Science and Mathematics Education Commons^™

College Of Engineering Senior Design Competition Fall 2011, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

Fred and Harriet Cox Senior Design Competition Projects

Part of every UNLV engineering student’s academic experience, the senior design project stimulates engineering innovation and entrepreneurship. Each student in their senior year chooses, plans, designs, and prototypes a product in this required element of the curriculum. A capstone to the student’s educational career, the senior design project encourages the student to use everything learned in the engineering program to create a practical, real world solution to an engineering challenge. The senior design competition helps focus the senior students in increasing the quality and potential for commercial application for their design projects. Judges from local industry evaluate the projects on …

College Of Engineering Senior Design Competition Spring 2011, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

Fred and Harriet Cox Senior Design Competition Projects

Part of every UNLV engineering student’s academic experience, the senior design project stimulates engineering innovation and entrepreneurship. Each student in their senior year chooses, plans, designs, and prototypes a product in this required element of the curriculum. A capstone to the student’s educational career, the senior design project encourages the student to use everything learned in the engineering program to create a practical, real world solution to an engineering challenge.

The senior design competition helps focus the senior students in increasing the quality and potential for commercial application for their design projects. Judges from local industry evaluate the projects on …

Evaluation Of Senior Project Group Processes Against Cmmi Standards, Jonathan Winstead

Honors Capstone Projects and Theses

No abstract provided.

How Much Do U.S. University Students Know, And Want To Know, About Sustainability And Green Building? The Findings Of A Survey, And Possible Implications For General Elective Curricula., Jeremy R. Farner

Purdue Polytechnic Masters Theses

Using the survey approach, this investigation examined the attitudes and interest of college students at two universities in different geographic locations within the United States.  Approximately 24,000 students from all disciplines and majors at Weber State University (WSU) in Utah, and 4,000 at Purdue University in Indiana, were invited to participate in a study to determine current knowledge, familiarity, and interest in topics within the sustainability and Green Building educational arena. The goal of this study was to determine what students already know, would like to know, and how much interest there would be in developing …

Experiential Learning Curricular Development Model For Stimulating Student Interest In Green Collar Careers, Sally E. Arnett, Allen Kitchel, John G. Cannon

Online Journal for Workforce Education and Development

Green jobs are in high demand, yet there is lack of a trained workforce for the green industries. Early exposure to green careers can stimulate future employment interest among students. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of an experiential learning unit of instruction designed to expose students to and develop knowledge about the green collar workforce. The study used a mixed method research design. A purposive sample of 101 (n=101) secondary students in career development type classes were given a pre-test, treatment, and post-test that involved both quantitative and qualitative responses. The findings revealed that the …

Factors Related To Math Performance And Potential Benefits Of One-On-One Instruction, Amanda Zagame

Honors Projects in Mathematics

This fall 2010 study of Bryant University students enrolled in freshman-level math courses considered factors related to college-level math performance, including gender, math self-efficacy, math anxiety, and utilization of professors’ office hours and/or tutoring center services. Female students at Bryant reported lower levels of math self-efficacy and higher levels of math anxiety, both of which research has shown to be negatively correlated with test scores. The use of one-on-one instruction was expected to provide a potential counterweight to this equation. Results from the 287 initial and 229 final surveys administered in this study did not support this hypothesis. This phenomenon …

Redesigning Introductory Biology: A Proposal, Eileen Gregory, Craig Lending, Amanda N. Orenstein, Jane P. Ellis

Faculty Publications

With the increasing complexity and expansion of the biological sciences, there has been a corresponding increase in content in the first-year introductory biology course sequence for majors. In general this has resulted in courses that introduce students to large amounts of material and leave little time for practicing investigative science or skill development. Based on our analysis of data compiled from 742 biology faculty at a variety of institutions across the United States, we verified that there is strong agreement on the content appropriate for introductory biology courses for majors. Therefore, we propose that faculty teaching these courses focus primarily …

Ists, May 2011, Iowa Academy Of Science

ISTS Newsletter

In this issue:

--Notes and News

--Opportunities

Comparing The Cognitive Demand Of Traditional And Reform Algebra 1 Textbooks, Allison M. Park

HMC Senior Theses

Research has shown that students achieved higher standardized test scores in mathematics and gained more positive attitudes towards mathematics after learning from reform curricula. Because these studies involve actual students and teachers, there are classroom variables that are involved in these findings (Silver and Stein, 1996; Stein et al., 1996). To understand how much these curricula by themselves contribute to higher test scores, I have studied the cognitive demand of tasks in two traditional and two reform curricula. This work required the creation of a scale to categorize tasks based on their level of cognitive demand. This scale relates to …

Development Of A Math Interest Inventory To Identify Gifted Students From Underrepresented And Diverse Populations, Gabrielle M. Snow

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The current investigation supports the objectives of Project GEMS (Roberts, 2008), a grant funded program whose objectives include the development and validation of a protocol to identify students from underrepresented and diverse populations as gifted in the content areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Identification of students from low-income and diverse populations as gifted has been a struggle with current assessment techniques (Baldwin, 2005). Project GEMS aims to address this problem through development of interest measures specific to the STEM areas for use within an identification protocol. The current project developed a measure to assess interest in mathematics. The …

Effects Of Poverty Funding On Math And Literacy Achievement In Arkansas, Karen L. Cushman

College of Education Dissertations

This research project was designed to provide a foundational study of the effectiveness of a state categorical fund directed at poverty students called NSLA funding on literacy and math achievement in Arkansas. Poverty funding for students in Arkansas is realatively new and there have not been any studies to examine the impact of this funding to date. Literacy and math achievement scaled scores were evaluated for one year for fourth, sixth, and eighth grades by four NSLA levels, NSLA level 1, NSLA level 2, NSLA level 3, and NSLA level 4.

This causal comparative study was conducted with data from …

The Impact Of Manipulatives On Learning In The Elementary And Middle School Mathematics Classroom, Laura Dahl

Mathematics Graduate Theses

This paper is a review of research pertaining to the use of manipulatives in the elementary and middle school mathematics classrooms. It embodies the logic behind using manipulative materials in the classroom setting and the impact their use will have on student understanding and enjoyment for learning mathematical concepts. This research paper will identify the struggles and concerns of manipulative use along with the need of increased professional development and training for teachers to be better prepared for the daunting, yet rewarding challenges of successfully teaching mathematics.

One Step On A New Journey, Salima Shahzad Arwani

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

No abstract provided.

Impact Of Student Motivation In Online Learning Activities, Amy Lathrop

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

With the prevalence of online learning in education for both distance and campus-based students, it is critical to determine how to design electronic learning materials that tailor to student motivation and facilitate learning.  Students were asked to complete an online plant breeding activity, motivation survey and an online learning quiz related to the activity.  The control group of students was those who elected not to complete the activity, while the experimental group of students chose to complete the activity.  Motivation scores were compared between control and experiment groups, courses, and gender using independent sample t-tests.  Pearson correlations were also used …

An Exploration Of Materials For Music Integration In Elementary Science Education, Nicole Jennet Mills

HIM 1990-2015

Strong educators always look for different ways to excite and enthrall their students in the curriculum. The field of science education often loses student interest due to the complexities and vocabulary found in the scientific realm. Incorporating music into the classroom has shown positive results as a way to integrate student learning and a different way of facilitating students in the learning process (Brewer, 1992; Davies, 200). Resources for implementing the integration of music and science exist throughout the Internet in a variety of mediums. This study looks at the availability of said resources and the concepts they cover, for …

Ucf Upward Bound Program Promoting First Generation In College, Low Income And Multicultural Students Stem College Success, Christina Restrepo

HIM 1990-2015

The objective of this research is to explore the perceptions of UCF Upward Bound Program participants using focus groups and pre-posttest surveys in order to assess students' level of understanding of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) related coursework, secondary education preparation in science and mathematics, and their perceptions of barriers to a STEM college education. Also, this study centers on the summer 2010 science and mathematics residential portion of the Upward Bound Program. Program outcomes and effectiveness were evaluated based on the change in student insight of the Upward Bound Program's stake in their secondary education. In addition, pre-posttest …

An Examination Of The Discourse In A Graduate Mathematics Methods Course, Rako Morrissey

Dissertations, Theses and Capstone Projects (Full IR Collection)

Mathematics reform efforts advocate the use of discourse as a method toward mathematical learning. Research also suggests that attention be placed on prospective teachers’ development of content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. One way to develop teacher knowledge and discourse skills of prospective teachers is to engage them in purposeful discourse that focuses on mathematical knowledge for teaching. The purpose of this study was to examine the discourse of prospective mathematics teachers in a graduate mathematics methods course. Theories of communication developed a framework for analyzing discourse. Theories on teacher knowledge formed a framework for analyzing the types of teacher …

Evaluation Of Ri Middle School Science Kits In Regards To The Ri Grade Span Expectations, Melissa L. Wetzel

Senior Honors Projects

Evaluation of Rhode Island Middle School Science Kits in Regards to Rhode Island Grade Span Expectations

Melissa Wetzel

Faculty Sponsor:  Jay Fogleman, Education

The Rhode Island Department of Education provides a set of Grade Span Expectations (GSEs) that outline major ideas in science, including physical, life, and earth and space science. Students in Rhode Island schools are expected to be able to demonstrate understanding of each GSE in order to graduate high school with proficiency in science. Educators do not always have the time to “unpack” the GSEs that line up with the grade level they teach. Unpacking a GSE …

Groups And Semigroups Generated By Automata, David Mccune

Department of Mathematics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In this dissertation we classify the metabelian groups arising from a restricted class of invertible synchronous automata over a binary alphabet. We give faithful, self-similar actions of Heisenberg groups and upper triangular matrix groups. We introduce a new class of semigroups given by a restricted class of asynchronous automata. We call these semigroups ``expanding automaton semigroups''. We show that this class strictly contains the class of automaton semigroups, and we show that the class of asynchronous automaton semigroups strictly contains the class of expanding automaton semigroups. We demonstrate that undecidability arises in the actions of expanding automaton semigroups and semigroups …

Homology Of Artinian Modules Over Commutative Noetherian Rings, Micah J. Leamer

Department of Mathematics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This work is primarily concerned with the study of artinian modules over commutative noetherian rings.

We start by showing that many of the properties of noetherian modules that make homological methods work seamlessly have analogous properties for artinian modules. We prove many of these properties using Matlis duality and a recent characterization of Matlis reflexive modules. Since Matlis reflexive modules are extensions of noetherian and artinian modules many of the properties that hold for artinian and noetherian modules naturally follow for Matlis reflexive modules and more generally for mini-max modules.

In the last chapter we prove that if the Betti …