Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Commons^™

School Change: Adolescents Transitioning From Conventional Schooling To Home-Based Online Education, Harvey Klamm

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This hermeneutic phenomenological research explored the lived experiences of six recently graduated adolescents to extrapolate the valued essence of their transitional encounters in changing from conventional school to home-based online schooling. The homeschool research shifted the emphasis from the outcome-based academic achievement studies prevalent during the past 20 years to a focus on internal and external factors impacting student learning within this technological instructional process. Findings produced from analysis and interpretation of reflective adolescent lived experiences revealed rich truth regarding the internal emotions, environmental adaptations, academic ramifications, and social adaptations encountered when changing from conventional schooling to home-based online school. …

Fortifying The Pipeline: An Exploratory Study Of High School Factors Impacting The Information Literacy Of First-Year College Students, Jennifer L. Fabbi

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Information literacy—the ability "to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information” (American Library Association [ALA], 1989, para. 3)—has been widely and increasingly cited as an essential competency for college success, for the workplace, and for life (Bruce, 1997; Eisenberg, 2008; Fitzgerald, 2004; Johnston & Webber, 2003; National Leadership Council for Liberal Education and America’s Promise, 2007; Obama, 2009; Rader, 2002). Information literacy best practice and standards state that students optimally develop this skill set through immersion in the research process—often and over time—and this proposition is also supported in …

Florida Charter Schools: The Effects Of Types And Socioeconomic Status On Academic Achievement, Reginald Thompson

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was established in 2002 with the primary goal of closing the achievement gap between low socioeconomic students and their more advantaged peers. Charter schools are a part of NCLB's school choice policy and are intended to be a form of intervention to close the achievement gap. Much research has been conducted to measure charter school student achievement compared to regular public schools. But little has been done in distinguishing the differences between charter schools and their impact on student achievement. This quantitative study identifies the different types of public charter schools in Florida using Carpenter's …

Some Assembly Required: How Scientific Explanations Are Constructed During Clinical Interviews, Bruce L. Sherin, Moshe Krakowski, Victor R. Lee

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

This article is concerned with commonsense science knowledge, the informally-gained knowledge of the natural world that students possess prior to formal instruction in a scientific discipline. Although commonsense science has been the focus of substantial study for more than two decades, there are still profound disagreements about its nature and origin, and its role in science learning. What is the reason that it has been so difficult to reach consensus? We believe that the problems run deep; there are difficulties both with how the field has framed questions and the way that it has gone about seeking answers. In order …

More Efficient Public Schools In Maine: Learning Communities Building The Foundation Of Intellectual Work, David L. Silvernail Phd, Erika K. Stump Phd, Richard E. Barnes, Kenneth E. Kunin, Sarah E. Wintle

School Improvement

This report describes the methodology used to identify Maine schools that were outperforming expectations and reports the results from conducting case studies of a representative sample of these and other Maine schools. Through these case studies, we were able to uncover what the schools were doing that set them apart from other schools and what other schools may wish to emulate as they work to build the foundation for improvement within their own schools.

Striving For World Class Excellence: Rankings And Emerging Societies, Ellen Hazelkorn

Books/Book chapters

No abstract provided.

Methodological Orientations Of Articles Appearing In Allied Health's Top Journals: Who Publishes What And Where, Pamela Lea Mccloud Alderman

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This study examined articles published in the major peer-reviewed journals, either hard copy, web, or both formats, in five allied health professions from January 2006 to December 2010. Research journals used in this study includes Journal of Dental Hygiene, Journal of the American Dietetic Association, Journal of Nursing Scholarship, Physical Therapy Journal of the American Physical Therapy Association, and Radiologic Technology. These journals were chosen after reviewing the professional organizations’ of each discipline, as well as the professional honor societies, and the recommendations by the discipline-specific national accreditation agencies found on the organizations’ websites. All research articles published in these …

Using Data Mining For Predicting Relationships Between Online Question Theme And Final Grade, M'Hammed Abdous, Wu He, Cherng-Jyh Yen

Information Technology & Decision Sciences Faculty Publications

As higher education diversifies its delivery modes, our ability to use the predictive and analytical power of educational data mining (EDM) to understand students' learning experiences is a critical step forward. The adoption of EDM by higher education as an analytical and decision making tool is offering new opportunities to exploit the untapped data generated by various student information systems (SIS) and learning management systems (LMS). This paper describes a hybrid approach which uses EDM and regression analysis to analyse live video streaming (LVS) students' online learning behaviours and their performance in their courses. Students' participation and login frequency, as …

The Politics Of Physical Education Reform, Ari Zyskind

CMC Senior Theses

The purpose of the paper is to determine why today's youth are so physically inactive by examining the role and efforts of physical education, and the state and federal governments responsibility in supporting these programs, in fighting today's obesity epidemic by creating generations of healthy and physically active children. Research led to the determination that states have failed to maintain and improve physical education resulting in a physically inactive youth. Therefore, the nation should look to federal legislation to support state-led physical education, which this paper found to be constitutional if the enactments followed the provisions established in South Dakota …

Engaging With The Community, Ellen Hazelkorn, Elaine Ward

Books/Book chapters

This article focuses on how higher education institutions (HEIs) engage with their external community, contribute to social and economic development, and underpin civil society and democracy. The external community consists of a wide-range of stakeholders from business and industry, the public, private and non-governmental sector, and civil society. While many HEIs have historically had a strong association to their city or nation, today the health of society and the economy is inextricably tied to greater collaboration between “town” and “gown”. The article has five main sections: i) Introduces the social and public responsibility of higher education, ii) Describes the policy …

Understanding Early Faculty Experience: On Becoming Teachers, Scholars, And Community Members, Michele M. Welkener, Michelle Flaum Hall, Mary I. Grilliot

Counselor Education and Human Services Faculty Publications

This article focuses on findings from a qualitative study of the experiences of pretenured faculty within their first two years in the academy. The authors share narratives from faculty participants who are diverse in their disciplinary backgrounds and prior experiences, focusing on the expectations they had upon entering the profession, the challenges they encountered, and what they found helpful for meeting the many demands of faculty life. Their stories provide evidence of the enduring need for faculty learning communities. Implications of this work can inform the efforts of faculty developers, college and university administrators, and anyone with an interest in …

Explore, Educate, Expand: The Exploratorium’S Education Abroad Youth Program, Nina Rubin

Capstone Collection

This capstone describes the design of an outbound, education abroad program that will take place in Dharamsala, India over a five-week period. It will bring together young adults from the U.S. and Tibet for an intercultural learning experience. The program will provide hands-on opportunities for participants to be engaged in academic, philosophical and personal growth. The educational workshops and activities will be centered on neuroscience, meditation, and Buddhist conceptions of science and the natural world. At the same time, themes of intercultural communication and competence will be explored in-depth.

As a foundation, the program will build from an existing partnership …

Framing In Cognitive Clinical Interviews About Intuitive Science Knowledge: Dynamic Student Understandings Of The Discourse Interaction, Rosemary S. Russ, Victor R. Lee, Bruce L. Sherin

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Researchers in the science education community make extensive use of cognitive clinical interviews as windows into student knowledge and thinking. Despite our familiarity with the interviews, there has been very limited research addressing the ways that students understand these interactions. In this work we examine students’ behaviors and speech patterns in a set of clinical interviews about chemistry for evidence of their tacit understandings and underlying expectations about the activity in which they are engaged. We draw on the construct of framing from anthropology and sociolinguistics and identify clusters of behaviors that indicate that students may alternatively frame the interview …

Physical Activity Data Use By Technoathletes: Examples Of Collection, Inscription, And Identification, Victor R. Lee, Joel Drake

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

The proliferation of physical activity data monitoring devices had led to an increase in technoathletes—individuals who combine athletic training and performance with the collection and evaluation of personally-relevant data in an effort to better understand their own abilities. We interviewed 20 technoathletes who were actively involved within either cycling or running communities. Qualitative vignettes of technoathletic engagement with data and the practice of data logging, in specific, are discussed and illustrated. Individual relationships that technoathletes have with their data are also examined. Through the examples, we highlight some commonalities in the data that were obtained and how various athletes …

In Pursuit Of Consensus: Disagreement And Legitimization During Small Group Argumentation, Leema K. Berland, Victor R. Lee

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

In recent years, an emphasis on scientific argumentation in classrooms has brought into focus collaborative consensus-building as an instructional strategy. In these situations, students with differing and competing arguments are asked to work with one another in order to establish a shared perspective. However, the literature suggests that consensus-building can be challenging for students because their interpretations of the argumentative task and context may not enable their productive engagement with counter-arguments and evidence. In this paper, our goal is to explore the ways in which interactions of students support or inhibit their consensus-building. To that end, we examine and describe …

Collaborative Agency In Youth Online And Offline Creative Production In Scratch, Y. B. Kafai, Deborah A. Fields, R. Roque, W. Q. Burke, A. Monroy-Hernandez

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Few studies have focused on how youth develop agency to organize and participate in online unstructured creative collaborations. This paper describes and analyzes how youth programmers organized collaborative groups in response to a programming “Collab Challenge” in the Scratch Online Community and in an accompanying workshop with high school students. The analyses focused on modalities of online collaborations, determined the breadth of online participation, and examined local teens’ awareness of the online community. The discussion addresses youth’s collaborative agency in these new networked contexts, studied the role that online social awareness plays in completing tasks and makes recommendations for the …

Dispositions In The Twenty First Century School Library Profession, Sue C. Kimmel, Gail K. Dickinson, Carol A. Doll

STEMPS Faculty Publications

Within the school library profession there is an emerging focus on dispositions, defined as "a tendency to exhibit frequently, consciously, and voluntarily a pattern of behavior that is directed to a broad goal" (Katz, 1993). Directed focus groups of practicing school librarians were asked to articulate their vision for school libraries of the future. Data from these groups informed development of six dispositional continua to guide both school library education and school librarianship in the 21st century. This study clarifies the dispositions needed by school librarians in the future.

Community Capacity Building: Supporting Military Children And Families Environmental Scan Of Extension Professional Development Opportunities For Early Childhood And School-Age Providers: Final Report, Jennifer K. Gerdes, D. Felix, Amanda Prokasky, Tonia Durden, Kathleen Lodl

Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families, and Schools: Faculty Publications

The purpose of this environmental scan was to discover what professional development is offered through the Cooperative Extension System to early childhood or school age providers across the nation. A secondary focus was to assess the availability of professional development opportunities offered through the Cooperative Extension System for providers who serve children (birth–12) from military families, both on and off installation. Through this process, the strengths of Extension were highlighted and existing resources that could be replicated for use in other states were identified.

Part-Time Faculty In Higher Education: A Selected Annotated Bibliography, Robert Pankin, Carla Weiss

Sociology & Anthropology Faculty Publications

At this writing (Fall 2011), two-thirds of the faculty in higher education are contingent part-time or full-time. Only one-third of the faculty is tenured or on the tenure-track. This selected, annotated bibliography is organized by year of publication, from 1977 to 2010. (An earlier version was published in 2008.) It is the purpose of this publication to facilitate understanding of the meaning and implications of this major change in the structure of higher education. The annotations in the bibliography were written from the perspective of a part-time faculty member, unlike most of the literature, which is written from a management …

Creative Learning For Challenging Times: The Promise And Peril Of Risk, Michele M. Welkener

Counselor Education and Human Services Faculty Publications

We are in an unprecedented time when it comes to the world’s complexity—never has the need been greater for students to be prepared to think for themselves and act creatively to solve perplexing problems. As an artist, faculty member and administrator in higher education, faculty developer, and researcher of creativity in college students, I am passionate about creating environments where students can exercise such skills. In the art culture, risk, experimentation, exploration, and even failure are expected routes that lead to finding one’s own style, voice, and signature statement. My awareness of these expectations first began to intensify as I …

The Status Of Students With Special Needs In The Instrumental Musical Ensemble And The Effect Of Selected Educator And Institutional Variables On Rates Of Inclusion, Edward C. Hoffman Iii

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, Student Creative Work, and Performances

The purpose of this study was to describe the current status of students with special needs in the instrumental musical ensemble and to examine the effect of selected educator and institutional variables on rates of inclusion. An online survey was designed by the researcher and distributed electronically to 600 practicing K-12 instrumental music educators in the states of Idaho, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, and Rhode Island. While 13.6% of the total school-aged population nationwide received special education services, demographic data provided by respondents revealed that students with special needs accounted for 6.8% of all students participating in bands, orchestras, …

Understanding Inter-And Intra-Generational Communication Methods Utilizing A Framework Of Message Sensitivity, Thomas Edwin Craft Jr.

Dissertations

This study was designed to determine if differences existed between generations surrounding their preferred communication methods. In examining the social identity perspective of groups, scholars have found that many groups are categorized based on the social structure in which they exist. Generational groups have created their own social structure and set of cultural norms that define each generation. In a recent report released by the Pew Research Center (2010), when the younger generation was asked an open-ended question, "What makes your generation unique?", 24% of those asked responded "Technology Use." One of the unique differences among these generations is the …

Cyberbullying In Schools: A Research Study On School Policies And Procedures, Brian Wiseman

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

A mixed-methods research design first using quantitative then qualitative data was used in order to explore what cyberbullying policies are being employed by principals in the state of Nevada. Electronic surveys were given to all 118 middle school principals in Nevada. Middle school was chosen because it is the age where cyberbullying behaviors are most prevalent. Out of the 118 surveys that were deployed, 66 principals responded. A series of independent t-tests and a chi-squared analysis was conducted using the survey data. The survey concluded by asking principals if they were willing to participate in a one-on-one interview regarding the …

Analyzing The Relative Efficiency Of Nevada Secondary Schools, Jesse Welsh

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

A definitive answer to how to allocate school-level expenditures to yield the greatest "bang for the buck" has continually eluded education finance researchers. With increased regulation, oversight, and sanctions resulting from the No Child Left Behind Act, paired with financial strains on states' education budgets, measuring schools' production and efficiency has become urgent.

The methodology for this study was comprised of two phases. Phase I analyzed the per-pupil expenditures of middle and high schools over a three-year period and developed descriptive statistics that revealed the expenditure patterns by category. Phase II used a micro-level economic approach, data envelopment analysis, to …

A Mixed Methods Exploration Of Principal Communication And School Climate, Reece Oswalt

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Mixed methods triangulation research design was used in order to explore the relationship between principal communication and school climate. The Organizational Climate Description Questionnaire for Elementary Schools (OCDQ-RE) and interview protocols on principal communication were administered to principals and teachers at three elementary schools each having between 700-1000 students in an urban school district consisting of approximately 300,000 students. Each school had between 80-100% Free and Reduced Lunch (FRL), was designated Adequate according to No Child Left Behind Act (2001) as published in the 2009-2010 School Accountability Reports, and had a principal that had been assigned to that school for …

Modeling Teacher Ratings Of Online Resources: A Human-Machine Approach To Quality, Mimi Recker, Heather Leary, Andrew Walker, Anne R. Diekama, Philipp Wetzler, Tamara Sumner, James Martin

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

In education, the scalable deployment of media-rich online resources supports peer production in ways that promise to radically transform teaching and learning (CRA, 2005; Pea et al., 2008). Online educational repositories such as the Digital Library for Earth Systems Education (DLESE.org) and the National Science Digital Library (NSDL.org) collect and curate online learning resources created for a wide range of educational audiences and subject areas (McArthur & Zia, 2008). Through a simple, web-based authoring tool, called the Instructional Architect (IA.usu.edu) teachers locate and share educational resources and activities in an IA project. These IA projects can then be viewed, copied, …

The Degree Qualifications Profile, Lumina Foundation

UNLV Libraries-Greater Western Library Alliance Conference

The need for a Degree Profile

Higher learning has taken on new importance in today’s knowledge society. To succeed in the contemporary workplace, today’s students must prepare for jobs that are rapidly changing, use technologies that are still emerging and work with colleagues from (and often in) all parts of the globe. The challenges that graduates face as citizens during their lives are similarly complex and also are affected by developments around the world.

Recognizing the economic and societal importance of higher levels of learning, national leaders, policymakers, analysts and major philanthropies have called for a dramatic increase in the …

Faculty Institute On Research Based-Learning In High Impact Courses, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

UNLV Libraries-Greater Western Library Alliance Conference

In Spring 2009, the Library Advisory Board agreed to fund a proposal for the Libraries to collaborate with campus partners to provide support to faculty who were faced with several initiatives that impact the way faculty deliver their course content, develop their assignments and assess their success. These initiatives include the movement to large enrollment classes, especially for large impact, core courses; the redesign of the general education requirements around universal learning outcomes; and, enhancing the first-year experience for incoming students. There is no single entity on campus in a position to provide the faculty support and development needed.

The …

Unlv Faculty Institute On Research-Based Learning For High Impact Classes, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

UNLV Libraries-Greater Western Library Alliance Conference

IF YOU ARE A FACULTY MEMBER . . .

- Teaching a large-enrollment, lower-division course in Fall 2010

- Coordinating a multi-section, high-impact, lower-division course in Fall 2010

- Seeking ways to enrich your course and engage your students

- Committed to including substantive research and critical thinking components that utilize the Libraries’ collections in your course

- Interested in exchanging teaching ideas with colleagues from across the UNLV campus

- Eager to explore creative and effective ways to work with University partners to bring research into the classroom

- Interested in utilizing technology to create active learning environments in …

Loving The World And Our Children Enough--Nurturing Decidedly Different Scientifc Minds, By Design, Stephanie Pace Marshall

Publications & Research

Wise world-shaping and problem-solving requires that we and our children think in decidedly different, integral and wise ways. This transformation requires a fundamental shift in consciousness and the emergence of global minds that can creatively live into a new worldview of an interconnected planet and a sustainable and interdependent human family. "The fullness of our humanity and the sustainability of our planet rest with the nurturing of decidedly different minds."