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Full-Text Articles in Education

Technology, Information Literacy And Social Work Education, Laura Trull, David Vess Aug 2017

Technology, Information Literacy And Social Work Education, Laura Trull, David Vess

Libraries

This poster will demonstrate a unique series of interactive lessons, designed and implemented collaboratively by Social Work and Library faculty to support student information literacy skill development. This series of six lessons was implemented with junior-level social work students and focused on topics such as determining quality of sources, constructing citations, identifying research methodology, utilizing technology, research ethics and search techniques. Lesson outlines will be made available to participants and future research and evaluation plans will be discussed.


Girls Are Us: A Collection Of Oral Histories From The Jmu Community, Anne M. Sherman May 2017

Girls Are Us: A Collection Of Oral Histories From The Jmu Community, Anne M. Sherman

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

On a campus where women make up a majority of the student population, it is especially important that female voices are heard and given a platform on which they can control their own narrative. I wanted to give those female-identifying voices that platform. I conducted a series of interviews to examine how college-aged female-identifying students feel about their identity and how they construct that identity within the climate of the JMU community. I was particularly interested in the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexual preference, and ability. I asked each person to share their stories of times when they …


How Scholarship Programs Facilitate First-Generation College Students’ Involvement, Maria C. Restrepo Chavez May 2017

How Scholarship Programs Facilitate First-Generation College Students’ Involvement, Maria C. Restrepo Chavez

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

As a first-generation college student, I am interested in the on-campus involvement and experiences of other first-generation college students. First-generation college students are those whose parents did not receive a university degree and tend to come from low-income families. This project explores programs designed to support and enrich the experiences of such students. The Centennial Scholars Program at James Madison University and the Presidential Scholarship Initiative at Virginia Tech aim to increase the socio-economic diversity on each campus. These programs provide students with full funding for four years, mentorship, professional development and social benefits, among others. In turn, students become …


Integrating Implementation Fidelity And Learning Improvement To Enhance Students’ Ethical Reasoning Abilities, Kristen L. Smith May 2017

Integrating Implementation Fidelity And Learning Improvement To Enhance Students’ Ethical Reasoning Abilities, Kristen L. Smith

Dissertations, 2014-2019

Examples of demonstrable student learning improvement in higher education are rare (Banta, Jones, & Black, 2009; Banta & Blaich, 2011). Perhaps because outcomes assessment practices are disconnected from pedagogy, curriculum, and learning improvement. Through partnership with the Madison Collaborative, the current study aimed to bridge this disconnect. Specifically, researchers applied implementation fidelity methodologies (O’Donnell, 2008) to an academic program, under the guiding framework of the Simple Model for Learning Improvement (Fulcher, Good, Coleman, & Smith, 2014). In doing so, researchers helped faculty create and elucidate an ethical reasoning educational intervention and accompanying fidelity checklist. Both were well-aligned with a University-level …


You Only Live Up To The Standards You Set: An Evaluation Of Different Approaches To Standard Setting, Scott N. Strickman May 2017

You Only Live Up To The Standards You Set: An Evaluation Of Different Approaches To Standard Setting, Scott N. Strickman

Dissertations, 2014-2019

Interpretation of performance in reference to a standard can provide nuanced, finely-tuned information regarding examinee abilities beyond that of just a total score. However, there is a multitude of ways to set performance standards yet little guidance regarding which method operates best and under what circumstances. Traditional methods are the most common approach adopted in practice and heavily involve subject matter experts (SMEs). Two other approaches have been suggested in the literature as alternative ways to set performance standards, although they have yet to be implemented in practice. Data-driven approaches do not involve SMEs but rather rely solely upon statistical …


The Effect Of A Font Intervention For 4th And 5th Graders With Dyslexia, Steven L. Powell May 2017

The Effect Of A Font Intervention For 4th And 5th Graders With Dyslexia, Steven L. Powell

Educational Specialist, 2009-2019

Dyslexie is a font developed by Christian Boer specifically to enhance reading fluency in students with dyslexia. The present study examined its potential impact on the performance of 36 4th and 5th grade students with SLD on story reading. We found that Dyslexie, when compared to other common fonts that have been adjusted to control for Dyslexie’s large size and spacing, appears to have no effect on readers’ ability to read text correctly, comprehend text, or read faster.


The Effect Of Educational Modules On Attitudes Towards Disabilities, Hunter W. Greer May 2017

The Effect Of Educational Modules On Attitudes Towards Disabilities, Hunter W. Greer

Educational Specialist, 2009-2019

The researchers in this study were interested in the effect of educational modules on student’s ratings of appropriateness and fairness of 10 different accommodations offered at the college level. Researchers were also interested in investigating if these modules would affect individual’s scores on the Social Distance Scale to evaluate levels of stigma towards mental health. Researchers surveyed 150 college students at a large South Eastern University and found that individuals rated accommodations as higher than neutral in fairness and appropriateness overall, but did not find a difference in students who read the modules and students who did not. Researchers also …


Retrospective Versus Prospective Measurement Of Examinee Motivation In Low-Stakes Testing Contexts: A Moderated Mediation Model, Aaron J. Myers May 2017

Retrospective Versus Prospective Measurement Of Examinee Motivation In Low-Stakes Testing Contexts: A Moderated Mediation Model, Aaron J. Myers

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Expectancy-value theory applied to examinee motivation suggests examinees’ perceived value of a test indirectly affects test performance via examinee effort. This empirically supported indirect effect, however, is often modeled using importance and effort scores measured after test completion, which does not align with their theoretically specified temporal order. Retrospectively measured importance and effort scores may be influenced by examinees’ test performance, impacting the estimate of the indirect effect. To investigate the effect of timing of measurement, first-year college students were randomly assigned to one of three conditions where (1) importance and effort were measured retrospectively; (2) importance was measured prospectively; …


Student Learning Gains In Higher Education: A Longitudinal Analysis With Faculty Discussion, Catherine E. Mathers May 2017

Student Learning Gains In Higher Education: A Longitudinal Analysis With Faculty Discussion, Catherine E. Mathers

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Student learning is the primary desired outcome of a college education. To understand how educational programming and curricula affect students, colleges and universities must collect evidence of student learning gain. In this study, a longitudinal design was employed to investigate how a math and science general education curriculum impacted college students’ quantitative and scientific reasoning. Quantitative and scientific reasoning gain scores were computed and predicted from personal (i.e., prior knowledge, gender) and curriculum (i.e., number of completed courses in the domain) characteristics to uncover what factors relate to learning gain. Collapsing across personal and curriculum variables, gain scores were moderate …


Argument Education In Higher Education: A Validation Study, Paul E. Mabrey Iii May 2017

Argument Education In Higher Education: A Validation Study, Paul E. Mabrey Iii

Dissertations, 2014-2019

Argument education can play an important role in higher education for leadership development and responding to increasing calls for post-secondary accountability. But to do so, argumentation teachers, scholars, and practitioners need to develop a clearer definition and research agenda for the purposes of teaching and assessing argumentation. The research conducted here contributes to this project by first establishing a definitional construct and observable behaviors associated with learning and practicing argumentation. Second, an argument education assessment instrument was created based off of the literature-supported definition of argumentation. Third, debate and argument education subject matter experts reviewed the definition, behaviors, and assessment …


The Effect Of Font Type On Sight Word Reading Performance Of 4th And 5th Grade Students With Reading Disabilities, Denton S. Warburton May 2017

The Effect Of Font Type On Sight Word Reading Performance Of 4th And 5th Grade Students With Reading Disabilities, Denton S. Warburton

Educational Specialist, 2009-2019

Reading interventions are a crucial component to combat barriers associated with reading difficulties. Within the education realm, nearly 50% of students who receive special education supports have a Specific Learning Disability (Gargiulo, 2006). As a result, the development and implementation of effective and targeted interventions is critical. Christian Boer developed a font called Dyslexie to help remediate reading difficulties of individuals with Dyslexia (Boer, 2011). However, studies by de Leeuw (2010) and Pjipker (2013) provide inconsistent supportive evidence, regarding the effectiveness of Dyslexie. The current study sought to examine the effectiveness of Dyslexie as compared to Arial on sight word …


Developing Information And Communication Technologies For Education In Haiti, Nabeel Janjua, Yan Li, Manoj Thomas Feb 2017

Developing Information And Communication Technologies For Education In Haiti, Nabeel Janjua, Yan Li, Manoj Thomas

VA Engage Journal

This research aims to aid in developing educational technologies for students and teachers in Haiti. The goal of the research project is to increase computer familiarity and literacy. To achieve this objective, a design science and mixed methods approach is developed. The design science approach focuses on building prototype artifacts consisting of software tutorials, computer on a stick, and Internet in a box. The qualitative and quantitative research methods consist of visual comprehension, discussion with students and teachers, data gathering and analysis through census and survey processing systems. Quantitative data is still being analyzed. Both methods may be utilized for …