Towards a Forward-Thinking College Calculus Program

Calculus is perceived as serving many roles in college STEM students’ education, including as a way to ‘weed out’ students who should not be in the major to teaching fundamental concepts. No matter its purpose, it is clear that college calculus is viewed as a critical course in university STEM education. It is also clear that in the US and other countries, STEM education is disproportionately serving men and white and Asian students. In this chapter, I discuss how calculus has come to occupy this position over time and the current state of college calculus drawing on two national studies in the United States. I then define a forward thinking-calculus program as one designed to support a diverse population of students to thrive, provide an example of a program aligned with this approach, and discuss key features to consider in designing a calculus program for the modern age

Asking the Big Questions that Guide Small Decisions: Developing Academic Library Infrastructure in Support of Graduate Students’ Qualitative Research

A primary task of graduate education is developing students who are able to ask valuable questions and use systematic research methods to develop new knowledge. By the end of most graduate programs, students are expected to be able to plan, implement, and share the results of an independent research process and make new knowledge claims. As such, they learn to make - and justify - the many decisions embedded in the research process. Academic libraries support graduate students’ development into independent researchers by providing both collections materials and library services related to the research process. In this presentation, we turn our attention specifically to the academic library systems that can support graduate students’ development as qualitative researchers. We draw two of our own recent studies to offer a framework for using academic librarians’ cross-disciplinary knowledge and public services experience to build a qualitative research support infrastructure. The studies, both based on in-depth interviews, offer insight into how graduate students and faculty learn to conduct qualitative research and use computer programs for qualitative data analysis and how academic librarians perceive both the potential and limitations of existing academic library structures that support qualitative research. We use the themes from these studies to offer specific ways in which academic library services for graduate students can be developed or enhanced to meet the needs of graduate students across disciplines who use qualitative methods. We make these recommendations without the expectation that librarians are, or become experts in qualitative methodologies. To the contrary, we see academic librarians’ cross-disciplinary focus and skill in asking the types of questions that help researchers think through their projects as a major strength compared to deep disciplinary or methodological knowledge. We expect that attendees will leave the session with a stronger sense of the types of decisions made during a qualitative research project and better prepared to ask the kinds of questions of students that support reflection on the research process and graduate students’ development into independent researchers

From Training to Learning: Developing Student Employees Through Experiential Learning Design

Published version available at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B978008100775400011XIn this chapter, the authors argue for moving student employee training programs beyond a sole focus on training students for effective service, to training based on experiential learning (EL) principles. The authors describe the development of an experiential approach for two student positions in the Ohio University Libraries’ social media and video production work. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the challenges in this approach, and addresses issues of scaling the model to larger student employment programs.No embarg

Help or hype? Assessing digital literature review tools for graduate students

A core role for academic librarians is to support early career researchers as they develop an increasingly focused understanding of the literature in their discipline and research area in order to contribute to the development of new knowledge. Graduate students use their knowledge of the literature to develop research questions and argue for the value of their work to the broader community of scholars. This task is both intellectually and technically challenging. A dissertation or thesis requires that students demonstrate knowledge of their field as well as cite perhaps hundreds of sources. This process has long been supported by tools for collecting and citing literature, such as Zotero or EndNote. But in recent years, companies have developed tools that purport to address the challenges of this process by helping scholars identify relevant literature and even to develop summaries and analysis of existing sources through the use of AI or other automated technology. We have observed increasing interest in these tools among graduate students. At the same time, we are aware of some trepidation from librarians and faculty about the impact of such tools on graduate students’ ability to not just search for and connect the literature, but to gain a deep and focused understanding of a body of research. In particular, we are concerned about how the developers of such tools characterize the process of conducting a literature review, which should be seen as an act of intentional analysis and argumentation. In this presentation, we offer the results of an environmental scan of these tools to understand their intended use and features with an eye to understanding how the promotion of these tools describe the literature process. With this information, we then critically examine the potential of these tools for the literature review process for identifying relevant research and developing a review that supports the graduate student’s own scholarship. Given the cost to access these tools, privacy concerns for users, and known issues with AI for analysis, we propose to assess whether this technology solves many of the challenges of literature review work or whether they divert graduate students’ focus thereby hindering the ultimate goals of knowledge acquisition and production within the students’ discipline or professional field

Research Needs and Learning Format Preferences of Graduate Students at a Large Public University: An Exploratory Study

This article reports on a study of research needs and learning preferences of graduate students at a public research university. A sequential exploratory mixed-method design was used, with a survey instrument developed from an initial qualitative stage. Significant differences were found between master’s and doctoral students’ and on-campus and online students’ confidence with several research skills. Graduate students overall prefer asynchronous online options and in-person workshops over synchronous online instruction and in-class presentations for learning research skills. The article concludes with a discussion of the value of the sequential exploratory mixed-method design for informing practice at an individual institution.Publisher allows immediate open acces

Theorizing coordination and the role of course coordinators

International audienc

Theorizing coordination and the role of course coordinators

International audienc

Factors contributing to students and instructors experiencing a lack of time in college calculus

Abstract Background Calculus is a foundational course for STEM-intending students yet has been shown to dissuade students from pursuing STEM degrees. In this report, we examine factors related to students and instructors reporting a lack of time in class for students to understand difficult ideas and relate this to students’ and instructors’ perceptions of opportunities to learn using a hierarchical linear model. This work is part of the US national study on college calculus, which provides an ideal landscape to examine these questions on a large scale. Results We find a number of student factors associated with students experiencing negative opportunities to learn, such as student gender, lacking previous calculus experience, and reports of poor and non-student-centered teaching. Factors weakly associated with instructor reports of lack of time were a common final and reporting that approximately half of the students lacked the ability to succeed in the course. Conclusions This analysis offers insight into how we might create more positive opportunities to learn in our own classrooms. This includes preparing students before they enter calculus, so they feel confident in their abilities, as well as weakening the internal framing of the course by engaging in teaching practices that provide students opportunities to communicate and influence their learning (e.g., discussion and group work). We argue that this is especially important in introductory college calculus courses that are packed with material, taught to a diverse population of students in terms of demographics, mathematical preparation, and career goals