Digital Commons Network^™

The Effect Of Flipped Instruction On Student Learning : Perspectives From Students And Teachers, Britta Adams

Graduate Research Papers

The purpose of this literature review is to examine the effects the flipped classroom has on student achievement, student attitudes and teacher perceptions. Thirty peer-reviewed journal articles were reviewed and analyzed. Three themes emerged from the review: student achievement, student attitudes and teacher perception. It was found that the flipped classroom was a positive experience within a majority of the studies. Since little research has been done in the K-8 level for content areas outside of math and science, it is recommended that further research to be done in a larger variety of content areas at the primary and secondary …

Using Running Records Data In Planning For Literacy Instruction, Tabitha A. Waltz

Graduate Research Papers

Running records are an assessment tool that allows teachers to monitor the sources of information readers are using. Many teachers have learned to take running records, but they may not be as comfortable analyzing the running records and using the results of the analysis to inform instruction. This graduate, final project presents a professional development program that will help teachers learn not only to take running records, but also to analyze and use the results in their instruction.

Effective Professional Development For Teachers : Read-Alouds In The Middle Level, Kelly Ann Behmer

Graduate Research Papers

Teacher read alouds are common practice in the elementary level, but they are rarely seen in the middle level. This paper addresses the importance of read alouds, with evidence from the literature, followed by the development of an effective professional development process for working with teachers at the middle level in developing instruction that includes read alouds. The goal of this professional development plan is to teach teachers of all subject areas in the middle level school how to conduct read alouds so they will know how to incorporate them into their specific subject area to enhance their students' learning.

Critical Literacy And Digital Technology With A Novel Unit, Brandon Harrison

Graduate Research Papers

This paper contains an instructional unit designed for teaching a novel unit utilizing critical literacy and digital technology at the upper-elementary level. The design of the unit is composed around relevant research-based literature which is cited and referenced in the paper. Methods for instructional delivery are provided as well as a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of key terms and critical prompts.

Changing Early Intervention Provider Practices To A Coaching Model Through Self-Study And Distance Mentoring Model : Family-Guided Routines-Based Interventions And The Key Indicators, Cindy Lefeber

Graduate Research Papers

The purpose of this study was to detemiine whether the use of the Distance Mentoring Model-Family Guided Routines Based Intervention strategies, adult learning strategies and self-study research would assist me in assimilating the Key Indicators into my early intervention provider practices. The Key Indicators are Setting the Stage, Observation and Opportunity to practice, Problem Solving and Planning and Reflection and Review (SS-OO-PP-RR). To determine the extent to which my teaching practices reflect the current practices in early intervention I engaged in Iowa Distance Mentoring Training through the state of Iowa while collecting and analyzing data through qualitative self-study, a constant …

What Relationship Between Preschool Class Sizes And Student Behaviors Do Teachers Report?, Lindsey Steen

Graduate Research Papers

This paper reports a study on whether preschool teachers of differing class sizes report a relationship between class size and student behaviors. Classes were categorized into small, medium, and large class sizes. Teachers reported Teaching Strategies GOLD scores for socio-emotional skills and gave their opinions about class sizes, Results of this study suggest that there is a relationship between class size and students' social emotional skills, but not always in accordance with teacher opinions.

The Impact Of Augmented Reality On Curriculum And Training Design, Destery K. Hildenbrand

Graduate Research Papers

Augmented reality (AR) is a relatively emerging technology that is being applied in a somewhat exploratory stage, for training design and curriculum development. In this review, 30 articles were selected and analyzed to identify some current uses of augmented reality in training and curriculum design. Four major themes were identified: 1) a brief introduction about AR; 2) the current uses of AR in curriculum and training development, 3) a review of the effects AR has on student engagement, and 4) the future implications of augmented reality in curriculum and training development. Recommendations for the future are also discussed.

Cinematherapy In Gifted Education Identity Development : Integrating The Arts Through Stem-Themed Movies, Timothy Carl Kangas

Graduate Research Papers

This paper examines the crucial need for inclusion of a curricular component within gifted and talented programming that addresses the social and emotional development of gifted students. This component, cinematherapy, addresses the asynchronous development of gifted students through the lives of gifted characters. This paper details the process for selecting STEM-themed movies to view with students, provides a table of relevant STEM films that feature gifted characters, and possible general discussion questions to be used after viewing.

Enhancing Student Motivation And Success In Reading Through Learning Clubs, Sarah Pamela Jackman

Graduate Research Papers

This paper contains lesson plans and instructions to be used with a learning club comprised of middle or high school students. While written to take place during the school day, it could be used as an outside-of-school activity as well. Strategies and concepts included in the plans are grounded in research that is referenced within this paper. Lesson plans as well as the necessary documents for completion of the lessons are also included.

Strengthening Early Mathematics In Early Childhood Classrooms : A Professional Development Project, Jennifer Lynn Jansen

Graduate Research Papers

This project outlines a series of professional development sessions for preschool teachers that focus on early mathematics. Each session emphasizes key mathematical content and builds teachers' understanding and positive attitudes toward mathematics. Teachers also explore how children's knowledge and skills in the content topics develops and examine examples of children at various levels of understanding and stages of learning with regard to mathematical content.

The sessions also emphasize how the mathematical content can be explored in preschool classrooms in ways that support children's foundational learning in the area of mathematics. Another element of this project is the use of site-based …

The Rise Of Close Reading, Jayne E. Larsen

Graduate Research Papers

The purpose of this advanced literature review is to examine the evolution of close reading as a reading strategy. Currently, close reading is a strategy used to teach students to independently navigate through challenging text. This strategy was previously used in higher education, but as years progressed, the strategy was used less frequently. Since the implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) there has been a rebirth of close reading as a reading strategy.

The literature review discusses the history and background of close reading starting in the early 1900's. Next the literature review explores instructional strategies, and effective …

The Design Of A Professional Development Program For Technology Integration, Dana M. Lampe

Graduate Research Papers

Although teachers recognize the use of technology in their classrooms has a positive influence on their students, efforts to learn the technology integration are often limited by barriers. The purpose of this project was to document the whole process of designing and developing a professional development program for technology integration to break out barriers. By conducting a literature review I gained a better understanding for professional development of instructional technologies. After collaboratively conducting the context analysis with my colleagues, I designed, developed and implemented thirteen sessions of the professional development sessions. I got the on-going feedback as the formative evaluation. …

Differences In Landing Impulses Between The Traditional And Swing Blocking Style In Volleyball, Jana Geertruida Braakhuis

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Blocking is an important part in the game of volleyball. Previous research has shown that the swing blocking style leads to a greater jump height, penetration over the net and effective blocking area compared to the traditional blocking method. No available research has been found investigating the differences in landing. The purpose of this study was to examine the differences in landing impulses, landing time and vertical ground reaction forces (vGRF) between the traditional and swing blocking style in volleyball. Therefore, eight female collegiate volleyball players were filmed in high definition at 60Hz performing successful trials of both blocking styles. …

Three Men In The Wilderness: Ideas And Concepts Of Nature During The Progressive Era With Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot And John Muir, Jeffrey A. Duke

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

When I began this research in the summer of 2014, I endeavored to find out how Americans comprehended nature in the Progressive Era. By the Progressive Era the historian Frederick Jackson Turner declared the frontier to be closed. This notion that no wide open spaces remained to be conquered altered the American people’s attitude towards nature. The perspectives of three men who were at the forefront of environmental policy illustrate how America’s understanding of nature had changed. These three men were twenty-sixth President Theodore Roosevelt, professional forester Gifford Pinchot and naturalist John Muir. Describing the similarities and differences in these …

Dancing My Adoptive Identity : An Autoethnographic Analysis Of Adoption Narratives And Performance Of Identity, Montana Jean Smith

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Family storytelling helps individuals make sense of the world around them. Stories not only help people understand their familial relationships, but understand the development of their identity. For adoptive children, family narratives are crucial to the creation of the child’s adoptive identity and how it intersects with the many other identities the child holds. This study considers the construction of identity from the adoptee’s point of view by use of autoethnographic and performance methods.

Using a multi-methodological approach, this thesis uses interactive interviews, autoethnography, and performance methods as a way to assess what narratives are told within an adoptive family …

Belief And Practice: A Self-Study, Jamie Marie Nelson

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The purpose of this self-study was to critically examine whether or not my beliefs about literacy are reflected in my teaching practice. In addition, it was to determine if my teaching practice aligned with six instructional elements for literacy suggested by Allington and Gabriel (2012) in their article “Every Child, Every Day.”

There were three data sources in this study. I kept a time-log for one week with an instructional calendar about my schedule for literacy instruction. At the end of each day, I wrote a post-teaching reflection. The third data source was my personal, written responses to each of …

Education: An Unexplored Variable On Millennial Volunteer Attitudes, Darian N. Everding

Honors Program Theses

For the 1.9 million nonprofit organizations in the United States, engaging potential volunteers in an efficient way is critical to their success. As Baby Boomers retire, the Millennial generation is expected to populate an ever-growing percentage of the volunteer workforce. The Millennial population totals nearly 80 million in the United States alone. The current body of research has been focused primarily on general attitudes of Millennials in regards to volunteering, philanthropy, and corporate social responsibility. There has been very little analysis on the attitudes of Millennials based on their demographic information, especially their education level. Less than a third of …

Preservice And Practicing Teacher Science Inquiry Projects: An Analysis Of Their Understanding Of The Inquiry Process, Benjamin D. Olsen

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Student conducted inquiry is an essential component of the Next Generation Science Standards and considered to be a core goal of teaching science methods. Teachers need to understand what student inquiry entails, to be able to successfully conduct their own inquiry investigations, and to understand this process well so as to guide original student inquiry investigations. Some suggest that, as a result of No Child Left Behind legislation, an entire generation of students have missed out on inquiry-based elementary science instruction. Research indicates that many preservice teachers find it difficult to bridge knowledge of subject matter with pedagogy – making …

"Rock Against Reagan": The Punk Movement, Cultural Hegemony, And Reaganism In The Eighties, Johnathan Kyle Williams

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Despite scholars’ growing interest in the cultural movement known as punk, there has been a lack of focus on the movement’s relationship to its historical context. Punk meant rebellion, and this research looks at how the rebellion of the American punk movement during the eighties [1978 to 1992], was aimed at the president Ronald Reagan. Their dissent, however, was not only directed towards Reagan, but the culture that he encompassed. Under this influence, American culture gave way to Reaganism: a culture of individualism, greed, power, and symbols. Adding to the work by historian Dewar MacLeod and others who have focused …

The Immediate Effects Of Thearapeutic Taping On Musculoskeletal Pain, Aaron Michael Krejci

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Context: Therapeutic taping is commonly used as a preventative intervention; however, its utilization as an immediate pain management intervention is still unknown. This study assesses the immediate effectiveness of therapeutic taping on musculoskeletal pain. Objective: Evaluate the immediate effects of three therapeutic taping interventions on musculoskeletal pain. Design: Experimental, single-group repeated measures design. Participants: 29 physically active volunteers (14 male, 15 female) with a mean age of 20.9 ± 1.98. Methods: Participants were induced with delayed onset muscle soreness to their elbow flexors of the non-dominant arm. Forty-eight hours after induction, participants’ baseline pain was measured using the Numeric Pain …

Effects Of Predator Satiation On Seed Predation In New Roadside Prairie Plantings, Jessica Riebkes

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Restoration efforts in the tallgrass prairie ecosystem are inhibited by high seed cost and as little as 10% emergence of planted, pure live seed. This study examined the portion of loss due to seed predation and sought to reduce this predation in new roadside prairie plantings. Studies document the occurrence of predation in several plant communities and across all plant families, but little is known about how to reduce the impact of seed predators, especially in a restoration setting. On three sites where native prairie seed was recently drilled, we attempted to satiate seed predators by broadcasting a supplemental food …

A Qualitative Study Of The Perceptions Of Public School Teachers And Administrators On The Teachers' Association And The Collective Bargaining Process In An Iowa Urban School Setting, Eric J. Gjerde

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Previous studies have looked at collective bargaining and teachers’ associations and their impact on student achievement, but the results are mixed. Absent from the literature are studies that analyze data gathered after the passage of the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The focus of this study was to explore urban Iowa public school administrators’ and teachers’ current perceptions of the relationship between teacher associations and collective bargaining. It is the intent of this research to understand what the administrators and teachers in this study perceive about teacher associations and collective bargaining and why they maintain these perceptions. …

Density And Diversity Of Bees In The Midwestern Agricultural Landscape: Influence Of Surrounding Agricultural Land Use And Local Plant Community Characteristics, Andrew J. Ridgway

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

After over a century of large-scale agricultural development in the Midwestern corn-belt of the United States, many wild bee pollinator populations are in rapid decline or extirpated from their historic range. Large-bodied species, such as Bombus spp. are especially threatened, but are also valuable as efficient natural pollinators that are capable of effectively pollinating many economically important crops. Bees, therefore, have high conservation value, and pollination research has shifted focus from community inventory to population recovery efforts. These efforts include reducing the effects of habitat fragmentation and destruction using ecological restoration as well as integrating conservation strategies into agricultural land …

Testing For Modularity In The Axial Skeleton Of Fishes, Emily Meier

Honors Program Theses

The Weberian apparatus is a novel hearing adaptation of otophysan fishes (including such fishes as minnows, loaches, catfishes, characids, and South American electric eels) that allows for dramatically increased hearing capability and sensitivity. The strong functional advantage otophysans gain via the Weberian apparatus has likely created a new modular unit (set of structures that develop, evolve, and function in concert). To determine if components of the Weberian apparatus are integrated into a new developmental module, the timing and sequence of development was collected for specific anatomical structures related to the Weberian apparatus to determine developmental sequence. Patterns of development within …

The Utility Of Tallgrass Prairie Reconstructions As Bioenergy Feedstocks, Jessica Abernathy, Mark Sherrard

Undergraduate Student Work

Two of the more pressing, yet opposing, ecological challenges that we face at the global-scale are the loss of biodiversity and rising demand for energy. Many ecological experiments have shown the importance of biodiversity for ecosystem services and functions, but the simultaneous demand for energy has led to greater conversion of natural landscapes to low-diversity energy production crops (e.g., corn for ethanol). One potential solution to these seemingly opposing issues would be to grow diverse native vegetation for bioenergy. Native tallgrass prairie produces large amounts of aboveground biomass but also provides great habitat for wildlife and other ecosystem services. In …

Initiation Of Communication From Users Of Aac And Preceding Communication Partner's Utterances, Lauren Vaughn Welser

Honors Program Theses

This study examined the effect communication partners’ have on the initiations produced by users of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). The data was reviewed from a larger study; it included transcripts and videos of a set of four students from an elementary school classroom in the Midwest. The students had a wide range of abilities. Both the student and teacher utterances were analyzed for: different types of communication functions, environmental factors and conversational factors. It was hypothesized that the communicative function of the previous utterance and the level of aided input used would affect the number of initiations. The findings …

The Effects Of Argumentation On Student Motivation In Mathematics, Julie Kirkpatrick

Honors Program Theses

As a future educator, I am going to need to motivate my students to learn mathematics and be engaged deeply with the material. Because mathematics is a required subject for students, mathematics teachers must employ various strategies to motivate their students. Something that has motivated me in past mathematics courses has been the chance to form arguments and defend them in class. Argumentation in mathematics classrooms has been included in the Common Core Standards for Mathematical Practice as Practice Standard 3: “Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others” (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of …

Inclusion: Learning Without Barriers, Amy Lois Bucciferro

Honors Program Theses

This study analyzes the literature that has been written about inclusive education and the effect on students in the classroom and compares the information in the literature to three interviews with mothers who have had experiences with inclusive classrooms. Inclusive education is defined as the concept that students with disabilities, regardless of the nature and extent of their disability, should be educated with age-appropriate peers in regular classrooms (with needed supplementary aids and services) in the neighborhood school (Gartner, 2002). The main focus in this study is to examine how the parents view the learning of their child and how …

The Efficient Recovery Of Deleted Data From Nand Flash Memory, Lisa Diercks

Honors Program Theses

NAND flash memory is used in flash drives, smart phones, and memory cards for digital cameras. While there are ways to recover data from deleted memory, there are no universal or efficient ways to recover data from NAND flash memory. When a user clicks “delete” on a file in this type of memory, the file is not necessarily deleted, but may just be hidden. This means these files are still on the chip, but are inaccessible through normal means. The ability to recover this lost data could help computer forensic examiners during investigations and corporations working to use secure deletion …

A Book Club For Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Elizabeth Ann Kosmicki

Honors Program Theses

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by difficulties with social communication and interaction, as well as repetitive behaviors, interests, or activities. Individuals with ASD are also known to struggle with reading comprehension. Difficulties in social communication and interaction may lead to depression, while poor literacy skills may result in unemployment and poverty. Because book clubs target social communication and interaction, as well as reading comprehension, they may be beneficial for individuals with ASD. Indeed, some evidence already exists to support this belief. Through literature review of book clubs in general, currently existing book clubs and information on …