Higher Education Commons^™

Chapter 5: Instructional Message Design With Powerpoint, Meredith Spencer

Instructional Message Design, Volume 1

Now a household name, Microsoft PowerPoint software is one of the most commonly used slideware presentation tools in business, scientific conferences, education, and other professional, academic, government, and military settings. As an instructional message design tool, controversy proliferates surrounding its role in the classroom experience and its impact on cognitive learning. After compiling the research, lessons can be garnered on how to best visually display PowerPoint slides, how to most effectively deliver PowerPoint-aided instruction, and how to maximize student learning from PowerPoint-based lessons. This chapter will explore the existing body of literature on the technology’s capabilities and limitations; offer best …

I Had To Do The Reading: A Phenomenological Case Study Of College English Students, Jennifer Eleanor Frank

Teaching & Learning Theses & Dissertations

The purposes of this qualitative phenomenological case study were to investigate multiple student experiences in a general elective introduction to literature course when music was added as an autonomously structured assignment. Music and song lyrics are no strangers to the classroom setting, but there is a gap in the literature examining the space where students can create meaningful links between music they enjoy and assigned course readings in college English. Informed by social constructivism and English studies theories this study was designed to investigate any impact that autonomously driven music-link assignments may have on students. The structured assignments were called …

Punctuations In Life: Exploring The Developmental Journeys Of Campus Tradition Builders, Preston Scott Reilly

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Theses & Dissertations

Campus traditions are powerful vehicles that can shape college life (Cowley & Waller, 1979). Students foster smaller identities through their involvement in traditions on campus, and these traditions often ritualize coming-of-age or the start of American adulthood (Bronner, 2012). However, the climate of higher education today may be putting campus traditions and the purposes they achieve at risk. Often mistaken as frivolous and unnecessary parts of campus life (Manning 1994), these critical meaning-shaping events could fall prey to cost-cutting and downsizing as college campuses continue to evolve.

Guided by narrative analysis methods described by Patton (2002) and the Standard Life …

An Experimental Study Of Research Self-Efficacy In Master’S Students, Nicola Aelish Meade

Counseling & Human Services Theses & Dissertations

Engaging master’s counseling students in the research literature and facilitating an environment that strengthens their research identity development are necessities for counselor educators. This need is juxtaposed with over 20 years of research, which found that counseling students appeared to lack confidence and have low interest in this topic (Gelso, Baumann, Chui, & Savela, 2013; Phillips & Russell, 1994). Low research self-efficacy was presented as an important explanatory factor. Thus, this experimental study deployed a pedagogical intervention based on the work of Albert Bandura and his social learning theory. Two sections of the required research course in a southeastern university …

Sustainability Of Study Abroad Programs At Rural Community Colleges, Michelle Lieberman

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Theses & Dissertations

In this era of increased globalization, it is important to prepare students to participate in world issues and a worldwide economy. Study abroad increases knowledge regarding international affairs, boosts access to valuable cross-cultural experiences, and promotes academic success, retention (Raby, Rhodes, & Biscarra, 2014), cultural awareness (Clarke, Flaherty, Wright, & McMillen, 2009), and professional growth (Younes & Asay, 2003). Community colleges educate nearly half of the nation’s undergraduate students, but offer disproportionately few study-abroad programs (Hardy & Katsinas, 2007). Little existing research has documented the study abroad experiences of community college students. Even fewer studies have addressed sparse community college …

Work Environment Factors Impacting The Report Of Secondary Trauma In U.S. Resident Assistants, Robert Jason Lynch

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Faculty Publications

WORKING WITH TRAUMATIZED INDIVIDUALS can have potentially negative impacts on professional support personnel, including cognitive decline, increased anxiety, and declines in physical health. Despite the responsibilities of resident assistants as crisis-responders, few studies explore how they are impacted by secondary trauma. This study sought to understand how specific aspects of the RA work environment relate to their self-reported levels of secondary trauma. Using a sample of RAs (N = 208), the researcher conducted a quantitative secondary analysis of an existing dataset assessing symptoms of secondary traumatic stress in RAs. Findings indicated relationships between a variety of environmental factors and self-reported …

Combined Srl-Based Cognitive-Motivational Modules Increase Undergraduate Biology Grades, Jennifer G. Cromley, Tony Perez, Avi Kaplan, Ting Dai, Kyle Mara, Michael J. Balsai

STEMPS Faculty Publications

Students’ success in undergraduate STEM courses requires effective study strategies, but also the motivation to enact them, drawing on two key tenets of Self-Regulated Learning. Interventions designed to promote students’ achievement and retention in STEM have commonly focused on either cognition or motivation. Building on Pintrich’s (2000) SRL framework, we iteratively-developed and tested the effect of different combinations of one of four cognition-focused with one of three motivation-focused intervention modules. Initial development took place in 2015-2016 and post-iterative experiments occurred in 2017. Participants were 3,092 undergraduate introductory biology students tested in 10 studies at 3 universities over 4 academic years. …

The Role Of Data Analytics In Education: Possibilities & Limitations, Robert L. Moore

STEMPS Faculty Publications

In the last decade, we have seen dramatic increases in the integration of technology within education. It has now become commonplace for K-5 educators to apply learning management systems (LMS) in ways that were previously only seen in higher education contexts. Similarly, on the higher education side, we are seeing a significant increase in online learning evidenced by the growing number of for-profit online colleges and universities (Picciano, 2012). This chapter utilizes Khan’s Learning Framework (Khan, 2001, 2005) to explore the role data analytics can play in education by looking at the possibilities and limitations of analytics.

How Should Institutions Of Higher Education Define And Measure Student Success? Student Success As Liberal Education Escapes Definition And Measurement, Laura E. Smithers, Peter M. Magolda (Ed.), Marcia B. Baxter Magolda (Ed.), Rozana Carducci (Ed.)

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Faculty Publications

[First paragraph]

The question structuring this chapter begins with the presumption that we should define and measure student success. The perspective missing from this question is: What possibilities exist for versions of student success in excess of its definition and measurement? Measurements ask us to standardize definitions of success—say, four-year graduation—and work to produce all students in this image. As a former academic adviser, I can read a university catalog and tell you the quickest pathways to graduation a university has to offer. This makes me an asset to institutions that place a value on student success as measured by …

Liberal Education And The Capitalocene In American Higher Education, Laura Smithers

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Faculty Publications

Data-driven control is remaking American higher education as the Capitalocene is remaking environment around us. In higher education, how might we orientate the queer potential of liberal education to produce the conditions of possibility of an Earth beyond the Capitalocene and data-driven control, an Earth that produces expansive notions of student success and racially just futures? I take up this inquiry in three sections. First, I establish relations between the orientation of the Capitalocene and the apparatus of data-driven control to develop a critical new materialisms analytic. I then diffract the practices of a student success initiative at a west …