Education Commons^™

Deep Change Theory: Implications For Educational Development Leaders, Caitlin Martin, Elizabeth Wardle

Publications

While chapters 1 and 2 explore the promise of theoretical frameworks for making conceptual change that leads to innovative action around teaching and learning in higher education, they also point out the challenges to this kind of work as teams of faculty strive to lead change in their programs and departments after completing the program. To summarize our claims thus far: one of the goals for the HCWE Faculty Writing Fellows Program is to empower faculty who participate to return to their departments to make programmatic changes—changes they identify as central to their work and values and program culture. The …

Does Removing Quizzes Impact Student Performance In An Online Course?, John Griffith

Publications

Data for 295 college online introductory statistics students were examined to determine if removing four module (weekly) quizzes impacted student performance on a cumulative exam. In this research, student performance was not significantly impacted by the removal of the quizzes. The difference in the exam mean score earned by the group of students who did not take quizzes was less than 0.8 of a point lower than the exam average for students who took the quizzes prior to the exam. Withdraw rates significantly declined from 5 percent to 1 percent. Results of this study support the idea that course designers …

Defending Against External Influences On Educational Data: The Role Of Policies And Procedures, Emily Faulconer, Debra Bourdeau

Publications

Within higher education, there has been increased focus over recent decades on evaluating our teaching practices to provide high-quality evidence of student learning for both internal and external assessment. Even at institutions without a college of education, many faculty are engaged in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) and/or discipline-based educational research (DBER). While studies are very diverse, and include qualitative and quantitative measures, common data points include student assessment scores and final course grades. In investigations using these measures, researchers acknowledge various mediating and moderating variables, but one particularly impactful variable is often ignored – administrative policies and …

Systems Thinking Applied To Higher Education Curricula Development, Reza Rahdar, Mark London, Yuetong Lin, Hong Jiang

Publications

Systems Thinking (ST) is a general and yet nebulous term that describes an approach to understanding and working with complexity in the real world. ST seeks to evaluate different behaviors of individual system elements when they operate in isolation as opposed to when they are integrated as part of a larger system and placed within a particular operating environment. The education environment consists of multiple systems with different digital content, learning goals/outcomes that serve different stakeholders including teachers, learners, and administrators. The inherent complexity and interaction among these various educational system elements and functions make this environment a worthy candidate …

Board 256: Development And Evolution Of Workshops To Support Online Undergraduate Research, Dr. Robert Deters, Dr. Brent Terwilliger, Emily Faulconer, Dr. Kelly A. George

Publications

Under a National Science Foundation (NSF) Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) grant, the Research Scholars Program was developed at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University — Worldwide. The objective of the Research Scholars Program is to promote undergraduate research for the online students at the Worldwide campus and to formalize the process in which the students can participate in research. A significant aspect of the project was to create a support network for the students that incorporated existing services provided by the university and established new services to aid students throughout their mentored research experience. One of the new services was the development …

Impact Of Critical Narrative On Students’ Abilities To Recognize Ethical Dilemmas In Engineering Work, Jeff Brown, Chad Rohrbacher, Taylor J. Mitchell, Dr. Leroy Long Iii, Jenna Korentsides, Joseph R. Keebler

Publications

This study aims to investigate the impact of exposure to critical narratives on students' abilities to recognize ethical dilemmas and broader impacts in engineering work. Critical narratives are place-based stories that engage students and help them enhance their critical thinking skills by making connections between the narratives, broader impacts of engineering work, and their responsibility to address these issues. The effectiveness of the critical narrative intervention was assessed by implementing discussion-based assignments around three critical narratives, which required students to listen to the narrative, respond to focus questions, engage with their peers, and reflect on the process. The intervention was …

Comparing Weekly Reflection Surveys And A Midterm Survey: Insights On Formative Feedback In Graphical Communication Education, Lulu Sun, Chad Rohrbacher

Publications

The authors report on a pedagogical feedback strategy employed in a first-year engineering graphics course, which implemented a flipped classroom model for self-regulated learning. Class time was reserved for activities and content clarifications. To encourage self-regulated learning and just-in-time teaching modifications, students completed a weekly mixed methods survey in the fall semester of 2022. Over each semester, 12 weeks of student data were collected. To further understand students’ concerns and capture potentially different voices, an anonymous midterm survey was administered by the Center of Teaching and Learning Excellence (CTLE) in the middle of the fall semester of 2022. A comparison …

Effects Of Isotonic Drinks On Academic Performance For University Students In Singapore, Sze Hiang Lee, Hursh Tarun Sanghavi, Xavier Tan, Ruhaan Das

Introduction to Research Methods RSCH 202

There are several factors that impact the academic performance of university students. The consumption of isotonic drinks is a factor that has not been explored enough to form a conclusive statement regarding its effects on academic performance. We will conduct an experiment in Singaporean universities to analyze the mean change in the scores of aptitude tests using a Paired Sample t-Test. We will also conduct a survey to compare how age, gender, study hours, sleep hours, smoking status, and exercise frequency correlate with measures of academic performance. Using regression analysis, we will determine which variables are associated with better levels …

Supporting Undergraduate Research For Globally Distributed Students And Mentors, Emily Faulconer, Brent Terwilliger, Robert Deters

Publications

Undergraduate research is widely viewed as a high-impact practice. However, participation in undergraduate research among students completing degree programs exclusively online may be impeded due to barriers such as access limitations, time poverty, and adequate institutional support. Through an NSF I-USE project (#2021221), we formed a framework of support, including a research independent study course and a mentoring program, where we deliberately separated and defined the roles of research supervisor and research mentor. In this session, we will discuss interview data on the experiences of faculty and students in both the credit-bearing active research as well as the non-credit-bearing research …

Community In The Online Science Classroom, Emily Faulconer

Publications

As online course offerings rise, it is important to design and facilitate courses to promote community so students feel connected to each other and the instructor and feel a sense of belonging as a scientist. Online discussions are a common feature for building and nurturing community and combating isolation. Discussions stimulate active learning, a strategy to promote participation in knowledge construction. This sense of community and science identity is important for both persistence and performance. I will share efforts to promote community while reducing extraneous cognitive load through discussion design and targeted instructor professional development. I will share data on …

Critical Teaching Behaviors: Defining, Documenting, And Discussing Good Teaching, Claudia Cornejo-Happel

Publications

What does “good” teaching mean, and how can we know it when we see it? Perhaps you have grappled with these questions at some point in your career, either as an instructor wanting to document or grow your teaching effectiveness or as a peer or administrator trying to provide guidance to or assess the teaching of others.

This book serves three purposes: a condensed, evidence-based guide to effective teaching; a resource on creating a focused teaching narrative and teaching portfolio; and a toolkit that equips faculty to conduct peer observations, student midterm feedback, and productive conversations related to teaching.

The …

Technology-Enabled Active Learning In Gen Ed Courses, Emily Faulconer

Publications

Technology tools can achieve active learning in asynchronous online courses. The H5P platform promotes self-paced, self-directed active learning through activities including branching scenarios, crosswords, flashcards, and interactive videos. This tool can provide formative feedback through features that allow provision of automatic feedback for a variety of question types (e.g.; fill in the blank, multiple choice, image hotspot, and drag and drop). H5P activities were embedded in the learning management system of two introductory general education courses. Learning analytics data and student perspectives were collected. This data will be used to guide future use of this technology tool in online courses.

H-Stem Infusions In Lower-Level General Education Courses, Emily Faulconer

Publications

This session presents the justification for infusing humanities into lower-level STEM general education courses, pointing to co

Hook, Line, And Sinker: How To Build Dei In Stem Focused Institutional Repositories By Putting Student Research First, Anne Marie Casey, Debra Rodensky

Publications

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) Scholarly Commons is an institutional repository on the bepress Digital Commons platform that highlights the intellectual output of the university’s faculty, staff, and students. Established in May 2013, Scholarly Commons has grown to include faculty, student, and staff research, instructional materials, journals, magazines, conferences, and research data. By August 2022, the collections consisted of more than 34,600 works downloaded nearly 4.9 million times. An important part of this collection is the research submitted by undergraduate students, which offers a variety of diverse voices.

Educate Or Litigate? The Mindsets Of Advancing Knowledge And Maintaining Financial Stability In Higher Education, Cherri Brown, Cheryl Lentz

Publications

The educational mindset for online higher degrees, specifically the master’s and doctoral journey, shifted from the refractive thinking perspective as transformational experiences, producing objective decision-making processes, to transactional business exchanges, and in some institutions, an exchange for investors and stakeholders. Nehrlich (2006) coined “transactional exchange” as an exchange of one thing for another involving some form of gain. This chapter presents the business of marketing higher education programs (i.e., master’s and doctoral degrees) and the front-line faculty positioned to achieve an institution’s profit margin derived from degree production. Our goal is to discuss the losses and gains when faculty, who …

Connecting Organizational Learning Strategies To Organizational Resilience, Stephanie Douglas, Gordon Haley

Publications

The objective of this study is to analyze the conceptual and domain overlap of organizational learning and organizational resilience; specifically, the adaptation or renewal domain in organizational resilience. From the findings, strategies to foster collective learning leading to organizational resilience are identified and outlined.