Library Ebooks at George Fox University

Workshop presentation discussing how to find, access, and best utilize the variety of ebook platforms used here at George Fox University

Open Textbooks at George Fox University, Starting Year 3

This presentation explains the rationale for open textbooks, provides an update on open textbooks at George Fox University, and encourages faculty to participate

Open Textbook Initiative, Year 2: George Fox University

This presentation for faculty explains the rationale for open textbooks, provides an update on George Fox University\u27s Open Textbook Initiative, and encourages them to participate

The Impact of School Profiles with the Competing Values Framework (CVF) on the Decision of Educators to Leave the Profession Entirely

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships between the perceived ways in which 248 Tennessee high schools address the organizational tensions, trade-offs, and conflicts (Cameron, Quinn, DeGraff, & Thakor, 2006, p. 50) embodied in the Competing Values Framework (CVF) and the percent of educators at those schools intending to leave education entirely. To this purpose, item-, scale, and quadrant-level responses aligned with the CVF were selected from data derived from the 2013 administration of the Teaching, Empowering, Leading, and Learning survey in Tennessee (TELL Tennessee). To control for school characteristics that might confound the aforementioned relationships, TELL data were merged with concurrent information derived from Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) website and analyzed using hierarchical multiple regression procedures.Although the TDOE data appeared to have little impact on the intentions of educators to leave or stay in the profession, organizational dynamics related to the CVF proved to have a consistently measurable effect on such decisions. As hypothesized in the CVF literature, the effect of a balanced CVF profile was to depress the percent of educational leavers, while the effect of an unbalanced one tended to increase that percentage (-0.13t = -2.03, p = .044). In terms of other model dynamics, higher scores on the Rational Goal (-0.18t = -2.70, p = .007), Internal Process (-0.17t = -2.60, p = .010), and Human Relations quadrants (-0.17t = -2.67, p = .008) of the CVF were shown to be negatively linked to the percent of professional leavers. Appearing to most inhibit educators deciding to leave education entirely, however, were scores on the CVFs Open Systems quadrant (-0.23t = -.60, p \u3c .001), with items related to the Innovation scale the most strongly negatively related (r = -0.24, p \u3c .001, pr = -0.25, p \u3c .001)

Strategies to Support Open Educational Resources for Student Success: Case Examples from Oregon

Presentation on Open Textbooks outlines how colleges can leverage freely available, peer-reviewed content to increase student success and completion, reduce costs for students and more. Open Textbook Initiatives are highlighted from five Oregon institutions of higher education. Specifics of the George Fox University Open Textbook Initiative are shared along with student savings totals for the pilot initiative that took place during the Fall 2016 / Spring 2017 academic year

An Open Textbook Initiative & Library Textbook Affordability Program

Through an internal grant, George Fox University embarked on a Textbook Affordability Program, joining the Open Textbook Network and incentivizing faculty to consider adopting open textbooks for their courses. In the 2016-17 school year, this program saved George Fox University students over $118,000

Factors that Influence Persistence of Biology Majors at a Hispanic-Serving Institution

To promote diversity within the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce, we must identify factors that influence or hinder historically underrepresented minority (URM) students’ persistence to degrees in STEM. We documented potential factors that influence students’ persistence in an undergraduate biology program and created a 14-item, Likert-scale instrument. We recruited 137 undergraduate biology majors at a Hispanic-serving institution in Texas to report which factors they found influential in their decision to remain enrolled in their degree programs. We used a modified social cognitive career theory model of career choice to guide interpretation of the reported influences and identify patterns in responses. We documented three highly influential factors for all students: personal motivation, potential learning experiences, and job opportunities with the job opportunities showing a significant difference (P=0.036) between White and URM student groups. We also found a trend (P=0.056) indicating White students were more influenced by role models and mentors than URM students. Our findings suggest that personal motivation and potential job opportunities are the most influential factors driving students to seek educational opportunities that could lead to STEM careers. However, access to a diverse pool of role models also has the potential to provide positive impacts on student persistence in STEM

A Test of the Theory of DSS Design for User Calibration: The Effects of Expressiveness and Visibility on User Calibration

This paper reports a test of the theory of decision support systems design for user calibration that compares the efficiency of the visual computing paradigm with that of the conventional text paradigm over varied levels of problem novelty. Perfect user calibration exists when a user’s confidence in a decision equals the quality of the decision. The laboratory study reported here compared the effects on user calibration of problems depicted either using a text paradigm or visual computing paradigm. The results support the theory. When problems are new and novel, visual depiction improves user calibration. As problems became more familiar and problem novelty decreases, no difference was found in user calibration between subjects exposed to visibility diagrams and those exposed to a traditional text paradigm