Higher Education: Obligation or Opportunity?

From the beginning of my experience at Marquette, I continually observed students that appeared to demonstrate no enthusiasm for getting an education, reflected in a noticeable lack of participation in class discussions. I felt my expectations of academia being crushed as students boasted about skipping lectures and passively sat in class, seemingly disinterested in the professor and the material. If college was truly regarded as an opportunity for intellectual growth, why did students treat education as nothing more than an obligation? Through mixed-method, qualitative research, combining observation, interviews, and review of scholarly literature, this project examines what factors influence student engagement in the learning environment.https://epublications.marquette.edu/english_3210ur/1021/thumbnail.jp

Reengaging Readers: How Choice Reading Promotes Lifelong Literacy

For instructional purposes, teachers often use an informal reading inventory, among other assessments, to sort students into like-ability groups. While undoubtedly beneficial in terms of planning and small group work, it appears in some classrooms that informal reading inventory (IRI) data sometimes becomes the driving force in literacy-related curricular decisions – including using IRI data to limit the books students have access to. With this observation as a starting point, this research attempts to answer the questions – What is the correlation, if any, between the text difficulty of books students self-select and the amount of reading growth they experience? The research conducted over the last year examines how children’s literacy growth is effected in a classroom context where readers are making their own decisions about what books to read during daily independent reading time. This research was conducted in a second grade classroom in an urban school in the Midwest. Informal reading inventory data was collected at the beginning and end of this study providing a measure of students’ reading ability, and book logs kept by students in their book totes were collected each week to track book choices of individual readers for the duration of the study. A wide range of professional texts both in favor of and against students having the opportunity to self-select books regardless of reading level were also consulted

A Project Based Approach to Statistics and Data Science

In an increasingly data-driven world, facility with statistics is more important than ever for our students. At institutions without a statistician, it often falls to the mathematics faculty to teach statistics courses. This paper presents a model that a mathematician asked to teach statistics can follow. This model entails connecting with faculty from numerous departments on campus to develop a list of topics, building a repository of real-world datasets from these faculty, and creating projects where students interface with these datasets to write lab reports aimed at consumers of statistics in other disciplines. The end result is students who are well prepared for interdisciplinary research, who are accustomed to coping with the idiosyncrasies of real data, and who have sharpened their technical writing and speaking skills

Supporting EU, home and foreign students in London writing final year undergraduate BA English language studies dissertations

The London Metropolitan University BA English Language Studies degree (BA ELS) attracts more than 50% “non-traditional” entrants, including many with English as a second language. This paper reports on challenges of the compulsory third year Undergraduate Dissertation, and on implementing and evaluating interventions to help students meet these challenges. My colleague and I carried out pre- and post-module surveys of student perception and made use of an ongoing student diary from one student to determine student needs and experiences. We discovered that students find structuring their literature reviews challenging and need to be trained to see the applicability of some of the literature to their particular thesis situations. There is evidence that students in European institutions face similar challenges. Our action research was informed by a constructivist, dialogic, pedagogic approach which, importantly, included supporting students’ writing from within their subject area. In attempting to find solutions to these problems, we were influenced by the academic literacies with its emphasis on learner differences, but more by the genre approach. I argue that existing manuals on research Dissertations, which focus largely on topic choice, storage of notes and may need to give higher priority to structuring the literature review. Our report includes a survey of students’ attitudes and expectations regarding the Dissertation, then moves on to describe and assess changes which were made to the Dissertation in the Degree in question. The greatest focus is on the “literature review”, but we also describe changes to the module documentation (Handbook), changes to the Dissertation structure, to the process of choice of Dissertation topic, and attention to students’ time management

Boston University 2013 undergraduate student library survey report

In the spring of 2013 the Assessment Committee surveyed all BU undergraduate students to determine their use of and satisfaction with current library services and resources. The quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed and the results from the survey are now available in our Undergraduate Student Survey Report. The chart below from the report shows undergraduate students ratings of the BU libraries’ contribution to their quality of life and academic success

Making Sense of Leased Popular Literature Collections

There is a well-publicized debate in the library field on whether or not it should be an academic library’s responsibility to collect and preserve popular culture materials. Budget constraints, space issues, and the “quality” of these materials, are all widely documented concerns as to why popular culture materials—especially popular literature titles—are still not making their way into an academic library’s permanent collection. This study describes a survey of 22 academic libraries throughout the country that use a leased popular literature collection in addition to or instead of purchasing popular literature titles for their permanent collection. The study was designed to answer the following research questions and others: Why do academic libraries choose to use a leasing plan to provide a popular literature collection for their users? What are the values/benefits these collections provide for the library and its users

Making Sense of Leased Popular Literature Collections

There is a well-publicized debate in the library field on whether or not it should be an academic library’s responsibility to collect and preserve popular culture materials. Budget constraints, space issues, and the “quality” of these materials, are all widely documented concerns as to why popular culture materials—especially popular literature titles—are still not making their way into an academic library’s permanent collection. This study describes a survey of 22 academic libraries throughout the country that use a leased popular literature collection in addition to or instead of purchasing popular literature titles for their permanent collection. The study was designed to answer the following research questions and others: Why do academic libraries choose to use a leasing plan to provide a popular literature collection for their users? What are the values/benefits these collections provide for the library and its users

How to Explain Cancer to a Child and the Effects of Coloring Therapy in Children with Cancer

Did you know that doodling or coloring in a book can have significant therapeutic effects? It has been studied and proven that art therapy can help with anxiety, depression, and even some diseases such as cancer.1 Although coloring may not be able to cure cancer, it can make coping with it more manageable.1 When a child who has cancer is waiting to be seen in a doctor’s office or at the hospital, a coloring book can keep his or her mind off of the diagnosis, provide entertainment, and elicit a relaxing mindset. This coloring book could also have a storyline incorporated that explains cancer to children in a way that is easy to understand and gentle. Furthermore, there is an entire field of art therapy and professional associations dedicated to research around benefits in art therapy for patients. Games can be used to take children’s minds off of cancer as well. There are some cancer art therapy and children’s books already available, but through this research project, I studied specifically what resources are currently available (books, coloring books, and games), and ultimately created a new resource to fill the gaps for children around cancer