Wake Up! Your PDQ is Due!

Student engagement in the classroom can often be an elusive goal. We as faculty in a four-year university-based clinical laboratory science program were noticing a trend of more students coming to class unprepared. In an effort to increase student engagement in two different pre-professional practice clinical laboratory science (CLS) courses, the pre-discussion quiz (PDQ) was implemented as a curricular component for enhancing student engagement. This was done as an active learning strategy to motivate students to read the material and respond to a series of questions in preparation for discussion before they came to class. A review of educational literature suggests intrinsically motivated learning enhances the learning process. It is suggested this intrinsic motivation is linked to such factors as the perception of personal control, self-efficacy, and the perception of relevance.1 These instructional strategies should give the learner some control over sequence of instruction and pace,2 and some even believe they should not be optional.3 The use of incentive-based preparation exercises has been found to significantly improve student engagement and provide an effective means of assessment.

Perceptions of Science and Technology: A Comparison of Criminal Justice and Traditional Science and Technology Majors

Due to the increased demands for science and technology (S&T) in criminal justice (CJ) occupational preparation and in response to the growing interest of students in forensics, this study explores the attitudes of CJ majors towards S&T. Despite the acknowledgment that S&T skills are helpful in gaining employment, CJ majors reported less favorable attitudes than S&T majors, reporting: less interest in gaining S&T knowledge, fewer social benefits of S&T, and greater concerns that S&T are dangerous to society than traditional forensic science majors. While these findings raise some fundamental questions about the suitability of increased representation of S&T courses within CJ curriculum, authors argue that CJ curricular goals must continue to evolve to foster innovative students who are academically prepared to meet the twenty-first century challenges of their future careers

Gender Differences in Attitudes toward Science & Technology among Majors

In the USA, women have consistently been proportionally underrepresented in science and technology (S&T). In these disciplines, as students move from high schools to colleges to graduate programs, qualified women drop out at higher rates than do men, resulting in a striking loss of talented students. Attitude toward a discipline is one of the major factors in students’ choice of majors. As a result, attitudes toward S&T are issues with longstanding attention and interest in education research. Retention of female students in S&T majors remains a major concern. The purpose of the study was to investigate attitudes toward S&T including attitudes toward female participation in S&T, among S&T majors, and examine differences by gender and class standing. Such an investigation would provide deeper insights to help devise strategies to retain women in S&T majors