Education Commons^™

Examining The Relationships Between Gender Role Congruity, Identity, And The Choice To Persist For Women In Undergraduate Physics Majors, Bronwen Bares Pelaez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Persistent gender disparity limits the available contributors to advancing some science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. While higher education can be an influential time-point for ensuring adequate participation, many physics programs across the U.S. have few women in classroom or lab settings. Prior research indicates that these women face considerable barriers. For university students, faculty, and administration to appropriately address these issues, it is important to understand the experiences of women as they navigate male-dominated STEM fields.

This explanatory sequential mixed methods study explored undergraduate female physics majors’ experiences with their male-dominated academic and research spaces in the U.S. …

Exploring Elementary Students’ Agricultural And Scientific Knowledge Using Evidence Centered Design, Molly R. Brandt

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The public is more disconnected from agriculture than ever. Americans are two to four generations removed from the farm, and a majority of Americans, even in rural agricultural states have no direct link to agriculture. As a result, the public lacks the knowledge and appreciation of the food, fuel, and fiber it demands. The National Center for Agricultural Literacy (NCAL) uses National Agricultural Learning Objectives (NALOs) to measure student’s agricultural knowledge. The purpose of this project is to develop assessments aligned with the NALOs and to use results from the assessments to further understand students’ agricultural literacy. This study focuses …

A Mixed Methods Approach To Investigating Cognitive Load And Cognitive Presence In An Online And Face-To-Face College Algebra Course, Jodi J. Mills

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

Most research on Cognitive Load Theory (Sweller, 1988) has uncovered many instructional design considerations for learning complex tasks. Additionally, the Community of Inquiry (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000) framework describes many of the learning experiences in online education. A gap existed in the literature for investigating cognitive load over the duration of a college algebra course and for investigating the relationship between cognitive load and cognitive presence. This research study has addressed this gap by investigating cognitive load and cognitive presence in an online and face-to-face college algebra course.

The results of this study revealed that face-to-face students earned statistically …

Increasing Student Motivation To Become A Successful Industrial Engineer, Danielle Lanigan

All Theses

This paper explores the use of the VIE theory of Motivation in the field of Industrial Engineering Education. This work focuses on two different populations of students, college students who have chosen Industrial Engineering as a major and middle school students with a predisposition toward engineering. To start, we used a mixed methods sequential explanatory study to learn more about Clemson University department of Industrial Engineering students. Quantitatively, the study found that differences exist among different subsets of Industrial Engineering students. Female students have a higher motivation than male students do, and students with university sponsored project experience have a …