Educational Methods Commons^™

Reading Effectively Across The Disciplines (Read): A Strategy To Improve Student Success, Juanita But, Pamela Brown, Davida Smyth

Publications and Research

This paper describes the structure and activities of READ (Reading Effectively Across the Disciplines), a pilot initiative to improve students’ critical reading skills, disciplinary literacy and academic success. READ employs a multimodal design that consists of faculty training in disciplinary literacy instruction and curricular enhancement, development and implementation of active reading assignments and assessments, peer-led team learning, and the dissemination of discipline-specific teaching and learning resources on an Open Lab site to provide an interactive teaching and learning environment for students and faculty. Empirical evidence of the initial effectiveness of the pilot in three gateway courses in Biology, Electromechanical Engineering …

Teaching Size And Power Properties Of Hypothesis Tests Through Simulations, Suleyman Taspinar, Osman Dogan

Publications and Research

In this study, we review the graphical methods suggested in Davidson and MacKinnon (Davidson, Russell, and James G. MacKinnon. 1998. “Graphical Methods for Investigating the Size and Power of Hypothesis Tests.” The Manchester School 66 (1): 1–26.) that can be used to investigate size and power properties of hypothesis tests for undergraduate and graduate econometrics courses. These methods can be used to assess finite sample properties of various hypothesis tests through simulation studies. In addition, these methods can be effectively used in classrooms to reinforce students’ understanding of basic hypothesis testing concepts such as Type I error, Type II error, …

Using Role-Play To Enhance Critical Thinking About Ethics In Psychology, Jillian Grose-Fifer

Publications and Research

In this chapter, I describe a highly structured, student-centered role-play activity. Before coming to class, students read about the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. They then work cooperatively in small groups to decide on how to collectively portray the role of their assigned character from the study. Each group then presents their character's testimonial at a tribunal, with the aim of clarifying the injustices that occurred during the study. The activity is designed to foster collaboration and communication skills and to encourage students to think critically about how this historical study violated ethical standards for conducting research with human subjects. Assessment data …

Case Study Of Undergraduate Research Projects In Vector Analysis, Alexander Vaninsky, Willy Baez Lara, Madieng Diao, Analilia Mendez

Publications and Research

This paper presents two examples of the undergraduate research projects in vector analysis conducted under the first author’s supervision at one of the community colleges that is an integral part of a large city university. The projects were accomplished by the students pursuing associated degrees in engineering, during their sophomore year. One project was to obtain an explicit formula for the curvature of a curve in plane defined implicitly in rectangular or polar coordinates. Another project was aimed to develop an alternative procedure for finding potential function for a vector field in space based on simultaneous integration. Participation in these …

Teaching College: The Ultimate Guide To Lecturing, Presenting, And Engaging Students, Norman Eng

Publications and Research

Your students aren’t reading. They aren’t engaged in class. Getting them to talk is like pulling teeth. Whatever the situation, your reality is not meeting your expectations. Change is needed. But who’s got the time? Or maybe you’re just starting out, and you want to get it right the first time.

If so, Teaching College: The Ultimate Guide to Lecturing, Presenting, and Engaging Students is the blueprint. Written for early career instructors, this easy-to-implement guide teaches you to:

• Think like advertisers to understand your target audience—your students
• Adopt the active learning approach of the best K-12 teachers
• Write a syllabus …

Online, Blended And Technology-Enhanced Learning: Tools To Facilitate Community College Student Success In The Digitally-Driven Workplace, Dawn Levy

Publications and Research

Community colleges have embraced distance education as a means to provide increased flexibility and access to their large numbers of non-traditional students. Retention rates and student achievement measures alone may not reflect all of the benefits and opportunities that online learning, blended or hybrid learning, and technology enhanced learning may afford these students. Online learning resources should be viewed as a tremendous value added benefit for community college students, not only for the content conveyed, but also for fostering the digital readiness, cultivating the professional personas, and encouraging the self-directed learning needed to succeed in the digitally-driven workplace.

Embedded Remediation: A New Paradigm, Nicola Blake

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Funeral In The Classroom: A Failed Teaching Practice?, Nicola Blake

Publications and Research

The author introduces the idea of performative annotation as a powerful teaching tool to engage students in a shared experience of reading and understanding a piece of text. Orality and performance are shared constructs that provide opportunities for students to demarcate moments in a text that resonated with them. The nature of this activity is called into question because of the deeply emotional responses students have towards the experiential learning activity of recreating a funeral in the classroom. This article assesses what went wrong with the activity and offers suggestions on how to make space for performative annotation prior to …

Montauk Point, An Essential Field Experience For Students In The New York City Area, Stanley Schleifer, Nazrul I. Khandaker, Keshaw Narine

Publications and Research

Except for a thin strip of Proterozoic and Paleozoic metamorphic and igneous rock along its very western edge and an outcropping of coastal plain deposits along its northwestern edge, the surface of Long Island is immediately underlain by unconsolidated deposits consisting of moraines of glacial till, outwash plains of stratified drift, and beach and dune complex formed by wave action. Two very prominent features of the island are the Harbor Hill Moraine, which marks the southernmost extent of the last major advance of continental glacier ice in the New York area during the Pleistocene and the Ronkonkoma Moraine, which marks …

Effective Integration Of Nasa Stem Curricula Is Allowing Students To Appreciate Earth Science Concepts, Nazrul I. Khandaker, Stanley Schleifer, Krishna Mahabir, Newrence Wills, Matthew Khargie

Publications and Research

NASA Minority University Research and Education Project (MUREP) Aerospace Academy - MAA is a national, innovative activity designed to increase participation and retention of historically underserved and underrepresented K-12 youth in the STEM disciplines, particularly earth science and human exploration (HEO). HEO is dedicated to informing and educating the public about NASA's plans for a new era in space exploration. Utilization of NASA satellite images, online climate education, space mathematics and other earth science-related resources is allowing students to conduct basic research and prepare themselves for a New York City-wide science competition. In addition to offering school children a solid …

From Marginality To Mattering: Linguistic Practices, Pedagogies And Diversities At A Community-Serving Senior College, Andrea Springirth, Hannah Göppert

Publications and Research

The cultural diversification of colleges and universities which initially targeted the needs of a specific minoritized group raises questions concerning the inclusion of every individual and the maintenance of the advances which have been made for the original population. This paper provides insight into the challenges and merits at the intersection of linguistic and racial/ethnic diversification within CUNY’s Medgar Evers College. Historically tied to the Black Campus Movement, the college is committed to being an agent of social transformation for the surrounding community. Aiming to understand the perspectives on language and diversity of the key stakeholders at the college, a …

Female Role Models In Bukusu Folktales: Education At The Mother’S Hearth, Namulundah Florence

Publications and Research

Folktales serve a descriptive, as well as prescriptive role, by consistently depicting societal and cultural norms. Sexist portrayals sanction the marginality of Bukusu women, particularly when these reflect prevailing gender roles and expectations. However, contests over identity and representation are as ancient as (unwritten) history. The analysis of tales From Our Mothers’ Hearths: Bukusu Folktales and Proverbs, offers a wide range of role models for women; some of which depict female agency in exacting circumstances (Florence, N., 2005. From our Mothers’ Hearths: Bukusu Folktales and Proverbs. NJ: Africa World Pres/The Red Sea Press). Further, females as narrators, protagonists, and the …

Exploring Relations Between Teachers’ Beliefs, Instructional Practices, And Students’ Beliefs In Statistics, Melissa C. Duffy, Krista R. Muis, Michael J. Foy, Gregory Trevors, John Ranellucci

Publications and Research

We examined the epistemic climate of statistics classrooms across two different classrooms by measuring teachers’ espoused beliefs about teaching statistics and observing their teaching practices. We then explored whether students’ beliefs became more aligned with the epistemic climate of the classroom over time. Post-secondary students’ beliefs were measured at the beginning and end of the semester. To measure the epistemic climate, teachers completed self-reports of their beliefs about teaching and learning, and participated in two semi-structured interviews at the beginning and end of the semester. Moreover, several classroom observations were conducted over the course of the semester. Analyses of the …

High Impact Practices: Student Engagement And Retention, Giselle Bonet, Barbara R. Walters

Publications and Research

Community college students face special challenges that can impede their academic progress, resulting in lower grades and persistence than students in selective four-year colleges. Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, New York, successfully addresses these challenges with learning communities: small cohorts of students in a blocked program of study, which includes developmental or basic English, a one-credit student skills course, and a social or behavioral science course. This research analyzes the short-term effects of the model by comparing a sample of 267 students enrolled in four learning community and four regular sections of sociology and psychology classes. The results demonstrate a …

Testing Create At Community Colleges: An Examination Of Faculty Perspectives And Diverse Student Gains, Kristy L. Kenyon, Morgan E. Onorato, Alan J. Gottesman, Jamila Hoque, Sally G. Hoskins

Publications and Research

CREATE (Consider, Read, Elucidate the hypotheses, Analyze and interpret the data, and Think of the next Experiment) is an innovative pedagogy for teaching science through the intensive analysis of scientific literature. Initiated at the City College of New York, a minority-serving institution, and regionally expanded in the New York/New Jersey/Pennsylvania area, this methodology has had multiple positive impacts on faculty and students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics courses. To determine whether the CREATE strategy is effective at the community college (2-yr) level, we prepared 2-yr faculty to use CREATE methodologies and investigated CREATE implementation at community colleges in seven …

Cogenerative Dialogue: Developing Biology Learning Accommodations For Students With Disabilities, Edward Lehner

Publications and Research

A prominent challenge, at times under-addressed in the science education literature, is considering what types of learning accommodations science teachers should employ for students with disabilities. Outside of science education, researchers have consistently outlined how Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is one efficient means by which to engage students with disabilities in the curriculum. This paper presents the results of a research study in which teachers employed cogenerative dialogue as a learning space where UDL was used to differentiate and individualize instruction in an inclusive biology class. The data originated from a larger, ongoing, longitudinal ethnography of science learning in …

Proceedings Of The 3rd Annual Cuny Games Festival, Robert O. Duncan, Joe Bisz, Julie Cassidy, Carlos Hernandez, Kathleen Offenholley, Maura A. Smale, Deborah Sturm, Cuny Games Network

Publications and Research

Proceedings of the CUNY Games Conference, held from January 22-23, 2016, at the CUNY Graduate Center and Borough of Manhattan Community College.

Literacy and Story - Anything Can be Attempted: In-Person Simulations and Role-Plays in Educations - Game Design - STEM - Design Research - Literature and Story - Awareness: Gender and Sex - Transformative Games Initiative: Game Design as a Classroom Laboratory for Any Discipline - Narrative and Rhetoric - Design Challenges - Information Literacy and Language - Game Design for All: What’s Your Game Plan? Turn Any Idea into a Game! - Ghosts in the Machine - Game …

Mapping The Futures Of Higher Education: Community, Equity And Innovation, Janey Oliphint Flanagan, Deborah Greenblatt, Katina Rogers, Danica Savonick, Lisa Tagliaferri, Kalle Westerling

Publications and Research

This session explores the impact of student-centered pedagogy and digital innovation in the Futures Initiative’s 2014-2015 inaugural year. The pilot year integrated high- and low-tech student-centered learning approaches to flexibly target specific needs of CUNY students and instructors, and to promote equity in CUNY classrooms. Evaluators conducted an independent analysis to assess the pilot’s effectiveness. The session includes perspectives from Futures Initiative fellows, students, website developers, evaluators and program administrators.

School Leadership Along The Trajectory From Monolingual To Multilingual, Laura Ascenzi-Moreno, Sarah Hesson, Kate Menken

Publications and Research

This article explores the critical role of school leaders in language policy change, and specifically in shifting their language education policies and practices from monolingual to multilingual. We examine the process of language policy change in three schools that were involved in a project aimed at increasing the knowledge base of school leaders about bilingualism and language learning, and which required that participating schools use bilingualism as a resource in instruction and cultivate a school-wide ecology of multilingualism. The project encouraged translanguaging pedagogical strategies that engage the entire linguistic repertoire of emergent bilinguals flexibly. Our findings demonstrate that the school …

Kabanflow, Daniel A. Sabol

Publications and Research

A review of KabanFlow, a tool which helps organize projects. It was used for some time prior to my report to determine if it has any quality in regards to both education and librarianship.

Embedded Librarian Ideas: Best Practices Explored And Redefined, Carl R. Andrews

Publications and Research

This paper explores the multitude of ways in which embedded librarianship can be implemented. Although the paper is primarily targeted to academic librarians in higher education settings, the literature examined and the ideas presented can support secondary and college level inter-disciplinary teaching initiatives. The ideas presented are sourced from scholarly journal articles, monographs, and best practices implemented by the author. Attention is given to programs where Information Literacy is infused into a school’s General Education curriculum. Academic librarian pedagogy, outreach, and networking strategies are also highlighted. The author is especially interested in projects that address student academic success after an …

Teaching Self-Management Skills Through Social Studies Content Lessons, Christy Folsom, Marietta Saravia-Shore, Karvelee Adu, Hector Cabrera

Publications and Research

Candidates learn to teach students self­‐management skills of criteria setting and self-­evaluation using the TIEL (Teaching for Intellectual and Emotional Learning) lesson plan to formulate questions that elicit thinking and social emotional learning, plan guided practice that teaches students criteria-­setting and self-­evaluation skills. Learning to explicitly teach students evaluation skills within lessons prepares candidates to expand the teaching of self­‐management skills to include planning and decision making within a project-based unit culminating project.

The Nurtured Heart Approach: An Odyssey Of Discovery And Implementation, Mary Sanford, Alexandria Pacheco

Publications and Research

The Nurtured Heart Approach (Glasser) is a methodology for behavior management, which emphasizes Positive Behavior Support. The candidate, Alexandria Pacheco, of her own initiative, began using this approach in her self-contained class of students with severe behavior disorders a year ago. Impressed with its effectiveness, her school principal asked her to conduct a Professional Development workshop for the school staff and faculty on the Nurtured Heart Approach.

Improving Motivation, Engagement And Differentiation In Lesson Development Using An Interactive White Board: 10-Hour Workshop Cycle Toward Professional Development Certificate, Leslie Lieman, Jenelle Fiori, Naliza Sadik

Publications and Research

The School of Education prepares aspiring teachers for teaching in 21st century classrooms by offering intensive interactive white board training cycles. In designing interactive lessons, the workshop cycle focuses on the pedagogical decision making that can improve classroom teaching and student engagement and understanding.

Xenopus! Spiraling Scientific Journal Articles With High School Science English Language Learners, Gillian Bayne, Cristie Peralta

Publications and Research

This poster describes a journal article that is geared specifically towards assisting science teachers as they create lessons that are specifically focused toward ELLs. The article involves reading and analyzing scientific primary sources with ELLs, a challenge not only specific to ELLs but commonly experienced by all students. This article will be submitted to The Science Teacher journal.

Lessons Learned From Lesson Study: Focusing On Differentiation For Ells And Students With Special Needs, Anne Marie Marshall, Khalilah Arrington

Publications and Research

This poster will present an overview of the lesson study process within the MATH-UP program. The poster will summarize the components of lesson study and highlight candidate learning from the process. Specifically, the lesson study selected will demonstrate evidence of candidate learning about emergent bilinguals.

Creating An Effective Model For Digital Storytelling In The Esl Writing Class, Mary Sepp, Shoba Bandi-Rao

Publications and Research

Using technology in the classroom is no longer the exception but the rule in most college classrooms. Now the question is not whether to use technology, but which technology to use. Among recent innovations is digital storytelling, a multimodal tool that can be used across disciplines. This paper reports on a pilot study designed to determine the feasibility and pedagogical value of using digital storytelling in an ESL writing course at an urban community college. The report documents a detailed plan for implementation and some of the challenges this process presents.

Proceedings Of The 2nd Annual Cuny Games Festival, Robert O. Duncan, Joe Bisz, Francesco Crocco, Carlos Hernandez, Kathleen Offenholley, Maura A. Smale, Deborah Sturm, Cuny Games Network

Publications and Research

Proceedings of the CUNY Games Conference, held from January 16-17, 2015, at the CUNY Graduate Center and Borough of Manhattan Community College.

Health Games - Language and Composition - Design: Classroom Considerations - Games in the Physical Environment - Games and Behavioral Science - Play, Politics & Economics - Gaming Curricula, Disciplines & Programs - Gaming and History - Institutional Programming with Games - Philosophy and Roleplaying - Ed. Game Design: Strategy & Tactics - Repurposing Game Genres - Narrative, Storytelling & Games - Community & Social Justice - Extemporaneity - Personal & Social Transformation - Cognition, Design & Play …

Connecting Science Education To A World In Crisis, Kenneth Tobin

Publications and Research

Even though humanity faces grand challenges, including climate change, sustainability of the planet and its resources, and well-being of humans and other species, for the past 60 years science educators have been preoccupied with much the same priorities. Adherence to the tenets of crypto-positivism creates problems for research in the social sciences (e.g., over reliance on statistical analyses leads to oversimplified models that strip away context and are reductive). Hypotheses and associated statistical tests support causal models that rarely predict social conduct or blaze pathways for meaningful transformation. In contrast to the mainstream of research in science education, I advocate …

Peers Inspiring Peers: Why A Summer Bridge-To-College Program Benefits From This Partnership, Janet Liou-Mark, A.E. Dreyfuss, Mursheda Ahmed, Christopher Chan, Karmen Yu

Publications and Research

A Bridge-to-College Summer Academy for Teaching Assistant Scholars, who serve as Peer Leaders and small-group instructors in several New York City high schools, was designed and held at New York City College of Technology, CUNY. The Summer Academy was designed to acclimate the Teaching Assistant Scholars (TAS), many of whom are underrepresented minority students, to college life. College Peer Leaders assisted in motivating and encouraging incoming freshmen in gaining the academic skills needed to successfully navigate a college environment. The Peer Leaders also facilitated three-day mathematics preparatory workshops that provided students with the confidence to excel in their first credit-bearing …