Education Commons^™

Implementation Of Student-Centered Teaching Methods Among Stem Faculty, Melissa Cavan

Theses and Dissertations

Students at the college level need good instruction and active learning has been shown to improve student retention and learning. Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Faculty Institution (STEMFI) aims to assist faculty in implementing active learning in the classroom. This qualitative case study sought to understand faculty perspectives two years after completion of STEMFI in the areas of active learning implementation, methodology and student attitudes and impact. Data collected reported that the faculty participants still use active learning strategies in their classrooms two years after exiting the STEMFI program. The faculty also felt the need for a refresher course and …

Creating Statistical Testing Tools In Digital Testing Environments: Eliminating Confirmation Bias And Improving Pedagogy In The Humanities Testing Lab At Byu, Robert Hatch

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The Humanities Testing Lab at BYU is a computer testing environment for humanities students and professors. Statistics are useful in a pedagogical sense because they present unbiased information about the progress of the class. The Humanities Testing Lab did not previously have a statistical tool, making it the perfect place to monitor the change in teacher perspective when a statistical tool was introduced. In an effort to better the BYU Humanities Testing Lab, an ideal statistical tool was researched, created, and delivered to participating professors. Their interactions with the tool were measured through a set of before and after surveys. …

Reverse Mentoring In The Classroom: A Qualitative Study, Shandon Miles Gubler

Theses and Dissertations

The intent of this paper is to understand the lived experiences of higher education students engaging in reverse mentoring. A literature review aims to discover how reverse mentoring is being implemented. Reverse mentoring, framed by social exchange theory and leader-member exchange theory, is a method focused on younger generations teaching technology to older generations, such as current-day Millennials with Baby Boomers. This review examines reverse mentoring practices, analyzes what has worked, and seeks to determine if this learning method has a place in the classroom. Due to the segmented, yet evolving application of reverse mentoring, there is a lack of …

Compassionate Writing Response: Using Dialogic Feedback To Encourage Student Voice In The First-Year Composition Classroom, Tialitha Macklin

Journal of Response to Writing

In addition to other unfortunate circumstances, teacher response that comes in the form of negative, generic, and unintelligible commentary causes students to become alienated from writing. This problematic response often results from the lack of supportive student-centered response pedagogies within the first-year composition classroom. In an attempt to prevent additional writerly estrangement and to undo students’ isolation from the writing process, this article explores Marshall Rosenberg’s nonviolent communication theory as a potential framework for a dialogic, compassionate writing response pedagogy.

An Extensible Technology Framework For Cyber Security Education, Frank Jordan Sheen

Theses and Dissertations

Cyber security education has evolved over the last decade to include new methods of teaching and technology to prepare students. Instructors in this field of study often deal with a subject matter that has rigid principles, but changing ways of applying those principles. This makes maintaining courses difficult. This case study explored the kind of teaching methods, technology, and means used to explain these concepts. This study shows that generally, cyber security courses require more time to keep up to date. It also evaluates one effort, the NxSecLab, on how it attempted to relieve the administrative issues in teaching these …

Comparing Two Different Student Teaching Structures By Analyzing Conversations Between Student Teachers And Their Cooperating Teachers, Niccole Suzette Franc

Theses and Dissertations

Research has shown that preservice teachers participating in traditional student teaching programs tend to focus on classroom management, with very little focus on student mathematical thinking. The student teaching program at BYU has been redesigned in the hopes of shifting the focus of student teachers away from classroom management toward student mathematical thinking. This study compared conversations between student teachers and cooperating teachers before and after the redesign of the program to work towards determining the effectiveness of the refocusing of the new student teaching program. The study found that STs and CTs in the different student teaching structures were …

Kierkegaard And A Pedagogy Of Liminality, Sylvia Mcmillan

Theses and Dissertations

There is a strain of curriculum theory especially since the reconceptionalist movement that applies existential philosophy to educational issues and questions. There is also a related branch of curriculum theory that looks especially at existentialist theology to cast light on curriculum issues from a more religious slant. Both of these strains of analysis are rooted in Kierkegaard, the father of existentialism and existential theology (Huebner, 1999; Tillich, 1948). The educational implications of the works of Kierkegaard are a subject that has been virtually unexamined in either educational or Kierkegaardian scholarship except by two scholars whose works are already 40 years …

A Study Analyzing Five Instructional Methods For Teaching Software To Junior High Students, Scott Ronald Bartholomew

Theses and Dissertations

If you ask 5 different teachers what the best way to teach a new technology to a student is you will get 5 different answers. (Bork, 2001; Cheong, 2008; Egal, 2009; Howell, 2001) What is the best way to teach a new computer software application to a student? In the technological world we live in today the effective transfer of technological knowledge is paramount. With varying opinions even among the leaders of national technology teacher associations (Haynie, 2005) there is a large level of ambiguity in relation to best practices in technology teaching. This study evaluates five commonly used methods …

The Educational Philosophy And Pedagogical Practices Of Eliza R. Snow, Jolene Merica

Theses and Dissertations

Eliza R. Snow's contributions as an educator have gone largely unexamined yet are an important element of her lifework. An analysis of her writing, both poetic and instructional, as well as minutes and notes from her instructional meetings, supports the view that as an educator Eliza R. Snow had a definite philosophy that informed her educational practice and shaped teaching and learning in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Two articles, one on the educational philosophy of Eliza R. Snow and the other on her pedagogical practices, illuminate her contributions as an educational leader. Snow believed that God's …

Comparing The Pedagogical Thinking Of More Successful And Less Successful Adult Esl Instructors Using Stimulated Recall, Jason Paul Roberts

Theses and Dissertations

This paper reports a study that examined the pedagogical knowledge (knowledge and beliefs related to the act of teaching) of two more successful and two less successful adult ESL instructors during planning teaching and post teaching reflection. The verbal reports of their teaching were compared to previous studies (Gatbonton, 2000, 2008; Mullock, 2006) that used stimulated recall to categorize adult ESL instructors' pedagogical thoughts during their instruction. The comparison showed that the previous categories were inadequate to cover the data. Additional codes were added in order to codify all the data after which patterns and themes emerged that overarched the …

The Creation And Use Of Open Educational Resources In Christian Higher Education, John L. Hilton Iii, David Wiley

Faculty Publications

A significant movement in education concerns the use of open educational resources (OERs). By “open” it is generally meant that the resource is freely available to others to reuse in different contexts. These resources could include books, lesson plans, syllabi, slide shows, etc. There are several examples of individuals and institutions providing open educational resources; this openness is also specifically manifest in the field of religious education. I discuss different levels in which OERs can be “open” and the implications of these levels when creating OERs. Common motivations and obstacles to creating OERs are discussed. A particularly significant issue regarding …

An Investigation Of The Technological, Pedagogical And Content Knowledge Framework In Successful Chinese Language Classrooms, Su-Ling Hsueh

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative case study investigates whether technological, pedagogical and content knowledge (TPCK) is balanced and integrated in Chinese language classrooms. Three expert Chinese teachers in technology-enhanced classrooms, as well as their students, were observed and studied. Four and a half months of data were collected in the form of classroom observations, interviews, reflective journals, and document analysis. Four basic findings were derived from the study. First, the TPCK framework reflected an observable instructional process for communication between teachers and students. However, teachers did not knowingly integrate technology, pedagogy and content in technology-enhanced classrooms. Second, content was the focal point during …

An Evaluation Of A Student Response System Used At Brigham Young University, Coral Marie Hanson

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this project is two fold: (a) to evaluate the technology (hardware and software) of the student response system (SRS) used at Brigham Young University (BYU) and (b) to evaluate which instructional methods being used with the SRS students' feel are most helpful. In the past, the student response systems supported by BYU have not fully met the needs of professors and problems with the systems have limited professors' uses of the SRS. Ten professors were randomly selected to participate in the evaluation using a stratified random sampling technique. The data collection methods consisted of classroom observations, interviews …

Let's Surf-The-Net! World-Wide Web (Www) Sites In Italy, Or: How/Why Include A Web-Browser Component In Culture And Civilization Classes, Ilona Klein

Faculty Publications

First, this essay details the technical elements required to set up a computer for Web-surfing, then it discusses the rationale for a Web-browser component in Culture and Civilization courses. The first part of this study (the technical portion) is geared specifically toward teachers with little or no familiarity with the Internet and the World-Wide Web. In the second part of the article, the applied-pedagogy aspects of Web-browsing are provided for all colleagues in the profession, proficient or not in cyberspace surfing. This article argues that the internet and the World-Wide Web are here to stay and that, within certain limitations, …

Presenting Italian Comparative And Superlative Forms Of Adjectives To College L2 Beginners, Ilona Klein

Faculty Publications

This study treats the necessity to de-emphasize the focus on grammar teaching alone in L2, and to introduce methods which are not teacher-centered, so as to enable students to interact more among each other.

By using comparative and superlative forms of adjectives – but in reality using a sequence of teaching techniques that could be applied to other grammatical situations – this article presents the use of sea shells as a visual and tactile aid which allows students to shift their L2 efforts from an abstract notion to a concrete usage.

This study offers a tool to attempt a balance …