Education Commons^™

Technology Enhanced Learning: Students' Views, Eileen O'Donnell, Mary Sharp

Eileen O'Donnell

User feedback is very important in all areas of computer science especially in the development of computer applications. Hence, student feedback on the use of technology enhanced learning in higher education in Ireland is relevant to the quality of the learning resources to be created by learning designers and academics in the future. The book “Student Reactions to Learning with Technologies: Perceptions and Outcomes” (Moyle & Wijngaards, 2012) was published by IGI Global in October 2011. This book includes contributions from various authors who are interested in students’ feedback regarding how technology has impacted on their educational experience. This book …

Five Year Follow-Up Evaluation Of A Faculty Development Program: A Qualitative Study, Marcia Tennill

Dissertations

This qualitative follow-up evaluation explored the long-term impact of a faculty development program on participants who were five years post program. This study focused on 12 faculty members who participated in the University of Missouri’s New Faculty Teaching Scholars program. The nine month program focused on creating a culture of teaching within the university and enhancing peer networking among participants. Data was collected through the review of existing program documents, interviews with program participants, classroom observations, and the review of participants’ syllabi and curriculum vitae. The primary purpose of this study was to learn how a faculty development program affected …

Students With Mental Health Issues In Higher Education: A Survey Of Prevalence And Fall-To-Spring Persistence Rates In A Community College Environment, Pendy J. Pecka

Dissertations

Among the multitude of challenges and adversities students face during their first year of higher education, many experience deterioration of their emotional or mental health. Current research focuses on the perceived rise in the breadth and complexity of student mental health concerns at four-year colleges and universities. Even though community college students encompass the majority of individuals enrolled in the United States higher education system, no research specifically examines the mental health prevalence of these students and whether these difficulties negatively impact persistence. This study explored the relationship between evidence of mental health problems and fall-to-spring persistence for first-year students …

Assessing And Modeling Student Academic Practices And Performance In First-Year Mathematics Courses In Higher Education, Kim Ward, Chantal Larose

Higher Learning Research Communications

Objectives: This research brief explores literature addressing developmental education to identify successful interventions in first-year math courses in higher education. Our goal is to describe the relationship between students’ academic practices and their final course grade in their first-year math courses. Method: Data on 3,249 students have been gathered and analyzed using descriptive statistics and predicative analytics. We describe the Math program, which includes a supplemental support component, and the environment under which it was created. We then examine the behavior between students’ participation in supplemental support and their academic performance. Results: We used classification and regression tree algorithms to …

Exploring The Relationship Between Planning And Training, And Response To Campus Safety Incidents, Kimberly Michele Harvey

Dissertations

Over the past 50 years, campus violence has significantly impacted our institutions of higher education. As a result, campus safety has become an increasingly important topic for all colleges and universities. The Virginia Tech tragedy in 2007 highlighted the necessity of emergency management planning and training as well as employee understanding of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). Emergency management plans for 27 institutions in Missouri were collected and evaluated to determine how they instructed employees to respond to various campus safety scenarios and how training factored into the campus plans. Two-hundred, fifty-one employees were then surveyed to …

Battling Academic Corruption In Higher Education: Does External Quality Assurance (Eqa) Offer A Ray Of Hope?, Lazarus Nabaho, Wilberforce Turyasingura

Higher Learning Research Communications

The post-1980s changes in the global higher education landscape have triggered a burgeoning of incidents of academic corruption in higher education institutions. Since 2000, the discourse on how to combat academic corruption has gained traction in higher education and quality assurance is advanced as one of the strategies for fighting corruption in higher education. In 2016, UNESCO (and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation) issued a “wakeup call” to quality assurance systems to take up a leading role in the battle against academic corruption. However, a dearth of empirical and conceptual studies on how the quality assurance systems, in general, …

Legal Discourse, Conceptual Metaphors, And Basic Writing Programming: A Study Of Ayers V. Fordice, Joyce Olewski Inman

Dissertations

In what ways does legal discourse influence our perceptions of students labeled as basic writers and these students’ perceptions of themselves? How does standards-based discourse affect student writers’ abilities to define themselves in academe? This dissertation involves an examination of legal and public discourse surrounding Ayers v. Fordice, one of the most prominent desegregation cases in higher education, in an attempt to answer these questions. Its intent is to explore how conceptual metaphors prevalent in these discourses affect our understandings of basic writing programming in the state of Mississippi but also in the field of composition more globally.

My …

Considering The Shift In Lecturer Roles As Key Skills And Competencies Are Fostered In Higher Education Students Today, Frances Boylan, Muireann Okeeffe, Mary O'Rawe

Conference papers

The need to develop the skills in students for smooth progression from higher education into employment are even more important in today’s economic climate. Students need to be increasingly adaptable and entrepreneurial in their ability to locate and create employment opportunities. Consequently, efforts are afoot throughout the higher education sector to develop measures to ‘broaden the curriculum’ addressing the holistic development of the student. In an attempt to prepare these students to manage their work and learning throughout all stages of their lives, lecturers now recognise the importance of fostering key skills and competencies. However, supporting and implementing these measures …

Single Mothers In College: The Effect Of Selected Variables, Rickey Booker

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Single parent mothers who are currently in poverty may find it difficult to find routes out of poverty and/or even to enrolling in college. Little empirical research has been conducted on low-income single parent mothers who attempt to enroll, persist and graduate college. The current research has shown that single parents are at a high risk of dropping out of college because of many barriers including poverty related issues. This study examined women who had at least one child or dependent, were in poverty, and were first time beginners in college. The purpose for conducting this study was to identify …

Swinging Bridge - November 30, 2011, Sari Heidenreich

Student Newspapers & Magazines

No abstract provided.

Making Sense Of An Elusive Concept: Academics’ Perspectives Of Quality In Higher Education, Lazarus Nabaho, Jessica Norah Aguti, Joseph Oonyu

Higher Learning Research Communications

Objective: Since the 1990s studies on how stakeholders in higher education perceive quality have burgeoned. Nevertheless, the majority of studies on perception of quality in higher education focus on students and employers. The few studies on academics’ perceptions of quality in higher education treat academics as a homogeneous group and, therefore, do not point out cross-disciplinary perspectives in perceptions of quality. This article explores how academics across six disciplines perceive quality in higher education. Method: The article is anchored in the interpretivist paradigm. Data was collected from 14 purposely selected academics at Makerere University in Uganda and analyzed using thematic …

Developing Faculty To Provide University Students With Improved Learning Experiences, Águeda Benito, Neal A. Green, Deborah R. Popely, Phuong M. Thai-Garcia, Art T. Schneiderheinze

Higher Learning Research Communications

The article addresses the importance of incorporating faculty development as a key priority of higher education institutions. A literature review and some face-to-face and online interviews were conducted at various U.S. institutions, to identify common and best practices regarding this important matter. The article offers some ideas about what is done, and how it is done, to help faculty be ready for the challenging role they need to play: to be effective developers of a diverse student body that meets the evolving needs of industry and that utilizes technological tools that never existed before.

Exploring The Relationship Between Students With Accommodations And Instructor Self-Efficacy In Complying With Accommodations, Anna M. Wright, Kevin R. Meyer

Higher Learning Research Communications

The willingness and flexibility of university instructors to comply with and provide accommodations for students with disabilities is critical to academic success. The authors examine how communication between students needing accommodations and university instructors impacts instructor self-efficacy, or instructors’ perception that they can meet the accommodation. Specifically, the authors’ explored the relationship between student self-disclosure of a disability and instructor empathy, flexibility, and self-efficacy in meeting student accommodation needs. Results revealed that the more a student self-discloses about a needed accommodation, the more self-efficacy an instructor has in making that accommodation. For the low-disclosure condition, empathy and flexibility were both …

Swinging Bridge - November 10, 2011, Sari Heidenreich

Student Newspapers & Magazines

No abstract provided.

Where’S My Journal: Open Access And Digital Repositories, Andrée J. Rathemacher

Technical Services Faculty Presentations

Presentation slides for the breakout session "Where’s My Journal: Open Access and Digital Repositories" at the 2020 Vision: The Future of URI Library Services Forum, University of Rhode Island Memorial Union, Kingston, RI. November 4, 2011.

Professor Gender, Age, And “Hotness” In Influencing College Students’ Generation And Interpretation Of Professor Ratings, Sara L. Sohr-Preston, Stefanie S. Boswell, Kayla Mccaleb, Deanna Robertson

Higher Learning Research Communications

Undergraduate psychology students rated expectations of a bogus professor (randomly designated a man or woman and hot versus not hot) based on an online rating and sample comments as found on RateMyProfessors.com (RMP). Five professor qualities were derived using principal components analysis (PCA): dedication, attractiveness, enhancement, fairness, and clarity. Participants rated current psychology professors on the same qualities. Current professors were divided based on gender (man or woman), age (under 35 or 35 and older), and attractiveness (at or below the median or above the median). Using multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA), students expected hot professors to be more attractive …

Does Being Rural Matter?: The Roles Of Rurality, Social Support, And Social Self-Efficacy In First-Year College Student Adjustment, Allison L. Bitz Phd

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

One out of every three first-year college students will not return for a second year of college (Postsecondary Education Opportunity, 2010). Due to a variety of factors, minority students are at an even higher risk of dropping out of college. Rural youth, comprising approximately 22% of the nation’s total youth, form a significant minority population; yet the rural student experience in college has not yet been widely considered in research. The purpose of this quantitative study was to explore college adjustment and its predictors among first-year students, with an emphasis on the role of rurality in college adjustment. Social self-efficacy, …

Literature Review Relating To The Current Context And Discourse Of Indigenous Tertiary Education In Australia, Michele Lonsdale, Greta Rollo, Jenny Wilkinson, Ali Radloff, Stephanie Armstrong, Gina Milgate, Jenny Trevitt

Indigenous Education Research

This review outlines some of the themes that have emerged in the growing global discourse of Indigenous education in the higher education sector. The past decade and a half have seen increased numbers of Indigenous students and academic staff in universities, a proliferation of publications exploring Indigenous issues in the academy, and heightened interest in the nature and meaning of Indigenous knowledge and studies.

This review examined information provided by 22 Australian universities to gain a picture of the research fields and topics that are attracting most interest from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander graduates and academics. It also reviewed …

Urban-Serving Research Universities: Institutions For The Public Good, Desiree D. Zerquera

Higher Learning Research Communications

This manuscript seeks to situate access to higher education as part of the public good of universities, and connect that specifically to the mission of institutions that are charged with carrying this out more than others. One such institution—the Urban-Serving Research University (USRUs)—has a distinct mission that emphasizes not just location within the urban context, but being composed of the city they inhabit. A key and significant part of the USRU mission is to provide access to urban and historically marginalized students in their regions, populations typically underserved by higher education. Further, this manuscript highlights the tensions inherent in this …

Working To Educate Global Citizens And Create Neighborly Communities Locally And Globally: Penn’S Partnerships In West Philadelphia As A Democratic Experiment In Progress, Ira Harkavy, Matt Hartley, Joann Weeks, Rita Hodges

Higher Learning Research Communications

In the rapidly accelerating global era in which we now live, human beings must solve a vast array of unprecedently complex problems. Perhaps the most complex and significant problems facing society today are persistent, widening, and increasingly destructive social, economic, and political inequality; globally destructive, man-made climate change; and increasingly frequent and savage terrorist acts. Given their proclaimed dedication to critical intelligence, and their unique constellation of formidable resources to develop it, institutions of higher education, we submit, have a unique responsibility to help solve these problems—indeed all the problems intensified by globalization.

Swinging Bridge - October 26, 2011, Sari Heidenreich

Student Newspapers & Magazines

No abstract provided.

Introducing B Corporations To The Higher Education Community, Bart Houlahan, Dan Osusky

Higher Learning Research Communications

The higher education industry faces many challenges. Despite the recognition that a college degree is essential to developing skilled employees, informed citizens, and flourishing people, there is a shortage of skilled workers, college costs (and student debt) are rising, and the attainment gap for minorities and underrepresented populations remains stark.

How Graduate Interior Design Programs Prepare Emerging Educators To Teach, Anne Wilkinson-Burke

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Global Learning In A New Era, Judith Ramaley

Higher Learning Research Communications

Our nation’s colleges and universities have frequently adapted their educational approaches and their relationships with society to respond to new social, economic and environmental challenges. The increasingly interconnected patterns that link together our lives on a global scale have created a new reality. Globalization offers an especially exciting and challenging blend of generational change combined with the emergence of a set of complex, multi-faceted problems created by the global context in which we all now live and work. How shall we educate our students for life in this new era? What can we expect of our graduates in a global …

Cultural Perspectives On Social Responsibility In Higher Education, Iris M Yob

Higher Learning Research Communications

The writers of the UNESCO document, Rethinking education: Towards a global common good? challenge educators to address their efforts to meet the current threats to sustainable life for all who share this planet. One way that higher education has been attempting to do this is through campus-community partnerships working to solve social problems locally or further afield. In this exploratory study, answers were sought to the question of why faculty members and administrators participate in these service partnerships, both in terms of what motivates them to do so and what they hope to accomplish, and how cultural context may influence …

What If A State Required Civic Learning For All Students?, John D Reiff

Higher Learning Research Communications

his article tells the story of the first state in the U.S. to set the expectation that every undergraduate in public higher education would be involved in civic learning. In 2012, the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education made “Preparing Citizens” one of seven key outcomes of its Vision Project for public higher education. In 2014, the Board passed a Policy on Civic Learning defining civic learning as “acquisition of the knowledge, the intellectual skills and the applied competencies that citizens need for informed and effective participation in civic and democratic life; it also means acquiring an understanding of the social …

Faith-Based Institutions, Institutional Mission, And The Public Good, Jessica Rose Daniels, Jacqueline N Gustafson

Higher Learning Research Communications

Rooted in historical foundations and demonstrated by continued government financial support, one purpose of higher education is to contribute to the “public good,” or support and further social causes and human flourishing. This notion has received renewed attention in both the literature as well as in professional practice. Given the variety of institutional structures (e.g., public, private, religiously affiliated, nonprofit, and proprietary), the influence of institutional mission varies. Yet, aside from institutional leadership, an institution’s mission is potentially most significant in influencing public good. Faith-based higher education institutions often have missions that are inextricably interconnected with service and community engagement. …

Editorial, Gary J. Burkholder

Higher Learning Research Communications

In 2016, Higher Learning Research Communication (HLRC) celebrates its 6-year anniversary. The journal is a collaborative effort amongst Universidad Andrés Bello (Chile), Universidad Europea de Madrid (Spain), Istanbul Bilgi University (Turkey), and Walden University (United States). These four institutions started this journal to provide scholarly focus on international research in higher education, teaching and learning, education policy and practice, and internationalization. It was important that the journal be open access, so that everyone could have immediate and unrestricted access to the latest research. It was also important that the journal be multilingual; we have accepted manuscripts for review in Brazilian …

The First Year: A Cultural Shift Towards Improving Student Progress, Becky Jobe

Higher Learning Research Communications

Student attrition has been a primary focus among higher education institutions for nearly 50 years, yet overall retention and graduation rates continue to be of significant concern. Despite increased attention, ongoing struggles of colleges and universities to effectively address potential barriers to student progress are well-documented. Part of the challenge lies in garnering widespread organizational commitment that establishes student progress as an institutional priority. Along with leadership commitment, broad institutional involvement and adherence to a systematic approach to testing new, innovative solutions are necessary to better position the institution to make clear, evidence-based decisions that improve the student experience. The …

Nerche Bulletin, Volume 7, Issue 1, New England Resource Center For Higher Education At The University Of Massachusetts Boston

NERCHE Bulletin

No abstract provided.