Higher Education and Teaching Commons^™

Digital Badges As Micro-Credentials: An Opportunity To Improve Learning Or Just Another Education Technology Fad?, Patrick Guilbaud, Joyce Anne Camp, Andrew Vorder Bruegge

Winthrop Conference on Teaching and Learning

Digital badges are online records of achievements that are awarded to learners for mastery of a specific set of educational contents. Often referred to as micro-credentials, digital badges are being used by many higher education institutions to assess and validate clearly defined chunks of knowledge, competency, or accomplishment.

At present, the use of digital badges is widespread. As a result, the perception exists that digital badges might be over-sold and over-hyped, as an assessment tool. Instructional design practice, however, reveals that learning objectives are best attained when course contents are broken into manageable chunks. In this context, digital badges, serving …

Organizing The Online Course, Kathleen A. Burke Ms.

Winthrop Conference on Teaching and Learning

If you are new to online instruction or are a veteran looking for fresh ideas for designing your online courses, this presentation will demonstrate user-friendly design for online courses, including course menu links, instructions, content examples and tips for making the all-important first week of class work to make the whole semester more dynamic. Take away ideas to jump-start your course organization and create a meaningful learning experience for students.

A Spoonful Of Success: Undergraduate Tutor-Tutee Interactions And Performance, Jonathan Marx, Michelle Wolf

Winthrop Conference on Teaching and Learning

We explore how the dynamics of the tutor-tutee relationship influence student self- reliance, and ultimately course performance. We examine 333 tutor and tutee pairs at a student success center at a public, comprehensive, university of about 5,000 undergraduates in over 60 different courses during the spring of 2015. We find as frequency and quality of the interactions between tutor and tutees increase that the tutors increasingly foster independent study habits on the part of the tutees. The incorporation of independent study habits was then associated with better course outcomes. In other words, the development of a positive, sustained relationship by …

Blended And Flipped, Theresa Butori

Winthrop Conference on Teaching and Learning

STEM courses, in particular, challenge educators and learners to learn complex processes, much of which is not intuitive or outside their realm of experience. Blended learning and flipped classrooms allow educators to tackle the rigors of STEM education head-on (Bishop & Verleger, 2013).

Defining blended and flipped: “Course that integrates online elements into face-to-face delivery. Content and materials are available online and typically keeps all or most face-to-face meetings. The inverted, active learning classroom “flips” the in-class and homework activities, often by moving content lectures before class, in that students watch online lectures at home, while class time is spent …

A Case Study: Using Blackboard Tools To Measure Correlations Between Student Engagement And Student Achievement, Andrew Vorder Bruegge

Winthrop Conference on Teaching and Learning

The Blackboard course management system includes the tool "statistics tracking." An instructor can use this tool to generate a report that "displays the summary of usage for that content item and [the students] enrolled in the course. The access date, hour and day of the week are all reported for the selected item and [students]." In this case study the researcher will correlate aggregate data about students' visits to numerous content items in a course and their final grade in the course. The instructor will also correlate aggregate data from a study log created to track the number of hours …

Life Lessons Of A Co-Teacher, Donna Cherveny

Winthrop Conference on Teaching and Learning

Co-teaching is a common practice across schools. While research may be present regarding the effects of co-teaching, there is little literature that simply offers the perspective a co-teacher. As a former co-teacher of six years, I experienced various encounters and relationships that helped shape my current career as a professor of education. From these experiences, I have developed a list of “wisha wouldas” as a reflection. These “wisha wouldas” are basic things I wish I had done or experienced that I feel would have made me a stronger co-teacher. Included in my list of “wisha wouldas” are co-teaching contracts to …

Capstone Courses At Winthrop University: What Are They?, Marsha Bollinger

Winthrop Conference on Teaching and Learning

Capstone courses are generally considered high-impact and transformative for students. In the process of redesigning the officially-designated capstone course for the environmental sciences and studies program at Winthrop University, the author discovered that there is no clear definition of what this senior culminating experience should be. Formats at Winthrop range from community field placements to individual research papers; course goals range from integrative discipline-based learning to career preparation to program assessment. Using course syllabi, catalog descriptions, and a questionnaire for department or program chairs, an analysis will be presented of the variety of experiences, formats, and goals for all undergraduate …

Credits Earned, Credits Due: Forging New Degree Completion Pathways For Post-Traditional Students With The Aid Of Prior Learning Assessment Portfolios, Patrick Guilbaud, Greg Oakes

Winthrop Conference on Teaching and Learning

In recent years, there has been a surge in the number of adult students who have expressed interest in returning back to school to complete their undergraduate degrees. Research, however, shows that many adult students who start degree completion programs do not complete them.

An oft-cited roadblock to degree completion by adult students is lack of recognition of prior learning obtained on the job or through other means. As a result, prior learning assessment (PLA) has now become an important tool used by colleges and universities to facilitate access to higher education by adult students.

The Council for Adult & …

"Can We Talk?": Strategies For Successful Classroom Discussion, John Bird

Winthrop Conference on Teaching and Learning

We all recognize the value and importance of class discussion for student learning and engagement, but we have probably had uneven results when we try to hold discussions in class. Sometimes it goes great, but sometimes it fails, miserably. In this workshop, we will examine some of the problems with class discussion: students who won’t talk, students who talk too much, students who go off topic, silent classes, and so on. Then we will explore and practice some techniques that can solve those problems, including more effective question design, effective questioning techniques, the use of writing as discussion starters, and …

All Aboard, All Attuned And All Involved: Fostering Learner Engagement And Teamwork With Clickers In An Introductory Computer Science Course At Winthrop University, Patrick Guilbaud, Michael Whitney

Winthrop Conference on Teaching and Learning

Modern education technology tools and learning systems provide the means for faculty to develop courses that offer connected and engaging learning opportunities. However, many courses, particularly those in the sciences and engineering disciplines, are not often designed to encourage collaboration, cooperation and teamwork.

Given the presence of a global and interconnected economy, it is critical for students to interact with classmates who hold diverse perspectives, experiences and opinions. Moreover, research shows that students who have had the opportunity to participate in learning activities with heterogeneous teams --early in their college life-- are more likely to develop lasting relationships with classmates …

Critical Reading, Critical Research: Practical Strategies To Develop, Amanda L. Hiner

Winthrop Conference on Teaching and Learning

Perhaps no other skill affects students’ intellectual achievement more profoundly than the skill of critical reading. The analysis and assessment of written texts requires specific, learned skills in unpacking a text’s meaning, understanding its claims and implications, assessing its logic and coherence, evaluating its evidence, and drawing logical conclusions based on its claims. Both anecdotal evidence and qualitative research suggest that these skills are lacking in many high school and college students, and though teachers are intuitively aware of how crucial such skills are in the research and writing process, they often struggle to help students practice and apply critical …

Spectators Or Patriots? Citizens In The Information Age, Amrita Dhawan

Publications and Research

In theory, a strong democracy rests on robust citizen participation. The practice in most democracies is quite different. This gap presents a challenge, which can be narrowed by augmenting civic education to bring it up to date with the current information environment and thus give citizens the opportunity to participate. Robert Dahl’s work on democracy provides a model that looks at this problem structurally. He writes about the ideals and the actual institutions necessary for a democracy and if we situate his model in the modern information environment we get a better idea of how to improve civic education. Successful …

The Research Journey: Through The Lens Of The Adult Learner, Angela Wright

Dept. of Organisation & Professional Development Publications

This research provides an opportunity to reflect, evaluate and to implement better procedures for practice, specifically, the research supervision of post graduate students at the taught Masters Level. In this context, empirical data were gathered from recently graduated ‘taught masters’ students in the business arena in an Irish Third Level Institution. The main objective was to understand their specific research and learning needs better. This current research is novel, as an examination of the academic literature in relation to this area is scant. It is envisaged that this research will provide a ‘voice’ for the students in this field. A …

Fostering An Inclusive Stem Workforce, Cary A. Supalo Dr.

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

The following keynote address was delivered by Dr. Cary A. Supalo at the 2015 Training Workforce and Development and diversity conference which is one of the divisions that is part of NIH’s general medical sciences. This conference was attended by over 500 program directors from all of the T32 sponsored projects in 2015. This presentation discussed the importance of a full inclusive STEM workforce that includes persons with disabilities

Annual Report Of Externally Funded Grants And Contracts July 1, 2015 - June 30, 2016, Office Of Research And Sponsored Programs. Morehead State University.

Office of Research and Sponsored Programs Reports and Publications

Annual Report of Externally Funded Grants and Contracts July 1, 2015 - June 30, 2016.

Are We Teaching Them Anything?: A Model For Measuring Methodology Skills In The Political Science Major, Christi Siver, Seth W. Greenfest, G. Claire Haeg

Political Science Faculty Publications

While the literature emphasizes the importance of teaching political science students methods skills, there currently exists little guidance for how to assess student learning over the course of their time in the major. To address this gap, we develop a model set of assessment tools that may be adopted and adapted by political science departments to evaluate the effect of their own methods instruction. The model includes a syllabi analysis, evaluation of capstone (senior) papers, and a transcript analysis. We apply these assessment tools to our own department to examine whether students demonstrate a range of basic-to-advanced methodological skills. Our …

Toward A Framework For Reading Lived Experiences As Texts: A Four-Year Self-Study Of Teacher Education Practices, Abby Cameron-Standerford, Christi U. Edge, Bethney M. Bergh

Book Sections/Chapters

No abstract provided.

An Exploration Of Fairness In The Assessment And Process Of Student Group Work, Rita Gibson, Emma Geoghegan, Oscar Macananey, Andrew Hines, Lorraine D'Arcy

Practitioner Research Projects

This project was driven by a motivation to be as fair as possible in the assessment of students' group work. Achieving fairness in assessment is a recurrent them in group project assessment literature (Nordberg, 2009). All authors of this report teach modules with group projects, and acknowledged that discrepancies often exist between a mark assigned to a group and an individual's contribution. Our aims were to (a) collectively enhance our understanding of the issues that need to be considered when assessing a group work project and (b) collectively build our confidence in approaches chosen to overcome these challenges. The findings …

Methods For Deriving Individual Marks From Group Work, Miriam Delaney, Lucy Bowe, Breiffni Fitzgerald, Peter Maccann, Christina Ryan

Practitioner Research Projects

Group assessment is a valuable teaching and learning method (Springer et al., 1999). This has been comprehensively demonstrated in the teaching and learning literature both in general (Johnson et al., 1991) and in specific contexts. This assessment practice promotes questioning, discussion and debate and encourages students to become active team players (DIT, 2013). However, when using this form of assessment, it is important to recognise that it is "individuals who graduate and gain qualifications" (Gibbs, 2009, p.4). The problem of freeloading has been identified and one of the suggested methods of reducing this is to incorporate individual assessment into the …

Facilitating Group Work: A Guide To Good Practice, Ronan Mccrea, Irene Neville, David Rickard, Ciara Walsh, David Williams

Practitioner Research Projects

Oakley et al. (2004) and Gibbs (2009) observe that owing to the extensive literature on group work, lecturers searching for a succinct guide on how to facilitate this activity effectively would find it challenging to digest such a large corpus. We extensively reviewed the literature in order to produce a quick and accessible guide for lecturers to use. It is our aspiration that this could be referred to when planning and facilitating group work projects with insights and recommendations informed by our research. Moreover, as this work draws on publications from educators in a wide range of disciplines, we expect …

Gamification To Improve First Year Engagement, John Colleran, Aoife Lloyd Mckernan, Julie Ann Naughton, Brian Vaughan

Practitioner Research Projects

The purpose of this project was to examine the role of Gamification in increasing first year student engagement within the third level educational setting. A literature review was carried out in order to explore the teaching philosophy behind gamification in education and review the quantitative and qualitative evidence regarding its use. Gamification can be broadly described as the application of gaming methods and elements in non-gaming contexts in order to improve user engagement and user experience (Deterding et al., 2011). Qualitative analysis suggests these factors result in beneficial emotional and social impacts on students, particularly in the area of increasing …

Effective Teaching Practices In Online Higher Education, Kim Mcmurtry

CCE Theses and Dissertations

In the context of continuing growth in online higher education in the United States, students are struggling to succeed, as evidenced by lower course outcomes and lower retention rates in online courses in comparison with face-to-face courses. The problem identified for investigation is how university instructors can ensure that effective teaching and learning is happening in their online courses. The research questions were:

1. What are the best practices of effective online teaching in higher education according to current research?
2. How do exemplary online instructors enact teaching presence in higher education?
3. What are the best practices of effective online teaching in …

Outstanding University Lecturers: Ambitious Altruists Or Mavericks Of The Academy?, Sharon Lierse

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

The paper discusses the results of a research study to determine what characteristics outstanding university lecturers have in common. Academic staff and graduate students at an Australian university were invited to participate in a survey questionnaire followed by voluntary interviews. Lecturers who had been identified as outstanding were also interviewed. The five characteristics were expertise, holistic approach to learning, engaging the student, open door policy and ambitious altruists. This study found that outstanding lecturers were unconventional in their work practices and valued student learning often at the sacrifice of their own career paths. Outstanding university lecturers are ambitious altruists who …

School-Based Youth Physical Activity Promotion: Thoughts And Beliefs Of Pre-Service Physical Education Teachers, Jerome N. Rachele, Thomas F. Cuddihy, Tracy L. Washington, Steven M. Mcphail

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Physical education teachers are central to the facilitation of school-based physical activity promotion. However, teachers have self-reported a lack of knowledge, skills, understanding, and competence to successfully implement these strategies. The aim of this investigation was to explore the beliefs and perceptions of pre-service physical education teachers, concerning their potential roles in future school-based programs designed to promote student physical activity. Fifty-seven pre-service physical education teachers (21 males and 36 females) had complete data and were included in the analysis. Participants responded positively, and did not reveal concerns about their capacity to facilitate school-based physical activity promotion during practicum, and …

Role Perception Among Faculty Members At Teacher Education Colleges, Esther Grobgeld, Ariela Teichman-Weinberg, Egoza Wasserman, Mercedes Barchilon Ben-Av

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

The goal of this study was to examine how faculty members at academic colleges of education perceive their role and to consider elements of their work that need to be included in a professional profile definition. All faculty of one college of education were asked: "What are the tasks/obligations of a faculty member at a college of education? Please list the ones important to you." Content analysis yielded eight themes which were used for construction of a closed questionnaire containing 61 items describing teacher educator tasks. This questionnaire was distributed to all teacher-training colleges nationwide. The faculty members were found …

“It’S About Improving My Practice”: The Learner Experience Of Real-Time Coaching, Erica J. Sharplin, Garth Stahl, Ben Kehrwald

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This article reports on pre-service teachers’ experience of the Real-Time Coaching model, an innovative technology-based approach to teacher training. The Real-Time Coaching model uses multiple feedback cycles via wireless technology to develop within pre-service teachers the specific skills and mindset toward continual improvement. Results of this qualitative study suggest that pre-service teachers experienced an improved pedagogic practice, found the Real-Time Coaching process supportive and stress relieving, and valued its focus on practice, the explicitness of the teaching and the ability to implement feedback immediately.

Developing The Whole Teacher: A Phenomenological Case Study Of Student Teachers' Emotional Experiences In One Teacher Education Program, Kathleen M. Crawford

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Student teaching serves as the culminating field experience in the majority of teacher education programs, and studies have revealed the need to investigate the connection between pre-service teachers and the emotions they experience, express, and manage. Therefore, the overarching purpose of this phenomenological case study was to examine how one Early Childhood (PreK-5^th) Education Program addressed and prepared teachers for the emotional dimensions of teaching, as well as to examine the emotional experiences of the student teachers. The results of this study revealed the need for teacher education programs to amend the ways in which they prepare pre-service …