Education Commons^™

Narrative World Building: Creative Applications For Gamification In Study Abroad, Ashley Lear

Publications

This study examined a cohort of 12 study abroad participants taking a course on video game topography and narrative in Salamanca, Spain, to determine how inhabiting and co-creating narrative worlds as part of the coursework might impact the experiences of the students inside and outside of the classroom as they engaged in mandated and optional cultural engagement activities, such as museum tours and excursions to historical sites. Students completed two gameful learning activities: 1) they co-created their own narrative game world in a group game proposal assignment drawing upon research from storytelling through game environments, and 2) they created independent …

Does Removing Quizzes Impact Student Performance In An Online Course?, John Griffith

Publications

Data for 295 college online introductory statistics students were examined to determine if removing four module (weekly) quizzes impacted student performance on a cumulative exam. In this research, student performance was not significantly impacted by the removal of the quizzes. The difference in the exam mean score earned by the group of students who did not take quizzes was less than 0.8 of a point lower than the exam average for students who took the quizzes prior to the exam. Withdraw rates significantly declined from 5 percent to 1 percent. Results of this study support the idea that course designers …

Systems Thinking Applied To Higher Education Curricula Development, Reza Rahdar, Mark London, Yuetong Lin, Hong Jiang

Publications

Systems Thinking (ST) is a general and yet nebulous term that describes an approach to understanding and working with complexity in the real world. ST seeks to evaluate different behaviors of individual system elements when they operate in isolation as opposed to when they are integrated as part of a larger system and placed within a particular operating environment. The education environment consists of multiple systems with different digital content, learning goals/outcomes that serve different stakeholders including teachers, learners, and administrators. The inherent complexity and interaction among these various educational system elements and functions make this environment a worthy candidate …

Community In The Online Science Classroom, Emily Faulconer

Publications

As online course offerings rise, it is important to design and facilitate courses to promote community so students feel connected to each other and the instructor and feel a sense of belonging as a scientist. Online discussions are a common feature for building and nurturing community and combating isolation. Discussions stimulate active learning, a strategy to promote participation in knowledge construction. This sense of community and science identity is important for both persistence and performance. I will share efforts to promote community while reducing extraneous cognitive load through discussion design and targeted instructor professional development. I will share data on …

Rethinking Credentials For Aviation Sustainability: A Dacum Approach, Leila Halawi

Publications

The pandemic of COVID-19 Millennials aren't the youngest working generation anymore, and Gen Zers are the new kids on the block. This group of individuals, born between 1995 and 2019, already makes up 5% of the total U.S. labor force, roughly 9 million people. However, the skills gap is real and exists, one in which research shows that new college graduates either do not have all the skills employers want, or they are not doing an excellent job of demonstrating those skills in their resumes.

Sustainability programs consistently encounter challenges that threaten the future as a viable academic discipline. It …

The Relationship Between Learning Mode And Student Performance In An Undergraduate Elementary Statistics Course In The United States, John C. Griffith, Emily K. Faulconer, Bobby L. Mcmasters

Publications

Faculty have conducted many studies on the relationship between learning mode and student performance but few researchers have evaluated final grades, grade distribution, and pass rates in a sophomore introductory statistics course with a non-traditional student population who self-selected the learning mode from among different course sections. Accordingly, we examined 307 end-of-course grades from four different modes of instruction: (a) online, (b) videosynchronous learning classroom, (c) videosynchronous learning home, and (d) traditional classroom in an introductory statistics course. All data on grades, which included pass rate and grade distribution, were collected from the nine-week January 2019 term. All learning modes …

A Course In Context: Video Trailers In General Education, Emily Faulconer

Publications

Most Gen Ed programs use distribution requirements and universal learning outcomes.

• Writing skills
• Critical thinking and analytic reasoning skills
• Quantitative reasoning skills
• Science literacy
• Knowledge of arts and humanities
• Cultural literacy
• Knowledge of social science
• Oral communication skills
• Information literacy
• Research skills
• Ethical reasoning

Breaking Silos: Cross- And Interdisciplinary Stem, Emily Faulconer

Publications

Integrated STEM connects disciplines to enhance learning.

• Scientific inquiry to understand
• Technological literacy to measure
• Engineering design to learn from failure
• Mathematical thinking to analyze

Discussion Board Facilitation, Emily Faulconer

Publications

Setting expectations allows students to take responsibility for their learning Discussion Board Engagement Guidelines

• Participation
• Analysis and Interpretation
• Scholarly Dialogue Clear due dates Detailed rubrics Gradebook feedback and feedforward
• Explain your role and be visible
• Model your expectations Idea

Writing A Literature Review Checklist, Jennifer Nader, Clara Volker

Publications

This checklist infographic is designed to help students organize their approach to writing their literature review.

Assessment As A Learning Opportunity: Feedforward With Multiple Attempts, Emily Faulconer

Publications

High quality feedback is well-known to provide multiple student benefits, especially if students are provided the opportunity to apply the feedback. It reasons, then, that we can support student success on summative assessments by combining multiple attempts with high-quality immediate feedback. This study explores student behaviors, performance, and perspectives regarding this strategy.

Collaboration Between Library, Faculty, And Instructional Design To Increase All Open Educational Resources For Curriculum Development And Delivery, Kelly Whealan-George, Anne Marie Casey

Publications

Students at universities spend an average of $1,250 yearly on textbooks and course materials. Can a collaboration between the Library and the Instructional Design Department create value for student populations by incorporating OER into the course development process? This is a case study of one University with a large online and distributed network with controls over the course design, timeline and curriculum delivered by the faculty. This University’s team tested whether the entire course could be designed in a scalable format using OERs collaborating with a librarian to organize the resources so students will have ready access to OER every …

Collaboration Between Faculty And The Library Using Oer For Curriculum Development, Kelly Whealan George, Anne Marie Casey

Publications

• High Cost of Textbooks
• $1,240 – expected cost of textbooks in 2018-2019 for 4-year college students (CollegeBoard, 2019)
• 43.8% of Florida students spent $301 or more on textbooks in Spring 2018 (Florida Virtual Campus, 2018, p. 9)
• 63% of ERAU students surveyed in summer 2018 found textbooks more expensive than expected

• Case Study to explore textbooks in online courses
• Collaboration between the Library and the Faculty create value for the university and student population by incorporating OER into the course development process.

Seeing And Understanding Data, Beverly Wood, Charlotte Bolch

Publications

Visual displays of data are commonly used today in media reports online or in print. For example, data visualizations are sometimes used as a marketing tool to convince people to purchase a certain product, or they are displayed in articles or magazines as a way to graphically display data to emphasize a certain point. In general, it is hard to imagine the majority of disciplines in science and mathematics not using data visualizations. However, before standard data visualization techniques were developed (and accepted by the community), mathematicians and scientists very rarely used graphical displays or pictures to represent empirical data.

Accounting Education In Greece During The Gfc (2009-2016), Dimitrios V. Siskos

Publications

The structure of accounting education in Greece, and in the world, is facing nowadays many significant challenges since the global financial crisis has left behind many critical educational burdens. At the same time, there is an increase in accounting omissions and malpractices of ethics both in the public and in the private sector of Greece. These undoubtedly contributed to massive unemployment, high poverty rate, crime and other social ills experienced in the country. This motivated the study on restructuring accounting education by devising a new educational framework that can be applied to Greek universities and colleges with the purpose of …

Book Review: Review Of Changing Curriculum Through Stories: Character Education For Ages 10-12, Aaron D. Clevenger

Publications

This is Dr. Clevenger's book review of Marc Levitt's book, Changing Curriculum Through Stories, published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2017. ISBN: 978-1-4758-3591-5.

Motivating Students To Learn A Programming Language: Applying A Second Language Acquisition Approach In A Blended Learning Environment, Lulu Sun, Christina Frederick, Caroline Liron, Li Ding, Lei Gu, Andrew Calvin Griggs Ii, Paula Sanjuan Espejo

Publications

Learning a programming language typically involves acquisition of new vocabulary, punctuation, and grammatical structures to communicate with a computer. In other words, learning a programming language is like learning a human language. A recent study showed that programmers use language regions of the brain when understanding source code and found little activation in other regions of the brain devoted to mathematical thinking. Even though programming code involved mathematical operations, conditionals, and loop iterations, researchers found that programming had less in common with mathematics and more in common with human language.

Updated Guidelines, Updated Curriculum: The Gaise College Report And Introductory Statistics For The Modern Student, Beverly Wood, Megan Mocko, Michelle Everson, Nicholas J. Horton, Paul Velleman

Publications

Since the 2005 American Statistical Association's (ASA) endorsement of the Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE) College Report, changes in the statistics field and statistics education have had a major impact on the teaching and learning of statistics. We now live in a world where "Statistics - the science of learning from data - is the fastest-growing science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) undergraduate degree in the United States," according to the ASA, and where many jobs demand an understanding of how to explore and make sense of data. In light of these new reports and other …

Evaluating Student Perceptions And Learning Outcomes: Differences Between Sla-Able And Non-Sla-Able Introductory Programming Courses, Christina M. Frederick, Matthew B. Pierce, Andrew Griggs, Lulu Sun

Publications

Engineering, computer science and subsequently knowledge of programming language is an increasingly vital skill in today’s workforce. First year engineering students are introduced to programming in addition to rigorous course loads in their first year. Second Language Acquisition (SLA) has been applied to programming course content delivery and has shown promise as an effective means of better educating new students. Results will be presented from a NSF funded study conducted over the past two years. SLA was applied to an introductory engineering course that teaches basic programming skills in a Blended learning environment (SLA-aBLe). This study examined four semesters worth …

Multi-Choice Questions And Their Problems When Used For Assessment Of Aircraft Engineers Education, Ian R. Mcandrew, Ken L. Witcher, Elena Navarro, Peter Foreman

Publications

Licensed aircraft engineers under the European Aviation Safety Agency, EASA, undertake academic training to complement their practical and type specific studies. These exams are mainly Multi-Choice Questions, MCQ, and four 20-minute essays. The MCQ exams are as few as 16 questions to a maximum of 140 questions. A score of 75% is needed to pass each exam, and each question has three possible answers. This authors of this paper reviews the theory and design of the MCQ and asks if the assumptions are valid and that it achieves the academic level assumed for engineers who will be maintaining some of …

Quality Function Deployment And Proactive Quality Techniques Applied To University Lectures To Improve Student Feedback, Kenneth Witcher, Elena Navarro, Beverly Wood, Ian Mcandrew

Publications

Lecturing and instruction to students at university has traditionally been based on qualifications, experience and position of academics within ones department or college. The higher the level and more advanced the subject then the most experienced lecturers are traditionally selected for that task. Visiting lecturers are never asked to teach basic mathematics or science, they are to share their experience and enlighten the students from a vast knowledge and history. This paper reviews and discusses Kano’s model with Quality Function Deployment related to customer satisfaction and compares if the traditional approach is in keeping with university practice. Furthermore, it argues …

Developing A Homeland Security Curriculum: A Case Study In Outcomes-Based Education, Daniel A. Cutrer

Publications

In 2007, I began research for my doctoral dissertation on what a curriculum in an undergraduate degree in homeland security should look like. At that time, the field of homeland security was a nascent discipline, and as such it did not have a standardized academic curriculum. There were several institutions of higher learning in the United States that were offering degrees in homeland security, but no consensus existed on what the curriculum should contain. This is what prompted me to perform a case study, gathering input from a body of subject matter experts as to what these experts felt were …

Real Data Is Messy... And Manageable, Beverly Wood, Carl Clark

Publications

Using real data in an introductory statistics course is a delicate balance between reality and manageability. The internet is awash with data that is useful for students to answer questions of interest to them but it is not always formatted as neatly as textbook data. The ASA's recently endorsed GAISE College Report 2016 points to the plausibility of considering multivariable thinking even if only at a rudimentary level. With both messy and multivariable data in mind, we present some activities/projects and sources for data to give introductory students the opportunity to engage with real data.

A Study Of Video-Mediated Opportunities For Self-Directed Learning In Required Core Curriculum, Debra T. Bourdeau, Donna Roberts, Beverly Wood, Johnelle Korioth

Publications

Improving a required course in our curriculum that has proven to be a challenge for our students was the focus of this study. Surveys of both students and instructors attempted to identify specific problem areas. Using the information from these surveys, the researchers developed a series of videos to explain vital course concepts and deployed these into the course sections. The purpose of the videos is to provide consistency across the multiple modalities in which we offer our courses (including online, classroom and via videoconferencing) and to improve overall student understanding. This project seeks to determine how supplemental content focusing …

Increasing Student Interactions With Learning Objectives, Emily Kaye Faulconer

Publications

As educators, we recognize the importance of strong student learning objectives. We also know that students benefit by being well informed of expectations. Existing literature offers little guidance in methods and teaching strategies to apply in exposing students to their learning objectives. In this article, we discuss the use of specific teaching strategies to increase student interactions with the learning objectives. Student opinions regarding learning objectives were measured using an end-of-course Likert survey. Although no statistically significant changes in student opinions were detected in this study, a future study will investigate the influence of these targeted strategies on content mastery. …

Learning: It's Personal, Angela Atwell

Publications

If you have any questions about this presentation or would like a copy of the handout, please contact Angela Atwell. Her information can be found at the end of the presentation.

Contrary to popular belief, teaching and learning in an online environment is not easier or less work than a traditional classroom. It takes intentionality, discipline and commitment from both the instructor and the student. However, the flexibility offered by online programs makes this option increasingly appealing. With this growing demand, online instructors must think critically about the content, strategically plan activities and align outcomes with diverse student goals. All …

Video-Mediated Opportunities For Self-Directed Learning In Undergraduate Research Methodology Courses, Debra T. Bourdeau, Donna Roberts, Thomas E. Sieland, Beverly Wood

Publications

No abstract provided.

Investigating The Influence Of The Level Of Inquiry On Student Engagement, Emily K. Faulconer

Publications

Previous studies investigating student-generated questions in a laboratory class compared inquiry to a traditional approach without characterizing the inquiry level. This study investigated the influence of inquiry level on the quantity and quality of student-generated questions over one semester in a General Chemistry course with 356 participants. The researchers studied two types of inquiry in labs: structured inquiry and open inquiry. Quantity and quality of student-generated questions were analyzed and student attitudes were measured using a LIKERT survey while content knowledge was assessed via post-test. A close relationship was not found between the level of inquiry and the quantity or …

Guidelines For Assessment And Instruction In Statistics Education (Gaise) College Report 2016, Robert Carver, Michelle Everson, John Gabrosek, Nicholas Horton, Robin Lock, Megan Mocko, Allan Rossman, Ginger Holmes Roswell, Paul Velleman, Jeffrey Witmer, Beverly Wood

Publications

In 2005 the American Statistical Association (ASA) endorsed the Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE) College Report. This report has had a profound impact on the teaching of introductory statistics in two- and four-year institutions, and the six recommendations put forward in the report have stood the test of time. Much has happened within the statistics education community and beyond in the intervening 10 years, making it critical to re-evaluate and update this important report. For readers who are unfamiliar with the original GAISE College Report or who are new to the statistics education community, the full …

Inclusive Strategies For The Global Virtual Classroom, Angela Atwell

Publications

In today’s digital age of global enterprise, higher education is focused on delivering high quality experiences in virtual learning environments. Instructors must be armed with the knowledge and skills to use online learning tools effectively in order to deliver an engaging learning experience for all students.It is crucial to create a welcoming and inclusive learning environment, possibly even more so in a virtual classroom. Students who feel welcomed and respected are more likely to engage, contribute to the course and add richness to the content. Instructors must facilitate student learning by encouraging cooperation, collaboration and professional networking. Students and instructors …