Digital Commons Network^™

Western Michigan University Magazine, Summer 2022, Western Michigan University

Western Michigan University Magazine (1997-present)

• Preparing to prosper
• Expanding the horizons
• 100 years of better living
• Betting on an adventure
• Why I give
• University News
• Expert Insights
• Classnotes
• In Tempo
• In Memoriam

Exploring Ohiohealth Employer Solutions Fitness And Wellness Team, Sammer Hamed

Masters Theses/Capstone Projects

Goal 1 I will apply the lessons learned from my coursework by becoming an advocate of corporate fitness and wellness through my research and program creation. Goal 2 I will improve my advocacy for health and wellness in the workplace by increasing my knowledge of workplace health and wellness with research. Goal 3 I will improve my understanding of the changes the pandemic had on corporate health and wellness by learning about the effects of COVID-19 on fitness in the workplace. Goal 4 I will learn about the workplace from a team perspective by integrating myself into the fitness and …

[Cldv 100] Diversity And Multicultural Studies, Oluremi "Remi" Alapo

Open Educational Resources

CLDV100 (Liberal Arts) Introduction to Multicultural Studies in the 21st Century: 3 hrs. 3 crs.

A study of what culture is; how it influences the choices we make; how to deal positively with conflicts that inevitably arise in working/living situations with people of diverse cultures. It is a course structured to raise multicultural awareness and fortify students' social skills in dealing with cultural differences. It includes an ethnographic study of cultural groups in the U.S.A. Through the study of cultural concepts, this course develops skills in critical thinking, writing, and scholarly documentation. Not open to students with credit in CLDV …

Afn 122 Course Design Worksheet And Content: An Anti - Racist And Culturally Inclusive Pedagogy, Oluremi "Remi" Alapo

Open Educational Resources

Studying (and teaching) such a vast and diverse continent can be challenging. Because no introductory course can claim to be fully comprehensive, this one will explore several themes in the history of Africa and its peoples that the professor finds important and noteworthy. The readings, lectures, films, and activities will consider broad regions of the continent, and the goals of this course include both knowledge and enjoyment. You should come away from this class with a new appreciation for Africa and a general idea of its history from 1500 to the present.

Academic Brands And Cognitive Dissonance, Mark Bartholomew

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 7 in Academic Brands: Distinction in Global Higher Education (Mario Biagioli & Madhavi Sunder, eds., Cambridge University Press, 2022).

It is hard to reconcile the research university’s supposed reason for being – the reasoned pursuit of knowledge – with its methods for building brand awareness and equity. Just like pitches for other luxury goods, the selling of higher education depends on irrational appeals devoid of information and marketing missives meant to hug the line between legally protected puffery and outright fraud. Although universities have always borrowed from the selling strategies of the commercial sphere, in recent years, …

University Of Central Florida Undergraduate Catalog, 2022 - 2023, University Of Central Florida

UCF Catalogs

No abstract provided.

Differences Between African American And White Males In Grades 6-8: Comparative Evidence From Selected Texas Rural Schools, Sheenah Maria Hopkins-Johnson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The academic achievement gap among Black males in grades 6-8 across Texas is a growing concern. Based on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR), secondary data from the Texas Education Agency (TEA) was used to evaluate scores from a sample of Texas rural schools. In this quantitative, non-experimental methods study, the dependent variable examined was the STAAR reading score at the “meets grade level,” and the independent dichotomous variables examined were: race, whether or not the student was classified in one of the following groups: ECD, at-risk, and special education. Academic trends from the 2017-2019 academic school …

Afn 122 Revised Syllabus Redesigned At The Anti - Racist Pedagogy Workshop At Bmcc, Remi Alapo

Open Educational Resources

In this advanced survey of African history, we will examine a vast place over a manageable span of time: all of Africa from the sixteenth century to the present. Because Africa is the cradle of humankind, it is diverse in language, culture, and history. There is greater human genetic and linguistic variation in Africa, for example than on any other continent. The same is true for cultural variation, though such diversity among Africa’s populations co-exists with a range of shared spiritual, ideational, and material perspectives. Over the past five centuries, the forces of international enslavement, commerce, colonialism, and its legacies, …

Course Design Worksheet Goals And Content, Remi Alapo

Open Educational Resources

In addition to the required texts, we will be reading and supplementing with other resources and videos in our class discussions. Some particularly important works include a novel on the life of a middle-class Senegalese woman during the colonial era (So Long a Letter) and about the work and moral dilemmas involving corruption in post-independent Africa (The Beautiful Ones are not yet Born), and Chinua Achebe’s (Things Fall Apart) Things Fall Apart is part tragedy and part documentary. It is the story of Okonkwo and his tragic death after the coming of the white man; …

Peacebuilding Through Education: The Case Of Cameroon’S Anglophone Crisis, Thomas D Aquin Mbatna Taiwe

Dissertations (1934 -)

This study explores peacebuilding promotion in Cameroon's schools amid the Anglophone crisis. The crisis is characterized by a violent social rebellion affecting education and society in Cameroon (Egoh, 2020). The theoretical framework for the study is critical peace education. According to Zembylas (2018), critical peace education must consider revising peace education curricula in former colonies, enriching them with local cultures to develop sustainable peace.I conducted a multiple case study inquiry in four Cameroonian schools using semi-structured interviews and observations and analyzed documents. The logic of replication was used, and a cross-case analysis and discussion led to recommendations for peacebuilding, including …

The Devil And Tom Robot: The Use Of Robotics To Impact Empathy In Secondary Students Of American Literature, Susan K. Porter-Voss

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this action research study was to evaluate the effect of a robotics-based intervention on empathy for students enrolled in secondary English and literature courses. Empathy, as a concept, is an integral component of reading comprehension and student motivation. A decline in reported individual levels of empathy among young adults can negatively influence longitudinal academic and career success. Robotics present a promising method in which to impact student learning in K-12 environments. Student manipulation of Wonder Workshop Cue robots in designed challenges was integrated within literature content standards for English III. The outlined study measured the impact of …

Where Are The Girls? Exploring Influences On Female Eighth Grade Public School Students’ Choices Of Technology Classes In Texas: A Mixed Method Action Research Study, Shasta Colon

Theses and Dissertations

There is a continuing trend of unrepresented female students in STEM classrooms, particularly in technology courses. There is a focus on the K-12 learning environment to increase the number of female STEM students, which will encourage a growth in participation for females in the STEM field (Sassler, Glass, Levitte, & Michelmore, 2017). The purpose of this study was to increase the number of females students who enroll in technology courses in a public school in Kether Independent School District (KISD). The participants were 66 eighth–grade female students who were enrolled in the College and Career Readiness (CCR) and Technology Applications …

Null Hypothesis Statistical Testing: A Survey Of The History, Critiques, And Alternative Methodologies, Bradley David Rogers

Theses and Dissertations

Considered normative from the second half of the 20th century (Danziger, 1990), null hypothesis statistical testing (NHST) has received consistent, largely unheeded criticism. Critiques have received more attention in recent years with the recognition of the replication crisis in the social sciences and the American Statistical Society’s statement and special issue on p values (Wasserstein & Lazar, 2016; Wasserstein et al., 2019). This paper seeks to provide a framework for understanding the issue by looking at the history of NHST and investigating some alternatives to the methodology. A brief review of the history, spread, and critiques of NHST is provided …

Meaningful And Interactive Learning Experiences Provided Through A Learning Management System: An Action Research Study In Ninth Grade Advanced Placement Human Geography, Daniel Robert Plonski

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this mixed methods action research was to determine if increased interactive Schoology-based modules could alter learner perceptions concerning the lack of meaningful learning (learner-instructor, learner-learner, learner-content) in the culture unit of instruction in an Advanced Placement Human Geography (APHG) classroom. A series of instructional modules were facilitated through the learning management system (LMS) Schoology to students (n = 16) in APHG at a southeastern U.S. high school. The interactions were designed to enhance interaction based upon the criteria provided by Piaget’s (1981) social constructivist theory, specifically Moore and Kearsley’s (2011) systems approach and Miyazoe and Anderson’s (2010) …

Subverting The Academic Language Hegemony: Implementing Language Architecture And Similar Pedagogies, Viviana Chavez Garcia

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The field of English language teaching is continually evolving in order for teachers to best serve the students. The field’s connected history with colonization and racism must be acknowledged in order to confront the reasons why academic English is valued higher than all other forms of English and other languages. Under the current framework, teachers are asking multilingual students to change their language in order to reverse their own oppression. According to language architecture, the languages that students bring to class are already sufficiently cognitively sophisticated to achieve content standards and participate in academic activities. This is where the foundation …

Using Video Games To Teach Social Studies, Model Careers, And Develop Environmental Identities Within Our Classrooms, Luke Stahlmann

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Decades of research point towards great, but unfortunately untapped, potential video games provide classrooms for meaningful learning and enrichment. Despite a lot of academic thought being poured into the subject of video games’ educational value, we do not see them being used commonly within classrooms or even cohesively studied as different games are focused on and successes are measured in non uniform ways. The content created for this project focuses on taking much of the academic foundation or merit of learning through video games and advocates them to a general audience alongside modern games that exemplify learning principles covered. The …

A Sense Of Place In Environmental Education: A Forest Ecology Curriculum, Samantha Selter

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

This project discusses the definition of a sense of place as it pertains to environmental education to present the influence of people-to-place relationships in developing environmental stewardship and pro-environmental behavior. Researchers across the fields of geography, environmentalism, and psychology have long identified places as being important to how people see the world and how they act in different places. Fostering place attachment and place meaning within environmental curricula can advance environmental understanding and responsibility through the use of local ecology and problem solving of environmental issues. The curriculum unit within this project focuses on invasive species and uses this environmental …

Place-Based Education And Nature Journaling Curriculum Development, Emaline Kelley

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

nature. Educators must find ways to bring nature to the classroom. Nature journaling uses unique geographies of places as a basis for teaching natural science and other subjects. The nature journaling curriculum development project here, dedicated to natural science and environmental education asks, in what ways could nature study and place-based education be taught to students who live in the urban environment? Goals, learning benefits, and results of nature study and place-based education will be discussed in the literature review. Nature journaling as a tool of learning, along with its benefits, will be discoursed to better understand why the project …

Supporting Multilingual Learners In The Content Classroom Through Culturally And Linguistically Responsive Teaching Practices, Karen Martinez Tinajero

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Culturally and linguistically responsive teaching practices have been demonstrated to yield positive learning outcomes for multilingual learners. The curriculum designed for this project focuses on making direct use of the culturally and linguistically responsive guidelines, frameworks, and strategies as proposed by Zaretta Hammond, Sharroky Hollie, Sydney Snyder, and Diane Staehr Fenner in a secondary level history classroom for the purpose of maximizing learning opportunities for multilingual learners. This project involved creating a dynamic curriculum complete with teacher considerations to transform content learning through cultural and linguistic responsiveness. The curriculum will primarily be used in secondary social studies classrooms for multilingual …

How Can A Non-Personal Interpretive Guide Increase Place Attachment For Visitors, Encourage The Appropriate Development Of Sustainable Community-Based Ecotourism, And Increase Knowledge Of The Desert And Coastal Ecosystems And Migratory Whales Of Baja Mexico?, Mahin Hamilton

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Small ecotour companies run whale-watching tours in remote, protected lagoons of Baja California Sur every winter, as gray whales migrate there to mate and give birth to their young. Often, tourists must drive for hours each way to reach the lagoons for their tour. When tourists get to the small villages that are the base camp for whale watching, their only guides are the boat captains, who do not normally speak English (the main language of tourists in the area). A non-personal interpretive guide would bridge the gap of information, so that tourists learn about the ecology, history, and culture …

Composing Her Growing Identities As A Mexican American, Xiaodi Zhou

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

This article studies the growing and changing cultural identifications of one early adolescent Mexican American girl as represented by her engagements with literacy. Her writing behaviors in particular manifested a changing cultural identity that reacted to and represented her response to a changing world. Her bilingualism and biculturalism manifested a dialogic innervation of distinct voices and truths, particularly set in the Trump-era United States. Through a theoretical framework of cultural hybridity and bordered identity, this study analyzes the complex linguistic, developmental, and cultural identities of a young Mexican American woman in the rural South.

Volume 31, Number 2, Summer 2022, Office Of Communications, Illinois Wesleyan University

Illinois Wesleyan University Magazine, 2018-present

VOLUME 31 | NUMBER 2 | Summer 2022

ON OUR COVER: Dr. Nurman Noor ’08 showcased his culinary skills as an eventual runner-up in The Great Australian Bake Off. Photo courtesy of Foxtel Publicity.

14 Baked with Love Dr. Nurman Noor ’08 may be a general practitioner by trade, but a passion for baking earned him a spot in the TV series The Great Australian Bake Off, where he won scores of fans with his likable personality, raw vulnerability and mouth-watering creations.

18 Breaking Through Angela (Tomazin) Hesemann ’09 found herself laid off at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, …

Understanding The Priorities And Practices Of Rural Science Teachers: Implications For Designing Professional Learning, Kerri Wingert, Jennifer Jacobs, William Lindsay, Abraham S. Lo, Cari F. Herrmann-Abell, William R. Penuel

The Rural Educator

In order to design professional learning that supports rural science teachers to effectively implement standards-based “five-dimensional” (5D) instructional and assessment practices, a critical first step is to elicit their perspectives, prior experiences, concerns, and interests. Based on survey data from 87 rural science teachers in Colorado, along with focus group sessions with 18 of those teachers, this article investigates teachers’ perspectives on what makes rural science teaching unique, the degree to which they use 5D science instruction, their curricular and assessment resources, and their professional learning experiences and preferences. Overall, rural science teachers in Colorado reported using rich practices for …

National Rural Education Association Research Agenda–2022-2027: A Closer Look At The Research Priorities, Sara L. Hartman, J. Kessa Roberts, Sarah Schmitt-Wilson, Erin Mchenry-Sorber, Pamela J. Buffington, Catharine Biddle

The Rural Educator

No abstract provided.

Dynamic Policy Solutions For Rural El Educators, Elizabeth Thorne Wallington, Adrienne Johnson

The Rural Educator

No abstract provided.

Comparing Rural And Non-Rural Principal’S Instructional Leadership In The Age Of Essa, Cailen M. O'Shea Dr., Sarah J. Zuckerman Dr.

The Rural Educator

This qualitative study compares the instructional leadership practices of rural and non-rural principals, seeking to understand contextually based differences in how principals create a focus on teaching and learning. Principals across settings report similarities in instructional leadership tasks; however, they reported significant contextual differences in how they are carried out. These include the use of formal distributed leadership in non-rural schools and informal distributed leadership in rural schools. Additionally, rural principals report adaptive practices that shape policy implementation in ways that support people-centered leadership. We conclude with areas for additional research: the unique demands of the role of principal-superintendent; how …

The 2020-2021 Whippoorwill Award: Redefining And Reconsidering What Counts As Rural Ya Literature, Kate E. Kedley, Devon Brenner, Chea L. Parton, Karen Eppley, Nick Kleese, Jennifer Sanders, Stephanie Short

The Rural Educator

No abstract provided.

A Critical Look At The Importance Of Teaching National Identity In Algerian Efl Classrooms: Perceptions Of Public Middle And Secondary School Teachers نظرة فاحصة على أهمية تدريس الهوية الوطنية في صفوف اللغة الإنجليزية كلغة أجنبية في الجزائر: تصورات معلمي المدارس المتوسطة والثانوية الحكومية, Miral Bassaid, Prof. Oqlah M. Smadi

Jordanian Educational Journal

Abstract: Over the past decades, studies investigating the concept of national identity within educational settings have grown increasingly prevalent and in demand. Ergo, the following study has set out to examine the perceptions of EFL teachers regarding the importance of incorporating national identity within newly developed English textbooks used in public middle and secondary schools in Algeria. The researchers elicited the views of 112 Algerian teachers during the second semester of the academic year 2017-2018 regarding the efficiency of home-grown textbooks in teaching national and local matters as well as their role in helping Algerian students foster their intercultural competence. …

The Effectiveness Of Using Infographic Education To Develop Spatial Thinking Skills For Students In Grade 10 In Sultanat Of Oman فاعلية استخدام الإنفوجرافيك التعليمي في تنمية مهارات التفكير المكاني لدى طالبات الصف العاشر الأساسي بسلطنة عُمان, Huda Mubarak Al-Dayri, Dr. Ahmad Hamed Al Rabaani

Jordanian Educational Journal

Abstract: The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of using an educational infographics in the development of spatial thinking skills among grade 10 female students in the Sultanate of Oman. The study sample consisted of (406) students of the tenth grade, divided into two groups, experimental (194 students), and control (212 students). To achieve the objective of the study, the researchers prepared a test in spatial thinking skills consisting of 30 items divided into multiple choice and short essay questions. The results of the study showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the mean scores …

The Effect Of Using A Computerized Educational Program Based On (Visual Basic) Software On The Achievement Among The Students Of Communication Principles Subject In The Faculty Of Mass Communication At The University Of Petra أثر استخدام برنامج محوسب مستند إلى برمجية (Visual Basic) على تحصيل طلبة مادة مبادئ الاتصال في كلية الاعلام في جامعة البترا, Wafa Khaled Al-Husami, Dr. Muhannad Anwar Al-Shboul

Jordanian Educational Journal

Abstract: The study aims at investigating the effect of the use of a computer program based on (Visual Basic) on the achievement among the students of the communication principles subject in the faculty of mass communication at the university of Petra. The study used a quasi-experimental research design as research methodology. The study sample consisted of (60) students, were intentionally chosen. The students were randomly divided into two groups each one consisted of (30) students. The control group which studied by using the conventional approach; and the experimental group which studied by using the compaterized educational program. To achieve the …