Education Commons^™

Meas: Exploring Links Between Implementation And Standards Mastery, Noah Silver

Honors Projects

In order to effectively enhance a student’s mathematical understanding and development in the field of mathematics, students need to engage in problem solving. Model eliciting activities, or MEAs, provide students with tasks that promote higher level thinking and the ability to utilize mathematics outside of the classroom; they also align and promote the utilization of the Common Core State Standards and Standards for Mathematical Practice. Research suggests that the language and motivation promoted by MEAs enriches engagement and increases student ability and performance of traditional and real-world mathematics. Use of technology further supports these goals. Through the analysis of checkpoint …

Data And Assessment Management In Collegiate Recreation, Jeana Carow

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Collegiate recreation programs and centers typically provide traditional programming space in addition to a range of physical activity spaces and resources, as a valuable part of the student experience. The external pressures of identifying and communicating departmental value and impact on the campus community has resulted in collegiate recreation departments’ use of data to communicate the effectiveness and impact of their work. The purpose of the study was to identify the data collection and assessment management practices of collegiate recreation departments, particularly focusing on the organization of data and assessment strategies as well as data collection, storage, reporting, analyzing, and …

Analyzing The Retention Of Knowledge Among General Chemistry Students, James T. Kingsepp

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

General chemistry is a survey course meant to form a foundation for students’ to build upon as they progress into chemistry sub-disciplines. The effectiveness of this foundation rests heavily on students’ abilities to retain or relearn concepts from the course. This study seeks to investigate the utility of a measure of general chemistry students’ knowledge retention across the time period of one semester. This approach was enacted in five different courses of either first or second semester general chemistry. The results showed that one-quarter to one-half of students exhibited a high rate of retention across the semester. A smaller group, …

Breaking The Language Barrier: Equitable Assessment In General Chemistry, Eshani Lee

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Because language provides the framework through which knowledge is constructed, it is crucial to consider the ways in which students with limited English proficiencies are able to express their understanding. English language learners (ELLs) make up a significant portion of the student body in the education system and represent many ethnic and racial minorities in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) fields (Burke & Mattis, 2007). Despite the national push to build a more diversified, STEM-ready workforce, there is little research that considers the way ELLs are assessed in STEM courses at the postsecondary level. Literature reports that science tests …

Automated Optical Mark Recognition Scoring System For Multiple-Choice Questions, Murtadha Alomran

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Multiple-choice questions are one of the questions commonly used in assessments. It is widely used because this type of examination can be an effective and reliable way to examine the level of student’s knowledge. So far, this type of examination can either be marked by hand or with specialised answer sheets and scanning equipment. There are specialised answer sheets and scanning equipment to mark multiple-choice questions automatically. However, these are expensive, specialised and restrictive answer sheets and optical mark recognition scanners.

This research aims to design and implement a multiple-choice answer sheet and a reliable image processing-based scoring system that …

Development And Testing Of An Assessment To Measure Spatial Thinking About Enhanced Greenhouse Effect, Heather Jean Skaza

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Americans, in general, do not behave in environmentally sustainable ways. We drive cars and fly in planes that emit planet-warming carbon. We purchase food in nearly indestructible packaging that is not recycled or repurposed. We do not consider the environmental impact of the “stuff” stuffed into our grocery and department stores, most of which is made of materials that had to be dug out of the ground, leaving rivers and skies full of pollution in its place. Citizens have a responsibility to understand complex global and local environmental problems. A person’s ability to think about the way that an environmental …

An Investigation Of The Dayton Regional Stem School Public-Private Partnerships, Kimberly S. Poole

CCE Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation study documents in-depth the exploration of the Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) between the Dayton Regional STEM School (DRSS) and their industry partners as well as the establishment of a framework for evaluating and assessing PPPs. The public-private partnership agreements were studied in order to answer the over-arching research question: How is an effective public-private partnership established, assessed, and evaluated in education? A descriptive case study methodology was used to study DRSS' public-private partnership agreements to determine if goals and objectives were established and whether or not the partnerships met those goals and objectives. This case study also included …

Predicting High-Stakes Tests Of Math Achievement Using A Group-Administered Rti Instrument: Validating Skills Measured By The Monitoring Instructional Responsiveness: Math, Jeremy Thomas Coles

Doctoral Dissertations

Three universal screeners and nine progress monitoring probes from the Monitoring Instructional Responsiveness: Math (MIR:M), a silent, group-administered math assessment designed for implementation with an RTI Model, were administered to 223 fifth-grade students. The growth parameters of the overall MIR:M composite and two global composites (math calculation and math reasoning) identified significant variation in student growth, within significant linear and quadratic trajectories. However, there were significant differences in the nature of the growth trajectories that have applied educational implications. In addition, growth parameters across the three composites provided significant predictive potential when using the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) Achievement …

Assessing College Students' Understanding Of Acid Base Chemistry Concepts, Yanjun Wan

All Dissertations

Typically most college curricula include three acid base models: Arrhenius', Bronsted-Lowry's, and Lewis'. Although Lewis' acid base model is generally thought to be the most sophisticated among these three models, and can be further applied in reaction mechanisms, most general chemistry curricula either do not include Lewis' acid base model, or quickly mention it at the end of the acid base chapter, because of the concern that Lewis' model may confuse general chemistry students (Shaffer 2006). While such a disconnection in curriculum might put students to disadvantage as they try to construct solid and coherent acid base mental models, there …

Effective Methods Of Formative Assessment, Chelse Rae Bugg

Online Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to explore the implementation of formative assessment in the mathematics classroom. Formative assessment is considered to be any data-driven activity that an educator uses to help guide and improve instruction. While there is an abundance of research that concludes that formative assessment does indeed improve student achievement, practical methods of implementation are not thoroughly discussed. To partially determine which methods of formative assessment most positively impact student achievement, a study was conducted at Lafayette High School. The researcher compared two popular methods of formative assessment: daily exit slips and unit probing (pre-, middle-, and …

The Measure And Instruction Of Scale In Introductory Chemistry, Karrie Linn Gerlach

Theses and Dissertations

As a student, it is fundamental to comprehend how small an atom or molecule is in order to truly understand how the world works. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has determined that scale is a critical theme that pervades through all areas of science and is critical to a deep understanding. This project determined that students, which are more proficient with scale and moving between the macroscopic and particle worlds, were better performers in chemistry classes. Interviews were used to determine what the students understood and what common misconceptions were present. These lead to the development …

Rapid Knowledge Assessment (Rka): Assessing Students Content Knowledge Through Rapid, In Class Assessment Of Expertise, Erin Margaret O'Connell

Theses and Dissertations

Understanding how students go about problem solving in chemistry lends many possible advantages for interventions in teaching strategies for the college classroom. The work presented here is the development of an in-classroom, real-time, formative instrument to assess student expertise in chemistry with the purpose of developing classroom interventions. The development of appropriate interventions requires the understanding of how students go about starting to solve tasks presented to them, what their mental effort (load on working memory) is, and whether or not their performance was accurate. To measure this, the Rapid Knowledge Assessment (RKA) instrument uses clickers (handheld electronic instruments for …

Assessing The Effect Of Simulation Models On Systems Learning In An Introductory Environmental Science Course, Heather J. Skaza

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

While there is plenty of anecdotal evidence within the systems dynamics community supporting the use of systems simulations in the classroom to improve student understanding, there is little published, controlled, experimental research. This paper describes the results of a paired experiment testing the effect of using system dynamics simulations to increase systems understanding in an introductory environmental science course. We believed that the students using the systems simulations would demonstrate a greater systemic understanding of environmental issues than those who did not.

We conducted an experiment during the fall semester of 2009, with 304 students enrolled in four sections of …

A Study Of The Curriculum Of The Natural Science Division Of Ouachita Baptist University, Natural Sciences Group

Honors Theses

In our evaluation of the curriculum of the Natural Science Division, we began by reviewing the catalogue descriptions of our courses and evaluating whether the courses meet the objectives given. To do this we divided into departments since our division is so large. Next, we wrote to Hendrix, Little Rook University, Southwestern at Memphis, and State College of Arkansas and compared their course offerings with ours. In this comparison we discovered our strengths and weaknesses and changes that need to be made in our present curriculum. In several cases we decided upon possible alterations which would aid the student going …