A Sense of Belongingness Among Undergraduate Students Across Race/Ethnicity, Class, and Gender

Research has shown that feelings of belongingness within an educational setting are likely to improve outcomes in various academic-related areas. In the present study, I examine BGSU undergraduate students’ sense of belongingness, feelings of value, and understanding of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts on campus. Using an online campus climate survey, I explore differences in perceptions and experiences among students with different social identities. In particular, I focus on differences across race/ethnicity, social class, and gender identity. Findings show that there are racial/ethnic and gender differences across feelings and perceptions of the general campus climate, DEI, belongingness and value, institutional commitment, and thriving and growth, with students from historically marginalized groups feeling the lowest levels compared to students with dominant-culture identities. This study aims to spark future research on best methods for university intervention to give all students equitable access to resources and support within higher education

Feeling and Speaking: The Role of Sensory Feedback in Speech

Sensory feedback allows talkers to accurately control speech production, and auditory information is the predominant form of speech feedback. When this sensory stream is degraded, talkers have been shown to rely more heavily on somatosensory information. Furthermore, perceptual speech abilities are greatest when both auditory and visual feedback are available. In this study, we experimentally degraded auditory feedback using a cochlear implant simulation and somatosensory feedback using Orajel. Additionally, we placed a mirror in front of the talkers to introduce visual feedback. Participants were prompted to speak under a baseline, feedback degraded, and visual condition; audiovisual speech recordings were taken for each treatment. These recordings were then used in a playback study to determine the intelligibility of speech. Acoustically, baseline speech was selected as “easier to understand” significantly more often than speech from either the feedback degraded or visual condition. Visually, speech from the visual condition was selected as “easier to understand” significantly less often than speech from the feedback degraded condition. Listener preference of baseline speech was significantly greater when both auditory and somatosensory feedback were degraded then when only auditory feedback was degraded (Casserly, in prep., 2015). These results suggest that feedback was successfully degraded and that the addition of visual feedback decreased speech intelligibility

Multiple imputation and selection of ordinal level 2 predictors in multilevel models. An analysis of the relationship between student ratings and teacher beliefs and practices

The paper is motivated by the analysis of the relationship between ratings and teacher practices and beliefs, which are measured via a set of binary and ordinal items collected by a specific survey with nearly half missing respondents. The analysis, which is based on a two-level random effect model, must face two about the items measuring teacher practices and beliefs: (i) these items level 2 predictors severely affected by missingness; (ii) there is redundancy in the number of items and the number of categories of their measurement scale. tackle the first issue by considering a multiple imputation strategy based on information at both level 1 and level 2. For the second issue, we consider regularization techniques for ordinal predictors, also accounting for the multilevel data structure. The proposed solution combines existing methods in an original way to solve specific problem at hand, but it is generally applicable to settings requiring to select predictors affected by missing values. The results obtained with the final model out that some teacher practices and beliefs are significantly related to ratings about teacher ability to motivate students.Comment: Presented at the 12th International Multilevel Conference is held April 9-10, 2019 , Utrech