciplinary poster presentation was held at the State Capitol in St. Paul on February 26, 2014 from 11:00-1:00 PM in the Rotunda. Participating campuses included: Anoka-Ramsey Community College; Bemidji State University; Inver Hills Community College; Metropolitan State University; Minneapolis Community and Technical College; Minnesota State University, Mankato; Minnesota State University, Moorhead; North Hennepin Community College; Rochester Community and Technical College; St. Cloud State University; Southwest Minnesota State University and Winona State University.

02-2014 Newsletter, Minnesota State University, Mankato. Library Services

Library Services Newsletters

Minnesota State University, Mankato, Library Services Newsletter for February 2014.

Mavclass: Deep, Real-World Learning Analytics To Enhance Student Success, Jude Higdon, Jeffrey Myers Ford, Lynn D. Akey, Nathan Gustafson

Academic Affairs Publications

No abstract provided.