Digital Commons Network^™

The Why And Where Of Big History: Building A Program, Mojgan Behmand

Office of Academic Affairs

The goals of our First Year Experience program are aligned with our institutional mission, our core values, and the goals of our General Education program. The program is designed to promote:

1. recognition of the personal, communal, and political implications of the Big History story;
2. critical and creative thinking in a manner that awakens curiosity and enhances openness to multiple perspectives; and,
3. development of reading, thinking, and research skills to enhance one’s ability to evaluate and articulate understanding of one’s place in the unfolding universe.

Knowledge, Agency And Collective Action As Barriers To Energy-Saving Behaviour, Debby Cotton, Wendy Miller, Jennie Winter, Ian Bailey, Stephen Sterling

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

Energy saving is becoming a rising priority as a response to climate change and fossil fuel depletion in recent years. However, despite energy-related behaviour change being an important part of many environmental education initiatives, “energy literacy” among citizens remains patchy in both the USA and the UK, with evidence of strong positive attitudes but less consistent knowledge. Whilst it is clear that increasing knowledge does not automatically produce behaviour changes, potential questions must be asked about the logic of focusing solely on behaviour without simultaneously exploring and enhancing understanding of energy issues. This research, undertaken at a higher education institution …

Undergraduate Commencement Exercises Program, May 16, 2015

Bryant University Commencements

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of New Materials And Teaching Methodologies On Low-Level Biology Courses, Rebecca L. Garrison

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

A new generation has entered higher education that learns differently from generations before. To meet the changing needs of this generation, Western Kentucky University’s Biology Department introduced e-textbooks and e-materials from McGraw Hill™ publishing in the fall of 2013 to most low-level classes. A foreseen product of this shift was a change in the way that some faculty taught and assessed their classes. This study assesses the changes in pedagogical techniques among professors of 100- and 200-level biology classes due to the new e-text and e-materials. Syllabi were collected from these classes pre- and post-implementation and common characteristics were inductively …

Understanding The Lived Experience Of Tenured Associate Professors, William R. Tallman

Open Access Dissertations

This qualitative study was designed to gain a deeper understanding of the lived experiences of university faculty who achieve promotion to the rank of associate professor and award of tenure, but are not promoted within 10 years after award of tenure. A review of the literature found that the phenomenon of delayed progression among tenured faculty is understudied, and this study begins to address that gap. Using a purposive sampling method that sought to maximize homogeneity of sample, I recruited and interviewed five tenured associate professors who have been in-rank for ten years or longer, and evaluated the transcripts of …

Improving Student Learning In Higher Education: A Mixed Methods Study, Megan R. Good

Dissertations, 2014-2019

To improve quality, higher education must be able to demonstrate learning improvement. To do so, academic degree program leaders must assess learning, intervene, and then re-assess to determine if the intervention was indeed an improvement (Fulcher, Good, Coleman, and Smith, 2014). This seemingly “simple model” is rarely enacted in higher education (Blaich & Wise, 2011). The purpose of this embedded mixed methods study was to investigate the effectiveness and experience of a faculty development program focused on a specific programmatic learning outcome. Specifically, the intervention was intended to increase students’ ethical reasoning skills aligned with a university-wide program. The results …

Faculty Perceptions Of The Adoption And Use Of Clickers In The Legal Studies In Business Classroom, Denise M. Farag, Susan Park, Gundars Kaupins

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

The use of clickers in the classroom can improve student engagement and motivation. However, few studies have been conducted on faculty opinions of the use of clickers. This paper measures clicker use amongst legal studies in business faculty and investigates perceptions and factors associated with adoption of clickers in the discipline. Survey results indicate that most legal studies in business faculty have either never or rarely use clickers, and very few faculty members in the discipline use clickers regularly. Instructors perceive clickers to improve teaching, but may be reluctant to adopt them because of time constraints.

Characteristics Of Stem Success: A Survival Analysis Model Of Factors Influencing Time To Graduation Among Undergraduate Stem Majors, Riley K. Acton

Business and Economics Honors Papers

Producing more graduates in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), as well as ensuring students complete college in a timely manner are both areas of national public policy interest. In order to improve these two outcomes, it is imperative to understand what factors lead undergraduate students to persist in, and ultimately graduate with STEM degrees. This paper uses data from the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study, provided by The National Center of Education Statistics, to model the time to baccalaureate degree among STEM majors using a Cox proportional hazard model.

Faculty Senate Meeting Minutes Apr 17, 2015, A-State Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Minutes

Meeting minutes for the Faculty Senate held on April 17, 2015.

Public Debate Format For The Development Of Soft Skill Competency In Computer Science Curricula, Christopher S. Stuetzle

Computer and Data Science Faculty Publications

We present a method for incorporating soft skill development into a traditional computer science curriculum through the use of a public debate format. The debate format forces participants to practice public speaking, active listening, teamwork, research and preparation, and critical thinking, as well as having the less obvious benefit of contextualizing the material taught in the classroom by introducing contemporary, real-world debate topics. This work presents an example of the incorporation of public debates in an upper-level human-computer interaction class, including a discussion of student feedback, and suggestions for adopting the debate format to other upper-level courses and its perceived …

Academic Engagement Using Social Media: Revisiting The Technological, Pedagogical And Content Knowledge Framework In Higher Education Today, Matt Glowatz, Orna Keane

Stream 6: Global University

Research into the use of social media for academic purposes is increasingly emerging. Such research suggests that a social networking site (SNS) could be used as an innovative tool for teaching purposes. However, much of previous research has focused on outlining the experience of students and the empirical evidence to date reports how a SNS may develop a higher level of academic engagement amongst students. In addition, research in this field has overlooked review of the pedagogy involved in utilising a SNS for education purposes successfully. Previously, Koehler and Mishra (2009) proposed the TPACK framework to explore the relationship of …

Wiki'd Transformations: Technology Supporting Collaborative Learning, Bill Hunter, Roger Austin

Stream 6: Global University

This paper examines the uses of wikis in teaching in higher education. It was developed in support of a workshop offered at the Higher Education in Transformation conference in Dublin, Ireland, in March, 2015. The paper describes one author’s use of a wiki over a period of five years to support graduate students in their study of principles of learning, reviews some of the literature on educational applications of wikis and suggests directions for future research.

Organizational Communication: Perceptions Of Staff Members' Level Of Communication Satisfaction And Job Satisfaction, Priti Sharma, James Lampley, Donald W. Good

ETSU Faculty Works

The purpose of this research study was to explore the topic of organizational communication in higher education and examine staff members’ perceptions about their level of communication and job satisfaction in their workplaces. This study was also designed to test the relationship between communication satisfaction and job satisfaction by analyzing the significance of different dimensions of Communication Satisfaction with the view that satisfaction is multifaceted.

The results of the study indicated that gender differences and the number of years in service do not seem to make a significant difference in the level of satisfaction among staff members, but the level …

Students’ Perspectives On Flipped Classroom Implementation In Higher Education, Joelle Elmaleh, Nachamma Sockalingam

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper reports students' experiences with a Flipped Classroom pedagogy model in an undergraduate programming course and suggests ways to improve the Flipped Classroom implementation.

The Pacifican March 26, 2015, University Of The Pacific

All Issues - Student Newspaper, The Pacifican, Pacific Weekly

No abstract provided.

Faculty Senate Meeting Minutes Mar 20, 2015, A-State Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Minutes

Meeting minutes for the Faculty Senate held on March 20, 2015.

Tenure: A Communal Privilege For Service, Not An Individual Privilege For Research, Steven Kessler

Journal of Educational Leadership in Action

Tenure is commonly understood as a privilege earned by individuals in higher education guaranteeing a lifetime appointment barring gross negligence. To individuals outside of higher education, the tenure process is less clear. Contemporary tenure is earned today largely for research and teaching with the heaviest emphasis on research. The third leg of tenure, service, is often neglected or discouraged in the rewards structure. While this information is widely known in higher education, the irony of this system is not. This paper aims to explore higher education’s historical roots as a medieval corporation in explaining the origins of tenure. Tenure originally …

Understanding Why International Student Applicants Choose A Public Four-Year Institution, Mark Gene Darby

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The purpose of Understanding Why International Student Applicants Choose a Public Four-Year Institution was to apply a mixed-methods research approach to California State University, San Bernardino’s (CSUSB) international student population to better understand the factors associated with an international student’s decision-making processing to study abroad.

Internationalization by institutions reflects the current two million international students studying around the world. In recent years internationalization has become more of an economic driving force, whereas in the past it was an opportunity for diversifying knowledge and research. Studies on push and pull factors reflect reasons why international students have decided to go abroad. …

Following Fisher: Narrowly Tailoring Affirmative Action, Eang L. Ngov

Catholic University Law Review

Affirmative action has been at the forefront of educational policies and to this day continues to enliven debates. For decades, schools have litigated over whether affirmative action can be used to create a diverse student body. Now, the litigation has shifted to whether affirmative action policies are narrowly tailored. The Supreme Court’s most recent affirmative action case, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, requires that schools prove that there are no workable race neutral alternatives in order to demonstrate that their affirmative action programs are narrowly tailored. This article examines the available race neutral alternatives: percentage plans; socioeconomic …

Faculty Senate Meeting Minutes Feb 6, 2015, A-State Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Minutes

Meeting minutes for the Faculty Senate held on February 6, 2015.

Daringly Different: The Making Of The Singapore Management University, Kevin Y. L. Tan

Oral History Collection

This is a book about the founding and early years of Asia’s first university in the 21st century - the Singapore Management University or SMU. It provides a background to tertiary education in Singapore to set the scene and offer the reader a glimpse of the landscape in which the remarkable changes leading to SMU’s establishment, and ramifications flowing therefrom, took place. So many of the key actors who were intimately connected to this grand story are still around and actively engaged in the life of SMU, and thus the book benefitted greatly from first-hand interviews with a number of …

The Management Of A Turnaround After An Ethical Breach In A Public Institution Of Higher Education, Ashley Stark

Doctor of Business Administration (DBA)

The field of management has built a wealth of literature on turnaround management as well as the effect unethical actions have upon organizations. However, there has been less study on the application of these topics to turnarounds specifically in small, regional, public institutions of higher education. It is important that an institution of higher education that has been affected by an ethical failure execute a turnaround to restore trust and faith in the organization, internally and externally. A small, regional, public institution of higher education in the upper Midwest recently encountered a series of organizational difficulties that negatively influenced its …

2015 January 26 - Graduate Council Minutes, College Of Graduate And Continuing Studies, East Tennessee State University

Graduate Council Agendas and Minutes

No abstract provided.

Synergy And Tradition: The Unity Of Research, Service, And Teaching In Legal Education, Frank A. Pasquale

Faculty Scholarship

Most non-profit law schools generate public goods of enormous value: important research, service to disadvantaged communities, and instruction that both educates students about present legal practice and encourages them to improve it. Each of these missions informs and enriches the others. However, technocratic management practices menace law schools’ traditional missions of balancing theory and practice, advocacy and scholarly reflection, study of and service to communities. This article defends the unity and complementarity of law schools’ research, service, and teaching roles. (For those short on time, the chart on pages 45-46 encapsulates the conflicting critiques of law schools which this article …

Weatherford: Undergraduate Catalog 2015-2016, Southwestern Oklahoma State University

Undergraduate Catalogs

No abstract provided.

Investigating Gender And Racial/Ethnic Invariance In Use Of A Course Management System In Higher Education, Yi Li, Qiu Wang, John Campbell

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This study focused on learning equity in colleges and universities where teaching and learning depends heavily on computer technologies. The study used the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to investigate gender and racial/ethnic heterogeneity in the use of a computer based course management system (CMS). Two latent variables (CMS usage and scholastic aptitudes)—with two moderation covariates (gender and ethnicity)—were used to explore their associational relationships with students’ final grades. More than 990 students’ CMS data were collected from courses at a Midwest public university in the United States. The final model indicated that there was gender and racial/ethnic invariance in the …

The Origins Of Underperformance In Higher Education In America: Proximal Systems Of Influence, Michael F. Mascolo, Jose Castillo

Pedagogy and the Human Sciences

In this paper, we examine the problem of underachievement in higher education. We begin by seeking to establish that the quality of learning among undergraduates is, as a whole, limited. Undergraduate underachievement cannot be attributed to any single cause. Quite the contrary, we argue that the origins of underperformance in the academy are systemic, coactive and multi-layered. At the proximal level of teaching and learning, we identify four mutually reinforcing processes that contribute to student underachievement: (a) fragmentation of the curriculum, (b) entrant knowledge level and skills gaps; (c) student culture, and (d) pedagogical ineffectiveness. At a more distal level, …

Graduate Programs Course Catalog 2015-2016

Bryant University Graduate School Course Catalog

No abstract provided.

Learning With Digital Technologies: Privileging Persons Over Machines, Mary E. Hess

Faculty Publications

Learning with digital technologies, at least when framed by moral commitments, requires lifting up specific epistemological frames, beginning with a conviction that learning involves human persons in interdependent communities who are involved in a shared search for truth. Such a conviction necessitates moving from teaching-centered to learning-centered pedagogies, and from explicit content to shaping tacit forms of knowing. Digital technologies can prove highly beneficial when used within those constraints.

Common Data Set, 2015-2016, Office Of Institutional Research, Bridgewater State University

Common Data Sets

No abstract provided.