Changing Hearts and Minds

A composition colleague, one with whom I regularly talk about teaching and writing, sends a student to the writing center with these words written across the top of the page: ”Your ideas are acceptable but your writing is marginal.” (Welch 51) Recently, a writing center friend told about coming up behind a group of fellow faculty members gathered around a bulletin board. From a distance she could see her name on the recently posted list of nominations for the outstanding teacher award. Next to her name, someone had drawn several large question marks. As she drew nearer to the group, she heard her colleagues question her eligibility. Even though she had recently earned tenure and regularly taught courses for graduate and undergraduate students, the fact that she also worked with students in the writing center placed her outside the circle of those regarded as teachers eligible for awards. (Grimm 524)University Writing Cente

Funder Perspectives: Assessing Media Investments

How are funders evaluating the outcomes of the media productions and campaigns that they support? Over the past five years, this question has informed a growing array of convenings, reports and research initiatives within the philanthropic sector, driving the emergence of a small but increasingly visible field of analysts and producers seeking to both quantify and qualify the impact of public interest media.These examinations have stimulated debate among both funders and grantees. Calls for the creation of a single media impact metric or tool have been met with both curiosity and skepticism. Those in favor of impact analysis cite its strategic usefulness in this moment of myriad new and untested media platforms, the importance of concretely tying mission to outcomes, and the need to justify media investments rather than programmatic ones. Detractors raise concerns about how an excess of evaluation might stifle creativity, needlessly limit funding to those projects whose short-term impact can be conclusively proven, or simply bog grantees down in administrative tasks that require entirely different skills, as well as resources.However, these debates have taken place in somewhat of an information vacuum. To date, the conversation about media impact has been led by a limited group of foundations. Little substantive information is available about how a broader range of funders address questions of evaluation. This research project aims to help fill that gap.The report, Funder Perspectives: Assessing Media Investments explores the multiple and sometimes overlapping lenses through which grantmakers view media evaluation, and confirms that there are still many unanswered questions

We Owe it to the Earth: The Importance of Environmentally-Friendly Lifestyle Changes during the Transitional College Years

This paper aims to explain and justify my choice of film as the medium employed to persuade my audience of the need for environmentally-friendly lifestyle changes to be made by individuals. In order to effectively stimulate action by college students, the target audience, film was used to communicate the necessity of developing green habits. During these years students in higher education develop intellectually and mature into adults. It is a prime time to learn simple green lifestyle changes and translate them into their daily behavioral repertoire. To begin my project I researched current information about the state of our environment, how individuals can do their part, and why it is important to reduce your impact on the environment. Then the documentary was produced, the steps of which will be detailed in the paper. In order to validate my use of film, academic databases were searched for applicable articles of the influential powers of television and documentaries specifically. After the documentary was produced it was tested on an ecology class and a control group was utilized. The results showed an increase in desire to perform green habits

Social Justice Documentary: Designing for Impact

Explores current methodologies for assessing social issue documentary films by combining strategic design and evaluation of multiplatform outreach and impact, including documentaries' role in network- and field-building. Includes six case studies

Impact Assessment for Nonprofit News Projects and their Funders

This is a how-to guide for funders and nonprofit news organizations looking to develop media assessment strategies

The Impact of Culturally Responsive Teaching on the Achievement of African American Students

Culturally responsive teaching is a pedagogical practice that incorporates cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of students to make learning encounters more relevant and effective. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of culturally responsive teaching on the academic achievement of African American students. The context of this inquiry is at a minority-majority Title I high school within a large urban school district. The district and evaluation school previously adopted a culturally responsive teaching initiative. My mixed-method study captures the quantitative performance of students within the school in teachers\u27 classrooms using culturally responsive teaching strategies and the qualitative perspective of teachers, administrators, and parents about culturally responsive teaching\u27s impact on student achievement

Comparison of Vegetative Community and Soil Organic Matter Depth Among Reference Sites and Two Restored Wetlands in the Coastal Plain of South Carolina

Wetland loss and degradation from agriculture, urbanization, forestry, and mining is a global issue. South Carolina alone has lost over 27% of its wetlands. This historical wetland loss and climatic changes and impacts make restoring wetlands critical for the state. In restoration, understanding the difference in restored and reference wetland’s vegetation and soil organic matter depth can be crucial in assessing the recovery rate and determining environmental functions and services. The main objectives for our research were to determine differences in soil organic matter depth and vegetative community between the restored Brosnan Forest wetlands, the headwater flats and headwater slopes, and reference sites at Francis Marion National Forest. Our results indicate no significant differences in soil organic matter depth between the two restored wetlands. However, the reference site’s soil organic matter depth was twice that of the Brosnan wetlands. Additionally, there are differences in vegetative community between the two restored wetlands; different species dominated each wetland. However, compared to the reference sites, the Brosnan wetlands were more similar, with only a few quadrats reaching the reference sites

Fluctuations in Student Understanding of Newton's 3rd Law

We present data from a between-student study on student response to questions on Newton's Third Law given throughout the academic year. The study, conducted at Rochester Institute of Technology, involved students from the first and third of a three-quarter sequence. Construction of a response curve reveals subtle dynamics in student learning not captured by simple pre/post testing. We find a a significant positive effect from direct instruction, peaking at the end of instruction on forces, that diminishes by the end of the quarter. Two quarters later, in physics III, a significant dip in correct response occurs when instruction changes from the vector quantities of electric forces and fields to the scalar quantity of electric potential. Student response rebounds to its initial values, however, once instruction returns to the vector-based topics involving magnetic fields.Comment: Proceedings of the 2010 Physics Education Research Conferenc

Beyond Course Evaluations: YayNay Sheets

Collecting student evaluation data is a common practice among law professors, but the evaluation data can come too late if not collected until the end of a semester. Opportunities for student feedback happen in every class; at the end of each class period, students can evaluate what just happened in class, and professors can use this information to make immediate adjustments to their teaching. This article argues that law teachers should take advantage of these opportunities for collecting student feedback to improve both the students’ learning experience and the teacher’s teaching experience. The article gives an example of one way to do this feedback collection through daily or weekly “Yay/Nay Sheets.