Education Commons^™

Climate Change And Modern Education: Preparing For A Sustainable Future, Poulomi Chakravarty, Sai Gattupalli, Stephen Mcginty

College of Education Student Publication Series

Climate change is a global phenomenon that has attracted widespread attention in recent decades due to its profound impact on the environment and society. Although climate change is a phenomenon occurring since the inception of Earth, anthropogenic activities such as fossil fuel consumption due to industrialization, transportation and domestic usage, deforestation and land use changes due to urbanization have accelerated the process. Climate education has become an important part of modern education as it helps raise awareness of the issue and promote behavior of climate consciousness which leads to climate action in a positive direction. The authors highlight the values …

A Very Small Pond: Discovery Systems That Can Be Used With Folio In Academic Libraries, Jaime Taylor, Aaron Neslin

University Libraries Presentations Series

FOLIO, an open source library services platform, does not have a front end patron interface for searching and using library materials. Any library installing FOLIO will need at least one other software to perform those functions. This article evaluates which systems, in a limited marketplace, are available for academic libraries to use with FOLIO.

Nens, Jaime Taylor

University Libraries Presentations Series

NENS (non-student non-employee) are a group of designations for people who are somehow connected to UMass, but who are neither students nor employees. A person’s NENS designation determines what they have access to at UMass, including at the Libraries.

Measurement Invariance Across Immigrant And Non-Immigrant Populations On Pisa Cognitive And Non-Cognitive Scales, Maritza Casas

Doctoral Dissertations

International large-scale educational assessments (ILSAs) have played a relevant role in educational policies targeting immigrant students across countries as their results are used by governments as input for decision-making purposes. Given the potential impact that ILSAs can have, the psychometric features of these assessments must be carefully assessed and empirical evidence about the extent to which the inferences made based on test results are valid must be collected. To do so, the first step is to determine if the test results have the same meaning across countries and groups of examinees that is, if the measures are invariant so that …

Using Generalizability And Rasch Measurement Theory To Ensure Rigorous Measurement In An International Development Education Evaluation, Louise Bahry

Doctoral Dissertations

Between the United States and Great Britain, over 30 billion USD was spent in 2018 on international aid, over a billion of which is dedicated to education programs alone. Recently, there has been increased attention on the rigorous evaluation of aid-funded programs, moving beyond counting outputs to the measurement of educational impact. The current study uses two methodological approaches (Generalizability (Brennan, 1992, 2001) and Rasch Measurement Theory (Andrich, 1978; Rasch, 1980; Wright & Masters, 1982) to analyze data from math and literacy assessments, and self-report surveys used in an international evaluation of an educational initiative in the Democratic Republic of …

Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Pedagogical Agent Design, And Hispanic English Language Learners, Danielle Allessio

Doctoral Dissertations

According to the most recent data from the National Center of Education Statistics (NCES) there were approximately 5 million English Language Learners (ELLs) in the U.S. public schools in the Fall of 2016, representing about 10% of the student population (2019). Spanish is the primary language for most ELL students, by a large margin. As a group, ELLs have faced a deeply rooted and persistent math achievement gap (U.S. Department of Education, 2015). Despite research indicating that intelligent tutors and animated pedagogical agents enhance learning, many tutors are not designed with ELLs in mind. As a result, Hispanic ELL students …

Agenda, Shubha Tewari

Science and Engineering Saturday Seminars

Abstracts for six Science and Engineering Saturday Seminars.

Arduino Microcontrollers In The Classroom: Teaching How To Phrase Effective Science Questions And How To Answer Them With Original Data, Tony Dinsmore

Science and Engineering Saturday Seminars

Arduino microcontrollers in the classroom: teaching how to phrase effective science questions and how to answer them with original data. Prof. Tony Dinsmore, UMass Physics This workshop will develop course modules that address a challenge in the science curriculum: how do we teach basic problem-solving and curiosity-based research skills in a classroom setting? The standard science curriculum teaches concepts and theory quite well but leaves rather little opportunity for students to take the lead in designing and implementing their own investigations. The workshop will use the Arduino, an inexpensive microcontroller that is simple to set up. A huge range of …

Agenda, Revised, Shubha Tewari

Science and Engineering Saturday Seminars

Materials from the seminars. The agenda was revised to include online sessions due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

2019 Patterns Around Us Handout, Benjamin Davidovitch, Narayanan Menon, Wayne Kermenski, Jennifer Welborn

Patterns Around Us

This is a FREE two-day program designed for Middle and High School General Science, Biology, Physics, Technology/Engineering teachers. It is funded by the National Science Foundation.Space is limited, so apply soon! Some limited funding is available for overnight stay.

“Science may be described as the attempt to give good accounts of the patterns in nature. The result of scientific investigation is an understanding of natural processes.... Overall, the key criterion of science is that it provides a clear, rational, and succinct account of a pattern in nature....” Massachusetts State Frameworks for Science and Technology.

Participants will explore the processes of …

Solar Cells, D. Venkataraman

Science and Engineering Saturday Seminars

Solar cells convert the sun's energy into electrical energy. In this workshop, I will discuss the processes involved in solar cell and various types of solar cells that are being developed as an alternative to silicon solar cells. I will also demonstrate how students can build a solar cell from readily available materials.

Accessible Science: The Natural History Of The Connecticut River Valley, Fred Venne

Science and Engineering Saturday Seminars

Many students take an Earth science or geology course to fulfill a requirement, knowing little to nothing about the field. Like all sciences, geology can appear to have ready answers unconnected to other areas of human endeavor, such as art, religion or philosophy. An interdisciplinary approach to teaching can ameliorate this perception for students who are intimidated by the subject and deepen understanding for those who are already excited about geology. We will examine two strategies designed to support the nature of science while scaffolding student learning in geology: research based digital resources use and museum of natural history visits. …

Air Pressure, Clouds, And Weather, Laura Shofield

Science and Engineering Saturday Seminars

1) What are basis characteristics of the atmosphere?

2) What is the horizontal and vertical movement of air in a “High” and “Low?”

3) How do clouds form and what can they tell us?

4) How are temperature, pressure and clouds related?

5) Applying concepts to real-time data

Concentration, Amount And Counting By Weighing, Julian Tyson

Science and Engineering Saturday Seminars

Concentration, Amount and Counting by Weighing

UMass Amherst STEM Ed Institute Saturday Workshop 2/3/2018

Julian Tyson, Professor Emeritus, Department of Chemistry. Tyson@chem.umass.edu

Session 1. Introductions.

Ice-breaker: The elementarity contest.

Setting the scene: “How much arsenic do we eat?” Why do we want to know? The Consumer Reports articles (Nov 2012 and Nov 2014)

Dealing with really big and really small numbers.

Session 2. Amount, concentration

Solids, liquids and gases. The “parts per” concept.

Session 3. Counting by weighing

The count equation. Rice grains (the bottle content problem), atoms and molecules.. Chemical formulas and balanced chemical expressions. The numbers in the …

Investigating Patterns Using Analyzing Digital Images (Adi) Software, Jennifer Welborn, Wayne Kermenski

Patterns Around Us

The mean and variation of a population are easily seen by graphing the number of individuals that have a trait of a given value. In this experiment, we will investigate color variation found in a mealworm population using ADI.

In this investigation, we will use digital images and ADI to measure the increased surface area created by villi located in the small intestines.

Wrinkling Of A Floating Sheet, Narayanan Menon

Patterns Around Us

The objective of today’s work will be to generate wrinkle patterns on very thin polymer films using the forces generated by the surface tension of a water drop. You’ll do a few sizes of water drop and we’ll give you a couple of thicknesses of film. Digital images of the pattern will allow us to make observations of the number and size of the wrinkles generated. We will try to develop an understanding of the dependence of the pattern on the materials used and the forces applied

Branching In Nature, Jennifer Welborn, Wayne Kermenski

Patterns Around Us

No abstract provided.

Wrinkling In Nature, Jennifer Welborn, Wayne Kermenski

Patterns Around Us

This lab experience is separated into four investigative segments:

1. Human saliva and enzymes

2. Osmosis and Dialysis Tubing

3. Analyzing dry and imbibed weights of wrinkled and smooth pea seeds

4. Putting it All Together, What makes Wrinkled Peas?

Overview, Benjamin Davidovitch, Narayanan Menon, Jennifer Welborn, Wayne Kermenski

Patterns Around Us

No abstract provided.

Superhero Robotics, Frank Sup, Brian Umberger, Nick Sawyer

Science and Engineering Saturday Seminars

No abstract provided.

Identifying Examinees Who Possess Distinct And Reliable Subscores When Added Value Is Lacking For The Total Sample, Joseph A. Rios

Doctoral Dissertations

Research has demonstrated that although subdomain information may provide no added value beyond the total score, in some contexts such information is of utility to particular demographic subgroups (Sinharay & Haberman, 2014). However, it is argued that the utility of reporting subscores for an individual should not be based on one’s manifest characteristics (e.g., gender or ethnicity), but rather on individual needs for diagnostic information, which is driven by multidimensionality in subdomain scores. To improve the validity of diagnostic information, this study proposed the use of Mahalanobis Distance and H^T indices to assess whether an individual’s data significantly departs …

Who Is Like Whom? Reclassification And Performance Patterns For Different Groupings Of English Learners, Molly M. Faulkner-Bond

Doctoral Dissertations

Approximately 10 percent of the US K-12 population consists of English learners (ELs), or students who are learning English in addition to academic content in areas like English language arts (ELA) and mathematics. In addition to meeting the same academic content and performance standards set for all students, it is also a goal for ELs to be reclassified – i.e., to master English so that they can shed the EL label and participate in academic settings where English is used without needing special support. Working with a longitudinal cohort of ~28,000 ELs in grades 3 through 8 from one state, …

Patterns Around Us Presentation, Benny Davidovitch

Patterns Around Us

No abstract provided.

Carbon Nanotubes And Graphene As Additives In 3d Printing, Lara A. Al-Hariri, Branden Leonhardt, Mesopotamia Nowotarski, James Magi, Kaelynn Chambliss, Thaís Venzel, Sagar Delekar, Steve Acquah

Chemistry Department Faculty Publication Series

3D printing is a revolutionary technology for the consumer and industrial markets. As the technology for 3D printing has expanded, the need for multi-materials that support fused deposition modeling and other forms of additive manufacturing is increasing. 3D printing filaments infused with carbon nanotubes and graphene are now commercially available, with the promise of producing conductive composites. This chapter explores some of the research, products, and challenges involved in bringing the next generation of functional printing materials to the consumer market.

Atomic Force Microscopes, Rob Snyder, Jennifer Welborn

Nanotechnology Teacher Summer Institutes

PowerPoint overview. A student activity that builds an atomic force microscope model.

Producing Electricity With Solar Cells, Chris Emery, Rob Snyder

Science and Engineering Saturday Seminars

No abstract provided.

Interdisciplinary Science Connections, Fred Venne

Science and Engineering Saturday Seminars

No abstract provided.

Innovative Representations Of Light, Behaving As Both Particles And Waves, Among The Paintings Of Monet And Renoir, Charles Smith

Charles Kay Smith

Monet and Renoir, friends collaborating in open air about 1865, discovered that sunlight filtering through a canopy of tree leaves does not produce the splotches and dapples that studio artists conventionally represented at the time but circles of light. Sometimes the circles of light punctuating the shade are clear, separate and crisp, as though light is being propagated as particles, but if the pin-hole gaps between leaves are very close together, they will project compound or superimposed circles that look like the waves that Thomas Young saw in his double slit experiment in 1803-4. Newton’s Opticks published in 1704 had …

Cultivating Communities Of Practice To Develop Local Preparedness For Climate Change, Konda Reddy Chavva

Doctoral Dissertations

The goal of this research was to study the effectiveness of field facilitators’ (FFs) community of practice in improving ways in which FFs and farmers communicate and work together to strengthen farmers’ climate change preparedness through identifying locally suitable adaptation strategies in drought-prone districts of Andhra Pradesh State in India. In development initiatives like the one studied, FFs are often the key liaison person with each community—farmers in this case. FFs interact regularly with farmers, with whom they establish and sustain critical relationships over time. Further, they take the lead in building farmers’ capacities by contextualizing technical information that professionals …

Developing Spatial Reasoning Skills In General Chemistry Students, Deborah L. Carlisle

Doctoral Dissertations

The study of organic chemistry requires the understanding and use of spatial relationships, which can be challenging for many students. Prior research has shown that there is a need to develop students’ spatial reasoning skills. To that end, this study implemented guided activities designed to strengthen students’ spatial skills, with the aim of preparing students for organic chemistry and other future STEM courses. Students, taking the second semester of a two-semester general chemistry course, engaged in these activities. This study followed a quasi experimental design, in which the experimental (n = 209) and the control group (n = 212) were …