Multiple factors are known to influence student success in higher education. Barriers to postsecondary success for underrepresented STEM students are numerous and well documented. We detail an exploratory study of STEM faculty notions of successful students and the instructional practices they employ to cultivate student success. We use a conceptual...
This paper explores the affordances and constraints of STEM faculty members' instructional data-use practices and how they engage students (or not) in reflection around their own learning data. We found faculty used a wide variety of instructional data-use practices. We also found several constraints that influenced their instructional data-use practices,...
College Algebra is a prerequisite for calculus and is thus an important stepping stone in the careers of STEM-intending undergraduates. However, College Algebra has low pass rates across the United States, interrupting students’ pathways to success. To address this concern, a research-oriented university in the Northwest United States restructured its...
Problem: To compare the effectiveness of three
different methods of teaching chemistry at a community
college.
Procedure: Three classes of college chemistry
were taught using the traditional lecture-discussion
with a typical text, a lecture-discussion using a
programed text, and an individualized self-paced
method.
The self-paced course was designed to allow...
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
This study developed a model which identified mathematical needs
in various vocational technical programs. This model provides a
method which can be used to develop an adequate mathematics curriculum
to support occupational offerings at community college/technical
institutes, and can also help high schools and the colleges/technical...
The purpose of this study was to analyze the effect of the use
of vocationally - oriented applications on the achievement and attitude
of community college beginning algebra students. The applications
were chosen to be representative of problems encountered in
a variety of occupations. They were in contrast to the...
Purpose of the Study:
The purpose of this study was to.investigate the achievement
effect of providing students in a college-level introductory
psychology course with behavioral objectives. The non-experimental
literature provides a rationale for student use of behavioral objectives
(Bobbitt, 1918; Tyler, 1950; Taba, 1962; Gagne and Briggs,
1974; and Popham,...
Two mathematical computer games, POE and EQUATIONS, were used to
test the effects of games as learning aids in a university entry-level
intermediate algebra course. Specifically, this study investigated
whether use of these games would significantly increase student achievement
in the course and improve student attitude toward mathematics.
EQUATIONS is...
What constitutes a quality solution to an authentic task from industry? This study seeks to address this question through the examination of two expert solutions to an authentic engineering task used in the Chemical, Biological and Environmental Engineering curriculum at Oregon State University. The two solutions were generated by two...
The objectives of the study were (1) to determine the differences
in ability of seniors and freshmen to apply principles learned
in a clothing selection course to selection of clothing, (2) to determine
retention of concepts learned in the course, (3) to determine if
age, grades, social class, and occupational...
Engineering students spend a significant amount of their undergraduate careers focused on technical theory and practice. This intensive student prepares them for their technical challenges in the future. This training is so intense that often the more 'soft skills' such as communication, leadership, design, and troubleshooting are left out or...
The purpose of this study was to understand how refrigeration, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (RHVAC) service technicians (techs) learned from troubleshooting. This understanding resulted in instructional and curricular strategies designed to help community colleges prepare vocational students to learn more effectively from informal workplace learning. RHVAC techs were studied...
About twenty years ago, a large, rural, doctoral granting institution with an undergraduate population of approximately 24,000 in the pacific northwest of the United States established the Math Excel program. Students would attend lectures three times a week for 50 minutes like a traditional course, and they would also attend...
Purpose of the Study:
The purpose of this study was to analyze, in the mathematics
classrooms, career-oriented verbal mathematics problems on the
achievement and attitude of the vocational mathematics student.
These career-oriented mathematics problems, used as advanced
organizers, were contrasted with mathematics word problems of a
more abstract and generalized...
A microprogramming teaching tool was designed and implemented. This tool was based on the Am 2900 bitslice microprocessor family. It provides tools for understanding software development for a simple bitslice microprocessor.
The study examined classroom instructional practices and teacher's
professed conceptions about teaching and learning college calculus in
relationship to the implementation of scientific-programmable-graphics (SPG)
calculators. The study occurred at a university not affiliated with any reform
project. The participants were not the catalysts seeking to implement calculus
reform, but expressed...
The purpose of this descriptive case study analysis was to provide portraits of the methods college students used to solve probability problems and the factors that supported or impeded their success prior to and after two-week instruction on probability. Fourteen-question Pre- and Post-Instructional Task-Based Questionnaires provided verbal data of nine...
"Each year, the grant support varying numbers of teachers to investigate spreadsheets with the intent of integrating teaching mathematics/science with spreadsheets. These teachers were taught to focus on teaching about key concepts of spreadsheet design while they also taught with the spreadsheets as tools for learning mathematics/science. As part of...
The purpose of this study was to investigate third year college students' transfer of learning of the concepts of eigenvalues and eigenvectors from the winter term physics courses to the interviews in which they participated before, during, and after these courses. Transfer of learning of each student was explored
by...
Collegiate student's conceptual distinctions of what define a mathematical and a physical model seems to be affected by the epistemological beliefs they hold about this knowledge. These beliefs seem to influence student's thinking and reasoning as they embark on problem solving activities in collegiate mathematics. Student's epistemological beliefs of mathematical...
Geospatial technology is a rapidly growing and changing field. The term geospatial technology (GST) refers to geographical information systems (GIS), global positioning systems (GPS), and remote sensing (RS), all emerging technologies that assist the user in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of spatial data. The speed at which new fields...
Like other social institutions, universities have been
created and administered by and for a white-male dominant
culture that continues to marginalize women and anyone else
designated as -Other- according to race, class, ethnicity,
ability, age, size, and sexuality. This discussion
questions the dominant model of standard written discourse
in the...
The purpose of this study was to investigate the
effectiveness of an expository advance organizer on the
achievement of students in a general chemistry course.
The subjects included 181 first year college students
enrolled in 12 sections of general chemistry at the
Chulachomklao Royal Military Academy, Thailand. The subjects
were...
Student engagement in a course plays a vital role in a student’s ability to process and construct knowledge. Student engagement research has investigated how students engage in and out of the classroom on a macro scale, through observation and survey data collection of large student populations, which lack focus on...
Presenting and synthesizing several paradigms for the teaching of literature in American colleges, I investigate how definitions of reading, readers, texts, interpretations, and knowledge affect student acts of reading and writing. In addition, I draw upon specific examples of text-based, reader-based, and social-cultural based models for the teaching of reading...
The purpose of this study was to identify if differences existed in perceived barrier factors and perceived attitude factors toward distance education between faculty and administrators in the decision stage and those in the implementation stage of distance education technology adoption. Information was gathered from teaching faculty and program leaders...
This study aimed to investigate students' models of probability in a modern physics context. The study was divided into three phases. The first phase explored student pre-knowledge about probability before modem physics instruction. The second phase investigated student understanding of concepts related to probability such as wave-particle behavior, the uncertainty...
Digital Instrumentation and Detection is becoming the future of radiation detection and measurement. Computers are able to perform digitally what before would have taken an extensive array of analog equipment. The art of teaching radiation detection and measurement is following this same pattern of a shift from purely analog to...
The purpose of this study was to understand how instruction in an introductory nonmajor astronomy course at Oregon State University affects how non-science majors view science and the scientific process. The study used research-based methods to design a reform-based lecture/lab course and implement it for students. Two top-level questions were...
This thesis is a qualitative study of the social justice practice of experienced student affairs professionals employed in higher education. If we are to be truly supportive of all of our students, as is paramount in the values of student affairs professionals (Komives et al., 2003), systemic change is needed...
Students in undergraduate engineering programs typically do not synthesize content learned from disparate course work until the end of their final terms of college. As an example, in undergraduate civil engineering programs, transportation engineering concepts (e.g., geometric alignment, asphalt design procedures) and geotechnical engineering concepts (e.g., shear strength of soils,...
The purpose of this study was to explore the issues involved with implementing and using pedagogies of engagement in community college STEM courses. The rationale for this study was based on current and emerging STEM education policy directives calling for an updated approach to teaching undergraduates, focused on student engagement,...
As people learn new concepts, they experience a process termed conceptual change. There are several theories that attempt to explain conceptual change, and this paper uses the framework theory to explain how students learn mechanics of materials. Semi-structured interviews with ninety students were qualitatively analyzed for this research in an...
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has been sponsoring workshops for undergraduate engineering professors since 1984. The workshops were designed to educate engineering professors about the importance of addressing health and safety issues in their undergraduate engineering curricula. This study was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of...
There has been a rapid increase in technological advances in the biological sciences that has contributed to an increase in societal issues that require attention from both scientists and citizens. Consequently, there is a need for the development of biologically literate citizens who have the ability to use their knowledge...
There is a significant amount of research analyzing the effect of race, gender, and other common demographical data on student interest and performance in computer science. However, there is relatively little research concerning less common demographic populations, such as introverts, artistic students, and visual learners. This study investigates if these...
Mathematical sophistication increases rapidly as students transition from lower- to upper-division physics courses. Complex algebra is one of the mathematical tools that is not introduced or used in lower-division physics courses but is pervasive throughout upper-division courses. In this dissertation, I study middle-division physics students' developing fluency with complex number...
This thesis focuses on active learning through four different studies that include metacognitive and cognitive aspects of learning designs to support active learning and a contextual analysis of the implementation of teaching tools used in active learning. The first three investigate important elements of active learning whereas the fourth study...
It is expected that information taught in the context of school will ultimately transfer to workplace settings. To support this transition, educators and researchers advocate for organizing foundational ideas, or concepts, in specific domains of knowing. In the domain of transportation engineering, knowing of concepts, which include "big ideas" such...
Background
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has funded multiple research projects dedicated to the development of research and evidence based instructional strategies in an effort to improve the state of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education in the US. These efforts have led to an abundance of research based...
The purpose of this article is to explore student reasoning with regard to problems in logic, particularly those related to the Principle of Mathematical Induction (PMI). The five case studies presented build off of work done by other researchers, most notably Dubinsky and Harel, who both looked at how students'...
The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a deep
breathing and stretching exercise on communication Apprehension,
Cohesiveness and Attentiveness. An empirical method was used in
this study. All of the subjects involved in the study were students
in beginning public speaking courses, Speech 112, at Oregon...
The field of accounting has experienced dramatic changes in the past 20 years. Advances in technology and workplace requirements have changed the responsibilities in the accounting position of a historical recorder to a functioning manager within the organization. The curriculum used by accounting instructors has not changed or kept pace...
Although a concern for gender equity provided the framework for this research,
the results of this study highlighted the fact that the question of equity should be
broadened to include concern for the tier of talented women and men who currently
choose not to persist in an undergraduate computer science...
As a reader and as a teacher of introductory reading and writing courses, I
am persuaded by the concept of a genuine authority in which all readers both
value and seek to examine their early readings of texts. What I have come to
regard as a pretended authority or mastery,...
This follow-up study investigated the effect of a systems-oriented graduate
training program upon system thinking among practitioners who had completed training,
using a post-test only, treatment-comparison group design. The subjects consisted of
practitioners matriculated through two counselor-related programs at a medium-sized
college in the Northwest during the years 1985-1991. A...
The Accounting Education Change Commission (AECC) is
a consortium of concerned accounting professionals and
accounting educators that advocates the redesigning of
accounting curriculums in higher education. Traditionally
accounting programs have focused on the technical aspects
of the profession. Although technical competence is
necessary for the profession, the AECC urges accounting...
This research is aimed at obtaining a better understanding of the impact of the use of collaborative and simulation sessions for learning lean principles and methods. Study participants were enrolled in a Lean Manufacturing System Engineering (IE436/536) course at Oregon State University or at three other business and engineering universities...
The structure of engineering curricula currently in place at most colleges and universities has existed since the early 1950's, and reflects an historical emphasis on a solid foundation in math, science, and engineering science. However, there is often not a close match between elements of the traditional engineering education, and...
This study examined the dynamics of student, teaching assistant (TA), and faculty learning in relationship to implementation of a genetic technologies project in a university introductory biology course. Research focused on the types of learning that occurred and the various factors impacting that learning. Study participants included 25 undergraduate non-science...
The purpose of this study was to investigate teaching models that may aid in
improving student's understanding of how to interpret graphs of kinematic variables.
The teaching models that were considered incorporated the use of cooperative groups
and calculator-based laboratory instruments, alone and in concert. The subjects used in
this...
This study examined the reading-writing relationship for
99 exclusively international students, and used narrative,
and timed and untimed expository writing samples. The reading
comprehension test was the Degrees of Reading Power (DRP), a
test appropriate for use with English as a second language
(ESL) learners.
Results of the study indicated...
This dissertation arose out of an awareness of difficulties undergraduate linear algebra students encounter when solving linear algebra problems from novel, non-isomorphic settings, even when the problems could be solved with matrix representations and similar procedures as problems from a more familiar setting. This mixed-methods study utilized both traditional and...
Improving safety education could contribute to the preparation of better professional engineers. Safety topics are not holistically embedded in transportation course curricula. This thesis explores the current state in which safety is being incorporated in transportation course curricula in terms of design and compares the uses of safety data in...
The purpose of this thesis is to explore civil engineering students’ and professional civil engineers' understanding of concepts within statics and fluid mechanics. The studies described herein begin to examine theories of situated cognition utilizing concept inventories, which are sets of multiple-choice questions where the incorrect answers are based on...
First year college writing classes originated in the United States at Harvard University in 1874. Since then, theorizing such a course has proven a place of contention, as its purposes and subjects have proven difficult to sort and impossible to agree upon. When Harvard first began teaching introductory composition, literature...
A combination of theoretical perspectives is used to create a rich description of student reasoning when facing a highly-geometric electricity and magnetism problem in an upper-division active-engagement physics classroom at Oregon State University. Geometric reasoning as students encounter problem situations ranging from familiar to novel is described using van Zee...
The purpose of this study was to apply instructional system theory to the
process of developing authentic English as a foreign language (ESL) materials
for Indonesian pre-departure scholars. The researcher established a theoretical
framework for the process through an intensive review of instructional system
literature and selected an applied process...
The research presented in this dissertation focuses on the model generation and modeling processes of student teams that participate in capstone, undergraduate engineering physical and virtual laboratory projects. The Heat Exchange Laboratory Project, the Ion Exchange Laboratory Project, and the Virtual Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) Laboratory Project provide the context...
The purpose of this study was to learn about the experiences of Generation 1.5 Hispanics in developmental English in community college. A qualitative comparative case study design was used for this social critical study. The key findings fell into three categories: road blocks, motivators, and actions. The road blocks included:...
The purpose of this quantitative study was to identify factors that contribute to students' levels of global citizenship. Factors considered in this research include (a) race/ethnicity, (b) gender, (c), year in school, (d) age, (e), length of time abroad, (f) host family experience, (g), community service abroad, (h) more than...
No research to date has involved ESL students as researchers in investigations of community language practices. This study examined the research processes of 23 international college students in an advanced ESL course. The students worked on an original curriculum, the Language Research Project, through which they performed ethnographic and discourse...
The increasingly corporatized and privatized public university has resulted in significant role changes for students and faculty. Among these changes includes the development of online education and its proliferation among various disciplines to not only increase educational access, but to sustain budgetary program needs. Such processes are occurring in women's...
Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) is an interdisciplinary academic field that addresses gender, sexuality, and social justice issues. The research objective of this project was to examine the attitudes of self-identified male students in introductory Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies for winter term 2016 at Oregon State University. This...
What are the most effective ways to improve the engineering curriculum? Improvements should result in increased student retention, undergraduates who are more industry-ready and graduates who are better prepared to be leaders. Current research suggests that the best predictor of persistence is a person’s self-efficacy. The focus of this thesis...
Problem: The current national focus on college student success highlights the need to increase the graduation rates of students of color. To date, qualitative research has shown benefits from Ethnic Studies courses such as higher levels of student achievement, engagement and involvement, validation, mattering, and a sense of belonging for...
The following thesis presents a case study analyzing a service-learning project implemented in a second-year level Writing in Business course at Oregon State University. The classroom project required business writing students to serve as cultural ambassadors and conversation partners with international students through INTO OSU's Cultural Ambassador Conversant Program. Relying...
The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe how novice students solved computer programming problems in a beginning college level computer science (CS) course with an introduction to object-oriented programming (OOP) and what knowledge they obtained about OOP and computer problem solving (CPS) as a result of their experiences....
The purpose of this study is twofold: first, the construction of a major framework outlining a functional curriculum in professional forestry and, second, the suggesting of a method of procedure that will enable a staff in any forestry school to develop a functional curriculum adapted to local needs. No attempt...
Attracting, educating and retaining new engineering students is a challenge. The creative aspirations and "can do" attitude spawned by the space race, Heathkits, and homemade crystal radios have been replaced with the passive satisfaction of video games, cell phones and throwaway electronic appliances. At Oregon State University we have made...
The present study was conducted to examine the effects of early orientation of counseling related students to the two most prevalent paradigms of psychodiagnostic decision-making on first, the integration of the model, and second, on the ability to make proficient diagnostic decisions while in training.
Using an experimental, pretest posttest...
In 2000 the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at Oregon State University began a new and innovative program named TekBots[superscript TM]. This program was created to solve the problems of students in existing undergraduate engineering education not having sufficient skill when graduating in six program educational objectives; Depth, Breadth, Professionalism,...
Traditionally, Renaissance studies have neglected or overlooked the contributions of early modern female poets, many of whom produced lively, engaging, and highly creative work despite the limitations imposed on them by a rigidly patriarchal society. In my thesis, I examine the life and work of Aemilia Lanyer, a 17th century...
Multicultural curriculum, as a facet of multicultural education is not a new topic in higher education. Although there are many theories that describe multicultural curriculum (Banks, 1997b; Bennett, 2007), and a multitude of ideas and suggestions for best practices, several studies show there is not overwhelming faculty support for or...
In April of 1997 it was pointed out at an NSF Engineering Education Innovators conference that “… education appears to ignore the need for connections and for integration – which should be at the core of an engineering education.” In order to solve this problem a group named ‘TekBotsTM’ was...
As the Tekbots program expands into senior and graduate level classes at Oregon State University, so does the need arise for more complex learning platforms. These complex hardware platforms cannot be adequately tested in a manufacturing environment as we have done previously. Also, due to their complexity, these platforms require...
The purpose of this study was to investigate the perspectives of education professionals who manage, coordinate, and instruct in the English Literacy and Civics Education Grant
(EL/Civics) Programs in Oregon community colleges. The study compared the EL/Civics Grant Program to the conventional English as Second Language (ESL) programs offered at...
Reform in science education has often emphasized task-based learning as an instructional method to improve student understanding and retention of concepts, and to promote the development of reasoning and problem-solving. Yet studies assessing student knowledge at the beginning and end of a task-based class show mixed results. Students in task-based...
Gender has been the subject of study in engineering education and science social research for decades. However, little attention has been given to transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) experiences or perspectives. The role of cisgender or gender conforming status has not been investigated nor considered in prevailing frameworks of gender...
Assessing student conceptual understanding is a valuable method for gauging specific student learning outcomes but can be difficult and time consuming to measure. This research investigates the potential of automating some intermediary steps of a qualitative analysis of student conceptual understanding with tools from the field of Natural Language Processing...
The underlying aim of my dissertation was to contribute knowledge that may better support and foster STEM education improvement initiatives at public research universities. The two research studies included in my dissertation advance knowledge per perspectives of key stakeholders targeted by initiatives attempting to foster change, students and faculty. In...
Over several decades, much attention has been paid to the preparation of K-12 teachers. More recently, the body of literature on graduate teaching assistants' preparation for teaching has begun to increase. Since many graduate teaching assistants are hired as community college and university instructors, it is important to understand how...
This thesis explores student understanding of divergence in physics settings. The various uses of divergence in physics are detailed. Textbook approaches to divergence are categorized as geometric, curvilinear coordinate, discussion-based, and algebraic statement. Textbook approaches to the divergence theorem are categorized as geometric, equivalent integrals, mathematical statement with explanation, and...
This thesis explores the administrative issues that factor into the teaching of writing online. I explore these issues by situating the Conference on College Composition and Communication Position Statement of Principles and Example Effective Best Practices for Online Writing Instruction at the center of this project by both examining and...
As the necessity grows for undergraduate English teachers to incorporate various multimodal texts into their course material due to the changing landscape of what is considered English studies, comics can be an increasingly viable source for such texts. This thesis introduces several formal qualities of comics available for teachers to...
Previous research suggests that little is known about female
mentoring relationships, particularly among undergraduate students.
The purpose of the present study was to investigate mentoring
relationships experienced by female undergraduate merchandising
management students. The investigation included the overall
prevalence of mentoring experiences, the specific kinds of mentor
roles, the prevalent...
This study was an ethnographic case study of a
Vietnamese unaccompanied minor in a post secondary setting.
There were two guiding questions for the study: (1) How
does the subject perceive language as it relates to
educational experience? (2) What kinds of observable
personality, cognitive, or affective factors have
contributed...
Community colleges serve the most diverse student populations in higher education. They consist of non-traditional, part-time, older, intermittent, and mobile students of different races, ethnic backgrounds, language preferences, physical and mental abilities, and learning style preferences. Students who are academically challenged may have diverse learning characteristics that are not compatible...