Education Commons^™

Determining Faculty Capacity For Transdisciplinary Instruction, Dominic Swayne

Dissertations, 2020-current

The purpose of this study was to develop a reliable and valid survey instrument that would prove useful in identifying faculty with the capacity and inclination to succeed in team-taught, hands-on, transdisciplinary course programming. Using an exploratory, mixed-methods design, the qualitative component consisted of semi-structured interviews of nine experienced X-Labs faculty. The qualitative analysis process identified attributes that were vital to transdisciplinary teaching and demonstrated patterns that were consistent with complex leadership development. During the mixing process, these data were translated into a quantitative instrument. A panel of experts reviewed the prototype instrument and reduced the number of items included …

Rise And Shine: A Comparison Of Item Fit Statistics For The Rasch Model, Glenn T. Waterbury

Dissertations, 2020-current

The Rasch model implies that the relation between examinee ability and the probability of correctly answering an item can be defined solely by a small set of parameters. In the case of Rasch modeling, there are only two parameters: the ability of an examinee and the difficulty of an item. When the data meet the requirements of the Rasch model, it possesses several appealing properties that distinguish it from Classical Test Theory and more complex Item Response Theory models.

However, the desirable properties of the Rasch model only exist when the data meet its strict requirements. Therefore, it is vital …