Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Commons^™

2006-2007 Profile, Morehead State University. Institutional Research & Analysis.

Office of Institutional Research & Analysis Publication Archive

No abstract provided.

Assess And Assist: Capacity Building For All Teachers Of Students – With And Without Learning Difficulties, Ken Rowe

Student learning processes

Following a brief discussion of the fundamental importance of monitoring growth, this paper draws from emerging findings from evidence-based research and ‘state-of-the art’ practice in assessment and reporting of students’ developmental and learning progress – whether or not students experience learning difficulties. The monitoring of individual progress over time requires both diagnostic and developmental assessments of such progress on well-constructed scales (or ‘maps’) that are qualitatively described. The use of such ‘maps’ enables early detection of potential ‘risk factors’, and the monitoring of both individuals and groups across the years of schooling. Such ‘maps’ and their reporting products constitute major …

Making Use Of Bilingual Interview Data: Some Experiences From The Field, Nelofer Halai

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

This paper describes the challenges faced, and rules devised, while dealing with bilingual interview data as part of a life history study of a female science teacher’s conceptions of the nature of science while teaching in a school in Karachi. The interview data generated was both in Urdu and English, which underwent a number of processes (transcription, translation, and transliteration) to evolve into “interim texts,” to finally become a part of the data analysis process. I have called these translated materials “transmuted texts,” as they reflect the original, but have been recreated. This paper is significant because as globalization connects …

Piloting A Program-Level Learning Assessment Plan In Plant And Soil Science, Teresa Cerny-Koenig, Catherine A. Perillo, Caroline Pearson-Mims, Kathleen M. Williams, Gary R. Brown, Andrew Morozov, William L. Pan, William E. Hendrix

Office of Academic Innovation Publications

Faculty of Washington State University's undergraduate degree programs in Crop Science, Soil Science, and Horticulture initiated the development and implementation of an assessment process to gauge the extent to which WSU students in the plant and soil science programs meet university and program learning goals. This process was undertaken primarily to help improve our joint teaching efforts and students' learning; it also was encouraged by the needed documentation for the 2007 university accreditation and a need to better match our program learning goals with the University's newly developed Learning Goals of the Baccalaureate. The new program-level assessment plan focused on …

Assessment At The Program Level: Using Assessment To Improve Undergraduate Statistics Programs, Roxy Peck, Beth Chance

Office of the Dean (COSAM) Scholarship

With the growing focus on assessment and accountability, programs at many universities are now expected to define learning goals and objectives at the program level (as opposed to the course level) and to devise strategies for assessing whether these goals and objectives are being met. This paper will look at the role of assessment at the program level and how the resulting information about student learning can be used to make informed decisions about curriculum.

An Assessment Of Read 180 Regarding Its Association With The Academic Achievement Of At-Risk Students In Sevier County Schools., Jayson Nave

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

READ 180 is an intensive reading intervention program designed to meet the needs of students whose reading achievement is below the proficient level. The program addresses individual learning styles through adaptive software, interesting literature, and direct instruction with reading skills. The purpose of this study was to compare the achievement of academically at-risk students in Sevier County Public Schools in East Tennessee who participated in the READ 180 pilot program with the achievement of their academically at-risk peers not enrolled in the intervention program before and after its implementation in order to assess the reading intervention program. The Sevier County …

An Emic View Of Student Writing And The Writing Process, Michael Hass, Jan Osborn

English Faculty Articles and Research

This study uses student reflections of previous success in academic writing to guide instructors as they design writing assignments. Seventy-one students in five classes responded to a questionnaire designed to help them identify particularly successful writing experiences and reflect on the circumstances, strategies, and methods they believed impacted their success. Student responses to these questions were analyzed to identify broad categories or themes. This process produced an "emic" or insider's view of what constitutes successful writing assignments and writing process. The findings suggest that students self report their writing as successful when the writing assignment engenders engagement, commitment, collaboration, a …

A Rotating Panel Survey To Assess Quality Of Hunter College Education, Jennifer Sousa Brennan, William (Bill) H. Williams

Publications and Research

A rotating sample design is proposed to most accurately measure the perceived quality of a Hunter College education. A representative sample of Hunter College students will belong to one of six rotating panels. Students will be contacted during four rotation periods and report their assessment of the two most recent months. It is advantageous to use a rotating panel design as opposed to a fixed panel design in order to guard against the negative effects of a deteriorating response rate. Stratified sampling will help to ensure representation across major departments and academic year of study. Methods for sampling procedures, stratification, …

The Review Of Teacher Education For Languages Teachers : Final Report, Elizabeth Kleinhenz, Jenny Wilkinson, Margaret Gearon, Suzanne Fernandez, Lawrence Ingvarson

Initial Teacher education

This report produces a comprehensive national picture of the nature and effectiveness of teacher education and re-training opportunities for languages teachers. The report investigates course entry requirements, course content and structure for primary and secondary languages teachers; identifies structural impediments relating to the development of languages teachers' linguistic and pedagogical competency; and explores the potential application of the Professional Standards for Accomplished Teaching of Languages and Cultures, developed by the Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers (AFMLTA), in teacher education for languages teachers.

School Cultures And Their Correlations With Student Achievement: An Analysis Of Schools That Have Improved, Christina A. Fraley

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The two purposes of this mixed-method study were to (1) conduct a quantitative study that would investigate the correlation of collaborative cultures relative to student achievement, by assessing the cultures of 100 schools and (2) to look at specific schools, using qualitative study methods to better understand insights toward improvements in their culture scores and/or IS TEP third, sixth, or tenth grade scores. One hundred public schools were invited to participate with 81 of the schools being those that participated in a similar project four years ago (Gruenert, 2005). From those who chose not to participate or did not respond, …

Mail And Web Surveys: A Comparison Of Demographic Characteristics And Response Quality When Respondents Self-Select The Survey Administration Mode, Dawn M. Mackety

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to use a nonexperimental, quantitative design to compare mail and web surveys with survey mode self-selection at two data collection waves. Research questions examined differences and predictabilities among demographics (gender, ethnicity, age, and professional employment) and response quality (pronoun use, item nonresponse, response extremity, yea-saying, item completion errors, response length, response equivalency, anecdotal comments, and multiple response use) by survey mode and response wave. Analyses were conducted using chi-squares, ANOVAs, t -tests, and binary logistic regressions.

A questionnaire in mail and web formats containing 48 forced-choice and open-ended items was administered to a nonrandom …

Evaluation Of Researchers And Their Research: Toward Making The Implicit Explicit, Chris L. S. Coryn

Dissertations

Due to its very nature, the evaluation of research permeates nearly every aspect of the work of researchers. They evaluate the work of others or have their own work evaluated. They evaluate hypotheses that come to mind, the previous literature, the quality of data, the explanatory power of theories, or the design of experiments or instruments. And this is not always casual evaluation. It is highly skilled evaluation, and becoming a first-rate or world-class researcher is a process of improving the quality of these evaluations. However, deciding when someone is or has become a first-rate or world-class researcher is an …

Effective Critical Thinking Teaching Strategies As Perceived By Affiliated Program Evaluation Faculty, Dhaifallah Almatrodi

Dissertations

Critical Thinking (CT) skills are important for effective evaluation. In order to increase CT competency and use in evaluation to improve evaluation results, training programs for evaluators should incorporate CT instruction.

This study focused on three areas of interest relative to CT strategies, teac practices, and assessments to measure CT performance. Six research questions were identified to investigate Program Evaluation (PE) faculty's perceptions of effective CT teaching strategies. They are: (1) How many CT teaching strategies are faculty members aware of in teaching graduate students?; (2) How often PE faculty utilize CT teaching strategies in their teaching profession?; (3) Which …

Pisa 2003 Australia : Ict Use And Familiarity At School And Home, Sue Thomson, Lisa De Bortoli

OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) Australia

No abstract provided.

The Role Of The Interteach In Interteaching, Thorhallur Orn Flosason

Masters Theses

Interteaching is a relatively new instructional method, based on behavioral approaches to education, that has been offered as an alternative to the traditional lecture format in the college classroom. The present study examined the role of the cooperative learning component of interteaching in an undergraduate statistics class. An alternating treatments design, with conditions counterbalanced across two sections of the course, was used to determine whether or not the effectiveness of interteaching depends on the interteach (cooperative learning) component. Weekly exams were administered to measure student learning and social validity was assessed via a questionnaire that required students to rate their …

The Design And Use Of Simulation Computer Games In Education, Brett E. Shelton, David A. Wiley

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

This book, edited by Brett Shelton and David Wiley, is a view of models and simulations for education and research.

Table of Contents

1. In Praise of Epistemology - David Shaffer

2. Six Ideas in Search of a Discipline - Richard Van Eck

3. Building Bridges Between Serious Game Design and Instructional Design - Jamie Kirkley, Sonny Kirkley and Jerry Heneghan

4. Layered Design in an Instructional Simulation - Andrew S. Gibbons and Stefan Sommer

5. Designing Educational Games for Activity-Goal Alignment - Brett E. Shelton

6. "The Peripatos Could Not have Looked Like That," and Other Educational Outcomes From …

Effects Of Item Positions On Their Difficulty And Discrimination : A Study In Pisa Science Data Across Test Language And Countries, Luc T. Le

OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)

This study was based on a four-cluster rotation design of 13 linked test booklets from PISA 2006 science data. It investigated effects of item positions on their difficulty and discrimination parameter estimates obtained from one and two parameter IRT Partial Credit models. The analyses were done separately for 57 test language groups from 53 countries with a total of about 340,000 students.

The results revealed that for all of the test language groups the items tended to become more difficult when they were located later in the test. However, a high linear relationship between the item difficulty estimates by the …

Restoration Vs. New Construction: How To Make The Right Decision, Timothy J. Ilg, David Alan Dolph

Educational Leadership Faculty Publications

Restoration or new construction? That is a dilemma that educational leaders, particularly superintendents and school business officials, have had to wrestle with for years. In the past, state regulations often dictated whether school buildings should be renovated or torn down to make way for new construction. State reimbursement guidelines favored new construction over restoration for public school development by either withholding funds or denying the full state support for restoration projects. In fact, some states established complex formulas that mandated new construction if the cost of restoration exceeded approximately two-thirds of the new construction costs.

Reversing the mindset among many …

Evidence About The Potential Role For Affirmative Action In Higher Education, Braz Camargo, Ralph Stinebrickner, Todd Stinebrickner

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

In two recent cases involving the University of Michigan, the Supreme Court examined whether race should be allowed to play an explicit role in the admission decisions of schools. The primary argument in these court cases and others has been that racial diversity strengthens the quality of education offered to all students. Underlying this argument is the notion that educational benefits arise if interactions between students of different races improve preparation for life after college by, among other things, fostering mutual understanding and correcting misperceptions. Then, a fundamental condition necessary for the primary legal argument to be compelling is that …

The Underutilization Of Internet And Communication Technology-Assisted Collaborative Project-Based Learning Among International Educators: A Delphi Study, Barry S. Kramer, Andrew Walker, Jennifer M. Brill

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

This study explores the barriers associated with teachers implementing Internet and Communication Technology-assisted Collaborative Project-based Learning (ICTCPrjBL) as a classroom teaching methodology with students. We used a Web-based Delphi method to engage experienced educators in anonymous consensus building consisting of three rounds of surveys. The Round 1 analysis yielded 51 barriers. The Round 2 analysis produced descriptive statistics (range, mean, and standard deviation) on the importance of each barrier. The Round 3 analysis confirmed 16 of the 51 (31.4%) barriers as “moderately significant” to “very significant” to implementing ICTCPrjBL. Important contributions of this study include: (a) identification of barriers to …

The Effects Of The Fast Start Program On The Reading Achievement Of Emergent And Beginning Readers: A Replication And Extension, Pamela R. Mears

Doctor of Education (EdD)

This study replicated the Stevenson (2001) study to determine the effectiveness of the Fast Start parent tutoring program on student success in reading achievement. The current study attempted to enlarge the original study's sample size, include kindergarten students in the program, and determine the optimal length of training time for parents needed. Additionally, data gathered from the parent participants were analyzed including parent's perceptions of the program, their confidence level in tutoring their child, and the parents' level of mastery of the concepts of tutoring before working with their child. At the beginning of the school year, 36 kindergarten parent-student …

The Value Of Connecting Research And Practice, Philip I. Kramer

Office of Academic Review and Curricular Advancement Staff Publications

This study examined the attitudes of undergraduate teacher education majors and education faculty about the value of connecting educational research and practice in the university and in K-12 schools. Seventeen students and ten faculty participated in the study. The findings indicate that many participants think educational practice and research are typically conducted in isolation of each other.

Enrollment Report - Summer 2007, Uno Office Of Institutional Effectiveness

Enrollment Reports

The Enrollment Report provides administrative and delivery-site information on enrollment headcount and student credit hours, as well as the demographic characteristics of enrolled students. The purpose of this profile is to provide the undergraduate and graduate enrollments and student credit hour information by college or equivalent academic unit, class, gender and ethnicity.

Email Surveys In Educational Research: Ethical Surveys In Educational Research, Chi Hong Nguyen

Essays in Education

The growth of the Internet and the increasing application of electronic mail in many aspects of business and educational research have urged researchers to reach different individuals across geographical borders with an obvious reduction of costs and time. While the use of email surveys in educational research, as this paper mainly argues, offers significant benefits to researchers in collecting data, more awareness of ethical codes of conduct and culture of net-users should be insisted throughout the research process to enhance validity and to minimize physical or mental harm that may cause to the researched participants of different ethnic and socioeconomic …

Conceptualizing Constituent Perceptions Of Success Towards Public Education, Sean M. Lennon

Essays in Education

The aggressive age of assessment and accountability to which the American public school system belongs, belies the dichotomy, or disparate and passionate views of how to appropriately determine growth or success of learning for our students. The differences are startling; polar opposites of conception and ideal, and controversial, with educational professionals at odds with policy makers and the general public. At issue, or the core of this debate, is the question of what is the most effective way in assessing our schools and the children within them? Is there really one way to assess or determine success and are we …

Questioning The Utility Of Self‐Efficacy Measurements For Indians, Purva J. Rushi

Publications & Research

This study examined the influence of academic self‐efficacy and social support on the academic success of Indian‐American and Caucasian‐American undergraduate students. 200 Indian‐American and Caucasian‐American students completed a demographic form and five surveys. The data showed that academic self‐efficacy had a significant effect on college grade point averages (GPA) for Caucasians, but not for Indians. Regarding social support, the quality of mentoring relationships was found to be twice as high for Indians than Caucasians. The total number of mentors, however, was significantly higher for Caucasians. The results of this study support theories that highlight the importance of social support on …

Multidisciplinary Experiences For Undergraduate Engineering Students, Fred W. Depiero, Lynne A. Slivovsky

Electrical Engineering

Multidisciplinary (MD) team skills are of increasing importance in industry, and are required for programs that are ABET accredited. This can be challenging to provide, particularly for programs with high unit counts and a large student body. We have responded by establishing a multidisciplinary graduation requirement across the College of Engineering at Cal Poly. This requirement is mandatory. It may be satisfied by various curricular and co-curricular routes, easing throughput issues compared to having a single venue. In the paper we describe activities that satisfy the MD requirement, our general approach and assessment methods.

Surviving Abet Accreditation: Surviving The Demands Of Criterion 3, Allen C. Estes, Stephen J. Ressler

Architectural Engineering

Preparing an engineering program for an ABET accreditation visit can be both daunting and frustrating. The requirements of ABET Criterion 3, in particular, can be confusing and may even seem contradictory. This paper suggests some methods and approaches that address the Criterion 3 requirements for formulation and assessment of program outcomes. Additional thoughts for successful accreditation preparation are also included. The authors are both civil engineering program directors who have prepared their own programs for accreditation and are ABET evaluators with multiple accreditation visits to other programs.

Architectural Engineering Programs: Finding Common Ground, Allen C. Estes, Hector Estrada

Architectural Engineering

There are currently 17 ABET accredited Architectural Engineering programs in the United States. This paper presents curriculum data for these Architectural Engineering programs and discusses the challenges of finding common ground and conveying program needs to the rest of the academic community – especially when the programs are so small in number and so diverse in their structure and course offerings.

Transitioning The Struggling Reader: Evaluating The Effects Of Middle-School Direct Instruction On Traditional High-School Learning In The English Classroom, Sarah Tanner Anderson

Theses & Honors Papers

In this qualitative study, I investigate the academic performance of three current ninth-grade students who were tracked throughout middle school by the 1999 McGraw-Hill SRA Corrective Reading Direct Instruction program. To study their respective transitions from middle to high school, I investigate their test performance on the fifth- and eighth-grade reading and writing Virginia Standards of Learning assessments, analyze the quality of student work from sixth through ninth grades by evaluating student products and test documents, and conduct intensive interviews with students and their former and current teachers. By constructing a case-study of each student and conducting a cross-case analysis …