Undergraduates’ Preparedness for College-Level Work in STEM: The Importance of Reading and Understanding Scientific Theories, Arguments, and Data

This study focuses on undergraduates’ preparation for college level courses. In recent international PISA results United States students fall behind seventeen countries on the computer-based reading proficiency test. They have scored low for over a decade, in spite of spending more than one hundred-thousand dollars per student on education. This US score is similar to, or lower than, the scores of other countries where spending is lower. Considering reading performance statistics from the international PISA assessment and the inconclusive results from reading comprehension studies across media, the concern arose whether today’s high school students are well prepared for college level courses in STEM. In response to these concerns, we assessed students’ reading comprehension of a difficult scientific article. For that purpose, we investigated students understanding of text material on Earth’s magnetism, across media. The assessment included reading a published article and assessment of comprehension, content knowledge and scientific argument quality. Over a hundred undergraduates in one-hundred-level Earth science classes responded to 29 multiple choice questions, in a regular class setting. Thereafter, reading, and scientific literacy strategies--comprehension, knowledge, content, and sourcing qualities--were evaluated. Overall, participants performed similarly across media; however, several significant variations emerged between demographic groups. For example, females scored better than males on most strategies, and African American students outperformed Latinx students on most strategies. In general, students scored low on total understanding of the article, but higher on content knowledge than comprehension. Only 14 % of participants did well on understanding and argument quality, which coincided with higher familiarity with the topic (12% students) and higher interest (40% students), but the majority, overall, scored low on both familiarity and topic interest. Effective sourcing was correlated with high interest, understanding, and content knowledge. The qualitative findings, from interviews, indicated, conversely, that students felt well prepared for college courses. They reported proficiency in both English reading and writing. Moreover, they reported enjoyment of taking college level courses. This study suggests that it could be beneficial for students’ entering college to become involved in peer reflection activities that would promote their scientific literacy learning, the skills gained when collaborating with others providing the opportunity for both scientific debates and self-reflection. Improvement of scientific literacy skills can increase the readiness of American students for college level work, including students from under-represented groups

Inferences Training Affects Memory, Rumination, and Mood

Making negative inferences for negative events, ruminating about them, and retrieving negative aspects of memories have all been associated with depression. However, the causal mechanisms that link negative inferences to negative mood and the interplay between inferences, rumination, and memory have not been explored. In the current study, we used a cognitive-bias modification (CBM) procedure to train causal inferences and assessed training effects on ruminative thinking, memory, and negative mood among people with varying levels of depression. Training had immediate effects on negative mood and rumination but not after recall of a negative autobiographical memory. Note that training affected memory: Participants falsely recalled inferences presented during the training in a training-congruent manner. Moreover, among participants with high levels of depression, training also affected causal inferences they made for an autobiographical memory retrieved after training. Our findings shed light on negative cognitive cycles that may contribute to depression

Causal attributions and posttraumatic stress disorder: The relationships among dispositional attributional style, trauma-specific attributions, and PTSD

The learned helplessness model (Seligman, 1975) and its various revisions suggest that both dispositional attributional style and event-specific attributions may influence people’s responses to events. Attribution theory has been applied to the search for risk and resiliency factors in trauma survivors, but few studies have compared dispositional attributional style with traumaspecific attributions in relation to posttraumatic stress symptoms. In addition, studies of attributions and PTSD fail to take into account the importance to the individual of the events about which attributions are made. The importance of the situation is a key component of the hopelessness model. Attributions for causes of events that are highly important to the individual and whose outcomes are perceived to be highly negative are predicted to be more significant in influencing a person’s response than attributions for events that are considered to be less important and whose outcomes are perceived to be less negative (Abramson, Metalsky, & Alloy, 1989). This study compared dispositional attributional style for relatively commonplace events, attributional style for hypothetical traumatic events, and attributions for experienced traumatic events in order to determine the relationship between attributions and PTSD symptoms. Results indicated that attributions for experienced traumas were most predictive of PTSD symptoms, and the globality dimension of all attribution categories was consistently predictive of PTSD, even after controlling for depression. This study provides support for theory linking attributions with PTSD symptoms

ASQ: active learning with interactive web presentations and classroom analytics

Today it is commonly accepted that the effectiveness of instructional technology, measured as improvement over the learning outcomes of students, is highly correlated with the learning environment, the applied pedagogies and the goals of the participants of the learning process. The often applied passive lecture model and the undirected use of modern technology such as student laptops and smartphones has been associated with increased levels of inattention and poor student performance. To address this, our work is focused on creating instructional technology for orchestrating traditional post-secondary brick-and-mortar classrooms of computer science education where active learning is the pedagogy of choice. We promote active learning during interactive lectures featuring retrieval practice with open practice question types of all answer depth formats (recognition, cued/free recall) directly integrated with slides. These turn student devices from a source of distraction to a learning affordance. Moreover, we take advantage of modern real-time Web technologies and machine learning techniques to allow timely and effortless gathering, assessment and classification of all student responses and activity during lectures thus tackling issues of scale with extrinsic classroom activities. This dissertation introduces ASQ, a Web application for increasing teacher awareness by (i) turning student’s devices from distraction tools to learning affordances; (ii) facilitating the application of active learning with the use of question types of various formats and depth; and (iii) utilizing real-time data analytics to facilitate the collection of students submissions, accelerate feedback cycles and infer student behaviors dynamics. With ASQ lecture slides are transformed into an interactive social playground for knowledge construction where students experiment with the presented material (individually or collaboratively), answer questions and continuously give feedback about the lecture quality. We reinforce the role of teachers as the driver of classroom activity by providing them with information to follow the progress of the learning process, spot learning gaps or misconceptions early and provide feedback when needed. We begin by focusing on the engineering aspects of such an application and discusses in depth how to architect interactive presentations for the Web and design an extensible set of active learning question types for live audiences. Next, we move to the educational technology domain and combine several longitudinal case studies in real-world computer science courses involving hundreds of students, which showcase the potential of a data-driven approach to infer students dynamics and design more engaging lectures, with student and instructor evaluation studies of ASQ to confirm its the suitability as lecturing tool in the modern classroom

Variational Temporal IRT: Fast, Accurate, and Explainable Inference of Dynamic Learner Proficiency

Dynamic Item Response Models extend the standard Item Response Theory (IRT) to capture temporal dynamics in learner ability. While these models have the potential to allow instructional systems to actively monitor the evolution of learner proficiency in real time, existing dynamic item response models rely on expensive inference algorithms that scale poorly to massive datasets. In this work, we propose Variational Temporal IRT (VTIRT) for fast and accurate inference of dynamic learner proficiency. VTIRT offers orders of magnitude speedup in inference runtime while still providing accurate inference. Moreover, the proposed algorithm is intrinsically interpretable by virtue of its modular design. When applied to 9 real student datasets, VTIRT consistently yields improvements in predicting future learner performance over other learner proficiency models.Comment: 9 pages, 16th International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM'23

Thinking about assessment: Further evidence of the validity of the Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition as a measure of mentalistic abilities

The present study aimed to evaluate the nomological network validity of the Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition (MASC) in its Italian translation, addressing distinct research questions in three independent samples of Italian participants comprising adolescent nonclinical participants (N = 393), adult nonclinical participants (N = 193), and adult outpatients with a Personality Disorder (PD) diagnosis who sought psychotherapy treatment (N = 59). In all three samples the MASC proved to be a reliable measure of mentalizing ability, with Cronbach’s α values ranging from .70 to .78. In both nonclinical adolescents and nonclinical adults, the MASC scores correlated significantly and meaningfully with the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test scores. In nonclinical adults, the MASC scores showed significant (albeit modest) correlations with self-reported measures of attachment styles. Finally, in adult outpatients, the MASC “no ToM” scores, that are specific errors that indicating non mentalistic responses, correlated significantly with interview-based measures (Spearman r = .41, p < .01) and self-reported measures (Spearman r = .37, p < .01) of borderline personality disorder (BPD), as well as with measures of emotion dysregulation, (Spearman r = .37, p <.01). As a whole, these findings highlight the validity of the MASC as a measure of mentalization and are consistent with Fonagy and colleagues’ (i.e., Bateman & Fonagy, 2004b; Fonagy, 1991) model of mentalization and its role in personality pathology

A TQM study of faculty and trainees\u27 perceptions of public vocational training institutions in Taiwan

It is true that the public sector is organic so its degradation is inevitable. Therefore, the continuous review and improvement is the direction for public and private sectors around the world to go lest an organization be doomed to stagnate or wither away. The purpose of this article is to investigate the application of total quality management (TQM) on Taiwan’s public professional training institutions; further to redefine a better management for them to keep the active vigor and growth. To avoid the discrepancy between theory and practices, many papers are widely collected concerning the institutional system, character, training category and TQM applications in the world; moreover, such areas as TQM definition and its actual performances and restrictions are the focuses of this article

Using a social communication intervention to improve the social interactions and employment experiences of adolescents with High Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders

This study evaluated the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral social communiction intervention on improving the social reciprocity and employment experiences of adolescents with High Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders (HFASD). Four youth diagnosed with a HFASD participated in this study. A multiple baseline across skills design provided targeted measurement of the intervention, which included conversation supported language techniques, peer model role plays, social behavior mapping, and review and feedback. Conversational data were collected in the analogue and employment settings on the use of: (a) supportive comments, (b) follow-up questions, and (c) bridging comments or questions. The four participants were enrolled in a community-based work experience program as part of the school curriculum. The analogue training occurred in the high school setting once to twice a week, and observational data were collected once a week in the employment setting on conversations between coworkers and participants. The employer also rated the participants weekly on their employability and social skills.. In both settings, some improvements occurred in the use of supportive comments by three of the four participants in both settings. Some impact occurred on follow-up questions for three of the four participants. No significant findings occurred for bridging comments or questions. The researcher developed a threshold that compared the target skill use among non-disabled peers and determined that during intervention the participants demonstrated skill use commensurate with their non-disabled peers. As well, social validity interviews of participants, teachers, and employers supported the usefulness of the intervention. Furthermore, employability ratings indicated that workplace social interactions and social skills necessary for employment settings improved for the participants over the course of the study

Corporate social responsibility: the relationship between CSR and employees in times of organizational distrust

There is general consensus nowadays that CSR is not just altruistic do-gooding but rather a way for both companies and society to prosper. Companies themselves increasingly recognize that their sustainability depends on their willingness to assume responsibility for social and environmental issues. Academic research has, in the past, tried to theorize exactly how CSR improves business, employee satisfaction and productivity. However, few studies have a) separated the different effects of internal CSR and external CSR and b) studied these effects in times of internal organizational distrust. Hence, this paper examines the relationship between each type of CSR with two outcome variables related to employee attitudes: affective organizational commitment (AOC) and turnover intentions (TI). Furthermore, it investigates whether organizational distrust works as a moderator in each of these relationships by testing the hypothesis using a sample of 212 employees from a company that is currently going through a moment of internal crisis. Findings suggest that although all variables are strongly correlated, distrust works as a moderator for external CSR but not for internal CSR. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings conclude the paper

Nobel Strengths: The Attributes of Scientists by CAVE

A Content Analysis of Verbatim Explanations (CAVE) study of all chemistry Nobel laureates’ banquet speeches (N = 79) given in Stockholm showed that the chemists are very optimistic, with strong positive emotions that arguably help them be especially creative and satisfied in their work. The results first compared to those from the laureates in physiology or medicine (N=41), then in combination, support the contention that eminent scientists, though optimistic, also use healthy skepticism, defensive pessimism, and prudence in their approach to research. Finally, the Nobel laureates’ explanatory styles appear to be consistent with sense of equanimity and low ego attachment with outcomes, particularly evident in the low internality and controllability ratings