Education Commons^™

Mobile App Learning Lounge: A Scalable And Sustainable Model For Twenty-First-Century Learning, Michael H. Truong

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Twenty-first-century learning is increasingly defined by the use of mobile devices and applications. Centers for teaching and learning can help facuity and students acquire greater familiarity and fluency with just-in-time learning using mobile apps by creating informal, inviting, and informative learning spaces on their campuses. This chapter features the Mobile App Learning Lounge (MALL), a low-cost, high impact initiative of a center for teaching and learning at a California research university. Beyond sharing how MALL works, this chapter offers practical suggestions and strategies for replicating a similar ini tiative at other institutions.

Navigating The New Normal, Terre H. Allen, Holly Harbinger, Donald J. Para

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Faculty socialization and satisfaction are critical to retaining quality teacher/scholars and key to a well-functioning teaching-intensive, research-driven university (Ponjuan, Conley, and Trower, 2011). This chapter reports on a year-long research project aimed at investigating faculty work life and satisfaction at a large, urban, comprehensive state university. Our goal was to use empirical evidence to understand and support faculty work under the "new normal" conditions characterized by reduced state funding and increased faculty workload. We discuss the results in terms of a revitalized direction for facuity and explore directions for organizational development within the context of the new normal.

Measuring Student Learning To Document Faculty Teaching Effectiveness, Linda B. Nilson

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Recent research has questioned the validity of student ratings as proxy measures for how much students learn, and this learning is a commonly accepted meaning of faculty teaching effectiveness. Student ratings capture student satisfaction more than anything else. Moreover, the overriding assessment criterion in accreditation and accountability-that applied to programs, schools, and institutions-is student learning, so it only makes sense to evaluate faculty by the same standard. This chapter explains and evaluates course-level measures of student learning based on data that are easy for facuity to collect and administrators to use.

Keeping The Fire Burning: Strategies To Support Senior Faculty, Michael J. Zeig, Roger G. Baldwin

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Recent reports indicate that at some colleges and universities, as many as one in three professors are age sixty or older. This increase in senior faculty raises the question of what institutions do to support this large and important cohort. Historically, faculty development programs have focused on early-career faculty, with less attention paid to more seasoned professors. Based on a national web-based investigation, this chapter reviews the strategies some institutions have implemented to support senior faculty. It also provides recommendations for how senior faculty and their administrator colleagues can provide new meaning and purpose to this phase of academic life.

Student Consultants Of Color And Faculty Members Working Together Toward Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy, Alison Cook-Sather, Praise Agu

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Through positioning undergraduate students as pedagogical consultants to college faculty, Students as Learners and Teachers is a program that provides reconceptualized "counterspaces" for students and facuity members with whom they work. In our study of the experiences of consultants of color, we found that those students and their faculty partners used program counterspaces to explore links between their lived identities and pedagogical commitments and to share authority and responsibility in developing culturally sustaining pedagogy. In this chapter we report on participants’ experiences in these collaborations and how they legitimate the knowledge of students of color in faculty learning.

Tomorrow's Professor Today: Tracking Perceptions Of Preparation For Future Faculty Competencies, Michael S. Palmer, Deandra Little

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

The University of Virginia’s Tomorrow’s Professor Today (TPT) pro gram is a broadly conceived graduate student professional development program designed to facilitate the transition from student to academic professional. Begun in 2005 in response to the recommendations of a number of national reform initiatives, TPT focuses on improving pre paredness in three key areas: teaching, research, and service. We describe the key elements of the program and ongoing assessment efforts. Pre- and postprogram participant surveys from the first eight years show that TPT is improving perceptions of preparedness in twenty-one competencies tracked; follow-up studies support long-term impact.

First Day Of Public Speaking Class And Student Expectations, Oli Mohammadi Phd, Crystal L. Swift Phd

Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges

On the first day of class, what should an instructor do? What do the students expect? What might ruin the first day of class? The author asked 270 students these questions, and their answers apply to any class’s first day.

Shutting Up In Class: The Zen Of Silence, Doug Thiele

Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges

This author discovered that his most powerful tool in the classroom was not to lecture, but to stop speaking at all. The effect of the resulting silence was even more positive than he could have imagined.

Why We Write The Way We Do: A Study Of Composition Teaching Through Writing Style Translation, Yuemin He Phd

Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges

This author used translation in the classroom to increase student awareness of audience. However, this translation was not between different languages; it was translation from an informal to a formal writing style, and vice versa.

Front Matter

Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges

Cover art: “Mennonite 2” by Ana Maria Mendez Ritchie, a student at Blue Ridge Community College.

Librarians In Your Midst: The Embedded Librarian Program At Pvcc, Laura C. Skinner

Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges

The easy availability of Internet information has caused many to question the future of libraries. However, librarians, as experts of information science, are even more necessary to help students navigate the Internet. An embedded librarian provides assistance at the most critical point – exactly when it is needed.

Putting Theatre Arts To The Test: Student Performance That Goes Beyond Stem And Steam, Lisa Nanni-Messegee, Teresa B. Murphy

Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges

President Obama’s “Educate to Innovate” initiative emphasizes training in the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). More recently, arts have been added to STEM, resulting in the acronym STEAM: Science and Technology interpreted through Engineering and the Arts, based in the Mathematical elements. However, should the arts be used only to cultivate better scientists? Or might the arts be valued apart from of their service to math and science?

Personalizing The Material Leads To College Students' Better Understanding Of Concepts, Charles J. Huffman Phd

Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges

In this study, students completed two different projects about personality. The results showed that while the students learned more about themselves, personalizing the material also increased their ability to understand core concepts.

Partnership For Math Success: Development Of A Mathematics Readiness Class For High School Students, Yvonne Jessee

Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges

To implement the developmental mathematics redesign, this author’s College partnered with two public school systems to establish early placement testing and a capstone readiness course, to be administered in the high school students’ senior year.

A Cross-Cultural Teaching Model For Community College Teachers: Considerations For Service-Delivery And Implications For The Teaching-Learning Process, Christopher T. Arra Phd

Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges

Community college classes are increasingly diverse, both culturally and ethnically, but how can teachers best educate students concerning cross-cultural issues? This author proposes a cross-cultural teaching model that focuses on a personalized approach.

Great Expectations: Twenty-First Century Public Institutions And The Promise Of Technology Based Economic Development: A Case Study, Tara K. Baas

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

American research universities, especially over the past 30 years, have increasingly become involved in technology transfer activities. For public land grant institutions, involvement is largely inspired by a desire to maximize revenue opportunities and demonstrate economic relevance. This intrinsic case study addresses the efforts of a public, land grant and flagship institution, the University of Kentucky, to augment its technology transfer activities, with a specific focus on its attempts to spin off university technology-based firms. The data were gathered primarily through oral history interviews with technology transfer personnel, entrepreneurs, and spinoff personnel. Its purpose is to understand better the structure …

Teaching Amidst Transformation: Integrating Global Perspectives On The Financial Crisis Into The Classroom, Shruti Rana

Shruti Rana

Teaching during tumultuous times requires creativity, but the lessons that emerge during times of crisis can also enrich classroom discussion by underscoring different perspectives and potential solutions to traditional classroom problems. This essay describes some methods for using examples from the recent financial crisis in the classroom, with the aim of enhancing comparative analyses and tying traditional financial concepts to broader themes stemming from the financial crisis.

Zombies In The Academy: Living Death In Higher Education, Ruth Walker, Christopher Moore, Andrew Whelan

Ruth Walker

No abstract provided.

Undead Universities, The Plagiarism Plague, Paranoia And Hypercitation’, Ruth Walker

Ruth Walker

No abstract provided.

Leadership Learning Through Student-Centered And Inquiry-Focused Approaches To Teaching Adaptive Leadership, Paige Haber-Curran, Daniel Tillapaugh

Daniel Tillapaugh

No abstract provided.

Temperature-Dependent Absorption Cross-Section Measurements Of 1-Butene (1-C4h8) In Vuv And Ir, Et-Touhami Es-Sebbar, Yves Benilan, Aamir Farooq

Dr. Et-touhami Es-sebbar

Vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) and infrared (IR) absorption cross-section measurements of 1-butene (1-C4H8; CH2=CHCH2CH3; Butylene) are reported over the temperature range of 296–529 K. The VUV measurements are performed between 115 and 205 nm using synchrotron radiation as a tunable VUV light source. Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy is employed to measure absorption cross-section and band strengths in the IR region between 1.54 and 25 μm (∼6500–400 cm−1). The measured room-temperature VUV and IR absorption cross-sections are compared with available literature data and are found to be in good agreement. The oscillator strength for the electronic transition (A1A′→X1A′) around 150–205 nm …

Dialogue, Selection, Subversion: Three Approaches To Teaching Women Writers, Karen Gevirtz, Martha Bowden, Jonathan Sadow

Karen Bloom Gevirtz

No abstract provided.

Influences Of Theory And Practice In The Development Of Servant Leadership In Students, Jennifer Massey, Tracey Sulak, Rishi Sriram

Rishi Sriram, Ph.D.

This paper explores the extent to which the leadership knowledge, skills, and abilities of upper-year student leaders on one private, United States college campus developed as a consequence of their education and experience as an extended orientation leader. Findings reveal that compared to leadership education in the classroom, leadership development is limited by experiences that do not include intentional reflection. We identify key elements in pedagogical frameworks that support and impede the leadership development of students and propose strategies to enhance the learning outcomes established for leadership development.

Spreading The Word: Service Learning In A Media Literacy Course, Carrie Buchanan, Margaret O. Finucane Ph.D.

Carrie Buchanan

Emergency Service Leader Perceptions Of Legitimacy, John R. Fisher, R. Jeffery Maxfield

Dr. John R. Fisher

This study adds to the qualitative data showing how leaders in the emergency services perceive legitimacy and the bases of power. The study examines leader perception of the reasons their subordinates view their leadership as legitimate. Two definitions of legitimacy are presented: the traditional viewpoint of French and Raven (1959) associating legitimate power “with having status or formal job authority” and the other proposed by Maxfield (2012) in the LEAP leadership model basing legitimacy more on the characteristics leaders bring to their positions. Emergency service students interviewed leaders in their career fields, determining their view of legitimacy. They found that …

Developing Successful Online Educational Programs At The College Level: Guidelines Based On The Literature, Bradley Van Alstyne

Brad Van Alstyne