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Full-Text Articles in Education
A Summary Of Agricultural Air Quality Perceptions In Virginia, Jactone Arogo-Ogejo, Nancy K. Franz Dr., Kurt Stephenson
A Summary Of Agricultural Air Quality Perceptions In Virginia, Jactone Arogo-Ogejo, Nancy K. Franz Dr., Kurt Stephenson
Nancy K. Franz
As part of our project “Integrating Education and Development of a Biodegradable Litter Amendment to Mitigate Ammonia Emissions from Poultry House” funded by the National Institute for Food and Agriculture, research project (#2009-55112-05214), we conducted four listening sessions on agricultural air quality with 44 agricultural agency representatives, farmers, and Extension agents/specialists, across Virginia. The purpose of the listening sessions was to gather information from the community (stakeholders) about their perceptions, concerns, what they would like to know, and who should be educated about agricultural air quality. We made a short presentation to introduce the subject and then solicited stakeholder reaction. …
Enhancing Accountability: Servsafe™ Impact Template Delivers, Renee Boyer, Matthew Benson, Heather Boyd, Mena Forrester, Nancy K. Franz, Karen Gehrt, Patsy Pelland, Kirsten Roan
Enhancing Accountability: Servsafe™ Impact Template Delivers, Renee Boyer, Matthew Benson, Heather Boyd, Mena Forrester, Nancy K. Franz, Karen Gehrt, Patsy Pelland, Kirsten Roan
Nancy K. Franz
Generating statewide impact data from Extension programs can be challenging. To streamline reporting, Extension specialists, with the help of county agents and administrators, generated a statewide impact statement for the ServSafe™ program in Virginia. This template includes knowledge gain, behavior change, and economic impact from participants generated from current standardized evaluation methods used by all Extension educators across the state. Providing this template for agents resulted in easier, more consistent yearly reporting for those agents administering the program.
Designing An Intelligent Discourse Evaluation Tool: Theoretical, Empirical, And Technological Considerations, Elena Cotos
Designing An Intelligent Discourse Evaluation Tool: Theoretical, Empirical, And Technological Considerations, Elena Cotos
Elena Cotos
Considering the promising potential of ICALL and intelligent feedback, this paper addresses this topic from the perspective of practical applications. It reviews existing intelligent language learning systems and their feedback capabilities, arguing that while ICALL is very promising and highly complex, its development should be more principled. In other words, the decisions behind the system design need to be justified theoretically, integrating technology with theory, research, and practice in instructed SLA. To support this argument, this paper provides an example of how this was achieved in the context of L2 graduate academic writing. It describes a new natural language processing-based …
Automated Diagnostic Writing Tests: Why? How?, Elena Cotos, Nick Pendar
Automated Diagnostic Writing Tests: Why? How?, Elena Cotos, Nick Pendar
Elena Cotos
Diagnostic language assessment can greatly benefit from a collaborative union of computer-assisted language testing (CALT) and natural language processing (NLP). Currently, most CALT applications mainly allow for inferences about L2 proficiency based on learners’ recognition and comprehension of linguistic input and hardly concern language production (Holland, Maisano, Alderks, & Martin, 1993). NLP is now at a stage where it can be used or adapted for diagnostic testing of learner production skills. This paper explores the viability of NLP techniques for the diagnosis of L2 writing by analyzing the state of the art in current diagnostic language testing, reviewing the existing …
Automatic Identification Of Discourse Moves In Scientific Article Introductions, Elena Cotos, Nick Pendar
Automatic Identification Of Discourse Moves In Scientific Article Introductions, Elena Cotos, Nick Pendar
Elena Cotos
This paper reports on the first stage of building an educational tool for international graduate students to improve their academic writing skills. Taking a text-categorization approach, we experimented with several models to automatically classify sentences in research article introductions into one of three rhetorical moves. The paper begins by situating the project within the larger framework of intelligent computer-assisted language learning. It then presents the details of the study with very encouraging results. The paper then concludes by commenting on how the system may be improved and how the project is intended to be pursued and evaluated.
Reporting Program Impacts: Slaying The Dragon Of Resistance, Nancy K. Franz, Mark Mccann
Reporting Program Impacts: Slaying The Dragon Of Resistance, Nancy K. Franz, Mark Mccann
Nancy K. Franz
Virginia Cooperative Extension has responded to today's environment of enhanced accountability by improving the organization's program impact reporting. Successful strategies to enhance the quantity and quality of program impact reports include new hires, training faculty and administration, individual and small group technical assistance, development of reporting tools, and tying impact reporting to performance and recognition. This holistic approach resulted in enhanced reporting and use of program impacts as well as improved program design and evaluation.
Student Variables That Predict Retention: Recent Research And New Developments, Robert D. Reason
Student Variables That Predict Retention: Recent Research And New Developments, Robert D. Reason
Robert D Reason
This article reviews recent research related to the study of college student retention, specifically examining research related to individual student demographic characteristics. The increasing diversity of undergraduate college students requires a new, thorough examination of those student variables previously understood to predict retention. The retention literature focuses on research conducted after 1990 and emphasizes the changing demographics in higher education. Research related to a relatively new variable— the merit-index—also is reviewed, revealing potentially promising, but currently mixed results.
Assessment Of Introduction To Engineering And Problem-Solving Course, Joni E. Spurlin, Jerome P. Lavelle, Mary Clare Robbins, Sarah A. Rajala
Assessment Of Introduction To Engineering And Problem-Solving Course, Joni E. Spurlin, Jerome P. Lavelle, Mary Clare Robbins, Sarah A. Rajala
Sarah A. Rajala
At North Carolina State University, the freshmen’s first course in engineering is E101, Introduction to Engineering and Problem-Solving. It is offered each fall to over 1,100 first year engineering students. In an effort to continuously improve the course, we put into place a plan to assess the course's learning outcomes. Assessment data collected in fall 2001 and fall 2002 through surveys, rubrics, and class assignments were evaluated to determine how well students met learning outcomes related to communication, teamwork, and problem-solving. This paper presents the assessment methods used in this course and provides examples of how the assessment findings were …
Outcomes Assessment: Developing An Electronic Assessment Database As A Model For Collection And Analysis Of Data, Joni E. Spurlin, Sarah A. Rajala, Jerome P. Lavelle, O. Jerome Hoskins
Outcomes Assessment: Developing An Electronic Assessment Database As A Model For Collection And Analysis Of Data, Joni E. Spurlin, Sarah A. Rajala, Jerome P. Lavelle, O. Jerome Hoskins
Sarah A. Rajala
As the ABET process in each institution moves toward outcomes assessment, it pushes each program to develop and implement its outcome assessment plans. Assessment plans document how programs will gather data, interpret the findings, and use the results to make improvements in programs, curricula, and resources. The ABET team at North Carolina State University (faculty from each engineering discipline along with assessment-knowledgeable personnel) has developed a model that academic programs within the College of Engineering use to determine what data to gather, where to obtain the data, and what criteria may be most appropriate when interpreting the data. This paper …