Education Commons^™

“Helping Me Learn New Things Every Day”: The Power Of Community College Students’ Writing Across Genres, Tanzina Ahmed

Publications and Research

Although community colleges are important entry points into higher education for many American students, few studies have investigated how their students engage with different genres or develop genre knowledge. Even fewer have connected students’ genre knowledge to their academic performance. In the present article, 104 ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse students reported on classroom genre experiences and wrote stories about college across three narrative genres (Letters, Best Experience, Worst Experience). Findings suggest that students’ engagement with classroom genres in community college helped them develop rhetorical reading and writing skills. When students wrote about their college lives across narrative genres, they …

Impact Of Oer In Teacher Education, Denise Cummings-Clay

Publications and Research

The purpose of this research study, which employed a quantitative research design, was to determine if there was a difference in the grades achieved by students who were enrolled in an entry-level Foundations of Education course using Open Educational Resources (OER) versus the grades achieved by students who used textbooks in other course sections. The goal was to find out whether OER was of the same or higher quality as textbooks in our minority-serving higher education institution. The outcomes revealed that there was no significant difference in grades for course sections that used OER when compared to course sections that …

An Investigation Of How Environmental Science Textbooks Link Human Environmental Impact To Ecology And Daily Life, Yael Wyner, Rob Desalle

Publications and Research

Making direct connections between humanity and the environment is of ever-increasing importance in the context of today’s environmental crisis. We used qualitative content analysis of precollege- and college-level introductory environmental science textbook case studies to study how they portray humanity’s link to the environment. We assessed case studies for how specific and data rich they are and for how they link together daily life, human impact, and ecological interactions. We found that, for many textbooks, case study stories were vaguely drawn and included few data. We also found that, for all textbooks, case studies almost always described human impacts without …

It’S (Not) In The Reading: American Government Textbooks’ Limited Representation Of Historically Marginalized Groups, Shawna M. Brandle

Publications and Research

The Introduction to American Government course, and its textbook, is a nearly universal experience for students in American colleges and universities, but what exactly is being taught in this course? Do the textbooks used in this widely taught course accurately reflect the diversity of populations and experiences in the United States? More specifically, how do textbooks for Introduction to American Government cover historically marginalized groups, if at all? This article builds on previous work by analyzing the representation of individual historically marginalized groups to conduct index search and content analyses on traditionally published and openly licensed (i.e., open educational resources …

The Case For Oer In Lis Education, Stacy Katz

Publications and Research

The increasingly high cost of textbooks coupled with the pedagogical opportunities presented by Creative Commons licenses has provided fertile ground for the development of open educational resources (OER) initiatives as an impactful practice for improving student success. Librarians are leading advocates for OER, yet little has been published on how librarians learn about OER or how faculty use OER in library and information science (LIS) programs. For this study, the author surveyed LIS faculty about their awareness and usage of OER as well as the role they imagine for future librarians in open education. LIS faculty, current and future librarians, …

Yes, You Can Get A Job With That Major! Goal 5 Strategies For Facilitating, Assessing, And Demonstrating Psychology Students’ Professional Development, Kristin M. Vespia, Karen Z. Naufel, Jerry Rudmann, Jaye F. Van Kirk, Deborah Briihl, Jason Young

Publications and Research

The Summit on the National Assessment of Psychology was held on June 2016 to chart a path for assessing student achievement of the goals of the undergraduate psychology major. Our subcommittee was charged with identifying evaluation strategies and tools for students’ professional development, which included applying psychology to various careers; engaging in effective self-regulation, project management, and teamwork; and developing lifelong professional skills. In this article, therefore, we not only review a wide range of assessment tools for facilitating and evaluating professional development in psychology, but we also discuss the larger importance of the learning goal both to students and …

Fourteen Recommendations To Create A More Inclusive Environment For Lgbtq+ Individuals In Academic Biology, Katelyn M. Cooper, Anna Jo J. Auerbach, Jordan D. Bader, Amy S. Beadles-Bohling, Jacqueline A. Brashears, Erica Cline, Sarah L. Eddy, Deanna B. Elliott, Elijah Farley, Linda Fuselier, Heather M. Heinz, Madison Irving, Tanya Josek, A. Kelly Lane, Stanley M. Lo, Jeffrey Maloy, Michelle Nugent, Erika Offerdahl, Juan Palacios-Moreno, Jorge Ramos, Joshua W. Reid, Rachel A. Sparks, Ashley L. Waring, Mike Wilton, Cara Gormally, Sara E. Brownell

Publications and Research

Individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and otherwise non-straight and/or non-cisgender (LGBTQ+) have often not felt welcome or represented in the biology community. Additionally, biology can present unique challenges for LGBTQ+ students because of the relationship between certain biology topics and their LGBTQ+ identities. Currently, there is no centralized set of guidelines to make biology learning environments more inclusive for LGBTQ+ individuals. Rooted in prior literature and the collective expertise of the authors who identify as members and allies of the LGBTQ+ community, we present a set of actionable recommendations to help biologists, biology educators, and biology …

Nursing Skills Video Selfies: An Innovative Teaching And Learning Strategy For Undergraduate Nursing Students To Master Psychomotor Skills, Cynthia Sterling-Fox, Julius P. Smith, Ophalyn Gariando, Pamela Charles

Publications and Research

Introduction: The quality of care for patients is linked to the performance and competence of nurses. Nurse educators are challenged to prepare graduates to deliver safe, competent, patient-centered care. Nursing skills video “selfie” is an innovative teaching and learning strategy in which nursing students use technology to create videos of themselves (video selfie) performing psychomotor skills.

Method: The instructional exercise of creating the video selfie was administered to a group of nursing students in a medical–surgical class. The laboratory instructors identified three psychomotor nursing skills. In the skills lab, the instructors showed videos to demonstrate how the skills were …

Teaching With Oer During Pandemics And Beyond, Jennifer Van Allen, Stacy Katz

Publications and Research

Purpose – Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning materials openly licensed so that others may retain, reuse, revise, remix or redistribute (the 5Rs) these materials. This paper aims to raise awareness of OER by providing a rationale for using these learning materials and a strategy for educators to get started with OER during the collective crisis and beyond. Design/methodology/approach – Using a broad research base and anecdotes from personal experience, the authors make the case that OER improves student access to learning materials and improves the learning experience in both PK-12 and higher education contexts. Findings – The authors define …

Creating A Charrette Process To Ignite The Conversation On Equity And Inclusion, Erika R. Carlson, Leslie Craigo, Peter P. Hoontis, Elisabeth Jaffe, Lynn Mcgee, James Sayegh

Publications and Research

The gaps in graduation and retention rates between ethnic and gender groups continue to be a foremost area of focus at Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC), The City University of New York (CUNY). Equity and inclusion is also a critical concern as it relates to faculty and staff. At BMCC, a college-wide initiative, Designing for Success, is seeking to improve declining retention and graduation rates. At its core is the question, “Have we designed our operations to produce these results?” The answer is, “Yes”. BMCC’s Designing for Success strategic planning process seeks to re-design administrative processes and teaching in …

The Impact Of Undergraduate Research And Student Characteristics On Student Success Metrics At An Urban, Minority Serving, Commuter, Public Institution, Sheila I. Baron, Pamela Brown, Tammie Cumming, Michelle Mengeling

Publications and Research

Challenges to establishing and maintaining undergraduate research programs include how to demonstrate impact as evidence for future funding, establish eligibility criteria when resources are limited, and assess new components. To address these challenges, undergraduate researcher GPA, credit accumulation and time to graduation were evaluated longitudinally, at an urban, public, minority and Hispanic serving, commuter college. Students who participated in undergraduate research and matched peers were also compared. Evaluation revealed that all groups benefited from participation in undergraduate research, whether they had full- or part-time status, were STEM or non-STEM majors, or participated in single or multiple semesters of research. Addition …

Creating And Using Open Educational Resources (Oer) In Reading And Writing Classes, Christine E. Hutchins

Publications and Research

Creating her own assignments using openly licensed course materials allows this professor and her students to be more creative and to take greater advantage of digital resources.

Supporting Institutional Objectives By Embedding Mission-Critical Competencies In Credit-Bearing Library Instruction: A Review And Case Study, Derek Stadler, Alexandra Rojas

Publications and Research

This article reviews scholarship of incorporating institutional objectives in academic courses and proposes a method to embed mission-critical competencies in a library instruction course. Few academic institutions focus their mission or core competencies on digital communication. LaGuardia Community College delineates three competencies in its mission: inquiry and problem solving, global learning, and integrative learning. Students exhibit command of these competencies in written, oral, or digital communication. The College defines the digital communication ability as successful collaboration and interaction using online tools, such as discussion boards, either to stage written exchange, or to capture video or oral discussions. Through participation in …

Exploring Innovative Ways To Incorporate The Association Of College And Research Libraries Framework In Graduate Science Teacher Education Eportfolio Projects, Alison Lehner-Quam, Wesley Pitts

Publications and Research

This article investigates ways in which student voice informed design research into information literacy instruction in a year-long graduate science education ePortfolio culminating project. Library and science education faculty partnered in a two-year project to create communities of secondary science education students, in two cohorts, who used the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education to support their own research and reflections into information literacy. The overarching goal was to improve the course design to help science teachers develop their professional competencies in information literacy to conduct research to support their practice. Examination of students’ responses to research experiences …

So, You Want To Write An Oer? Three Authors Share Triumphs, Pitfalls, And Options, Kathleen Offenholley, Jenna Hirsch, Yevgeniy Milman

Publications and Research

Open Educational Resources (OERs) offer a free, viable alternative to costly textbooks. The authors share their experience and advice on finding and writing online content, creating an online platform for the content, finding videos and other resources, and working with an appropriate free online homework system to match the written content. In addition, the implementation and suggestions for practitioners are discussed. At the end of the article, the bibliography contains two OERs freely available under an open commons license, one for Intermediate Algebra, the other for Mathematics for Elementary Education.

A Multistep Inquiry Approach To Improve Pre-Service Elementary Teachers’ Conceptual Understanding, Lloyd Mataka, Rex Taibu

Publications and Research

A quasi-experimental control group pre- and post-test study was used to determine the effect of a Multi-Step Inquiry (MSI) approach on pre-service elementary school teacher‘s conceptual understanding. The MSI study involved the development of a conceptual workbook, and a Physical Science Concept Inventory. The conceptual workbook has activities that explicitly target students‘ misconceptions in physical science. The inventory has three categories: forces and motion, heat and temperature, and electricity. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to interpret the data. Independent t-tests were used to compare the experimental and comparison groups. Further, Cohen‘s d and Hake‘s g effect sizes were used …