Education Commons^™

(Non)Cognitive Dissonance? A Stakeholder-Based Exploration Of The Consideration Of Graduate Admissions Applicants' Personal Skills And Qualities, Reginald M. Gooch, Joseph H. Paris, Sara B. Haviland, Jose Sotelo

Journal of College Access

Prospective graduate students’ noncognitive attributes are commonly evaluated as a part of a holistic review of their admission applications. Yet it is difficult to determine which noncognitive attributes are considered by those who evaluate graduate admissions applications and what approaches they take to measure applicants’ noncognitive attributes. It is even less clear to what degree prospective graduate students understand how they are evaluated for graduate admissions and how the evaluation of their noncognitive attributes factor into admissions decisions. Drawing on surveys of graduate enrollment management (GEM) professionals and prospective graduate students in the United States, our study investigates the noncognitive …

Associations Between Learning Environment And Study Satisfaction Across Time: Two Cross-Sectional Analyses Of Occupational Therapy Students, Gry Mørk, Susanne G. Johnson, Astrid Gramstad, Linda Stigen, Tove Carstensen, Tore Bonsaksen

The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy

There is increasing attention toward students’ satisfaction and how they perceive the quality of the program they attend. This study examined stability and change across time with regard to the relationships between learning environment factors and occupational therapy students’ satisfaction with the program. In the two consecutive cross-sectional analyses performed in this study, 163 second-year students and 193 third-year students from all six occupational therapy education programs in Norway participated. The Course Experience Questionnaire was used to assess learning environment factors and study satisfaction. The data were analyzed with Pearson’s correlation coefficient r and with hierarchical linear regression. Bivariate associations …

Dreamers: Stories Of Daca Recipients In Higher Education During The 2018-2021 Political Climate, Alicia Billini

Dissertations

Immigration has been a longstanding conversation, or debate, in American politics and society throughout history. Whether, or how much, to embrace immigrant populations into U.S. society has been a source of polarization over time, specifically as related to the handling or treatment of undocumented immigrants. A particularly acute dimension of this issue in the United States is the question of undocumented immigrants who were brought into this country as children illegally by their parents (Council on Foreign Relations, 2021). Efforts to address the needs of this unique population of immigrants have been caught between the historically and widely divergent values …

Institutional Changes In Western Michigan University For Incorporation Of Education For Sustainability, Saman Khan

Dissertations

Higher Education institutions (HEIs) have the potential to be significant contributors in the pursuit of a sustainable world through the incorporation of Education for Sustainability (EFS). However, HEIs are entrenched with structures and values that are often resistant to change. The literature reveals that instructors’ beliefs and institutional contexts are the two main factors that impact the implementation of institutional change for sustainability education. Western Michigan University (WMU) has created new required curriculum “WMU Essential Studies” (WES) for undergraduate students and they have targeted sustainability as an essential learning outcome, by integrating and applying it in content courses. Using a …

Undergraduate Educational Research Experiences In The Study Of Interior Design, Julia Virginia Pimentel Jiménez

Dissertations

Designers create social constructions (experiences and interactions) for human beings among themselves and with and within interior environments to enhance meaning in people´s lives (Poldma, 2011). Those social constructions are created through the design process developed by the interior designer; that process relies heavily on design research. Therefore, it is at the undergraduate level that the passion for research should start for interior design (ID) students. Faculty in ID programs need to encourage that passion by engage students in meaningful learning experiences such as how to ask questions about users, functions, activities, and aesthetics.

This study explored what types of …

Occupational Therapy Students In Norway: Do Their Approaches To Studying Vary By Year In The Program?, Tore Bonsaksen, Mikkel M. Thørrisen, Talieh Sadeghi

The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy

Approaches to studying may be influenced by students’ age, maturity, and experience in higher education. Students’ approaches to studying may develop toward deep and/or strategic approaches and away from a surface approach as they move through the curriculum, which is generally considered a positive development. This study aimed to identify differences in approaches to studying among first-, second-, and third-year students enrolled in an occupational therapy program. Three cohorts of students (n = 160) from one university college completed the Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST) along with sociodemographic information. One-way analyses of variance were used to …

Building An Evaluation Model Of Academic Advising’S Impact On Progression, Persistence, And Retention Within University Settings, Abhik Roy

Dissertations

Academic advising is at a point in its maturation as a field of study where anecdotal evidence is no longer sufficient to inform the measure of effectiveness. As the area becomes more research-based, advising’s measurable impact should be based on an evaluative framework; no such structure currently exists. In this study, three methods were used to investigate this problem and ultimately to create a model and checklist. Firstly, a descriptive study was used to examine if there is an understanding of what evaluation is within the advising community, one where assessment has been the dominant practice. Secondly, a quasi-experimental design …

Measuring Performance Excellence: Key Performance Indicators For Institutions Accepted Into The Academic Quality Improvement Program (Aqip), Paul J. Ballard

Dissertations

Given growing interest in accountability and outcomes, the North Central Association's Higher Learning Commission developed a new path for accreditation, the Academic Quality Improvement Program (AQIP). The goal is to infuse continuous improvement and quality in the culture of higher education, and to blend traditional accreditation with the philosophy and techniques of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program. Yet, little is known about the key performance indicators (KPI) that colleges and universities are using to improve their quality and continuous improvement processes.

To this end, my research involved a content analysis of the Systems Portfolios submitted for accreditation by 34 purposefully …

The Dissemination And Effective Use Of Physics Education Research In Undergraduate Instruction, Trevor Stefanick

Masters Theses

Based on the results of a national survey of physics faculty, a set of interviews was conducted of 70 physics faculty from a diverse set of institutions. The interviews included questions about the dissemination and effective use of curricula and instructional strategies based on Physics Education Research (PER), focused to obtain recommendations to the PER community that might help to spread the use of these PER-based materials. Approximately half of the interviews (those with faculty who indicated knowledge about or use of Peer Instruction) have been previously analyzed. This project is the analysis of the 38 interviews that were conducted …

Accelerated Degree Completion Programs: The Effects Of Core Professors In Nontraditional Higher Education, Dale Frederick Gadd

Dissertations

Nontraditional Accelerated Degree Completion Programs (ADCPs) became popular in the 1980s at many private, higher education institutions, and involved cohort groups facilitated by core or major professors. There has been little research addressing the effectiveness of a core-professor or multiple-professor approach within ADCPs, or research on how students view their learning experiences under this unique concept. This study therefore examines: (1) the effects of using a core-professor concept within nontraditional ADCPs, and (2) students' experiences under the core-professor and multiple-professor concepts.

Two sources of data were used, as obtained from students who had been involved in an ADCP program at …