20,188 research outputs found

    Improvement Research Carried Out Through Networked Communities: Accelerating Learning about Practices that Support More Productive Student Mindsets

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    The research on academic mindsets shows significant promise for addressing important problems facing educators. However, the history of educational reform is replete with good ideas for improvement that fail to realize the promises that accompany their introduction. As a field, we are quick to implement new ideas but slow to learn how to execute well on them. If we continue to implement reform as we always have, we will continue to get what we have always gotten. Accelerating the field's capacity to learn in and through practice to improve is one key to transforming the good ideas discussed at the White House meeting into tools, interventions, and professional development initiatives that achieve effectiveness reliably at scale. Toward this end, this paper discusses the function of networked communities engaged in improvement research and illustrates the application of these ideas in promoting greater student success in community colleges. Specifically, this white paper:* Introduces improvement research and networked communities as ideas that we believe can enhance educators' capacities to advance positive change. * Explains why improvement research requires a different kind of measures -- what we call practical measurement -- that are distinct from those commonly used by schools for accountability or by researchers for theory development.* Illustrates through a case study how systematic improvement work to promote student mindsets can be carried out. The case is based on the Carnegie Foundation's effort to address the poor success rates for students in developmental math at community colleges.Specifically, this case details:- How a practical theory and set of practical measures were created to assess the causes of "productive persistence" -- the set of "non-cognitive factors" thought to powerfully affect community college student success. In doing this work, a broad set of potential factors was distilled into a digestible framework that was useful topractitioners working with researchers, and a large set of potential measures was reduced to a practical (3-minute) set of assessments.- How these measures were used by researchers and practitioners for practical purposes -- specifically, to assess changes, predict which students were at-risk for course failure, and set priorities for improvement work.-How we organized researchersto work with practitioners to accelerate field-based experimentation on everyday practices that promote academic mindsets(what we call alpha labs), and how we organized practitioners to work with researchers to test, revise, refine, and iteratively improve their everyday practices (using plando-study-act cycles).While significant progress has already occurred, robust, practical, reliable efforts to improve students' mindsets remains at an early formative stage. We hope the ideas presented here are an instructive starting point for new efforts that might attempt to address other problems facing educators, most notably issues of inequality and underperformance in K-12 settings

    Documenting the Value of Librarians in the Classroom: Results from a Mixed-Methods Research Collaboration with Campus Partners

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    This paper details the results of a mixed-methods study of first-year and upper-division students’ information literacy (IL) competencies. The study used a rubric and a survey, seeking to answer two research questions: 1) Is there a correlation between National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) IL survey responses and IL rubric scores? 2) Are there any indicators that correlate to improved IL performance in first-year students? Results demonstrated that first-year students reported greater engagement with IL and also indicated that instructors placed greater emphasis on IL competencies than students in upper-division courses. They also show a statistically significant impact on first-year students’ rubric scores when a librarian is in the class. This finding held even when controlling for other variables. Results provide an evidence-based foundation to spur conversations with faculty and university administration on the value of IL and the role of librarians in undergraduate student success

    Seizing the Moment: Realizing the Promise of Student-Centered Learning

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    This brief outlines policy recommendations for supporting student-centered learning at the local, state, and federal level

    Online Instruction in Higher Education: Promising, Research-based, and Evidence-based Practices

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    The purpose of this study was to review the research literature on online learning to identify effective instructional practices. We narrowed our scope to empirical studies published 2013-2019 given that studies earlier than 2013 had become quickly outdated because of changes in online pedagogies and technologies. We also limited our search to studies with undergraduate and graduate students, application of an empirical methodological design, and descriptions of methodology, data analysis, and results with sufficient detail to assure verifiability of data collection and analysis. Our analysis of the patterns and trends in the corpus of 104 research studies led to identification of five themes: course design factors, student support, faculty pedagogy, student engagement, and student success factors. Most of the strategies with promising effectiveness in the online environment are the same ones that are considered to be effective in face-to-face classrooms including the use of multiple pedagogies and learning resources to address different student learning needs, high instructor presence, quality of faculty-student interaction, academic support outside of class, and promotion of classroom cohesion and trust. Unique to the online environment are user-friendly technology tools, orientation to online instruction, opportunities for synchronous class sessions, and incorporation of social media. Given the few studies utilizing methodological designs from which claims of causality can be made or meta-analyses could be conducted, we identified only faculty feedback as an evidence-based practice and no specific intervention that we could identify as research-based in online instruction

    Online Instruction in Higher Education: Promising, Research-based, and Evidence-based Practices

    Get PDF
    The purpose of this study was to review the research literature on online learning to identify effective instructional practices. We narrowed our scope to empirical studies published 2013-2019 given that studies earlier than 2013 had become quickly outdated because of changes in online pedagogies and technologies. We also limited our search to studies with undergraduate and graduate students, application of an empirical methodological design, and descriptions of methodology, data analysis, and results with sufficient detail to assure verifiability of data collection and analysis. Our analysis of the patterns and trends in the corpus of 104 research studies led to identification of five themes: course design factors, student support, faculty pedagogy, student engagement, and student success factors. Most of the strategies with promising effectiveness in the online environment are the same ones that are considered to be effective in face-to-face classrooms including the use of multiple pedagogies and learning resources to address different student learning needs, high instructor presence, quality of faculty-student interaction, academic support outside of class, and promotion of classroom cohesion and trust. Unique to the online environment are user-friendly technology tools, orientation to online instruction, opportunities for synchronous class sessions, and incorporation of social media. Given the few studies utilizing methodological designs from which claims of causality can be made or meta-analyses could be conducted, we identified only faculty feedback as an evidence-based practice and no specific intervention that we could identify as research-based in online instruction

    College-Level Foreign Language Instructor\u27s Perceptions on the Incorporation of Mobile Technology Devices and Their Learning Applications in Curricula: A Collective Case Study

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    The purpose of this case study was to understand the integration of mobile technology devices (MTDs) and their learning applications (apps) into foreign-language curricula by foreign-language instructors at two colleges in the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. The theory guiding this study was Bandura’s self-efficacy theory, which examined how self-efficacy affects college-level foreign language instructors’ integration of MTDs and their learning apps into foreign language curricula. In this project qualitative case study design was used to explore and investigate the issue of having limited technology knowledge and skills to integrate MTDs and their learning apps into foreign language classes. A critical question that this study attempted to answer was how mobile educational technology training improved the way college-level foreign-language teachers delivered effective foreign-language curricula in the classroom. The study took place in two colleges in the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. A total of 10 college-level foreign-language instructors from these two colleges were the study participants. Additionally, the research instruments used throughout the study include journal prompts, foreign-language class syllabi, structured interviews, and transcripts from the interviews. Lastly, the researcher applied hand coding to complete an inductive and deductive coding process, including transcribing, categorizing, and analyzing the data collected from the participants. Five themes and fifteen sub-themes emerged from the study, underscoring the positive views of foreign language instructors on integrating MTDs and their learning apps. Yet, obstacles such as lack of training and connectivity issues challenge their full potential to enhance students\u27 self-efficacy in reading, speaking, and listening

    Development and Initial Validation of a Flipped Classroom Adoption Inventory in Higher Education

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    The purpose of this study is to develop and initially validate an inventory to learn about the critical variables involved in a higher education instructor’s decision to adopt a flipped classroom instructional model. A flipped classroom is an instructional model in which students’ learning is divided into two phases, the self-directed pre-class learning phase and the in-class student-centered active learning phase. Both phases are typically technology-enhanced. This study addresses a gap in the recent research regarding the identification and assessment of the critical variables that are related to a higher education instructor’s decision to adopt a flipped classroom instructional model. This study proposed a six-scale, 43-item inventory on higher education instructors’ adoption decision of a flipped classroom instructional model. After pilot study, this inventory was released to instructors at UTK through a web-based survey software tool and received more than 200 valid responses. A validated and refined inventory was generated after an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), which was used to identify the factor structure and the relationship between items and the factors. This validated inventory includes 24 items in three subscales, which represent three factors that might influence a higher education instructor’s adoption decision of a flipped classroom instructional model. Then, the three factors were used as independent variables in a multiple regression to examine their ability to predict a higher education instructor’s adoption decision. The results revealed that performance expectancy and technology self- efficacy are strong predictors of a higher education instructor’s decision to adopt a flipped classroom instructional model

    The Effects of Technology Integration On AVID Students Compared to Other Middle School Students

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    Student disengagement in the learning process is problematic, especially in the middle grades. Studies show that technology infusion in classroom instruction promotes student learning and behavior when effectively integrated. Employing the theory of constructivism, this study explored technology infusion in a college and career readiness program based on the assumption that integration aids in the construction of knowledge. The purpose of this study was to analyze the difference between the performance scores of AVID and non-AVID groups in middle schools. Archived test results for the Preliminary Scholastic Achievement Test (PSAT) were compared on a sample of non-AVID and AVID middle school groups in schools with both programs located in Texas. A quantitative casual-comparative design explored the dependent and independent variables. PSAT performance scores represented the dependent variable. The independent variable was defined as the type of instruction provided (AVID vs. Non-AVID). The independent samples t-test tested hypotheses for significance at 0.05 level. There was not a statistically significant difference in the mean scores of the two groups in the schools. The results had implications for determining whether technology integration assists in motivating students to perform and for aiding the teaching profession in general in decision making regarding infusing technology in classroom instruction
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