Education Commons^™

How Other Countries Reopened Schools During The Pandemic – And What The Us Can Learn From Them, Robert W. Spires

School of Professional and Continuing Studies Faculty Publications

As American school officials debate when it will be safe for schoolchildren to return to classrooms, looking abroad may offer insights. Nearly every country in the world shuttered their schools early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Many have since sent students back to class, with varying degrees of success.

I am a scholar of comparative international education. For this article, I examined what happened in four countries where K-12 schools either stayed open throughout the pandemic or have resumed in-person instruction, using press reports, national COVID-19 data and academic studies.

Measuring Faculty Teaching Effectiveness Using Conditional Fixed Effects, Maia K. Linask, James Monks

Economics Faculty Publications

Using a dataset of 48 faculty members and 88 courses over 26 semesters, the authors estimate Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) ratings that are conditional on a multitude of course, faculty, and student attributes. They find that ratings are lower for required courses and those where students report a lower prior level of interest. Controlling for these variables substantially alters the SET ratings for many instructors. The average absolute value of the difference between the faculty ratings controlling just for time effects and fully conditional ratings is nearly one-half of a standard deviation in the students’ rating of how much …

The High Costs Of Large Enrollment Classes: Can Cooperative Learning Help?, Tisha L. N. Emerson, Linda K. English, Kimmarie Mcgoldrick

Economics Faculty Publications

We examine the potential for cooperative learning activities to offset costs of large enrollment courses. We use a quasi-experimental research design to examine achievement and course perceptions in small and large enrollment sections of microeconomic principles. While large enrollment sections attain lower levels of achievement (measured by course score) than those with smaller enrollments, this effect is partially mitigated by use of cooperative learning. Furthermore, while students in large enrollment sections report lower levels of satisfaction and learning than students in smaller sized classes, the use of cooperative learning eliminates the negative effects of increased class size on student perceptions.

Seeing Is Believing: Peer Video Coaching As Professional Development Done With Me And For Me, Kate M. Cassada, Laura Kassner

School of Professional and Continuing Studies Faculty Publications

As part of their graduate education, in-service teachers identified an area of instructional focus, video recorded their classroom instruction at two intervals in a semester-long course, formed peer groups, and shared their videos for the purpose of obtaining feedback for professional growth. After the conclusion of the course, participants were contacted and presented with a summary of four benefits of the peer video review process, as identified in a recent professional article. Through online survey, participants were asked to share their perceptions of the peer video review experiences in the course and address any evidence related to the benefits raised …

Chat It Up: Backchanneling To Promote Reflective Practice Among In-Service Teachers, Laura Kassner, Kate M. Cassada

School of Professional and Continuing Studies Faculty Publications

In a graduate education course geared toward developing reflective teaching practice in in-service teachers, backchannels, in the form of chat rooms, were employed in small groups to facilitate peer feedback during viewings of video recorded instruction. This study examined the nature and quality of peer feedback exchanged in the digital medium and gauged graduate students’ impressions of the technology, with potential for carryover into their professional practices in P-12 instruction. Results revealed that the backchannel was perceived as an easy-to-use tool that promoted rich, real-time, high-quality feedback and a space to collaborate and exchange ideas, while improving engagement. Backchannel comments …

Engaging The Power Of Peer Observation, Kate M. Cassada, Julie Harris, Bobby Herting, Tara Warren, Damia Brown-Kidd

School of Professional and Continuing Studies Faculty Publications

As a college professor, I have taught hundreds of graduate students in instructional leadership and reflective teaching courses. The overwhelmingly consistent report I hear from these active and engaged educators is that they rarely, if ever, have time to see each other teach. Teaching remains an isolated event - protected time for teachers to share their craft through thoughtful peer discussion and observation rarely. exists. When time is devoted to these activities, it usually is prescribed by building or division-led professional development initiatives, experiences teachers say do not feel genuine, safe, and focused on true reflection and growth. As Daniels, …

Building An Assessment Program In The Liberal Arts College Library, Lucretia Mcculley

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

Now in its fourth year, the Library Assessment Committee at the University of Richmond has made great strides in establishing a sustainable assessment program within Boatwright Library. Prior to 2008, limited staff, time, expertise, and commitment were barriers to establishing an ongoing assessment program. As with many other liberal arts college libraries, most of our assessment efforts had focused on information literacy, since instruction is integral to the library and the university's mission. Library surveys and other assessment methods had only received close attention when the university was embarking on its re-accreditation process. With the growing emphasis on assessment within …

An Open Letter To Governor-Elect Mcauliffe, Thomas J. Shields

School of Professional and Continuing Studies Faculty Publications

Almost every governor elected in recent memory has recognized how critical education is to the economic and social welfare of our commonwealth. Each has come into office ready to put his personal stamp on Virginia's educational system. However, we believe the time has come for our state's chief executive to realize that our current system is no longer functioning in an equitable manner, particularly for children who are at or below the poverty line.

When Tests Fail: Why Our Public Education System Needs To Rethink High-Stakes Standardized Testing, Thomas J. Shields

School of Professional and Continuing Studies Faculty Publications

While we were in Finland, we met with students, teachers, university faculty and other leaders, such as Pasi Sahlberg, author of "Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland." When we asked Sahlberg what was the most important change that the United States could make to improve its education system, he replied without hesitation: Eliminate high-stakes standardized testing.

The Impact Of Class Size On Outcomes In Higher Education, James Monks, Robert M. Schmidt

Economics Faculty Publications

Numerous studies have investigated the impact of class size on student outcomes. This analysis contributes to this discussion by isolating the impact of class size on student outcomes in higher education by utilizing a natural experiment at a selective institution which enables the estimation of class size effects conditional on the total number of students taught by a faculty member. We find that class size negatively impacts student assessments of courses and instructors. Large classes appear to prompt faculty to alter their courses in ways deleterious to students.

The Application Of Little's Law To Enrollment Management: Improving Student Persistence In Part-Time Degree Programs, Ellen M. Walk, Lewis A. Litteral

Management Faculty Publications

Little’s Law is applied to enrollment management in part-time degree programs. Using institutional data by program, on number of graduates per year, as well as number of credits taken and number of active students per semester, the calculated average time to graduation is compared to the average flow time predicted by Little’s Law. Despite significant variability among students who enter with varying transfer credits and take varying credits per semester, Little’s Law provides a simple model for measuring program growth trends, student productivity, and persistence to graduation. Implications for marketing, admissions, advising, course scheduling, and curriculum design are discussed.

Innovations In The Pursuit Of Excellence, Mavis Brown, Linda B. Hobgood

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

As students begin their journey in preservice early education courses, an important aspect of an introductory level course is the microteaching experience. For the purposes of this article microteaching is defined as the opportunity to present a lesson to a group of peers who role-play as children at the primary level. Although field-based teaching is critical to a student’s educational experience before student teaching the microteaching experience can be a valuable tool for reflecting and evaluation on best instruction. In the process of evaluating practice it became apparent that we might also assess communication competence as well. The Foundations of …

Technology Follows Technique: Refocusing The Observational Lens, Anton Brinckwirth, Elizabeth M. Kissling, Kathryn Murphy-Judy, Carlos Valencia

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

Digital video is being applied to teacher training, development, and evaluation. This chapter evokes theories and practices of performance observation and improvement. It demonstrates facilitative media used in the design and implementation of a current interinstitutional project by the authors. Simultaneously, the implications of teaching evaluation techniques caught in the lens of digital observation technologies lead to considerations of their personal and social impact on the field of world language teacher training and professional development in the 21st Century. A more communal and non-hierarchical approach, called peer coaching, is advanced with a value-added digital video and e-community twist.

Student Preferences For Common Or Unique Assignments: Some Early Evidence, Erwin Waldmann, Janek Ratnatunga, Marshall A. Geiger

Accounting Faculty Publications

Accounting assignments and homework exercises that use identical problem material for all students encourage plagiarism. Giving each individual student a unique assignment alleviates this problem, but raises other issues such as the lack of co-operative learning and grading parity. This paper examines students' attitudes towards both common and unique accounting assignments. The results indicate that a large majority of students preferred the unique assignments and perceived getting a high grade on these assignments as more rewarding and reflective of higher learning than similar grades on common assignments. Attitudinal variables for the validity of grading, perceptions regarding plagiarism, and perceptions of …

On The Answer-Arrangement Bias Of Professional Certification Examinations In Accounting, Marshall A. Geiger, Mark M. Higgins

Accounting Faculty Publications

The test construction literature has emphasized the randomization of answers within multiple-choice items as a way to eliminate test construction bias. This study examines the answer placement bias of the multiple-choice portion of the 1987 - 1992 CIA, CMA, and CPA exams. The results indicate a consistent bias toward the "A" position in the CIA exam and against the "A" and "E" positions on the CMA exam. Also, all three exams were found to have significantly fewer correct answer runs (e.g., four "A's" in a row) than would be expected from the random placement of answers. A discussion of test …

Further Comments On The Use Of The Lsi In Research On Student Performance In Introductory Accounting, Marshall A. Geiger, Edmund J. Boyle

Accounting Faculty Publications

In this note we respond to the comments of Ruble and Stout (1993) concerning the use of the revised Learning Style Inventory (LSI) developed by Kolb (1985). While our more recent psychometric research on the LSI leads us to conclude that the standard version should no longer be used, unlike Ruble and Stout, we see promise for new or modified versions in future research. We also indicate where several of their comments on our work, as well as the work of others, are not well founded.

A Three-Year Longitudinal Study Of Change In Student Learning Styles, Jeffrey K. Pinto, Marshall A. Geiger, Edmund J. Boyle

Accounting Faculty Publications

Kolb's (1985) Learning Style Inventory and theories of learning preferences have become increasingly popular as a method for measuring preferred approaches for acquiring information and learning in classroom settings. Using Kolob's (1985) theory; a number of researchers have argued that as students move through their college experience, their learning styles are likely to undergo significant changes. This paper reports on the results of a three-year longitudinal study that investigated the actual degree of learning style changes for a sample of college students in business, offering mixed support for the contention that learning styles are likely to change over a student's …

Learning Styles Of Students And Instructors: An Analysis Of Course Performance And Satisfaction, Marshall A. Geiger, Edmund J. Boyle

Accounting Faculty Publications

Accounting educators have utilized Kolb's Learning Style Inventory (LSI) in the assessment of accounting students and the accounting curriculum. This study extends these earlier works by examining the effect of student and instructor learning style, as measured by the revised 1985 LSI, on introductory course performance and ratings of satisfaction with both the course and the instructor.

The results indicate no significant effect of student/teacher learning style interaction on final course grade or students' ratings of satisfaction. However, instructors having a convergent learning style were given significantly higher satisfaction ratings regardless of student learning style.

Learning Styles Of Introductory Accounting Students: An Extension To Course Performance And Satisfaction, Marshall A. Geiger

Accounting Faculty Publications

Togo and Baldwin (1990) have recently utilized Kolb's 1976 Learning Style Inventory (LSI) in the assessment of introductory accounting student performance. This study extends this earlier work by examining the effect of learning style, as measured by the 1985 LSI, on introductory exam performance and ratings of satisfaction with the introductory course. Learning style was found to be significantly related to overall exam performance; with those maintaining a similar learning style as the instructor (i.e. assimilator) performing best. Additionally, learning style was also found to affect student ratings of course satisfaction.

The Myth Of "Conventional Wisdom" On Changing Multiple-Choice Answers, Marshall A. Geiger

Accounting Faculty Publications

Business students are often warned not to change multiple-choice answers once an original selection has been made. This "conventional wisdom," that the first answer selected usually is the correct answer, is in contrast with the conclusions of research in the education and psychology fields. This study extends these earlier studies by using students in accounting principles I and principles II classes, and by examining whether the type of question (numeric or non-numeric) affects answer-changing behavior. On average, for every point lost roughly three points were gained by changing answers for both groups. Additionally, gender was found not to be a …

Teaching Accounting Concepts Versus Applications: An Analysis Of Student Attitudes, Marshall A. Geiger

Accounting Faculty Publications

Accounting faculty have long debated the usefulness and appropriateness of their teaching endeavor. One of the central themes in this continuing discussion is that of teaching concepts versus teaching applications of current accounting principles. In order to empirically address this issue, students' attitudes toward the conceptual aspects and toward the practical application aspects of financial accounting were assessed. This research also reports on the development and validation of an instrument that measures attitudes of students toward these aspects of financial accounting. The instrument demonstrated high reliability with both intermediate and introductory students. Intermediate students were found to distinguish between attitudes …

An Attributional Analysis Of Students' Reactions To Success And Failure, Donelson R. Forsyth

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Like it or not, evaluation is as much a part of education as is learning. In most schools and universities students are regularly tested and evaluated by their teachers, who communicate their appraisals in the form of a grade. When the papers are handed back, the grades are posted, or report cards are sent home, students find out if they have succeeded or if they have failed.

How do students react to these academic evaluations? According to a growing number of studies, the answer to this question depends upon their attributions: students' inferences about the causes of their performances and …