Education Commons^™

The Update, January-April 2017, University Of Northern Iowa. College Of Humanities, Arts And Sciences.

Update

In this issue

-- CHAS Briefs
-- Alumni Spotlight - Mason Greer
-- Student Spotlight - Lucas Beving
-- Alumni Spotlight - Caleb Vander Wiel
-- Student Spotlight - Micayla Dawson
-- Department of Art Hearst Lecture Series
-- Communication Studies Digital Media Program
-- Computer Science National Cyber Defense Competition
-- Earth and Environmental Sciences Geo-Service Project
-- Faculty Spotlight Kyle Gray
-- Faculty Spotlight Suzanne Dripps Communication Sciences
-- Calendar of Events April - May

2017-2018 Graduate Handbook For The Master Of Arts In Educational Mathematics, Otterbein Office Of Graduate Programs

Graduate School

Graduate Handbook on the MAEM Program at Otterbein University.

Introduction To The Special Issue On Teaching Inquiry (Part I): Illuminating Inquiry, Brian P. Katz, Elizabeth Thoren

Mathematics: Faculty Scholarship & Creative Works

We provide an introduction to the special issue on Teaching Inquiry, through its motivation and themes. We focus here on Part I: Illuminating Inquiry.

Introduction To The Special Issue On Teaching Inquiry (Part Ii): Implementing Inquiry, Brian P. Katz, Elizabeth Thoren

Mathematics: Faculty Scholarship & Creative Works

We provide an introduction to the special issue on Teaching Inquiry, through its motivation and themes, focusing here on Part II: Implementing Inquiry.

Third Grade And Concurrent Predictors Of Engagement And Achievement In Reading, Courtney Karasinski, Kirk Anderson

Funded Articles

Theoretical models of learning highlight the role of engagement. The current investigation assessed the role of self-concept, locus of control, internalizing and externalizing behavior problems, and self-perceived interest and competence in reading in reading achievement. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Class (ECLS-K), longitudinal (third grade) predictors of eighth grade reading achievement and motivation, and concurrent predictors of eighth grade reading achievement were analyzed. Regression modeling revealed that self-perceived interest and competence in reading, behavior problems, self-concept, and locus of control were weak predictors of reading achievement, both longitudinally and concurrently. Socioeconomic status and third grade reading achievement …

Math And Physics Activities, Maureen Miller, Hope Bragg, Christy Keefer

Integrated Math & Social Studies Lessons

Mathematics is at the core of the Hidden Figures story. These women were united by their passion for the field of mathematics. Society often portrays that there are “bad” math students, those that struggle with calculations and applications. The structure of these activities, pairing of students, permits students to support each other in working through the problems. The video clip allows students to establish connections between mathematical calculations and scientific concepts. The physics problems that students complete are motion problems that beginning rocket engineers would have solved to determine how high their rocket flew.

The Planet, 2017, Winter, Jesse Nichols, Huxley College Of The Environment, Western Washington University

The Planet

No abstract provided.

Exploring The Effects Of Different Classroom Environments On The Learning Process. Synthesis Of Thiazole-Linked Porous Organic Polymers For Co2 Separation And Nitro-Aromatics Sensing., Davide D'Urbino

Theses and Dissertations

When attempting to study the learning process of undergraduate chemistry student, the classroom and any interaction that take place within it constitute the social context of interest. By studying how different approaches can foster different classroom environments, it is possible to approach course design from an informed and scientifically sound perspective. Thus, it becomes necessary to identify and quantify the factors that have a positive or negative effect on the classroom environment. Social comparison concerns, comfort levels and self-efficacy have been shown to be social factors that affect each other as well as the learning process and have therefore been …

Teac 308: Teaching Mathematics In The Elementary School–A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio, Amanda Thomas

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

This portfolio outlines four aspects of the peer review of teaching project, which focused on TEAC 308: Teaching Mathematics in the Elementary School. The first aspect was the explicit articulation of student learning objectives drawn from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Principles to Actions: Ensuring Mathematical Success for All (2014). During this project, the nine objectives were aligned with instructional opportunities and assignments with those objectives. In addition to defining these objectives, the portfolio describes analysis of three components: student progress toward developing and demonstrating productive beliefs about aspects of teaching and learning mathematics, student progress across three …

Faculty Perceptions Of Instructional Strategies That Foster Student Engagement In Online Courses, Sharon M. Hope

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Developing online instructional strategies for increasing student engagement and success is significant locally and nationally due to growth in the online field, advances in technology, and the need for colleges to maximize student success. This study stemmed from the desire of administrators at an upstate New York private college to discover additional ways to design and deliver effective online instruction. The purpose of this qualitative instrumental case study was to discover faculty perceptions of and experiences with instructional strategies that they used to foster student engagement in online learning. Kearsley and Shneiderman's engagement theory formed the study's conceptual framework. Ten …

Teachers' Theories Of Teaching And Learning And The Use Of Math Interventions, Nicole P. Jones

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Despite the academic gap between students with learning disabilities (LD) and their nondisabled peers, schools continue to educate students with LD in regular education classrooms. In secondary math classes, such as Algebra 1, students with LD have high percentages of failure. The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to examine the relationship between teachers' personal theories of teaching and learning and their use of math interventions. Fox's (1983) theoretical framework of teaching and learning was used as a conceptual lens. Surveys were administered to 20 high school math teachers in an urban Northeastern U.S. school district. An ordinal logistic regression …

Nursing Informatics Competency Program, Kristina Ann Dunn

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Currently, C Hospital lacks a standardized nursing informatics competency program to validate nurses' skills and knowledge in using electronic medical records (EMRs). At the study locale, the organization is about to embark on the implementation of a new, more comprehensive EMR system. All departments will be required to use the new EMR, unlike the current policy that allows some areas to still document on paper. The Institute of Medicine, National League of Nursing, and American Association of Colleges of Nursing support and recommend that information technology be an essential core competency for nurses. Evidence of the need for nursing informatic …

Educator's Technology Integration Barriers And Student Technology Preparedness As 21st Century Professionals, Joy Anne Pine-Thomas

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Millions of dollars have been spent to acquire educational computing tools, and many education, government, and business leaders believe that investing in these computing tools will improve teaching and learning. The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine whether charter school educators face technological barriers hindering them from incorporating technology into their classrooms. If they experienced self-efficacy issues integrating technology in their classrooms and if they believed their students were technologically prepared as 21st century professionals. A 5-point Likert scale survey, validated by a pilot study, was completed by 61 charter high school teachers. Their responses were analyzed, scores …

Evaluating Intention To Use Remote Robotics Experimentation In Programming Courses, Pericles Leng Cheng

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The Digital Agenda for Europe (2015) states that there will be 825,000 unfilled vacancies for Information and Communications Technology by 2020. This lack of IT professionals stems from the small number of students graduating in computer science. To retain more students in the field, teachers can use remote robotic experiments to explain difficult concepts. This correlational study used the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) to examine if performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions can predict the intention of high school computer science teachers in Cyprus, to use remote robotic experiments in their classes. …

Strategies For Integrating Technological Innovations In Small Businesses, Petra Samuel

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The effective integration of technological innovation is vital to the success of small businesses and can catapult growth and profitability. Some business managers and supervisors, however, may not have a firm understanding of strategies for integrating technological innovations in businesses; this lack of knowledge may result in employee frustration and costly roadblocks to achieving business objectives. This case study was conducted to identify the strategies used by business managers and supervisors to integrate technological innovations in small businesses. Christensen's theory of disruptive innovation and Rogers' theory of diffusion of innovation served as the conceptual framework. Ten business managers and supervisors …

The Watershed Game: Land Use & Water Quality. Subjects: Environmental Science, Marine/Ocean Science, Life Science/Biology Grades: 9-12, Shanna Williamson

Reports

This lesson plan is a hands-on activity that allows students to explore how water and nutrients are transported from a watershed with three different land cover types and eventually ends up in a nearby stream.

An Analysis Of Secondary Teachers' Reasoning With Participatory Sensing Data, Anna E. Bargagliotti

Mathematics Faculty Works

"Participatory sensing is a data collection method in which communities of people collect and share data to investigate large-scale processes. These data have many features often associated with the big data paradigm: they are rich and multivariate, include non-numeric data, and are collected as determined by an algorithm rather than by traditional experimental designs. While not often found in classrooms, arguably they should be since data with these features are commonly encountered in daily life. Because of this, it is of interest to examine how teachers reason with and about such data. We propose methods for describing progress through a …

A Study Of Mathematics Achievement, Placement, And Graduation Of Engineering Students, Sara Hahler Blazek

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine how background knowledge impacts freshmen engineering students' success at Louisiana Tech University in terms of grades in two different freshman classes and graduation. To determine what factors impact students, three different studies were implemented. The first study used linear regression to analyze which demographic and academic variables significantly impacted freshman math and engineering courses. Using regression discontinuity, the second study determined if the university's placement requirement for Pre-Calculus was appropriate. The final study analyzed factors that impact graduation for engineering students as well as other disciplines to determine which significant variables were …

Visualizing Sorting Algorithms, Brian Faria

Honors Projects

This paper discusses a study performed on animating sorting algorithms as a learning aid for classroom instruction. A web-based animation tool was created to visualize four common sorting algorithms: Selection Sort, Bubble Sort, Insertion Sort, and Merge Sort. The animation tool would represent data as a bar-graph and after selecting a data-ordering and algorithm, the user can run an automated animation or step through it at their own pace. Afterwards, a study was conducted with a voluntary student population at Rhode Island College who were in the process of learning algorithms in their Computer Science curriculum. The study consisted of …

A Conceptual Framework For A Software Development Process Based On Computational Thinking, Catherine Higgins, Ciaran O'Leary, Orla Hanratty, Fredrick Mtenzi

Articles

A software development process is a mechanism for problem solving to help software developers plan, design and structure the development of software to solve a problem. Without a process to guide the structured evolution of a solution, it is extremely likely that at least some aspect of the resulting software will be omitted or incorrectly implemented. Even though the importance of utilising a software process for solving problems is accepted in the business and academic communities, it is a topic that is addressed very lightly (if at all) in most freshman undergraduate computing courses with most courses focussing on programming …

Gorenstein Injective Envelopes And Covers Over Two Sided Noetherian Rings, Alina Iacob

Department of Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

We prove that the class of Gorenstein injective modules is both enveloping and covering over a two sided noetherian ring such that the character modules of Gorenstein injective modules are Gorenstein flat. In the second part of the paper we consider the connection between the Gorenstein injective modules and the strongly cotorsion modules. We prove that when the ring R is commutative noetherian of finite Krull dimension, the class of Gorenstein injective modules coincides with that of strongly cotorsion modules if and only if the ring R is in fact Gorenstein.

Multiple Solutions With Constant Sign Of A Dirichlet Problem For A Class Of Elliptic Systems With Variable Exponent Growth, Li Yin, Jinghua Yao, Qihu Zhang, Chunshan Zhao

Department of Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

We present here, in the system setting, a new set of growth conditions under which we manage to use a novel method to verify the Cerami compactness condition. By localization argument, decomposition technique and variational methods, we are able to show the existence of multiple solutions with constant sign for the problem without the well-known Ambrosetti--Rabinowitz type growth condition. More precisely, we manage to show that the problem admits four, six and infinitely many solutions respectively.

Using An Online Learning Tutorial To Teach Rea Data Modelling In Accounting Information Systems Courses, Poh Sun Seow, Gary Pan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Online learning has been gaining widespread adoption due to its success in enhancing student-learning outcomes and improving student academic performance. This paper describes an online tutorial to teach resource-event-agent (REA) data modeling in an undergraduate accounting information systems course. The REA online tutorial reflects a self-study application designed to help students improve their understanding of the REA data model. As such, the tutorial acts as a supplement to lectures by reinforcing the concepts and incorporating practices to assess student understanding. Instructors can access the REA online tutorial at http://smu.sg/rea. An independent survey by the University's Centre for Teaching Excellence found …

Assessing In-Service Teachers’ Chemistry Content Knowledge And Self-Efficacy In Teaching The K To 12 Science Curriculum, Yna Camille A. Mongcal, Queena N. Lee-Chua, Armando M. Guidote Jr

Chemistry Faculty Publications

As the K to 12 Science program was formally implemented, interventions to enhance competence and confidence of teachers in teaching science in a spiral progression approach are main concerns. This study aims to assess the chemistry content knowledge and self-efficacy of 38 in-service teachers enrolled in a graduate program from a teacher education institution using a content knowledge test (CKT) and a self-efficacy beliefs scale (SeS) using a mixed-method approach. Quantitative findings reveal that the least mastered topics in chemistry of the teacher-respondents include solutions, chemical bonding, the mole concept, gas laws, and chemical reactions. The science teachers say they …

Cover

Journal of the Iowa Academy of Science: JIAS

No abstract provided.

Herbaceous Vascular Flora Of Forested Seep Wetlands In Winneshiek County, Iowa, Usa, Elizabeth A. Lynch, Anna Burke Weckwerth

Journal of the Iowa Academy of Science: JIAS

Forested seep wetlands dominated by skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) occur frequently in the Canoe Creek watershed of the Upper Iowa River, but this type of wetland has not been described systematically in the upper Midwest. The goal of this study is to document the herbaceous plant flora of five seeps. Although individual seeps are small (200-500 m²), they provide habitat for a high number of plant species. Five seeps with total area less than 0.2 ha supported more than 120 native vascular herbaceous taxa, 20 of which have a coefficient of conservatism (C-value) of 7 or …

A Statistical, Spatial, And Hydrologic Comparison Of Gauge-Based And Mpe-Based Rainfall Measurements, Richard Bernatz

Journal of the Iowa Academy of Science: JIAS

Gauge-based and multi-sensor precipitation estimation (MPE) data are compared on hourly, daily, monthly and event time scales at site locations over a 12-year period. Gauge data is collected at 16 sites within a 950 km2 portion of the Upper Iowa River in northeast Iowa. Average relative MPE bias is positive for all but the event time scale, and has a magnitude of less than 0.10 for all scales. Gauge and MPE average correlation coefficients range from 0.73 on the hourly scale to 0.92 on the event and monthly scales. The MPE relative bias standard deviation decreases from 1.70 mm on …

Adult Learners, Learning Disabilities, And Mathematics : A Case Study, Marguerite Sheehan Flood

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The purpose of this research was to understand how mathematics is taught at a small, liberal arts college that self-advertised as accommodating diverse learners. A qualitative case study was conducted on the mathematics program at Waterview College. Waterview College is unique in that almost half of their students self-identify with a disability, including learning disabilities (LD). The number of students with learning disabilities that attend college is increasing; therefore it is important for mathematics instructors to understand and accommodate diverse learners. The data for this research were collected using one-on-one instructor interviews, classroom observations, and student focus group interviews. The …

Implications Of A Health Careers Exploration Program For Minority Student Matriculation, Angelica Ellman Christie

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Organizations that deliver programs to promote the entry of students from marginalized populations into the U.S. health workforce often struggle to demonstrate the effective achievement of outcomes, and face diminishing fiscal resources. This study was an empirical examination of the extent and manner that a statewide, precollege, health careers exploration program fostered the matriculation of underrepresented minority students into health degree education programs. Schneider and Stevenson's aligned ambitions framework provided the theoretical foundation. The research questions for this study examined the relationship between program participation and the successful health degree matriculation of racial minority students based on the extent of …

How Attitude Toward The Behavior, Subjective Norm, And Perceived Behavioral Control Affects Information Security Behavior Intention, David Philip Johnson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The education sector is at high risk for information security (InfoSec) breaches and in need of improved security practices. Achieving data protections cannot be through technical means alone. Addressing the human behavior factor is required. Security education, training, and awareness (SETA) programs are an effective method of addressing human InfoSec behavior. Applying sociobehavioral theories to InfoSec research provides information to aid IT security program managers in developing improved SETA programs. The purpose of this correlational study was to examine through the theoretical lens of the theory of planned behavior (TPB) how attitude toward the behavior (ATT), subjective norm (SN), and …