Education Commons^™

Working-Class Students And Historical Inquiry, Leslie Schuster

Faculty Publications

For the past twelve years, I have been teaching a lower division introductory historical methods course that uses active learning to introduce students to the issues and practices of historical methods, the "how to" of historical inquiry, research and writing. While there are many models for such a course, including the one described by Jeffrey Merrick in the February 2006 issue of this journal, the design of such a course at my institution requires consideration of an often-overlooked dimension. The student body at Rhode Island College (RIC) is primarily working class, mirroring a significant transformation in the traditional college student …

Blogging About Summer Reading, Janice Becker Place

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

The purpose of this study was to investigate what happened when grade 11 high school honors students blogged about their summer reading under the monitoring of a teacher during vacation. I proposed that an educational blog might serve as an effective tool during summer vacation to help students retain skills or learning while at a physical distance from their school and teacher. In addition to the blog’s transcripts, a pre-project survey, post-project survey,and post-project interviews provided complementary data to inform my analysis. Qualitative analysis was applied to the blog discussion entries for evidence of peer learning, scaffolding, critical thinking, and …

A Student's Perspective Of Learning On A Dedicated Education Unit, Rachael L. Johnsen

Honors Projects

It is the intent of this honors project to give a student’s perspective of learning in the Dedicated Education Unit (DEU) on Bridge 7 at Rhode Island Hospital. Bridge 7 is a 38-bed unit specializing in general medical surgical patient care services. A student’s perspective is illustrated by journal entries written from each clinical experience over the course of one semester, during the course Adult Health II. In addition to a student’s perspective, it is the intention to compare the learning experience on the DEU, to the traditional model of clinical learning. This project will include current nursing research that …

A Comparison Of Hybrid/Online And Lecture College Courses, Katelyn Paquin

Honors Projects

The purpose of this research is to investigate relationships between online college courses and in-person courses with regard to student course completion rate and course grade averages. The personality characteristics of Introversion, Conscientiousness and Academic Self-Regulation, and professor student rapport were also examined in relation to performance of the students enrolled in online and in-person classes. This study was based on an integrative theory of self- and social regulation in learning contexts. A two-tailed t-test for independent samples found no significant difference between the end of previous semester cumulative GPAs (CGPAs) of students in the online/hybrid or in-person courses. The …

Describing Comprehension, Susan Vander Does

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

Teachers' observations of student performance in reading are abundant and insightful but often remain internal and unarticulated. As a result, such observations are an underutilized and undervalued source of data. Given the gaps in knowledge about students’ reading comprehension that exist in formal assessments, the frequent calls for teachers’ observational data to fill these gaps, and the paucity of research on teachers as assessment instruments, this study sought to learn more about the knowledge teachers gain about students’ comprehension through embedded observation.

This research was framed by a transactional conception of reading and informed by cognitive and sociocultural studies of …