Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Commons^™

Finding Correlations Among Academic Performance, Demographic Influences And Clinical Competency Utilizing Predictive Variables In An Associate Degree Nursing Program, Rebecca Montz, Brett Welch, Neil Faulk, Clementine Msengi

Journal of Research Initiatives

A nonexperimental, quantitative, correlation study was utilized as the research design to explore the relationship between multiple academic and demographic variables on the final clinical assessment score and Health Education Systems, Inc., (HESI) Exit Exam (E²) score from a South Texas ADN program. The research was conducted to address the nursing workforce shortage and effective ways to predict academic and clinical achievements for associate degree nursing (ADN) programs. The academic variables for the research consisted of preadmission grade point average (GPA) and Anatomy and Physiology (A&P) I prerequisite GPA. Age and gender were used as the demographic variables …

Family Communication And Engagement With Digital Technology: Approaches And Strategies, Simone Elias, Edward Cromarty, Linda Wilson-Jones

Journal of Research Initiatives

This article discusses family engagement with digital technology in inclusive education focusing on the development of caring relationships, diversity of communication skills within family and educational communities, the integration of the classroom and home, and being a media mentor to families. It reviews research related to family engagement with media technology and seeks to provide a flexible guide which may be adapted to diverse environments to assist in developing technology-infused family engagement and communication strategies. The educational practices discussed consider the importance of the family in the technology hybridized classroom and consider socioeconomic, cultural, linguistic, and human diversity as factors …

Incorporating Growth Mindsets To Attain Athletic And Academic Success., Michael E. Rutledge Ii

Journal of Research Initiatives

Higher education and intercollegiate athletics promote discovery processes that uncover boundaries of potentials in human development. The research associated with the academic progress of student athletes coincides with the general student population literature in the fact that student athletes also utilize effective study skills and achieve higher GPAs when implementing growth mindset (Joshi et al., 2022). The purpose of this study is to investigate the experiences of student athletes prior to college, through athletic careers, and through graduate school. Qualitative, ethnographic case study research methods rationalized the purpose of this study to advance theory, answer the research questions best, and …

Developmental College Education Courses And Programs: A Review Of The Literature, Charletta H. Barringer-Brown, Patricia A. Lynch

Journal of Research Initiatives

This study presents a review of the current literature on best practices in developmental education with regards to program structure and student placement procedures. Each academic year, millions of students decide to pursue post-secondary education. These students choose to pursue a college degree or the credentials necessary to improve their standard of living. It has been noted that many of these students are considered as being underprepared for college-level coursework and placed into developmental or remedial education. Among first-year undergraduates in the United States for the 2019-2020 academic year, approximately 40 percent reported they had enrolled in at least one …

An Intervention Strategy Addressing Implicit Bias In Scholarships, Lauren Moser Klink

Journal of Student Financial Aid

White students receive a disproportionate amount of private scholarships compared to their Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) peers (Kantrowitz, 2011). Scholarships provide important financial support for higher education and BIPOC students are more likely to graduate with loan debt compared to their White peers (Mishory et al., 2019). This loan debt is higher on average for BIPOC students compared to White students (Mishory et al., 2019). Scholarships could provide funding to reduce loan debt. In considering administrators who are involved in selection processes such as scholarship awarding, their implicit bias can impact judgment (Capers et al., 2017). I …

Exploring The Impact Of A Brief Counseling Intervention For Improving Mental Health Factors And Learning Strategies Among College Students At An Hsi, James Ikonomopoulos, Kristopher Garza, Javier Cavazos Vela

Journal of Academic Underperformance

Abstract

This study evaluated a counseling intervention called the University Turn Around Program (U-Turn) for college students experiencing mental health issues and low academic performance. Social Anxiety, Hostility, and Alcohol Use were measured on the CCAPS-34, and Attitude, Information Processing, Selecting Main Ideas, Test Strategies, and Using Academic Resources were measured on the LASSI-3. Paired samples t-tests revealed improvement for each measure (d = 0.45 to 1.09) supporting the U-Turn program’s inclusion in university counseling centers.

Keywords: College Students, Quasi-Experimental, University Counseling Center

The Effectiveness Of Developmental Academic Advising As A Retention Intervention For First-Generation Community College Students, Valarie A. Morgan, Mary Bess Pannel

Journal of Academic Underperformance

Student retention is a primary concern for community colleges since retention rates at the community college are unquestionably lower than retention rates at four-year institutions. First-generation college students are a high-risk student group of particular concern, because they make up over thirty percent of the undergraduate population and are two times more likely to exit college at the end of the first year of enrollment when compared to students whose parent or parents have a bachelor’s degree. The results of this study indicate that neither prescriptive advising nor developmental advising made a significant difference in student retention or graduation rates …

Letter From The Editor, Rebekah Reysen

Journal of Academic Underperformance

No abstract provided.

Investigating The Impact On Student Engagement From Converting Face-To-Face Classes To Online In Response To Covid-19, Anita Whiting

Atlantic Marketing Journal

Paper investigates the impact on student engagement from converting traditional face-to-face classes to online in response to Covid-19. In particular, this study investigated the impact of conversion to online on four different types of student engagement: (1) participation engagement, (2) emotional engagement, (3) skill engagement, and (4) performance engagement. Survey data were collected from 160 business students who had their face-to-face classes converted to online due to Covid-19. Results of study show that all four types of student engagement significantly declined when classes were converted to online. Participation engagement declined the most while performance engagement declined the least. Non-traditional students …

Building Extension Capacity Through Internal Grants: Evaluation Of A Mini-Grant Program, Lendel K. Narine, Cristian Meier, Brian Higginbotham

Journal of Extension

Acquiring external grants can seem out of reach for Extension professionals, especially early-career professionals. While Cooperative Extension provides opportunities to assist professionals in the grant writing process, Utah State University (USU) Extension facilitates an internal mini grant program to build professionals’ capacity to apply for external funds. Using survey data from USU Extension professionals, our study sought to evaluate the processes and outcomes of the internal mini grant program. Our results provided recommendations to improve the program. Our study provides insights that can assist other institutions seeking to implement their own internal mini grant program.

Lessons Learned Recruiting Comparison Elementary Schools For Impact Evaluation Of Snap-Ed Interventions, Amanda Linares, Phoebe Harpainter, Kaela Plank, Gail Woodward-Lopez

Journal of Extension

To determine the effectiveness of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program- Education (SNAP-Ed) nutrition and physical activity programming in elementary schools, it is necessary to recruit socioeconomically similar comparison schools not receiving SNAP-Ed programming. We developed a flexible recruitment strategy to tailor our approach to each individual school district and site. Here we discuss the lessons learned during the 10-month recruitment period, including early outreach, emphasizing participation benefits, leveraging and building relationships, and visiting sites.

Circlet Guide For Facilitators: Online Continuing Professional Development Module: Embedding Community Engaged Research And Learning In Higher Education Curricula, Catherine Bates, Sinead Mccann, Caroline Mcgowan

Books/Book chapters

This guide contains all the resources needed to implement a postgraduate Continuing Professional Development (CPD) module for lecturers who wish to build, or enhance, community engaged research and learning (CERL) projects in the modules they teach, as part of the Higher Education curriculum. CERL (or service-learning, as it can be known) is a high-impact activity in Higher Education (Kuh, 2008), increasing student engagement and learning. CERL also supports community goals, and makes teaching more interesting for lecturers.

This module is designed to build capacity among participants for CERL, including developing relevant knowledge, skills, attitudes and values. Our approach to this …

Teaching Arabic During A Pandemic: Investigating Challenges Facing Teachers Of Arabic And Their Beliefs In Online Classrooms, Gihan Hamdi Hussein Hanafi

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this study was to explore possible challenges and obstacles that teachers of Arabic as a foreign language faced when they transitioned to online remote teaching after the Coronavirus outbreak. The study looked into particular issues pertaining to technology use and language assessment issues. The paper further examined AFL teachers' beliefs and opinions of their own competence as teachers and the potential effects on students' language ability in distant classrooms. To this end, the study employed a mixed methodological approach for data collection that began with disseminating an online questionnaire and culminated with conducting a number of follow-up …

Assessing L2 Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (Eca) Learners’ Intercultural Communicative Competence, Ahmed Said Mohammed Elgebaly

Theses and Dissertations

This study assesses L2 Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (ECA) Learners' Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC). The study participants were 19 L2 (ECA) learners who completed one semester at least in Egypt. The participants were only from two proficiency levels; the advanced and high-intermediate levels. The current study used a mixed methodological approach for data collection, beginning with an ICC test and concluding with a series of follow-up semi-structured interviews with ten participants. The ICC test employed in the current study was created based on a model that includes ten features of the ICC. The current study's findings revealed that although high-intermediate learners …

Living, Learning, Serving: Outcomes Of Combining A Living-Learning Program With Service-Learning Courses, Allen Brizee, Kate Figiel-Miller, Marianna Carlucci

Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal

Abstract

This article discusses a two-year IRB-approved programmatic case study that measured the outcomes of merging a living-learning program (LLP) with service-learning. The study compared student survey data from four different pedagogical models, one of which was the hybrid LLP-service-learning model where service-learning students also participated in the LLP. We also interviewed instructors who used the LLP with their service-learning pedagogy. We used a one-way ANOVA and a non-parametric test to code and analyze the survey data. We used grounded theory to code and analyze interview data. Survey data revealed that the LLP-service-learning hybrid model scored the lowest of the …

Reimagining The Humanistic Tradition: Using Isocratic Philosophy, Ignatian Pedagogy, And Civic Engagement To Journey With Youth And Walk With The Excluded, Allen Brizee

Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal

The world is in a perilous place. Challenged by zealots, autocrats, a pandemic, and now a war in Europe, elected officials and their constituents no longer exchange ideas in a functioning public sphere, once a hallmark of the humanistic tradition. The timeliness of the Universal Apostolic Preferences (UAPs), therefore, is profound as they provide beacons of light for dark times. In this article, I trace Isocratic philosophy through Ignatian pedagogy and contemporary civic engagement to argue that we can use these three models to help us Journey with Youth and Walk with the Excluded. Key to this approach is a …

Elementary Teachers’ Use Of 1:1 Tablets In Lesson Planning And Presentation On A Western Pacific Island, Sinton Soalablai, Andrea M. Wilson, Beate Baltes

Journal of Educational Research and Practice

The Ministry of Education on a Western Pacific island invested in an expensive 1:1 tablet program providing elementary teachers and students with a tablet but had not determined if the program produced desired positive changes in the teachers’ instructional practices of lesson planning and lesson presentation. Guided by experiential learning theory, this causal–comparative study’s purpose was to determine if the 1:1 tablet program resulted in changes in elementary teachers’ use of technology in their lesson planning and lesson presentation practices. We analyzed pre and postimplementation lesson planning and lesson presentation data, collected from 63 elementary teachers, using repeated measures t …

Machine Learning With Kay, Lasith Niroshan, James Carswell

Conference Papers

Computational power is very important when training Deep Learning (DL) models with large amounts of data (Wooldridge, 2021). Hence, High-Performance Computing (HPC) can be leveraged to reduce computational cost, and the Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC) provides significant infrastructure and services for research and development to both academia and industry. A portion of ICHEC's HPC system has been allocated for institutional access, and this paper presents a case study of how to use Kay (Ireland's national supercomputer) in the remote sensing domain. Specifically, this study uses clusters of Kay Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) for training DL models to extract …

Economics Of Sustainable Public Pension Funding, Robert M. Costrell, Josh B. Mcgee

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

In this paper we propose a new approach to sustainable public pension funding, as an alternative to: (i) traditional actuarial full-funding policies, on the one hand; and (ii) recent proposals aimed instead at stabilizing pension debt at current levels. Actuarial contribution policies aim to fund liabilities that are wrongly discounted at the expected rate of return on risky assets; and these policies promise to do so with amortization schedules that terminate in a precipitous future drop in contributions, which never materializes. Conversely, recent debt-stabilization proposals (Lenney, Lutz, and Sheiner, 2019a; 2019b) properly discount liabilities at a risk-free rate, but effectively …

English Teachers' Opinions On Challenges Face In Teaching English As Foreign Language: The Case Of Jalalabad Selected Secondary Schools, Fahim Rahimi, Hangama Samadi

Journal of Research Initiatives

One important goal of teaching is to achieve learning outcomes. It has been observed in universities that many students have different levels of English language proficiency. However, they study in the same English courses at the school level. The main objective of this study is to learn the challenges that exist in teaching the English language as a foreign language in secondary schools that affect the English proficiency of students. In addition, ways in which these challenges will be overcome is reviewed. The data collection tools were questionnaires and semi-structured interviews to collect data from English language teachers in selected …

The State Of Early Childhood Education & Pre-Kindergarten In Arkansas, Sarah C. Mckenzie, Josh B. Mcgee

Arkansas Education Reports

This report describes the state of pre-Kindergarten and Early Childhood Education (ECE) access and quality in the state of Arkansas. This report focuses on the 1,571 licensed public and private ECE centers in the state, describing the number of licensed seats in these centers, transportation and funding options, quality ratings, staffing, and distribution of ECE opportunities. The report also includes survey results from 520 leaders of those pre-Kindergarten and ECE centers about their experiences with and thoughts about early childhood education in Arkansas. The findings detailed here should inform interested parties of the current state of ECE and pre-Kindergarten across …

The Intersection Of Student Engagement And Student Achievement: A Study To Determine The Strength Of The Relationship Between The Level Of Athletic Participation And Student Achievement, Matthew Kukoda

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between high school students’ athletics participation, mediated by engagement, and their academic achievement. The study sought to determine if increased athletics participation, and a self-reported increased sense of engagement at school, resulted in higher SAT test scores for high school students. In addition to this, predicators of race and gender were also incorporated into the statistical analysis of the relationship between sports participation and SAT scores. Using the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09), this study analyzed the survey respondents scale of student engagement, participation in organized sports and …

7 Hands-On Strategies For Struggling Readers, Elise Murray, Stacey Murray

Kentucky Teacher Education Journal: The Journal of the Teacher Education Division of the Kentucky Council for Exceptional Children

Struggling readers are found in almost every classroom across the world. With differing learning styles and abilities, teachers are encouraged now, more than ever, to be innovative when teaching foundational reading strategies. Within this article, readers are provided with a literature review of research and educational literature that discusses how multisensory, hands-on activities promote engagement and active learning for all students. The recommended seven hands-on learning strategies that can promote learning and support for struggling readers during literacy instruction include Build the Words, Feel the Words, Whole Body Letters, Five Finger Retell, Sight Word BINGO, …

De Bono's Six Hats Thinking Strategy For All Content Areas, Jamie Mahoney, Lynn Patterson, Carol Hall

Kentucky Teacher Education Journal: The Journal of the Teacher Education Division of the Kentucky Council for Exceptional Children

Problem-solving and collaboration require people to compromise, negotiate, and brainstorm to understand, create, manage, judge, and be intuitive and remain positive and calm while working as a team to address problems. Teachers can teach students to collaborate and problem-solve in any content area using de Bono's Six Thinking Hats Strategy. Using de Bono's strategy, university students in this study explored learning hats and ways to apply learning hat properties to collaborate and problem solve in group activities. Researchers employed a mixed-method study enlisting both general education and special education pre-service undergraduate and in-service graduate teachers to discover personal thinking hat …

Preservice Teachers’ Perceptions And Knowledge Of Response To Intervention/Multitiered Systems Of Support, Alexandra J. Taylor, Tommy Wells, Amy E. Lein

Kentucky Teacher Education Journal: The Journal of the Teacher Education Division of the Kentucky Council for Exceptional Children

There has been considerable research that establishes the need to improve teachers’ knowledge of and ability to effectively implement response to intervention (RtI)/multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS), and there is a scarcity of research examining interventions addressing these concerns. In a mixed methods study, we examined the perceptions and knowledge of the RtI/MTSS frameworks of undergraduate preservice teaching candidates enrolled in a dual certification program at a small, private Catholic university in Kentucky, before and after participating in a semester-long, experiential learning project. The project involved monitoring both the reading and mathematics progress of struggling elementary or middle school-aged students …

Co-Designing Ai-Based Orchestration Tools To Support Dynamic Transitions: Design Narratives Through Conjecture Mapping, Luettamae Lawrence, Boyuan Guo, Kexin Yang, Vanessa Echeverria, Zimmy Kang, Vikrant Bathala, Christina Li

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Dynamically transitioning between individual and collaborative learning has been hypothesized to have positive effects, such as providing the optimal learning mode based on students’ needs. There are, however, challenges in orchestrating these transitions in real-time while managing a classroom of students. AI-based orchestration tools have the potential to alleviate some of the orchestration load for teachers. In this study, we describe a sequence of three design sessions with teachers where we refine prototypes of an orchestration tool to support dynamic transitions. We leverage design narratives and conjecture mapping for the design of our novel orchestration tool. Our contributions include the …

Discourse In Inquiry Science Classrooms, Diisc, Version 2.0 (User’S Manual For An Observation Research Instrument), Elizabeth B. Lewis, Dale R. Baker, Lyrica L. Lucas, Amy Tankersley, Elizabeth Hasseler, Ana Rivero, Brandon Helding

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This is a user's manual for the externally validated Version 2.0 of the Discourse in Science Inquiry Classrooms (DiISC) instrument. The instrument is best suited for use in conducting research in secondary (grades 6-12) science classrooms that focuses on teachers' instructional practices, but can also be used as a professional development tool for teacher self-reflection and identifying goals for instructional change. The DiISC Version 2.0 is aligned with a model of a scientific classroom discourse community and articulated characteristics of social constructivist lessons in the categories of inquiry, oral and written discourse, and academic language development and essential learning principles.

How To Use Structural Equation Modeling In Psychological Research, Saeed A. Al-Dossary Phd

International Journal for Research in Education

Structural equation modeling (SEM) is a collection of advanced statistical methods that has recently and limitedly become used in Arabic research. The purpose of this research is to illustrate how to use SEM in a study to explain the phenomenon of cyberbullying using the theory of planned behavior on a sample of 307 students at Hail university. The five steps in SEM are outlined: model specification, identification, estimation, testing, and modification. In addition, the recommended best practices, which are rarely found in studies, are explained: two-stage estimation, and alternative models.

Keywords: structural equation modeling, path analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, …

Using The Visual Activity Schedule To Improve Self-Regulation Skills For Students With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Atef Abdalla Bahrawi Dr

International Journal for Research in Education

This study aimed to find out the level of using the visual activity schedule to improve self-regulation skills for students with autism spectrum disorder. The study consisted of a sample of 74 male and female students with autism spectrum disorder. The study tool was used to improve self-organization skills, and a program of using visual activity tables was administered, in which the validity and reliability of the tool was calculated. The study found statistically significant differences between the pre and post testing of the experimental group which refers that the training program improved self-regulation skills for the experimental group participants. …

Multi-Tiered Culturally Responsive Behavior Support: A Qualitative Study Of Trauma-Informed Education In An Australian Primary School, Dayna Schimke, Govind Krishnamoorthy, Kay Ayre, Emily Berger, Bronwyn Rees

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

There is growing awareness of the impact of intergenerational trauma and community disadvantage on the educational achievement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (First Nations) children in Australia. Scholars have identified the need for culturally responsive and trauma-informed approaches to complement existing disciplinary and behavior support practices utilized in schools. This pilot research project explored the experiences of primary school teachers who were supported to implement trauma-informed practices in a regional primary school with a large number of First Nations students. Qualitative interviews with eight teachers were conducted after a 3-year (2017–2020) implementation of the Trauma-Informed Behavior Support (TIBS) program. …