Education Commons^™

Authentic Science In Education: Studies In Course-Based Research At The United States Military Academy, Anthony M. Chase

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation consists of two studies at the United States Military Academy. Both studies involve the use of Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs). These experiences give students the ability to engage in undergraduate research at an early point in their academic career by replacing traditional laboratory activities with semester-long research projects. Both studies show an implementation of this type of instruction from the Center for Authentic Science Practice in Education (CASPiE). Study 1 shows the specific method of implementation at the military academy and explores learning-based outcomes. Primarily the outcome of critical thinking is demonstrated. Critical thinking is a construct …

A Descriptive Case Study: Investigating The Implementation Of Web Based, Automated Grading And Tutorial Software In A Freshman Computer Literacy Course, Glen J. Coulthard

Open Access Dissertations

Students in higher education require satisfactory computer skills to be successful. While today’s students may have greater exposure to technology, research shows that their actual computer knowledge and skills are superficial and narrow. As a result, the freshman computer literacy course remains an important curricular component. This study investigates the implementation of an innovative Web-based technology for delivering software proficiency training for Microsoft Office. Building upon decades of end-user computing satisfaction and technology acceptance research, the purpose of the study is to describe the instructor and student experiences that result from the implementation and use of MyITLab educational software. The …

The Development And Evaluation Of A Lean Six Sigma Advanced Manufacturing Methodologies Course For Aeronautical Engineering Technology Curriculum, John Michael Davis

Open Access Dissertations

Successful completion of the Lean Six Sigma advanced manufacturing methodologies practicum course provides undergraduate Aeronautical Engineering Technology (AET) students with the experience and knowledge appropriate to perform successfully in an advanced manufacturing environment. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine (a) Did the knowledge level of AET students increase following exposure to Lean Six Sigma and completion of the advanced manufacturing methodologies course? and (b) Did the course meet the AET students’ expectations following participation in the Lean Six Sigma advanced manufacturing course? The expected outcomes of the course included:

1. AET students will have the competencies to …

The Association Between Tolerance For Ambiguity And Fear Of Negative Evaluation: A Study Of Engineering Technology Capstone Courses, Sergey I. Dubikovsky

Open Access Dissertations

For many students in engineering and engineering technology programs in the US, senior capstone design courses require students to form a team, define a problem, and find a feasible technical solution to address this problem. Students must integrate the knowledge and skills acquired during their studies at the college or university level. These truly integrative design activities do not have a single “correct” solution. Instead, there is an array of solutions, many of which could be used to achieve the final result. This ambiguity can cause students to experience anxiety during the projects.

This study examined the main topics: • …

Race, Class And Gender In Engineering Education: A Quantitative Investigation Of First Year Enrollment, Canek Moises Luna Phillips

Open Access Dissertations

Research explanations for the disparity across both race and gender in engineering education has typically relied on a deficit model, whereby women and people of color lack the requisite knowledge or psychological characteristics that Whites and men have to become engineers in sufficient numbers. Instead of using a deficit model approach to explain gender and race disparity, in the three studies conducted for this dissertation, I approach gender and race disparity as the result of processes of segregation linked to the historic and on-going perpetuation of systemic sources of oppression in the United States. In the first study, I investigate …

Language, Culture, And Identity Negotiation: Perspectives Of Adolescent Japanese Sojourner Students In The Midwest, Usa, Reiko Akiyama

Open Access Dissertations

This qualitative research highlights the voices and lived experiences of adolescent Japanese sojourner students and their mothers residing in the Midwest. The central goals of this research are to understand what adolescent Japanese sojourner students’ school experiences in the U.S. are like—particularly in areas with small Japanese populations—and how their experiences in the U.S. shape their current identities as cultural and linguistic minority students. This research also aims to learn how the students’ sojourning experiences influenced their mindsets as future returnee students. I conducted an in-depth case study with a phenomenographic approach as the theoretical framework to deeply investigate the …

Conceptual Understanding Of Threshold Concepts Of Electrical Phenomena: Mental Models Of Senior Undergraduates In Electrical Engineering, Mark T. Carnes

Open Access Dissertations

Every field of study has a set of domain-specific concepts that anyone who desires to work in that field must know and understand. Most students who pursue university degrees in engineering trust that their education is designed to provide them with this knowledge. But does it? In electrical engineering (EE), conceptual understanding of electrical phenomena has rarely been addressed. Even though the presumed goal of instructors and students alike is to learn the concepts of electrical phenomena well enough to be able to use the concepts to design useful things, it is difficult to determine whether this goal is being …

Carbon Nanotube Thermal Interfaces And Related Applications, Stephen L. Hodson

Open Access Dissertations

The development of thermal interface materials (TIMs) is necessitated by the temperature drop across interfacing materials arising from macro and microscopic irregularities of their surfaces that constricts heat through small contact regions as well as mismatches in their thermal properties. Similar to other types of TIMs, CNT TIMs alleviate the thermal resistance across the interface by thermally bridging two materials together with cylindrical, high-aspect ratio, and nominally vertical conducting elements. Within the community of TIM engineers, the vision driving the development of CNT TIMs was born from measurements that revealed impressively high thermal conductivities of individual CNTs. This vision was …

Students' Explanations In Complex Learning Of Disciplinary Programming, Camilo Vieira

Open Access Dissertations

Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) has been denominated as the third pillar of science and as a set of important skills to solve the problems of a global society. Along with the theoretical and the experimental approaches, computation offers a third alternative to solve complex problems that require processing large amounts of data, or representing complex phenomena that are not easy to experiment with. Despite the relevance of CSE, current professionals and scientists are not well prepared to take advantage of this set of tools and methods. Computation is usually taught in an isolated way from engineering disciplines, and therefore, …

Factors Influencing Teacher Instructional Practice In Mathematics When Participating In Professional Development, William S. Walker Iii

Open Access Dissertations

In this research, I investigated teachers’ interpretations of the goals of professional development and factors that contributed to enacted instructional practices. A multiple-case study design was used to examine the interpretations of four high school teachers participating in a year-long professional development program with a standards-based framework for mathematics education. Data collection included information about the professional development program, the intended and enacted curriculum (Stein et al., 2007), the teachers’ interpretations of the professional development goals, and context factors that influenced instructional planning and implementation. The data were used to create a description of the professional development, a case study …

Thematic Analysis Of Influencers On Continuing Professional Learning Of Tenure Track Engineering Faculty As Assistant Professors At An Ru/Vh Institution, James Edwin Cawthorne

Open Access Dissertations

“Although the need for lifelong learning of professionals is stressed through university education, the patent differences between learning as a student, within a controlled framework focusing on accessible outcomes, and learning as a professional have not been clarified” (Webster-Wright, 2009, p. 708). Assistant professors are entry level professionals in academia who been prepared through their extensive education process to be lifelong learners and yet it is unknown how these assistant professors are engaging, or being engaged by others, in continuing their professional learning (CPL) for short-term and long-term success in academia as a career. This study aimed to understand who …

An Examination Of The Employment Of The Pair Programming Methodology As A Collaborative Instructional Scaffold On College Student Procedural Learning And Programming Self-Beliefs, Ronald Erdei

Open Access Dissertations

Using a concurrent mixed methods case study approach, this study investigated the impact of employing the pair programming methodology as a collaborative instructional scaffold on student programming procedural knowledge and programming-related self-beliefs in an introductory computer programming course offered at a large university located in the Midwestern United States. Employing a design research theoretical perspective in a natural educational setting, the study used course performance data, survey data, and researcher observations to educe that employment of the pair programming methodology as a collaborative instructional scaffold facilitated a more efficient learning process as well as a learning process less reliant on …

Methods To Facilitate Community Participation In Humanitarian Engineering Projects: Laying The Foundation For A Learning Platform, Andrea Mazzurco

Open Access Dissertations

Humanitarian engineering (HE) is a new interdisciplinary field that is rapidly emerging worldwide. Many not-for-profit organizations such as Engineers Without Borders, Practical Action, and International Development Enterprise have been flourishing with the goal of providing technological solutions to those who need them the most. In engineering programs across the U.S., HE, service-learning, community engagement, and similar programs are gaining popularity because they offer an efficient way to meet ABET accreditation criteria, while also teaching valuable technical and professional skills to engineering students. However, the cultural, social, and political differences among communities and engineers often add degrees of difficulty that cannot …

Decentering The Writing Program Archive: How Composition Instructors Save And Share Their Teaching Materials, Stacy Olivia Nall

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation decenters the writing program archive through research on instructors’ digital archives. Artifacts of composition instruction are no longer saved to print archives alone; rather, digital technologies expand the locations where artifacts of writing pedagogy can be archived and accessed. The following archival ethnography, focused on a community engagement writing course in the Introductory Composition at Purdue (ICaP) program, finds that many digital archives of composition are hidden to outside researchers or not sustained (which are theorized as either “abandoned” or “pop-up” archives). At the same time, some pedagogical materials are publicly visible by virtue of personal web spaces …

The Acquisition Of Bare Nominals By Three Populations Of Spanish-English Bilingual Adults, Lauren Elizabeth Miller

Open Access Dissertations

The present study contributes to our understanding of cross-linguistic influence by studying three different groups of Spanish-English speakers’ knowledge of the distribution of definite articles in both of their languages using a battery of tests that require them to draw on different linguistic abilities. These three groups include native English speakers who learned Spanish after adolescence, native Spanish speakers who learned English after adolescence and simultaneous bilinguals who grew up in the United States speaking both English and Spanish from birth. Specifically, this study explores interpretation, production and intuition regarding the acceptability of definite articles in different contexts. Since the …

L2 Effect On Bilingual Spanish/English Encoding Of Motion Events: Does Manner Salience Transfer?, Heidi E. Parker

Open Access Dissertations

This study explores the potential effect of a second language (L2) on first language (L1) encoding of motion events. The domain of interest is MANNER and the goal is to investigate if the degree of manner salience can be restructured under the effect of a L2. Slobin (2004, 2006) proposes an expansion of Talmy’s (1985, 1991, 2000) binary typology and observes that the degree of manner saliencevaries cross-linguistically. The two languages investigated in this study, Spanish and English, are at divergent points along the cline of manner salience. In addition, Slobin (1996b) suggests dividing MANNER into tier one (T1) …

From Mechanic To Designer: Evolving Perceptions Of Elementary Students Over Three Years Of Engineering Instruction, Anastasia M. Rynearson

Open Access Dissertations

Due in part to increasing state standards that require engineering in K-12 curricula and the Next Generation Science Standards’ incorporation of engineering outcomes, inclusion of engineering into elementary classrooms is on the rise. Teacher development and experiences in learning about and implementing engineering have been studied, but elementary students’ experiences when learning about engineering have not been explored.

The purpose of this study is to address the question: How do elementary students’ knowledge of, attitudes toward, and overall conceptions of engineering evolve over three years of engineering instruction?

This study follows seven elementary school students through three years of engineering …

Development Of First-Year Engineering Teams' Mathematical Models Through Linked Modeling And Simulation Projects, Kelsey Joy Rodgers

Open Access Dissertations

The development and use of mathematical models and simulations underlies much of the work of engineers. Mathematical models describe a situation or system through mathematics, quantification, and pattern identification. Simulations enable users to interact with models through manipulation of input variables and visualization of model outputs. Although modeling skills are fundamental, they are rarely explicitly taught in engineering. Model-eliciting activities (MEAs) represent a pedagogical approach used in engineering to teach students mathematical modeling skills through the development of a model to solve an authentic problem.

This study is an investigation into the impact of linking a MEA and a simulation-building …

Parental Educational Involvement In High School: Practice, Policy, And Implications For Low-Income And Minority Youth, Elizabeth Wehrspann

Open Access Dissertations

Parental educational involvement has become a key factor in policies and practice aimed at improving academic achievement, particularly for low-income and racial/ethnic minority youth. While much previous work has explored parental educational involvement for younger children, few consistent findings have emerged regarding parental educational involvement strategies with adolescents. Further, extant literature has shown mixed findings regarding the effectiveness of parents’ school choice (i.e. selecting a school regardless of geographic location) for increasing parents’ educational involvement and social capital more broadly. This dissertation addressed these findings in the literature by using two large nationally representative datasets – the Education Longitudinal Study …

The Educational Journeys Of First-Generation College Women In Stem: A Grounded Theory Study, Susan Geier

Open Access Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to ascertain the various factors that influenced these first-generation college women as they chose a college and selected a STEM major and subsequently persisted to upper level (junior/senior) status. Twenty-five first-generation college women in STEM majors who attended a research-intensive university in the Midwest were interviewed. Approaching this study using constructivist grounded theory provided the opportunity for deeper insights by examining data at a conceptual level while preserving the voices of the women in this study. The women faced numerous challenges on their journeys, yet they persisted. As the women in this study selected …

An Examination Of Indiana Early College High School Students Who Attended Purdue University Between 2006 And 2015, Lisa P. Kirkham

Open Access Dissertations

Early College High Schools (ECHS) are an educational intervention designed to promote rigor in high school education along with increased post-secondary access and success for disadvantaged students. Based on evidence, the Early College High School program is effective at helping students who traditionally are not in college-bound tracks find their way into that path. ECHSs provide a comprehensive, rigorous high school experience allowing students to earn an associate’s degree along with the high school diploma. Regarding structure, the ECHS is an entire high school, with all students earning college credits. Examining post-secondary experiences of students participating in Early College High …

A Phenomenographic Study Of The Ability To Address Complex Socio-Technical Systems Via Variation Theory, John A. Mendoza Garcia

Open Access Dissertations

Sometimes engineers fail when addressing the inherent complexity of socio-technical systems because they lack the ability to address the complexity of socio-technical systems. Teaching undergraduate engineering students how to address complex socio-technical systems, has been an educational endeavor at different levels ranging from kindergarten to post-graduate education. The literature presents different pedagogical strategies and content to reach this goal. However, there are no existing empirically-based assessments guided by a learning theory. This may be because at the same time explanations of how the skill is developed are scarce.

My study bridges this gap, and I propose a developmental path for …

It Is "Broken" And "Accented": Non-Native English-Speaking (Nnes) Graduate Students' Perceptions Toward Nnes Instructors' English, Hyo Jung Keira Park

Open Access Dissertations

This study investigates the perceptions of non-native English-speaking graduate students towards non-native English speaking (NNES) instructors’ accented English. Students (N=161) who were enrolled in an oral English course at Purdue University participated in a survey. Follow-up interviews were conducted with voluntary participants (N=9) to examine the perceptions of NNES graduate students towards NNES instructors in depth. The findings in the survey showed that more than one third of the participants experienced difficulty with their NNES instructors due to their limited intelligibility and restricted command of English. Furthermore, one third of the participants expressed that they would transfer to another section …

Promoting Teaming Metacognition, Lee Kemp Rynearson

Open Access Dissertations

Improving students’ capacity to effectively perform teaming skills is a crucial outcome for engineering education, and has been the subject of considerable prior and ongoing research. Based upon review of research on teaming, it was hypothesized that greater awareness of appropriate opportunities to use teaming skills in authentic contexts would lead to greater teaming skills employment over time. Further, it was hypothesized that greater psychological safety in student teams would lead to more students choosing to employ appropriate teaming skills over time. An intervention to achieve such increases could therefore be expected to promote student teaming skills performance improvement. Seeking …

An Analysis Of The Current Strength Of The Academic Relationship With The Aerospace Industry, James A. Stratton

Open Access Dissertations

The objective of this research was to discover which methods of technology transfer were most commonly accessed within the Indiana manufacturing sector in an effort to best serve companies in the Hoosier State. Previous work has explored the perceived importance of various academic sources, but there has not been an investigation to identify the specific preferences of industry professionals. If these preferences can be identified, university assistance programs and other academic engagement programs will be able to predict, and hopefully influence how to grow and develop the domestic manufacturing sector, ultimately strengthening the channels of knowledge transfer between academia and …

Writing Their Way To The University: An Investigation Of Chinese High School Students' Preparation For Writing In English In High Schools, Cram Schools, And Online, Cong Zhang

Open Access Dissertations

In this dissertation, drawing from activity theory, I investigate how Chinese students prepared themselves for undergraduate studies in U.S. universities in terms of English writing from three perspectives: English writing instruction in high schools, private supplementary tutoring (PST) in English writing in cram schools, and experience with writing online and using online resources. On the basis of data from a questionnaire, interviews, classroom observations, and examinations of written materials and a forum, I provide a picture of the writing instruction experience and writing background that Chinese students bring to writing classrooms in U.S. universities. It was found that other than …

Undergraduate Students' Goals For Chemistry Laboratory Coursework, Brittland K. Dekorver

Open Access Dissertations

Chemistry laboratory coursework has the potential to offer many benefits to students, yet few of these learning goals are realized in practice. Therefore, this study seeks to characterize undergraduate students’ learning goals for their chemistry laboratory coursework. Data were collected by recording video of students completing laboratory experiments and conducting interviews with the students about their experiences that were analyzed utilizing the frameworks of Human Constructivism and Self-Regulated Learning. A cross-sectional sampling of students allowed comparisons to be made among students with varying levels of chemistry experience and interest in chemistry. The student goals identified by this study were compared …

Self-Regulation To Practice: Incorporating The Strategy To An Early Childhood Special Education Setting, Kathryn L. Szwed

Open Access Dissertations

Preschool students who display social emotional deficits pose challenging issues for families, caregivers and teachers who educate them. In this study, the effectiveness of an assistive technology based treatment package consisting of video self-modeling and behavior management software was investigated to determine if its combined use would result in increased student self-regulation skills. Using a multiple baseline design, three students used the treatment package to increase self-regulation skills. During the investigation, the accuracy to self-identify behaviors, the documentation of desired and undesired behaviors and the overall impact of the treatment package was studied. Interobserver agreement (IOA) was used to determine …

Toward A Genre Writing Curriculum: Schooling Genres In The Common Core State Standards, Michael J. Maune

Open Access Dissertations

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS), published in 2010 and adopted by the majority of U.S. states, established a set of expectations for student writing in K-12 education. In describing these expectations, the CCSS used three general “text type” classifications: Narrative, Informative/Explanatory, and Argumentative. While the CCSS outlines the general expectations for students writing in these text types, the linguistic and genre expectations were not fully expressed. This study examines 34 student exemplar texts provided in an appendix to the CCSS in order to determine the genre and linguistic expectations for student writing in K-12 education. Using a genre typology …

Analysis Of Scientific Argumentation In Two Physical Chemistry Classrooms Using The Pogil Approach, Alena C. Moon

Open Access Dissertations

The benefits of facilitating argumentation in science education have been well reported (Jimenez-Aleixandre & Erduran, 2007). Engaging in argumentation has shown to model authentic scientific inquiry as well as promote development of content knowledge. However, less emphasis has been placed on facilitating argumentation in upper level undergraduate courses, though it is important for evaluating undergraduate curricula to characterize upper level students’ scientific reasoning. This work considers two implementations of the POGIL physical chemistry curriculum and evaluates the classroom argumentation. The researchers aimed to consider the content of the arguments and dialectical features characteristic of socially constructed arguments (Nielson, 2013). To …