The Crux: Promoting Success in Calculus II

In the 2013-14 school year, Boise State University (BSU) launched a major overhaul of Calculus I. The details of the reform, described elsewhere, involved both pedagogical and curricular changes. In subsequent years, we developed several assessment tools to measure the effects of the project on students’ grades and retention. The toolkit includes: (1) pass rate and GPA in Calculus I, (2) longitudinal analysis of pass rates and GPA in subsequent courses, (3) impact of Calculus I on retention in STEM and retention at BSU, (4) all of the above comparing students in reformed Calculus vs traditional Calculus, (5) all of the above for underrepresented minorities, women, or other demographic subsets. While these tools were originally developed to study the Calculus I project, they are available for studying the effects of other courses on student academic performance and retention. In this paper, we briefly describe a rebuild of Calculus II, overhauled in the 2015-16 school year following the same general plan as was used for Calculus I. We then present the results of applying the full toolkit to the new Calculus II course. Pass rate and GPA improvements in Calculus II were evident immediately after scale up in the spring of 2016. Sufficient time has now passed so that we can apply the full set of assessment tools built for Calculus I to measure the effectiveness of the Calculus II transformation on academic performance in post-requisite coursework and on student retention in STEM

Calculus Reform: Increasing STEM Retention and Post-Requisite Course Success While Closing the Retention Gap for Women and Underrepresented Minority Students

Boise State University (BSU) implemented an across-the-board reform of calculus instruction during the 2014 calendar year. The details of the reform, described elsewhere (Bullock, 2015), (Bullock 2016), involve both pedagogical and curricular reform. Gains from the project have included a jump in Calculus I pass rate, greater student engagement, greater instructor satisfaction, a shift toward active learning pedagogies, and the emergence of a strong collaborative teaching community. This paper examines the effects of the reform on student retention. Since the curricular reform involved pruning some content and altering course outcomes, which could conceivably have negative downstream impacts, we report on student success in post-requisite mathematics and engineering coursework. To explore the effects of the Calculus reform on retention we focused on whether or not students are retained at the university immediately subsequent to the year in which they encounter Calculus I. We divided 3002 student records into two groups: those who encountered the new version of Calculus and those who had the traditional experience. We then compared retention rates for the two groups. We found that the new Calculus course improved retention (relative to the old) by 3.4 percentage points; a modest, but statistically significant (p = 0.020) result. University retention rates for women, under-represented minorities (URM), and Pell-eligible students were also computed. All three subgroups showed gains, with URM leading with 6.3 percentage points of improved retention (p = 0.107) We then considered retention within STEM as a measure of how the Calculus reform influenced students. For the same groups of students, we computed the rate at which STEM majors were retained in STEM. Once again we found a modest overall gain of 3.3 percentage points (p = .078). We found strong effects on women and underrepresented minorities (URM). The new Calculus course improved retention for both of these groups by more than 9 percentage points, a large effect. At this university, under the old Calculus, women used to lag men in STEM retention by about 8 percentage points. After the Calculus reform this gap nearly vanished, shrinking to 0.5 percentage points. Under the old Calculus, STEM retention of URM students used to lag that of non-URM. After the Calculus reform the gap flipped, so that underrepresented minority students are now retained in STEM at higher rates than non-URM. As a final result we examined student success in courses that typically follow Calculus I. Here the metric is pass rate, and we compared pass rates between the students who took the new Calculus against those who took the old. For additional comparison we also included students who transferred into post-Calculus course work. Once again the reformed Calculus course led to better results

Cultural connections: The Role of the Arts and Humanities in Competitiveness and Local Development

This report considers how the arts and cultural institutions contribute to the appeal of place. Cultural institutions are a prominent part of UK society – and many have a rich and long heritage. The impact of such institutions has often been evaluated in terms of engagement and participation or on the direct economic impact of cultural institutions. This study primarily focuses on the wider role of cultural institutions in their local economies; their innovative activities; how they connect to other local organisations such as universities; and how they collaborate with academics from the Arts and Humanities

Combatting global grassland degradation

Grasslands are under severe threat from ongoing degradation, undermining their capacity to support biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being. Yet, grasslands are largely ignored in sustainable development agendas. In this Perspective, we examine the current state of global grasslands and explore the extent and dominant drivers of their degradation. Socio-ecological solutions are needed to combat degradation and promote restoration. Important strategies include: increasing recognition of grasslands in global policy; developing standardized indicators of degradation; using scientific innovation for effective restoration at regional and landscape scales; and enhancing knowledge transfer and data sharing on restoration experiences. Stakeholder needs can be balanced through standardized assessment and shared understanding of the potential ecosystem service trade-offs in degraded and restored grasslands. The integration of these actions into sustainability policy will aid in halting degradation and enhancing restoration success, and protect the socio-economic, cultural and ecological benefits that grasslands provide

Effect of post-mortem delay on N-terminal huntingtin protein fragments in human control and Huntington disease brain lysates

<div><p>Huntington disease is associated with elongation of a CAG repeat in the <i>HTT</i> gene that results in a mutant huntingtin protein. Several studies have implicated N-terminal huntingtin protein fragments in Huntington disease pathogenesis. Ideally, these fragments are studied in human brain tissue. However, the use of human brain tissue comes with certain unavoidable variables such as post mortem delay, artefacts from freeze-thaw cycles and subject-to-subject variation. Knowledge on how these variables might affect N-terminal huntingtin protein fragments in post mortem human brain is important for a proper interpretation of study results. The effect of post mortem delay on protein in human brain is known to vary depending on the protein of interest. In the present study, we have assessed the effect of post mortem delay on N-terminal huntingtin protein fragments using western blot. We mimicked post mortem delay in one individual control case and one individual Huntington disease case with low initial post mortem delay. The influence of subject-to-subject variation on N-terminal huntingtin fragments was assessed in human cortex and human striatum using two cohorts of control and Huntington disease subjects. Our results show that effects of post mortem delay on N-terminal huntingtin protein fragments are minor in our individual subjects. Additionally, one freeze-thaw cycle decreases the huntingtin western blot signal intensity in the cortex control subject, but does not introduce additional N-terminal huntingtin fragments. Our results suggest that subject-to-subject variation contributes more to variability in N-terminal huntingtin fragments than post mortem delay.</p></div

N-terminal huntingtin fragments in control temporal cortex tissue from an individual subject.

<p>Western blot analysis of temporal lobe tissue samples from tissue with no (A) and one freeze-thaw cycle (B) before sampling. Upper blot: full length htt. Middle and lower blot: N-terminal htt fragments with β-actin loading control. Squares: position of bands that increase with increasing artificial PMD (50kDa = white, 65kDa = grey). kDa = Molecular weight in kilodaltons, Artificial post mortem delay in hours (hr). (C) Whisker boxplot showing image J quantification of PMD-related htt bands at indicated timepoints relative to total htt (0 freeze-thaw cycli). (D) Whisker boxplot showing image J quantification of PMD-related htt bands at indicated timepoints relative to total htt (1 freeze-thaw cyclus). Boxes indicate the first and third quartile around the median (50 kDa = white, 65kDa = grey). Data points are shown as dots and represent four technical replicas of the same sample.</p

Comparison of N-terminal huntingtin fragments in human post mortem control and HD cortex and striatum tissue.

<p>Western blot analysis of (A) Cortex control subjects, (B) Cortex HD subjects, (C) Striatum control subjects and (D) Striatum HD subjects. Control and HD subjects were age, gender and post mortem delay matched. Upper blot: full length htt (fl htt). Middle and lower blot: N-terminal htt fragments with β-actin loading control. Arrows: position of bands associated with a post mortem delay related increase in intensity. kDa = Molecular weight in kilodaltons, Post mortem delay in hours (hr). High sensitivity: Blot analyzed at a higher viewing-sensitivity. mut = full length mutant htt, wt = full length wild-type htt.</p

Clinical information.

<p>Clinical information.</p