Education Commons^™

On My Grind: Freestyle Rap Practices In Experimental Creative Writing And Composition Pedagogy, Evan Nave

Theses and Dissertations

My work is always necessarily two-headed. Double-voiced. Call-and-response at once. Paranoid self-talk as dichotomous monologue to move the crowd. Part of this has to do with the deep cuts and scratches in my mind. Recorded and remixed across DNA double helixes. Structurally split. Generationally divided. A style and family history built on breaking down.

Evidence of how ill I am.

And then there’s the matter of skin. The material concerns of cultural cross-fertilization. Itching to plant seeds where the grass is always greener. Color collaborations and appropriations. Writing white/out with black art ink. Distinctions dangerously hidden behind backbeats or shamelessly …

Students’ Expectations And Faculty Approaches To Instructional Activities: Are Faculty Meeting The Needs Of This Generation?, Julie Ann Brines

Theses and Dissertations

Students who engage academically and socially with others on campus are more likely to stay at their institution and graduate, and the continued success of higher education institutions depends on the persistence of those students. An extensive body of literature for student retention and faculty teaching practices exists, but the present study focused on how student persistence may be affected by the interactions between students and faculty, especially when students and faculty were members of different generational cohorts. Investigating those interactions revealed there is a significant difference between students’ expectations and faculty approaches to instructional activities inside and outside the …

Synergy: Game Design + Qur'an Memorization, Sultana Jesmine Moulana

Theses and Dissertations

The rise of digital technology has transformed nearly every part of our daily lives, including the way we learn and memorize. Such transformations raise interesting questions for one of the most long-standing and demanding memorization tasks in the world: the memorization of the Islamic holy book, The Qur’an. For Muslims, The Qur’an is a timeless, sacred text, cradling within its covers many profound images, stories, and parables. Despite rigorous research in the fields of game design and memorization techniques, very little work has been done in combining these two areas of research to create a game-based memorization experience of The …

Testing The Ability Of Two Series Of Models To Predict High School Graduation Status, David T. Marshall

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to create and test two series of predictive models aimed at projecting high school graduation status. Secondary data were obtained in partnership with an urban school district. All of the predictor variables included in the models tested in this study were academic and nonacademic variables that were found to be significant predictors of high school graduation in previous empirical work. In the first series of models tested, individual academic and nonacademic variables were tested together along with school-level variables. Eighth and ninth grade variables were tested separately to avoid multicollinearity issues. The second series …

Developing Conceptual Understanding And Procedural Fluency In Algebra For High School Students With Intellectual Disability, Andrew J. Wojcik

Theses and Dissertations

Teaching students with Intellectual Disability (ID) is a relatively new endeavor. Beginning in 2001 with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, the general education curriculum integrated algebra across the K-12 curriculum (Kendall, 2011; National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010), and expansion of the curriculum included five intertwined skills (productive disposition, procedural fluency, strategic competence, adaptive reasoning, and conceptual understanding) (Kilpatrick, Swafford, & Findell, 2001). Researchers are just beginning to explore the potential of students with ID with algebra (Browder, Spooner, Ahlgrim-Delzell, Harris & Wakeman, 2008; Creech-Galloway, Collins, Knight, …

Recovery From Design, Cassandra J. Ellison

Theses and Dissertations

Through research, inquiry, and an evaluation of Recovery By Design, a ‘design therapy’ program that serves people with mental illness, substance use disorders, and developmental disabilities, it is my assertion that the practice of design has therapeutic potential and can aid in the process of recovery. To the novice, the practices of conception, shaping form, and praxis have empowering benefit especially when guided by Conditional and Transformation Design methods together with an emphasis on materiality and vernacular form.