Massachusetts Marine Educators

A thorough site for teachers in New England, specifically Massachusetts. Includes information on teacher workshops, MME membership, student contests, and teacher awards. Features an ocean tides classroom activity for middle school through high school students, links to other marine science education websites, and the latest issue of their newsletter available for download. Educational levels: Graduate or professional, Middle school, High school

Evaluating student attitudes and learning at remote collegiate soil judging events

As with many aspects of teaching, the COVID-19 pandemic forced soil judging teams to attempt new strategies towards achieving student learning outcomes. Soil judging Regions IV and V hosted remote regional contests in October 2020 in place of traditional, in-person contests typically held each fall. We conducted pre- and post-contest surveys to assess student learning outcomes, attitudes, and reflections on the remote contest experience compared to past, in-person contest experiences. We received 108 total responses from students who participated in the Region IV and Region V remote soil judging contests (>80% response rate). In self-reported learning outcomes, there were no significant gains post-contest and there were minimal differences between students in Regions IV and V. Female students, students with more soil judging experience, and students who had taken more soil science courses agreed more strongly that soil science is important, that they planned to pursue careers in soil science, and that they gained important skills from soil judging. Finally, students who previously participated in contests reported that they gained more knowledge and enjoyed in-person contests more than the remote contests held in Fall 2020. Thus, while it is possible to replicate some aspects of the soil judging experience in a remote contest, other aspects that are critical to student engagement are lost when teams are unable to gather at the contest location and examine soils in the field.This article is published as Owen, Rachel K., Amber Anderson, Ammar Bhandari, Kerry Clark, Morgan Davis, Ashlee Dere, Nic Jelinski et al. "Evaluating student attitudes and learning at remote collegiate soil judging events." Natural Sciences Education 50, no. 2 (2021): e20065. doi:10.1002/nse2.20065. Posted with permission.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made

Meeting Psychological Needs in Web-based Courses for Teachers

Two teacher educators describe their efforts to design and deliver online graduate courses for practicing teachers that meet psychological needs for belonging, freedom, power and fun (Glasser, 1999). Strategies to promote belonging include welcome letters, icebreaker and cooperative learning activities, personal Web pages, liberal office hours, private e-mail messages, and personalized responses to student postings, and public acknowledgement of student accomplishments. To ensure freedom for all participants the authors use minimum participation requirements, clear but flexible deadlines, multiple project options, Internet links, and access to all students\u27 work and projects. To empower their students, the authors provide ample technical support, a course bulletin board, performance assessments, and frequent opportunity to apply course material to experiences. To enhance the excitement of online learning, authors use an inviting welcome page, humor, contests and games, group projects, multimedia, and emoticons

A survey of the judging standards in high school speech contests of northern and central California

Part of the importance of the problem can be seen through the value of speech contests. One of the various means of realizing the purposes of speech education is through the speech contest, the practice of getting together with others for the comparison of formal speaking activities. The value of the speech contest was recognized centuries ago by the Greeks. “Speech contests are old devices; that stimulate a student to his greatest endeavors by a desire to win approval or victory over his fellows in not a product of this mad, modern naturalistic age.” From that early beginning contests have had an eventful history, hitting many rough spots on the way. From the depression to the post-war period of World War II there was a trend toward abandoning speech contests

Lewis, Connor, b. 1996 (FA 798)

Finding aid and full text paper (click Additional Files below) for Folklife Archives Project 798. This collection features a term paper about the tradition of pinewood derby contests within the Boy Scouts of American organization. Pinewood derby contests consist of participants creating and racing small cars out of pinewood according to the specific regulations of the contest. The project was completed by Western Kentucky University student Connor Lewis for credit in an “Introduction to Folk Studies” class

Contest Corner: The 2021 State Tournament of Mathematics Results

The article presents the top scores and statistics for student and schools for the Fall 2021 State Tournament of Mathematics.  Also presented are a sampling of problems from previous contests

The Ursinus Weekly, June 16, 1919

Class of thirty-two receives diplomas • Class Day celebrated Monday afternoon • Alumni oration by Reverend N. D. Bartholomew • Alumni dinner • Board meeting • Annual meeting of the Alumni Association • New men\u27s Student Council organizes • Women\u27s Student Council elects officers • Johnson-Seiz wedding • Junior oratorical contests of high calibre • Summer meetings • Men\u27s tennis tournamenthttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/weekly/2530/thumbnail.jp

Tutor Effectiveness of Student-Athletes at a Division I University

Peer tutoring services are a vital aspect to collegiate athletic support services to ensure that the academic needs of its student-athletes are being met. Collegiate student-athletes hail from a variety of academic backgrounds and everyone may not be ready for the rigors of college. Student-athletes also devote many hours to their specific sport in the form of practice, weight training, watching film, hosting recruits, doing volunteer services, and competing in athletic contests. Athletic contests may require student-athletes to miss class, which makes tutorial services even more crucial for student-athletes. In addition to these time consuming athletic activities, are a wide array of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) academic eligibility rules that student-athletes must abide by in order to remain eligible for their respective sport (Meyer, 2005). This places a higher importance on tutorial services not only for students, but also for coaches, athletic academic advisors, and the support services that serve student-athletes. While many campuses have tutorial services for the overall student body, tutorial services for athletes differ by catering to the busy schedules of its student-athletes. The goal of this study was to determine what internal factors (e.g., motivation of a student) influence an effective tutor as well as determine the extrinsic factors (e.g., nutrition/eating habits) that influence effective tutoring. Understanding these research questions will assist the hiring practice of tutor coordinators as well as provide valuable insight in the external factors that may affect tutoring

Protecting Minorities in Large Binary Elections. A Test of Storable Votes Using Field Data

Democratic systems are built, with good reason, on majoritarian principles, but their legitimacy requires the protection of strongly held minority preferences. The challenge is to do so while treating every voter equally and preserving aggregate welfare. One possible solution is storable votes: granting each voter a budget of votes to cast as desired over multiple decisions. During the 2006 student elections at Columbia University, we tested a simple version of this idea: voters were asked to rank the importance of the different contests and to choose where to cast a single extra "bonus vote," had one been available. We used these responses to construct distributions of intensities and electoral outcomes, both without and with the bonus vote. Bootstrapping techniques provided estimates of the probable impact of the bonus vote. The bonus vote performs well: when minority preferences are particularly intense, the minority wins at least one of the contests with 15--30 percent probability; and, when the minority wins, aggregate welfare increases with 85--95 percent probability. When majority and minority preferences are equally intense, the effect of the bonus vote is smaller and more variable but on balance still positive.Storable Votes, Referendums, Minorities, Majority Voting, Experiments

History of the Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communication

Names of the Department Administrators Location of Headquarters The Formative Years Practice Teaching Centers Cooperation with Teachers College Present Administration Organization Teaching: A Unique Role The Graduate Program Vocational Agriculture Contests Student Club Research Related Organizations Staff Recognition Reference