Digital Commons Network^™

Employing Ai To Enhance In-Class Role Playing Scenarios, Eric Fournier

Generative AI Teaching Activities

Role playing can deepen student’s engagement with course content and help them develop skills while learning course material. Students will use AI to develop their characters and help them craft compelling arguments in the role-play scenarios

Active Discovering New Slots For Task-Oriented Conversation, Yuxia Wu, Tianhao Dai, Zhedong Zheng, Lizi Liao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Existing task-oriented conversational systems heavily rely on domain ontologies with pre-defined slots and candidate values. In practical settings, these prerequisites are hard to meet, due to the emerging new user requirements and ever-changing scenarios. To mitigate these issues for better interaction performance, there are efforts working towards detecting out-of-vocabulary values or discovering new slots under unsupervised or semi-supervised learning paradigms. However, overemphasizing on the conversation data patterns alone induces these methods to yield noisy and arbitrary slot results. To facilitate the pragmatic utility, real-world systems tend to provide a stringent amount of human labeling quota, which offers an authoritative way …

Leveraging The "Large" In Large Lecture Statistics Classes, Kady Schneiter, Kimberleigh Felix Hadfield, Jenny Lee Clements

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications

Being a teacher or a student in a class with a large enrollment can be intimidating. Often, teachers view comforts that are common to small classes as unattainable in a larger class, including knowing students’ names, using active learning, employing group work, and creating group discussion. Students in large classes may find that the class size leads to isolation. At Utah State University, we offer introductory statistics classes for various audiences using a large lecture format. The authors have collectively led these large lectures dozens of times and found that, despite its shortcomings, the large lecture format can be an …

Investigating Student Engagement In General Chemistry Active Learning Activities Using The Activity Engagement Survey (Aces), Nicole Naibert, Jack Barbera

Chemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

Investigating student engagement in active learning activities could provide valuable insight into variations of student learning outcomes when active learning is included in a course. This study sought to explore students’ engagement in relation to active learning activities incorporated in a general chemistry lecture course using the Activity Engagement Survey (AcES). The AcES can be used to simultaneously assess students’ overall engagement, as well as dimensions above and beyond overall engagement including their combined behavioral/cognitive engagement, emotional engagement, and social engagement. As students’ engagement may be influenced by aspects related to the learning environment and context, differences in engagement were …

Exploring Student Perceptions Of Behavioral, Cognitive, And Emotional Engagement At The Activity Level In General Chemistry, Nicole Naibert, Elizabeth Vaughan, Kylee Brevick, Jack Barbera

Chemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

Although active learning strategies are being incorporated into many higher-education STEM courses, not all students benefit from these activities to the same extent. As these types of activities are designed to engage students in their learning, differences in student engagement may explain some of the differences in learning outcomes. However, before student engagement in active learning activities can be meaningfully measured using a self-report survey, it is important to evaluate if students perceive engagement similarly to the literature definitions on which these measures are based. Therefore, this study sought to explore students’ perceptions of the behavioral, cognitive, and emotional dimensions …

Development And Evaluation Of A Survey To Measure Student Engagement At The Activity Level In General Chemistry, Nicole Naibert, Jack Barbera

Chemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

Student engagement is an important consideration when incorporating active learning activities into a classroom. To facilitate the large-scale assessment of students’ engagement in activities, a survey measure must first be developed and evaluated. Therefore, the goal of this study was to create a self-report measure of student engagement for use with active learning activities in general chemistry classes. The Activity Engagement Survey (AcES) was modified from an existing survey of engagement of middle and high school science students that contained behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and social engagement items. Multiple rounds of response process interviews and factor analyses were used to modify …

Flip & Slack – Active Flipped Classroom Learning With Collaborative Slack Interactions, Kyong Jin Shim, Gottipati Swapna, Yi Meng Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Active flipped classroom learning is stipulated with faculty structuring the activities involving constructive interactions, either formal or informal. Sharing ideas and responding to ideas improve the cognitive skills of the students. Encouraging peers to contribute to class activities and respecting peers contribute to the development of affective skills. We present an integrated platform for cognitive and affective skills development. A flipped classroom arrangement allows the faculty to focus more on in-class activities such as programming and lab exercises to support active learning in computing courses. We share the design of an innovative flipped classroom model integrated with Slack and present …

Design And Supervision Model Of Group Projects For Active Learning, Yi Meng Lau, Kyong Jin Shim, Swapna Gottipati

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This research paper presents a group project framework for a second-year programming course, which was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. The framework offers well defined stages of the group project which allow students to work on their choice of a real-world problem, integrate their learnings from previous courses, and present a working solution. In the group project, students actively participate, reflect, and contribute to achieving the goals set in the learning objectives of the course. Our framework incorporates key features from Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory (1984) and principles of active learning from Barnes (1989) to achieve active and experiential learning …

Multi-Institutional Study Of Self-Efficacy Within Flipped Chemistry Courses, Nicole Naibert, Kerry D. Duck, Michael M. Phillips, Jack Barbera

Chemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

Active learning environments have been shown to be beneficial for student learning; however, including such activities can be limited by the class time available. One method that can provide more opportunities for active learning during face-to-face class time is the flipped learning approach. However, studies on the impacts of flipped learning environments on student motivation are limited. Therefore, in this multi-institutional study, general chemistry students enrolled in flipped courses at three institutions responded to measures of self-efficacy and self-regulatory strategies. The results from these measures were used to evaluate how students’ academic self-efficacy (ASE) and chemistry self-efficacy (CSE) changed over …

Tennis Anyone? Teaching Experimental Design By Designing And Executing A Tennis Ball Experiment, Laura Pyott

Mathematics Faculty Publications

Understanding the abstract principles of statistical experimental design can challenge undergraduate students, especially when learned in a lecture setting. This article presents a concrete and easily replicated example of experimental design principles in action through a hands-on learning activity for students enrolled in an experimental design course. The activity, conducted during five 50-min classes, requires the students to work as a team to design and execute a simple and safe factorial experiment and collect and analyze the data. During three in-class design meetings, the students design and plan all aspects of the experiment, including choosing the response variable and factors, …

Developing Institutional Skills For Addressing Big Data: Experiences In Implementation Of Aacsb Standard 5, Sumantra Sarkar, Joy Gray, Scott R. Boss, Emmet Daly

Accountancy Faculty Publications

The explosion of data coupled with firms’ desire to utilize it is driving rapid changes in the desired skillset for accounting and assurance professionals. Educational institutions are considering how to catch up to these requirements, while accreditors are also modifying standards to reflect changes in desired skillsets. We present evidence from two institutions’ efforts to update their courses to address contemporary skill requirements, accompanied by discussion from a Big 4 professional. We find that despite significant differences between the two institutions and their approaches, similar challenges were encountered, and similar feedback was obtained from students. We conclude with a proposal …

Supporting Student Success And Persistence In Stem With Active Learning Approaches In Emerging Scholars Classrooms, David Miller, Jessica Deshler, Tim Mceldowney, John Stewart, Edgar Fuller, Matt Pascal, Lynnette Michaluk

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Over the last several decades, Emerging Scholars Programs (ESPs) have incorporated active learning strategies and challenging problems into collegiate mathematics, resulting in students, underrepresented minority (URM) students in particular, earning at least half of a letter grade higher than other students in Calculus. In 2009, West Virginia University (WVU) adapted ESP models for use in Calculus I in an effort to support the success and retention of URM STEM students by embedding group and inquiry-based learning into a designated section of Calculus I. Seats in the class were reserved for URM and first- generation students. We anticipated that supporting students …

Active Fuzzing For Testing And Securing Cyber-Physical Systems, Yuqi Chen, Bohan Xuan, Christopher M. Poskitt, Jun Sun, Fan Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) in critical infrastructure face a pervasive threat from attackers, motivating research into a variety of countermeasures for securing them. Assessing the effectiveness of these countermeasures is challenging, however, as realistic benchmarks of attacks are difficult to manually construct, blindly testing is ineffective due to the enormous search spaces and resource requirements, and intelligent fuzzing approaches require impractical amounts of data and network access. In this work, we propose active fuzzing, an automatic approach for finding test suites of packet-level CPS network attacks, targeting scenarios in which attackers can observe sensors and manipulate packets, but have no existing …

Coordinating Stem Core Courses For Student Success, Cristina Villalobos, Hyung Won Kim, Timothy J. Huber, Roger Knobel, Shaghayegh Setayesh, Lekshmi Sasidharan, Anahit Galstyan, Andras Balogh

School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Research indicates multi-section coordination improves the academic performance of students in STEM education. This paper describes the process of coordination in Precalculus, Calculus 1, and Calculus 2 courses undertaken by a large department that grew from the merger of two institutions through a pilot program, and a project grant. Components introduced in the project courses are documented, including collaborative problem-solving sessions, student learning assistants, Q&A sessions, and additional technology resources. Preliminary data is provided on the impacts of the initiative on student success. The study findings provide a template for coordination, faculty buy-in, and increased student engagement at similar institutions …

Mentoring Undergraduate Research In Statistics: Reaping The Benefits And Overcoming The Barriers, Joseph R. Nolan, Kelly S. Mcconville, Vittorio Addona, Nathan L. Tintle, Dennis K. Pearl

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

Undergraduate research experiences (UREs), whether within the context of a mentor-mentee experience or a classroom framework, represent an excellent opportunity to expose students to the independent scholarship model. The high impact of undergraduate research has received recent attention in the context of STEM disciplines. Reflecting a 2017 survey of statistics faculty, this article examines the perceived benefits of UREs, as well as barriers to the incorporation of UREs, specifically within the field of statistics. Viewpoints of students, faculty mentors, and institutions are investigated. Further, the article offers several strategies for leveraging characteristics unique to the field of statistics to overcome …

Nimbleknow User Documentation, Camille Estee Ottaway

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

NimbleKnow User Documentation is an Honors Project by Camille Ottaway

NimbleKnow is a simple web application that teachers can use to pose questions which students can then answer using their basic smartphones or tablets. In order to accommodate ESL learners our application includes translation features. Having a user-friendly classroom technology can promote more engagement and collaboration between students and faculty alike in a classroom environment.

Assessing Differences Between Three Virtual General Chemistry Experiments And Similar Hands-On Experiments, Cory Hensen, Gosia Glinowiecka-Cox, Jack Barbera

Chemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

To date the efficacy of virtual experiments is not well understood. To better understand what differences may exist between a hands-on learning environment and a virtual learning environment, three experiments were chosen for investigation. For each experiment, approximately half of the students completed a hands-on version of the experiment and the other half completed a virtual version. After completing the given experiment, students were compared on: their ability to meet the learning objectives for that experiment, their responses to six affective scales, and their grade on a laboratory report. Differences were found on four learning objectives. Two of these learning …

The Community Outreach Model Of Service-Learning: A Case Study Of Active Learning And Service-Learning In A Natural Hazards, Vulnerability, And Risk Class, Brittany D. Brand, Kara Brascia, Margaret Sass

Geosciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

The popularity of service learning is increasing, especially at a time when college students want to make a greater impact in their communities. However, service learning has not been extensively assessed in courses based in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. This article provides a case study of how incorporating service learning through a community outreach project can increase student engagement, enhance the depth of understanding of a given topic, build communication and teamwork skills, and contribute meaningfully to the students' community. This article shares how the instructor of a natural hazards, vulnerability, and risk course implements service-learning through a community …

Using A Local Positioning System To Track 2d Motion, Paul R. Destefano, Cora Siebert, Ralf Widenhorn

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Tracking the motion of an object in 2D as a demonstration in a physics classroom or as a laboratory activity is difficult to accomplish in real time with traditional equipment used by educators. A local positioning system (LPS), like the Pozyx Creator series LPS,1 has a potentially wide range of educational applications for introductory physics courses. In a previous article2 we reported using this product to track one-dimensional motion, pressure, rotation, and magnetic field data, but here we discuss how such systems can provide location information (to within approximately ±10 cm) in one, two, and potentially three dimensions both indoors …

Adapting Realtime Physics For Distance Learning With The Iolab, Erik Bodegom, Erik Jensen, David Sokoloff

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

The IOLab is a versatile and inexpensive data acquisition device in a cart that can roll on its three wheels. It has numerous sensors for a variety of physical quantities. We adapted RealTime Physics, Module 1: Mechanics active learning labs for use with the IOLab. We tested these labs both on campus and with distance learners at Portland State University and Chemeketa Community College for three years, consistently obtaining significant conceptual learning gains on the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation (FMCE). Student attitudes towards the labs, the device, and distance learning—as measured by post-course evaluations—were generally very positive.

Assessing Affective Differences Between A Virtual General Chemistry Experiment And A Similar Hands-On Experiment, Cory Hensen, Jack Barbera

Chemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

To date, few general chemistry laboratory studies have included affective measures despite calls for more research on aspects of this domain. This shortage of studies may be partially due to the scarcity of affective measures that have been designed for, or tested in, the college laboratory setting. To provide measures for use in this environment, several existing affective scales were adapted for this new context. Before data from the scales were utilized to study the environment, evidence was provided for the validity and reliability of the data generated from them. Once sufficient evidence was provided, it was possible to determine …

Analyzing The Mindsets And Behaviors Of Introductory Physics Students Through The Lens Of Intellectual Humility, Meagan Sundstrom

University Scholar Projects

Students often enter the physics classroom with intuitive conceptions drawn from real life experiences or former coursework, and may be hesitant or reluctant to re-evaluate these mindsets in favor of formally instructed knowledge. The goal of introductory physics courses is not only to teach and expose students to new content, but also to cultivate students’ ability to reason through and derive content knowledge through personal inquiry. This scientific process necessitates one’s abilities to be open-minded in terms of hearing evidence that contradicts his or her personal opinion, to be willing to discard any original misconceptions in the face of such …

Analyzing The Mindsets And Behaviors Of Introductory Physics Students Through The Lens Of Intellectual Humility, Meagan Sundstrom

Honors Scholar Theses

Students often enter the physics classroom with intuitive conceptions drawn from real life experiences or former coursework, and may be hesitant or reluctant to re-evaluate these mindsets in favor of formally instructed knowledge. The goal of introductory physics courses is not only to teach and expose students to new content, but also to cultivate students’ ability to reason through and derive content knowledge through personal inquiry. This scientific process necessitates one’s abilities to be open-minded in terms of hearing evidence that contradicts his or her personal opinion, to be willing to discard any original misconceptions in the face of such …

Exploring Experiential Learning Model And Risk Management Process For An Undergraduate Software Architecture Course, Eng Lieh Ouh, Yunghans Irawan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper shares our insights on exploring theexperiential learning model and risk management process todesign an undergraduate software architecture course. The keychallenge for undergraduate students to appreciate softwarearchitecture design is usually their limited experience in thesoftware industry. In software architecture, the high-level designprinciples are heuristics lacking the absoluteness of firstprinciples which for inexperienced undergraduate students, thisis a frustrating divergence from what they used to value. From aneducator's perspective, teaching software architecture requirescontending with the problem of how to express this level ofabstraction practically and also make the learning realistic. Inthis paper, we propose a model adapting the concepts ofexperiential learning …

Online Active Learning With Expert Advice, Shuji Hao, Peiying Hu, Peilin Zhao, Steven C. H. Hoi, Chunyan Miao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In literature, learning with expert advice methods usually assume that a learner always obtain the true label of every incoming training instance at the end of each trial. However, in many real-world applications, acquiring the true labels of all instances can be both costly and time consuming, especially for large-scale problems. For example, in the social media, data stream usually comes in a high speed and volume, and it is nearly impossible and highly costly to label all of the instances. In this article, we address this problem with active learning with expert advice, where the ground truth of an …

Updated Guidelines, Updated Curriculum: The Gaise College Report And Introductory Statistics For The Modern Student, Beverly Wood, Megan Mocko, Michelle Everson, Nicholas J. Horton, Paul Velleman

Publications

Since the 2005 American Statistical Association's (ASA) endorsement of the Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE) College Report, changes in the statistics field and statistics education have had a major impact on the teaching and learning of statistics. We now live in a world where "Statistics - the science of learning from data - is the fastest-growing science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) undergraduate degree in the United States," according to the ASA, and where many jobs demand an understanding of how to explore and make sense of data. In light of these new reports and other …

On The Removal Of Motivation And Structural Barriers In The Classroom And Across The Mathematics Curriculum, Benjamin Wiles, Chantal Levesque-Bristol

IMPACT Presentations

Presentation at the research roundtable discussion at the 2018 Critical Issues in Math Education Workshop, Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, in Berkeley, CA.

Presents data on the ability of active learning methods to impact motivation and promote learning outcomes in mathematics courses.

Learning Likely Invariants To Explain Why A Program Fails, Long H. Pham, Jun Sun, Lyly Tran Thi, Jingyi Wang, Xin Peng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Debugging is difficult. Recent studies show that automatic bug localization techniques have limited usefulness. One of the reasons is that programmers typically have to understand why the program fails before fixing it. In this work, we aim to help programmers understand a bug by automatically generating likely invariants which are violated in the failed tests. Given a program with an initial assertion and at least one test case failing the assertion, we first generate random test cases, identify potential bug locations through bug localization, and then generate program state mutation based on active learning techniques to identify a predicate 'explaining' …

Automatic Loop-Invariant Generation And Refinement Through Selective Sampling, Jiaying Li, Jun Sun, Li Li, Quang Loc Le, Shang-Wei Lin

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Automatic loop-invariant generation is important in program analysis and verification. In this paper, we propose to generate loop-invariants automatically through learning and verification. Given a Hoare triple of a program containing a loop, we start with randomly testing the program, collect program states at run-time and categorize them based on whether they satisfy the invariant to be discovered. Next, classification techniques are employed to generate a candidate loop-invariant automatically. Afterwards, we refine the candidate through selective sampling so as to overcome the lack of sufficient test cases. Only after a candidate invariant cannot be improved further through selective sampling, we …

An Engagement Strategy For Teaching Computing Concepts, El Sayed Mahmoud

Publications and Scholarship

The research work in this paper investigates a new teaching strategy that uses active learning through play to increase students’ uptake of learning computing concepts. The strategy promotes student engagement through playing a customized Jenga game. The game consists of a set of blocks, one side of each block is covered with a piece of dry-erase tape to allow erasing and writing on the blocks. This allows instructors to reuse this editable Jenga for developing their own game-based learning activities. The editable Jenga can be used without writing if needed. Three sample activities with writing have been developed and conducted …