Education Commons^™

Defining Problematic School Absenteeism Using Nonparametric Modeling, Kyleigh Kay Skedgell

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Contemporary classification models of school absenteeism often employ a multitier approach for organizing assessment and treatment strategies. Researchers have yet to agree, however, on how to objectively define problematic school absenteeism and identify demarcation points for each tier. The present study aimed to inform a multitier approach by determining the most relevant risk factors for problematic school absenteeism. The most useful targets of assessment for problematic school absenteeism are also addressed. The present study examined problematic school absenteeism defined at three distinct cutoffs: 1%, 10%, and 15% of full school days missed. The present study evaluated interactions among several youth- …

But Can We Measure It?, Geoff N. Masters Ao

Teacher columnist – Geoff Masters

It’s often asserted that some things can’t be measured, Professor Geoff Masters AO writes in his latest column. But how true is this? And if we can’t measure something, should we stop pretending we can teach or develop it?

Learning To Assess Student Understanding Through Formative And Summative Assessment, Sheryl Mcglamery, Saundra Shillingstad

Journal of Curriculum, Teaching, Learning and Leadership in Education

Abstract: Following extensive discourse and observation (2015-2016) of pre-service teacher candidates’ engagement in academic field experiences in math, science, and social studies methods courses, two undergraduate methods professors noted that many of the teacher candidates struggled in the area of assessing student learning. We noted that pre-service teacher candidates struggled to differentiate between formative and summative assessment practices, struggled with knowing when and how to assess students during instruction, and lastly how to identify if student learning had occurred. This action research study reports the impact that modeling, teaching experience, and demonstrations of formative and summative assessment measures had on …

Meaningful Reviews: Reframing Evaluation To Yield Positive Change, Sharon Decker

Academic Chairpersons Conference Proceedings

This session will focus on how to reframe the culture of evaluation in order to encourage active and engaged faculty participation. The discussion will center on objectives, forms, and outcomes in order to create a process that will ultimately improve pedagogical techniques and philosophies.

Preliminary Evaluation Of The Psychometric Quality Of HeightenTm Quantitative Literacy, Katrina C. Roohr, Hyesun Lee, Jun Xu, Ou Lydia Liu, Zhen Wang

Numeracy

Quantitative literacy has been identified as an important student learning outcome (SLO) by both the higher education and workforce communities. This paper aims to provide preliminary evidence of the psychometric quality of the pilot forms for HEIghten quantitative literacy, a next-generation SLO assessment for students in higher education. We evaluated the psychometric quality of the test items (e.g., item analyses), individual- and group-level reliability, the relationship with student performance and related variables (e.g., grade point average) as well as student perceptions, and differences across college-related and demographic subgroups. Our study used data from a pilot test administered to over 1,500 …

Maximizing Test Efficiency: The Effects Of Test Format On Nonsense Word Reading, Amanda Kern

Doctoral Dissertations

A repeated measures study was conducted to determine the effects of test format on accuracy and fluency performance on a computer-based, nonsense word, decoding task. Decoding is a phonics skill that is highly predictive of overall reading performance (Fletcher, Lyon, Fuchs, & Barnes, 2007). Therefore, identifying students who are struggling with decoding and providing instruction to remedy skill deficits is of high importance to teachers. A possible way for teachers to determine the instructional needs of their students is through testing (Hosp & Ardoin, 2008). However, time dedicated to test completion in classrooms limits the time available for instruction. Therefore, …

Teaching Academic Language And Prosody Through Content-Related Collocations, Nell Duffy Hernandez

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

My research seeks to answer the questions How can students gauge their own prosody of targeted collocations?, What feedback and strategies can content teachers use to aid students? and Can a holistic rubric aid students’ learning to produce academic collocations?. To answer these questions I designed a study given to six sixth grade level four and five English language learners (ELs). Eight academic collocations were chosen from the students’ social studies textbook as the targeted language. The research examined the ELs’ language use using a holistic speaking and writing rubric designed for teacher assessment and a student self-monitoring sheet. The …

The Greenbook, Faculty Handbook, 2017-2018, Marshall University Academic Affairs

The Greenbook

This book has been published for the faculty of Marshall University for the specified period of time. This book was created by what is now known as Academic Affairs and is for the period of 2017-2018.

Relationships Between Comprehension And Fluency Levels Within Reading At A Second Grade Level, Erika Gregor

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this action research is to investigate the relationship between comprehension and fluency levels in a Spanish Immersion second grade setting and answer the question of: What is the effect of daily use of comprehension strategies, including inferencing, summarizing and visualizing, on fluency within a Spanish Immersion program? The literature review served the purpose to explore and deliver vital components in understanding the process of reading and how comprehension and fluency are achieved. I used a quantitative approach and utilized assessments throughout the school year to observe fluency levels when implementing comprehension strategies and assessments. The data revealed …

How Integrating Digital Formative Assessment Impacts The Learning Of Sixth-Grade Science Students, Sara E. Potter

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The research question addressed in the project was, How integrating digital formative assessment impacts the learning of sixth-grade science students? The motivating factor for this capstone was the increased use of electronic devices in the classroom. In this study, qualitative and quantitative data was collected using student surveys and summative assessment results of a science unit after using either traditional or traditional and digital formative assessments. In one year, exclusively traditional formative assessment was implemented, and in the other, both traditional and digital formative assessments were used. It was found that whether traditional formative assessment or a combination of traditional …

Closing The Gap In Urban Summer School Programs, Crystal Nelson

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Alternative learning and assessment methods have transformed secondary education to better equip students for the future. The author set out to explore how problem-based learning (PBL) can be implemented into urban summer school programs. The literature review revealed the rationale for embedding PBL strategies into curriculum as the evidence that PBL improves the student classroom experience. The process of writing curriculum using PBL strategies showed the author PBL’s ability for students to develop 21st century skills, create student action in the community, and reduce the summer learning gap. This capstone supports the idea that PBL can be connected to the …

Multi-Choice Questions And Their Problems When Used For Assessment Of Aircraft Engineers Education, Ian R. Mcandrew, Ken L. Witcher, Elena Navarro, Peter Foreman

Publications

Licensed aircraft engineers under the European Aviation Safety Agency, EASA, undertake academic training to complement their practical and type specific studies. These exams are mainly Multi-Choice Questions, MCQ, and four 20-minute essays. The MCQ exams are as few as 16 questions to a maximum of 140 questions. A score of 75% is needed to pass each exam, and each question has three possible answers. This authors of this paper reviews the theory and design of the MCQ and asks if the assumptions are valid and that it achieves the academic level assumed for engineers who will be maintaining some of …

Universal Design For Learning: A New Clinical Practice Assessment Tool Toward Creating Access And Equity For All Students, Diane Fogarty

LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations

To examine to what extent current general education pre-service teachers within a teacher preparation program at a private institution of higher education know and understand the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), expert focus groups were conducted. General education program syllabi were examined for UDL content and found to be lacking in such content. General education pre-service teachers videotaped lessons were reviewed for UDL content and were also found to be inadequate in demonstrating knowledge and understanding of Universal Design for Learning principles. Focus groups comprised of university fieldwork instructors and teacher education experts were asked to review and …

Informal Order, Needs Analysis, And The Eap Curriculum, Faisal S. Al-Maamari

The Qualitative Report

The academic curriculum is developed through a systematic process whereby content is created through the alignment of needs to stakeholder or target group. This qualitative research study features a small-scale, English for academic purpose (EAP) needs analysis (NA) of three credit-bearing EAP programs and the corresponding departmental programs conducted at a Language Center at a higher education institution in Oman. Based on interview, observational and documentary data, the analysis showed divergences in academic literacy (writing and reading) between the EAP and content programs. Principally, the findings pointed to the presence and operation of a group of informal orders and the …

Design And Assessment Of Deep And Active Learning In Science, Technology, Engineering, And Mathematics (Stem) Education, Juhong Christie Liu Ph.D., Elizabeth Johnson Ph.D., Jin Joy Mao Ph.D.

Libraries

This presentation draws academic significance from a focused literature review and initial data for learning design in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education. The presenters will discuss strategies of fostering deep, active learning, alignment with assessment, and development of assessment instruments and methods. The presenters will share the design and development of an assessment kit to measure learning outcomes that matter in the 21st century STEM education. Through shared evidence and interactive reflection, the audience will take away up-to-date design strategies for deep and active learning as well as assessment in STEM education. The project is sponsored by National …

Assessment-Orientated Instructional Design Using Dream Approach, Juhong Christie Liu Ph.D., Andrea H. Adams, Wei Wang

Libraries

This presentation proposes an assessment-oriented instructional design approach to enhancing student learning with blended learning environments and report its pilot implementation. Students gain significant learning experience through understanding the relationship between learning outcomes and learning process, connecting acquired knowledge, being able to tackle problems individually or on teams, and learning how to learn (Entwistle, Tait, & McCune, 2000; Fink, 2013; Suskie, 2010; Wiggins, 1998). These components ought to be designed in learning activities to educate learners through formative assessment such as self-reflection, peer evaluation, and constructive feedback from instructor (Angelo & Cross,1993; Wiggins, 1998). In blended learning with online environments, …

Assessment Online: Informing Teaching And Learning, Geoff N. Masters Ao

Teacher columnist – Geoff Masters

Online assessments are capable of providing significantly improved feedback to teaching and learning. Experience in schools is demonstrating the potential of online assessment – provided the foundations are right.

Assessment Online: Informing Teaching And Learning, Geoff N. Masters

Teacher columnist – Geoff Masters

Online assessments are capable of providing significantly improved feedback to teaching and learning. Experience in schools is demonstrating the potential of online assessment – provided the foundations are right.

The advantages of online assessment are often described in terms of its administrative convenience, efficiency and lower costs. However, well-constructed online assessments also are capable of providing more timely, more instructionally useful feedback to teaching and learning. For a number of years ACER has been investigating ways to enhance the educational value of online assessments.

Exposing Problems Teaching Students Morphological Species Identification, Trevor Stamper, Lauren Weidner, Gregory Nigoghosian, Ludmila D. Nunes

IMPACT Presentations

When dealing with physical remains, morphological assessment for species is a traditional approach to entomological specimen identification. A dichotomous key guides the user through taxa determination for a specimen by providing a series of dual-choice nodes that center around morphological differences. Each nodal choice leads to either a new set of dichotomous choices or a taxa decision. We evaluated student’s ability to utilize a dichotomous key down to species for a limited set of taxa, by reviewing their nodal decisions along with their confidence level using a Likert scale (1-5).

Along with individual decision recording, students conducted a post-decision group …

The Introduction Of Informal Cooperative Learning Into Our Programming Laboratories, Guity Ravai, Ludmila Nunes, Ronald Erdei

IMPACT Presentations

Presented at the Women in Engineering ProActive Network (WEPAN) Change Leader Forum: Creating a Mindset for Action in Westminster, CO, USA

Predicting Teacher Value-Added Results In Non-Tested Subjects Based On Confounding Variables: A Multinomial Logistic Regression, Nathan Street

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Teacher value-added measures (VAM) are designed to provide information regarding teachers’ causal impact on the academic growth of students while controlling for exogenous variables. While some researchers contend VAMs successfully and authentically measure teacher causality on learning, others suggest VAMs cannot adequately control for exogenous influences on the classroom. Furthermore, because VAMs are primarily connected to student performance on standardized, high-stakes exams and those exams are resoundingly considered to be inadequate measures of true student learning, educators and educational leaders assert VAM results are moot. The purpose of this study was to consider the potential for student background, teacher preparation, …

Evaluation Instruments And Good Practices In Online Education, Sally J. Baldwin, Jesús Trespalacios

Educational Technology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Chickering and Gamson’s (1987) Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education offers extensively researched and validated tenets for best practices in higher education. After a review of the literature, twenty-eight evaluation instruments currently used to design and review online courses in higher education institutions were collected and divided into categories, based on geographical reach and the type of institution for which they were developed. This study investigates how evaluation instruments used in higher education assess the Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education, and what other items are addressed in the evaluation of courses. Findings show that national …

Using Concept Maps To Monitor Knowledge Structure Changes In A Science Classroom, Leah J. Cook

Dissertations

The aim of this research is to determine what differences may exist in students’ structural knowledge while using a variety of concept mapping assessments. A concept map can be used as an assessment which connects concepts in a knowledge domain. A single assessment may not be powerful enough to establish how students’ new knowledge relates to prior knowledge. More research is needed to establish how various aspects of the concept mapping task influence the output of map creation by students. Using multiple concept maps and pre-instruction and postinstruction VNOS instruments during a 16-week semester, this study was designed to investigate …

What Impacts Do Oer Have On Students? Students Share Their Experiences With A Health Psychology Oer At New York City College Of Technology, Cailean Cooney

Publications and Research

This article reports findings from a study conducted with students in three sections of a Health Psychology course that replaced a traditional textbook with open educational resources (OER) as the primary course material. The purpose of the study was to learn how OER impacted students. Data were collected in Fall 2015 with students from New York City College of Technology (City Tech), of the City University of New York (CUNY), a comprehensive college located in Brooklyn. Students were assigned the OER by their course instructor, who developed it as part of a library funded OER pilot initiative. Two research instruments …

Derring Do Survey Data: Exploring Health Sciences Library Collaboration With Evaluation Experts, Marian Taliaferro, Jackie Loweree

Marian Taliaferro

No abstract provided.

Stitching Codeable Circuits: High School Students' Learning About Circuitry And Coding With Electronic Textiles, Breanne Krystine Litts, Yasmin B. Kafai, Debora A. Lui, Justice T. Walker, Sari A. Widman

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Learning about circuitry by connecting a battery, light bulb, and wires is a common activity in many science classrooms. In this paper, we expand students’ learning about circuitry with electronic textiles, which use conductive thread instead of wires and sewable LEDs instead of lightbulbs, by integrating programming sensor inputs and light outputs and examining how the two domains interact.We implemented an electronic textiles unit with 23 high school students ages 16–17 years who learned how to craft and code circuits with the LilyPad Arduino, an electronic textile construction kit. Our analyses not only confirm significant increases in students’ understanding of …

Pisa 2015: Financial Literacy In Australia, Sue Thomson, Lisa De Bortoli

Dr Sue Thomson

The main focus of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) financial literacy assessment is on measuring the proficiency of 15-year-old students in demonstrating and applying the knowledge and skill that they have learned in and out of school. Like other PISA domains, financial literacy is assessed using an instrument designed to provide data that are valid, reliable and interpretable. PISA is an international comparative assessment of student achievement directed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). PISA measures how well 15-year-olds, who are nearing the end of their compulsory schooling in most participating educational systems, are prepared …

Pisa 2015: Financial Literacy In Australia, Sue Thomson, Lisa De Bortoli

Lisa De Bortoli

The main focus of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) financial literacy assessment is on measuring the proficiency of 15-year-old students in demonstrating and applying the knowledge and skill that they have learned in and out of school. Like other PISA domains, financial literacy is assessed using an instrument designed to provide data that are valid, reliable and interpretable. PISA is an international comparative assessment of student achievement directed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). PISA measures how well 15-year-olds, who are nearing the end of their compulsory schooling in most participating educational systems, are prepared …

Is A Students’ Ability To Critically Self-Reflect, Related To Their Performance On Physiotherapy Clinical Placements?, Sarah Brooks, Nikki Milne, Rob Marc Orr, Rebecca Terry

Rob Marc Orr

Background. The relationship between students’ reflective ability and performance on physiotherapy clinical placement is currently unclear.

Objectives. To investigate: i) if a relationship exists between students’ critical reflective ability and performance on physiotherapy clinical placement; and whether these relationships differ by ii) Critical reflective task (CRT) rank grade or, iii) by gender.

Design. An observational cohort study design.

Methods. Critical Reflection Task (CRT) marks and clinical placement (APP) scores from 196 (F=94; M=102) post-graduate, entry-level physiotherapy students were analyzed.

Results. A significant moderate predictive relationship was found between CRT marks and APP scores (r=.411, p2=.169, SEE=12.79). There was a weak …

Is A Students’ Ability To Critically Self-Reflect, Related To Their Performance On Physiotherapy Clinical Placements?, Sarah Brooks, Nikki Milne, Rob Marc Orr, Rebecca Terry

Dr Nikki Milne

Background. The relationship between students’ reflective ability and performance on physiotherapy clinical placement is currently unclear.

Objectives. To investigate: i) if a relationship exists between students’ critical reflective ability and performance on physiotherapy clinical placement; and whether these relationships differ by ii) Critical reflective task (CRT) rank grade or, iii) by gender.

Design. An observational cohort study design.

Methods. Critical Reflection Task (CRT) marks and clinical placement (APP) scores from 196 (F=94; M=102) post-graduate, entry-level physiotherapy students were analyzed.

Results. A significant moderate predictive relationship was found between CRT marks and APP scores (r=.411, p2=.169, SEE=12.79). There was a weak …