Education Commons^™

Exploring The Role Of Gender, Race, First-Year College Gpa And Passing Stem Advanced Placement Exams And The Likelihood Of Graduating With A Stem Degree: A Multiple Logistic Regression Analysis, Amar Patel

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) careers are projected to grow beyond the normal pace of job growth (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2021). Many of these careers will require degrees in STEM fields, but, currently, there is a significant underrepresentation of Blacks and females in both STEM degree programs and careers. The purpose of the current quantitative study was to explore the strength of the association between AP Exams, first-year GPA, race, and gender in science achievement. Research Question 1 investigated the relationship between taking AP Exams and the time taken to graduate. For students who took an AP Exam, …

Scholars Day 2024 Program Of Events, Carl Goodson Honors Program

Scholars Day

This is the program of events for the 2023 Scholars Day Conference, where undergraduates across disciplines present their scholarly and creative works.

Are Students Actually Learning What You Think They Are? An Exploration Into The Educational Outcomes Of Course Based Undergraduate Research Labs, Matilda Dumaine, Jacob Saadoun

Biology Presentations

It is important to understand whether students are acquiring intended educational objectives. A course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) lab seeks to blend the logistical ease and accessibility of college courses with the educational benefits of research experiences. By employing inquiry-based teaching methods, CURE labs enable students to collaborate in a group setting under the guidance of a faculty member, engaging in hands-on research. This project studies how educational outcomes of CURE labs can be measured. CURE labs may improve anything from technical lab skills, to scientific literacy, to persistence in science. These short-, middle-, and long-term goals may be measured …

Building A Strategic Framework With A Sustainability Lens At Wcu, Stefanie Schwalm

Sustainability Research & Practice Seminar Presentations

Dr. Stefanie Schwalm, WCU Associate Provost for Accreditation, SRPS Spring '24 4/17: "Building a Strategic Framework with a Sustainability Lens at WCU."

Immersive Japanese Language Learning Web Application Using Spaced Repetition, Active Recall, And An Artificial Intelligent Conversational Chat Agent Both In Voice And In Text, Marc Butler

MS in Computer Science Project Reports

In the last two decades various human language learning applications, spaced repetition software, online dictionaries, and artificial intelligent chat agents have been developed. However, there is no solution to cohesively combine these technologies into a comprehensive language learning application including skills such as speaking, typing, listening, and reading. Our contribution is to provide an immersive language learning web application to the end user which combines spaced repetition, a study technique used to review information at systematic intervals, and active recall, the process of purposely retrieving information from memory during a review session, with an artificial intelligent conversational chat agent both …

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

Exploring Practical Measures As An Approach For Measuring Elementary Students’ Attitudes Towards Computer Science, Umar Shehzad, Mimi M. Recker, Jody E. Clarke-Midura

Publications

This paper presents a novel approach for predicting the outcomes of elementary students’ participation in computer science (CS) instruction by using exit tickets, a type of practical measure, where students provide rapid feedback on their instructional experiences. Such feedback can help teachers to inform ongoing teaching and instructional practices. We fit a Structural Equation Model to examine whether students' perceptions of enjoyment, ease, and connections between mathematics and CS in an integrated lesson predicted their affective outcomes in self-efficacy, interest, and CS identity, collected in a pre- post- survey. We found that practical measures can validly measure student experiences.

Health And Healthcare: Designing For The Social Determinants Of Health And Blue Zones In North Nashville, Rebecca Tonguis, Honor Thomas, Olivia Hobbs

Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

Owned by North Nashville’s First Community Church, a now empty site in the Osage-North Fisk neighborhood of North Nashville has been identified as a potential site for a new location of The Store, in addition to a community-centric architectural development based on the social determinants of health and informed by the principles behind Blue Zones, the locations with the highest lifespans in the world. Opened by Brad Paisley and Kimberly Williams-Paisley, The Store is a free grocery store that “allow[s] people to shop for their basic needs in a way that protects dignity and fosters hope”, for which North Nashville …

Navigating The Maze: The Role Of Pre-Enrollment Socio-Cultural And Institutional Factors In Higher Education In The Age Of Ai, Emily Barnes, James Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

This article explores the complex interplay between pre-enrollment socio-cultural and institutional factors and their impact on the higher education landscape. It challenges traditional metrics of academic achievement, presenting a nuanced perspective on student success that emphasizes the importance of socio-economic backgrounds, cultural capital, and K-12 education quality. The analysis extends to the significant role of institutional attributes in shaping student readiness and decision-making processes. The study advocates for the integration of artificial intelligence (AI)-driven assessments by higher education institutions to cater to the diverse needs of the student body, promoting an inclusive and supportive learning environment. Anchored in an extensive …

Rethinking Plagiarism In The Era Of Generative Ai, James Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

The emergence of generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, such as large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, has precipitated a paradigm shift in the realms of academic writing, plagiarism, and intellectual property. This article explores the evolving landscape of English composition courses, traditionally designed to develop critical thinking through writing. As AI becomes increasingly integrated into the academic sphere, it necessitates a reevaluation of originality in writing, the purpose of learning research and writing, and the frameworks governing intellectual property (IP) and plagiarism. The paper commences with a statistical analysis contrasting the actual use of LLMs in academic dishonesty with educator …

Publications And Other Works By R. F. Diffendal, Jr., Robert F. Diffendal Jr.

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Articles
Chapters in Books
Books
Field Guides
Geologic Maps
Other Maps
Cover Photographs
Other Photographs
Newspaper and Other Articles
Test-Hole Logs
Television Programs
Geonotes
Abstracts
Reviews
Manuscripts Accepted (A), Submitted (S), or in Preparation (P)
Geologic Maps in Press
Geologic Maps-Nebraska
Public Documents
Miscellaneous Publications
Editing

Updated March 2024

Hearing Iterative And Recursive Behavior: Sonification Improves Student Understanding, Joel C. Adams, Hayworth Anderson

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

Abstract topics such as recursion are challenging for many computer science students to understand. In this experience report, we explore function sonification-the addition of sound to a function to communicate information about the function's behavior in real-time as it runs-as a pedagogical approach for improving students' understanding of recursion. We present several example iterative and recursive function sonifications, plus spectrograms that illustrate their different sonic behaviors. We also present experimental evidence that using these sonifications significantly improved the understanding of recursion for students who used them, compared to students who used silent (i.e., traditional) versions of the same functions. Based …

Research Experiences Via Integrating Simulations And Experiments (Revise): A Model Collaborative Research Project For Undergraduate Students In Co2 Sorbent Design, Anthony Griffin, Neziah Smith, Mark Robertson, Bianca Nunez, Jacob Mccraw, Haoyuan Chen, Zhe Qiang

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Undergraduate research experiences are an instrumental component of student development, increasing conceptual understanding, promoting inquiry-based learning, and guiding potential career aspirations. Moving one step further, as research continues to become more interdisciplinary, there exists potential to accelerate student growth by granting additional perspectives through collaborative research. This study demonstrates the utilization of a model collaborative research project, specifically investigating the development of sorbent technologies for efficient CO2 capture, which is an important research area for improving environmental sustainability. A model CO2 sorbent system of heteroatom-doped porous carbon is utilized to enable students to gain knowledge of adsorption processes, through combined …

Developing A Success Model Of A Social Student Relationship Management System, Wasef Mater, Monther Aldwairi, Nasim Matar, Waleed Al-Rahmi

All Works

Social media's significance in higher education has increased due to its capacity to enhance participation, communication, teamwork, and information sharing. Important notifications, updates, and reminders can be promptly received by all members of the university community, assuring that information is shared with everyone. The objective of this study is to develop a model for a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system in higher education that is based on social media and intends to increase student satisfaction, loyalty, and profitability. It blends the idea of trust with Delone Mclean success model. Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to evaluate the …

Cognitive Load Scale In Learning Formal Definition Of Limit: A Rasch Model Approach, Rina Oktaviyanthi, Ria Noviana Agus, Mark Lester B. Garcia, Kornkanok Lertdechapat

Mathematics Faculty Publications

Constructing proofs for the limit using the formal definition induces a high cognitive load. Common assessment tools, like cognitive load scales, lack specificity for the concept of limits. This research aims to validate an instrument tailored to assess cognitive load in students focused on the formal definition of limits, addressing the need for diverse strategies in education. The research employs a quantitative survey design with a Rasch model approach, utilizing a data collection instrument in the form of a questionnaire. Subsequently, the data are analyzed by focusing on three aspects: (1) item fit to the Rasch model, (2) unidimensionality, and …

Advancing Cognitive Accessibility: The Role Of Artificial Intelligence In Enhancing Inclusivity, Rukiya Deetjen-Ruiz, Marjorie P Daniel, Jennie Telus, Lodz Deetjen

All Works

This editorial examines the transformative role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in enhancing cognitive accessibility for neurodiverse individuals. It explores the evolution from conventional assistive technologies to sophisticated AI-driven solutions, highlighting how these advancements are reshaping inclusivity in education and the workplace. The piece critically analyzes the benefits and challenges of AI in this context, considering ethical implications, user-centered design, and the need for equitable access. It concludes with a call to action for continued innovation and collaboration in developing AI technologies that truly cater to the diverse needs of neurodiverse individuals.

Seeing Eye To Eye? Comparing Faculty And Student Perceptions Of Biomolecular Visualization Assessments, Josh T. Beckham, Daniel R. Dries, Bonnie L. Hall, Rarchel M. Mitton-Fry, Shelly Engelman, Charmita Burch, Roderico Acevedo, Pamela S. Mertz, Didem Vardar-Ulu, Swati Agrawal, Kristin M. Fox, Shane Austin, Margaret A. Franzen, Henry V. Jakubowski, Walter R. P. Novak, Rebecca Roberts, Alberto I. Roca, Kristen Procko

Chemistry Faculty Publications

While visual literacy has been identified as a foundational skill in life science education, there are many challenges in teaching and assessing biomolecular visualization skills. Among these are the lack of consensus about what constitutes competence and limited understanding of student and instructor perceptions of visual literacy tasks. In this study, we administered a set of biomolecular visualization assessments, developed as part of the BioMolViz project, to both students and instructors at multiple institutions and compared their perceptions of task difficulty. We then analyzed our findings using a mixed-methods approach. Quantitative analysis was used to answer the following research questions: …

In Pursuit Of Consumption-Based Forecasting, Charles Chase, Kenneth B. Kahn

Marketing Faculty Publications

[Introduction] Today's most mature, most sophisticated, best-in-class forecasting is what we call consumption-based forecasting (CBF). In contrast, the least sophisticated companies typically do not forecast at all, but rather set financial targets based on management expectations. Companies beginning to use statistical forecasting techniques usually take a supply-centric orientation, relying on time series techniques applied to shipment and/or order history. The next stage of progression is to incorporate promotions data, economic data, and market data alongside supply-centric data so that regression and other advanced analytics can be used. Companies pursing CBF utilize even more advanced capabilities to capture, examine, and understand …

Conceptthread: Visualizing Threaded Concepts In Mooc Videos, Zhiguang Zhou, Li Ye, Lihong Cai, Lei Wang, Yigang Wang, Yongheng Wang, Wei Chen, Yong Wang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) platforms are becoming increasingly popular in recent years. Online learners need to watch the whole course video on MOOC platforms to learn the underlying new knowledge, which is often tedious and time-consuming due to the lack of a quick overview of the covered knowledge and their structures. In this paper, we propose ConceptThread , a visual analytics approach to effectively show the concepts and the relations among them to facilitate effective online learning. Specifically, given that the majority of MOOC videos contain slides, we first leverage video processing and speech analysis techniques, including shot recognition, …

Automatic Classification Of Activities In Classroom Videos, Jonathan K. Foster, Matthew Korban, Peter Youngs, Ginger S. Watson, Scott T. Acton

VMASC Publications

Classroom videos are a common source of data for educational researchers studying classroom interactions as well as a resource for teacher education and professional development. Over the last several decades emerging technologies have been applied to classroom videos to record, transcribe, and analyze classroom interactions. With the rise of machine learning, we report on the development and validation of neural networks to classify instructional activities using video signals, without analyzing speech or audio features, from a large corpus of nearly 250 h of classroom videos from elementary mathematics and English language arts instruction. Results indicated that the neural networks performed …

The Educational Affordances And Challenges Of Chatgpt: State Of The Field, Helen Crompton, Diane Burke

STEMPS Faculty Publications

ChatGPT was released to the public in November 30, 2022. This study examines how ChatGPT can be used by educators and students to promote learning and what are the challenges and limitations. This study is unique in providing one of the first systematic reviews using peer review studies to provide an early examination of the field. Using PRISMA principles, 44 articles were selected for review. Grounded coding was then used to reveal trends in the data. The findings show that educators can use ChatGPT for teaching support, task automation, and professional development. These were further delineated further by axial sub …

Types Of Teacher-Ai Collaboration In K-12 Classroom Instruction: Chinese Teachers' Perspective, Jinhee Kim

STEMPS Faculty Publications

The advancing power and capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) have expanded the roles of AI in education and have created the possibility for teachers to collaborate with AI in classroom instruction. However, the potential types of teacher-AI collaboration (TAC) in classroom instruction and the benefits and challenges of implementing TAC are still elusive. This study, therefore, aimed to explore different types of TAC and the potential benefits and obstacles of TAC through Focus Group Interviews with 30 Chinese teachers. The study found that teachers anticipated six types of TAC, which are thematized as One Teach, One Observe; One Teach, One …

Swosu Research And Scholarly Activity Fair 2024, Swosu Office Of Sponsored Programs

SWOSU Research and Scholarly Activity Fair Programs

On behalf of the members of the University Research and Scholarly Activity Committee (USRAC) and the Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP) at Southwestern Oklahoma State University (SWOSU) - Welcome to the Thirty-Second SWOSU Research and Scholarly Activity Fair! There are 61 poster presentations and 10 oral presentations involving over 100 student and faculty researchers, writers, presenters, artists, collaborators, and faculty sponsors encompassing activities from the SWOSU Departments of Biological Sciences, Chemistry & Physics, Engineering Technology, Kinesiology, Language & Literature, Mathematics, Music, Parks and Recreation Management, Pharmacy, Psychology, and Social Sciences.

Pre-Calculus: Thinking Deeply About Simple Things, Jacob Carter

Graduate Research Showcase

“Pre-Calculus: Thinking Deeply About Simple Things” is a research-based creative endeavor focused on designing a high-school pre-calculus course. This course aims to foster deep, meaningful thinking, as well as an appreciation of the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the math classroom. The course leverages students’ funds of knowledge to employ culturally responsive teaching methods to connect mathematical concepts to the students’ backgrounds, interests, and real-life situations. This course also integrates social-emotional learning to create an engaging and supportive learning environment for all students. By combining Peter Liljedahl’s “Building Thinking Classroom in Mathematics” approach with problem-based learning, the course …

Is The Declining Birthrate Really An Issue For The Economy?, Harsh Ramesh Pednekar, Theodore Lee, Darrion Chin

Introduction to Research Methods RSCH 202

This study aims to explore the complex implications of declining birth rates on the economy, focusing on GDP per capita as a crucial metric, and aims to uncover both potential opportunities and challenges stemming from this demographic transformation using regression analysis. Using a quantitative methodology and secondary data from OECD.stat, World Population Review, and World Bank, the study explores the relationship between declining birth rates and economic impacts. GDP per capita serves as an essential dependent variable, and it accounts for control variables such as labour force participation, literacy, and education levels, child dependence ratio, and physical capital. Past studies …

In Situ Water Sensing Systems: Research On Advancements In Environmental Monitoring, Abigail Seibel

Honors Theses

In this work, two sensing systems were researched in order to improve in situ environmental monitoring. The first is a pH and Total Alkalinity sensor used to determine these characteristics of sea water. I explored the facets of this sensor over a 7-week internship with Dr. Ellen Briggs in her lab in summer of 2023. The second is a more holistic sensing system that reads temperature, turbidity, and pressure used for studying environmental characteristics of Alaskan bever ponds. Both systems were developed in close collaboration with scientists who are collecting data to better understand the impacts of climate change. Better …

Exploring Students' Adoption Of Chatgpt As A Mentor For Undergraduate Computing Projects: Pls-Sem Analysis, Gottipati Swapna, Kyong Jin Shim, Shankararaman, Venky

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

As computing projects increasingly become a core component of undergraduate courses, effective mentorship is crucial for supporting students' learning and development. Our study examines the adoption of ChatGPT as a mentor for undergraduate computing projects. It explores the impact of ChatGPT mentorship, specifically, skills development, and mentor responsiveness, i.e., ChatGPT's responsiveness to students' needs and requests. We utilize PLS-SEM to investigate the interrelationships between different factors and develop a model that captures their contribution to the effectiveness of ChatGPT as a mentor. The findings suggest that mentor responsiveness and technical/design support are key factors for the adoption of AI tools …

How Helpful Do Novice Programmers Find The Feedback Of An Automated Repair Tool?, Oka Kurniawan, Christopher M. Poskitt, Ismam Al Hoque, Norman Tiong Seng Lee, Cyrille Jégourel, Nachamma Sockalingam

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Immediate feedback has been shown to improve student learning. In programming courses, immediate, automated feedback is typically provided in the form of pre-defined test cases run by a submission platform. While these are excellent for highlighting the presence of logical errors, they do not provide novice programmers enough scaffolding to help them identify where an error is or how to fix it. To address this, several tools have been developed that provide richer feedback in the form of program repairs. Studies of such tools, however, tend to focus more on whether correct repairs can be generated, rather than how novices …

Demystifying Artificial Intelligence (Ai) For Early Childhood And Elementary Education: A Case Study Of Perceptions Of Ai Of State Of Missouri Educators, Kathryn Arnone, James Hutson, Karen Woodruff

Faculty Scholarship

Artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on society have received a great deal of attention in the past five years since the first Stanford AI100 report. AI already globally impacts individuals in critical and personal ways, and many industries will continue to experience disruptions as the full algorithmic effects are understood. However, with regard to education, adopting in disciplines remains limited largely to Computer Science and Information Technology in postsecondary education. Recent advances with technology are especially promising for their potential to create and scale personalized learning for students, to optimize strategies for learning outcomes, and to increase access to …

Designing An Overseas Experiential Course In Data Science, Hua Leong Fwa, Graham Ng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Unprecedented demand for data science professionals in the industry has led to many educational institutions launching new data science courses. It is however imperative that students of data science programmes learn through execution of real-world, authentic projects on top of acquiring foundational knowledge on the basics of data science. In the process of working on authentic, real-world projects, students not only create new knowledge but also learn to solve open, sophisticated, and ill-structured problems in an inter-disciplinary fashion. In this paper, we detailed our approach to design a data science curriculum premised on learners solving authentic data science problems sourced …