Assimilation in Online Course Design

As online education continues to grow, instructors from traditional classrooms are being asked to design online courses. In this study, data from interviews with thirty-three public four-year college and university instructors, who had experience designing online courses, were used to understand the instructor’s perspective on online course design. Using grounded theory, data were analyzed, sorted, and coded to uncover the strategies instructors use to design online courses. Results revealed instructors adapt to the online environment by using strategies to mimic elements of face-to-face courses: in essence, adaption comes through assimilation. Instructors expressed interest in helping students navigate online to encourage active participation in courses. They described using technology and learning management system (LMS) features (e.g., videos, discussion forums) to “hear” and “see” students, as a way to increase interaction and presence, familiar elements from face-to-face education. They spoke of creating authentic assignments to increase student engagement. The implications of this study include effective design and instructional strategies for online courses, as well as understanding the motivation of instructors who design online courses. The study results are relevant to a broad audience including online instructors, instructional designers, LMS organizations, and administrators.     

Questioning Points and Percentages: Standards-Based Grading (SBG) in Higher Education

Despite its growing use at the K–12 level, standards-based grading (alignment of grading to course standards) has been comparatively neglected in higher education. College students are often confronted with grading practices that reflect subjective, non-standardized formats incorporating a blend of academic and non-academic components. This case study examined student attitudes and experiences regarding standards-based grading (SBG) principles introduced in an educational technology course in a medium-sized, Midwestern university. The authors found that, while students were initially anxious about the paradigm shift and the additional work it would entail, they nevertheless viewed the model as clearer and more fair. As the study progressed, students reported moving beyond “playing the game” of earning points for a grade and actually engaging more substantively with course content. Based on regular formative feedback, students began to take more ownership of their learning. Ultimately, most participants found SBG more beneficial and defensible—and reflective of their knowledge—than traditional grading practices. To supplement these findings, the authors offer some implementation ideas to assist instructors who may want to begin using SBG in their courses, including reflecting on and clarifying their purpose for grading, ensuring that their grades have meaning (by communicating information that is accurate, meaningful, and relevant to student success), and allowing students multiple chances to demonstrate learning (if the purpose of grading and assessment is to encourage and report mastery).     

The Relationship Between Undergraduate Attendance and Performance Revisited: Alignment of Student and Instructor Goals

We revisit the relationship between attendance and performance in the undergraduate university setting and apply agency theory in the instructor–student context. Building on agency theory propositions in the educational setting advanced by Smith, Zsidisin, and Adams (2005) , we propose that the student and instructor must align goals to promote the student's achievement of performance learning outcomes, and attendance functions as a behavior‐based alignment mechanism to encourage the convergence of faculty and student interests. Further, we propose that attendance does not equally affect lower‐ and higher‐performing students and that absences are also negatively related to students' cumulative grade point average. We test these hypotheses with data from undergraduates enrolled in management courses at a state university in the southeast. Our results show that attendance is positively related to exam performance, there are more pronounced negative effects of an absence for lower‐performing students than for higher performers, and absences are negatively related to a student's cumulative grade point average. We discuss the implications of our findings for students, instructors, and universities as well as practice in teaching and learning.     

高校辅导员工作科学化问题及对策

如何理解高校辅导员工作的科学化问题?高校辅导员工作科学化存在那些制约问题?怎么样提高高校辅导员工作科学化水平?根据国家有关辅导员的规定和当前辅导员队伍建设的实际,对高校辅导员工作科学化问题进行分析,并提出建议。     

Cases of Science Professors’ Use of Nature of Science

Study provides qualitative analysis of data that answers the following research question: how college science faculty teach science and NOS and incorporate aspects of NOS and the history of science into their undergraduate courses? Study concentrates on four cases and more specifically on three introductory science classes and on four instructors who taught those courses. These instructors were chosen as case studies to explore in greater detail what occurs inside introductory science courses in one particular higher institution in the Northeastern United States. Participants’ teaching styles are presented through a combined and detailed presentation of interview data and classroom observations supported with examples from their classroom activities. Constant comparative approach was used in the process of organizing and analyzing data. Findings revealed that participants preferred to use the traditional teacher-centered lecturing as their teaching style and whose main concern was to cover more content, develop the problem solving skills of their students, and who wanted to teach the fundamental principles of their subjects without paying special importance to the NOS aspects. The study also revealed that other variables of teaching science, such as large class size, lack of management and organizational skills, teaching experience, and instructors’ concerns for students’ abilities and motivation are more important for these scientists then teaching for understanding of NOS.     

The Bicycle Assembly Line Game

“The Bicycle Assembly Line Game” is a team‐based, in‐class activity that helps students develop a basic understanding of continuously operating processes. Each team of 7–10 students selects one of seven prefigured bicycle assembly lines to operate. The lines are run in real‐time, and the team that operates the line that yields the highest revenue wins. Students learn through discovery “What drives output rate?”; “How is capacity managed relative to market demand?”; and “Why does inventory accumulate?” Because task times are constant, the game provides a nice lead‐in to the topic of line balancing. This game has been successfully used in both undergraduate‐ and MBA‐level operations management courses.     

Instructor perspectives of multiple-choice questions in summative assessment for novice programmers

Learning to program is known to be difficult for novices. High attrition and high failure rates in foundation-level programming courses undertaken at tertiary level in Computer Science programs, are commonly reported. A common approach to evaluating novice programming ability is through a combination of formative and summative assessments, with the latter typically represented by a final examination. Preparation of such assessment is driven by instructor perceptions of student learning of programming concepts. This in turn may yield instructor perspectives of summative assessment that do not necessarily correlate with student expectations or abilities. In this article, we present results of our study around instructor perspectives of summative assessment for novice programmers. Both quantitative and qualitative data have been obtained via survey responses from programming instructors with varying teaching experience, and from novice student responses to targeted examination questions. Our findings highlight that most of the instructors believed that summative assessment is, and is meant to be, a valid measure of a student's ability to program. Most instructors further believed that Multiple-choice Questions (MCQs) provide a means of testing a low level of understanding, and a few added qualitative comments to suggest that MCQs are easy questions, and others refused to use them at all. There was no agreement around the proposition that if a question was designed to test a low level of skill, or a low level in a hierarchy of a body of knowledge, that such a question should or would be found to be easy by the student. To aid our analysis of assessment questions, we introduced four measures: Syntax Knowledge; Semantic Knowledge; Problem Solving Skill and the Level of Difficulty of the Problem. We applied these measures to selected examination questions, and have identified gaps between the instructor perspectives of what is considered to be an easy question and also in what is required to be assessed to determine whether students have achieved the goals of their course.     

Student perceptions of organizational features in relationship to course ratings

Students' perceptions of the organization and importance of features of a course of instruction may differ from the instructors' and may influence their achievement and attitudinal reactions to the course. Two hundred twenty-nine undergraduates identified and rated the importance of organizational features of their courses, rated the course and instructor, and supplied six items of personal information about themselves. Their final course grades were also secured. A perceptual agreement score between students and instructors on course features and the importance of those features was calculated for each student. Agreement on the presence and importance of course features, along with other personal variables, were significant predictors of student achievement and ratings of courses.     

Instructional Strategies to Help Online Students Learn: Feedback from Online Students

Increased enrollment in online programs and courses has prompted a plethora of research on instructional strategies that impact online students’ learning. Most of these strategies came from instructors, and others were solicited from students. While the literature notes that students who have more university experience tend to provide more substantive responses when solicited, there seems to be limited representation of online master’s students’ preferences on what instructional strategies work for them. There is paucity in the literature on how these preferred instructional strategies inform existing theoretical and practical frameworks that could impact online learning performance. This article discusses the Top Ten Instructional Strategies preferred by master’s students who responded to a dissertation survey question - What specific things would you like your online instructors do to help you learn successfully? - and relates these strategies to the Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education and the Quality Matters Rubric.     

Schools of Education and Preparation of College Teachers

The author explores an assumption evident in the literature that “most” college instructors grade participation in undergraduate courses. Instructors (N = 521) at a large, northeastern university were surveyed regarding their attitudes and practices in grading participation in undergraduate courses. A survey instrument was developed for the purpose of this study and subjected to principal components analysis. This instrument yielded seven subscales of acceptable reliability (Cronbach's alpha ≥ .70), three of which are the focus of this article. Results suggest that the majority of instructors across disciplines do incorporate a “participation” factor into students’ final course grades. Course level is not a significant correlate, but some differences may be observed by discipline. Underlying instructor beliefs are examined, and implications and future directions for research are discussed.     

No Downturn Here: Tracking E‐business Programs in Higher Education*

As the fortunes of e‐businesses fluctuate, what is the state of e‐business educational offerings? The present study attempted to explore this question by investigating the number and nature of e‐business programs available in colleges and universities. Results were compared to previously published findings on e‐business education. Data were collected from program web sites. Master's and bachelor's degree programs based in North America and elsewhere in the world were examined. Despite the “dot‐bomb” economy, the present data suggested large increases in all foreign and North American bachelor's programs between the start of the fall semester of 2000 and November 2001. The number of North American master's programs appeared to increase dramatically during the year 2000 and at a lesser rate afterward. Findings also suggested that bachelor's and foreign master's programs involved more technical e‐business courses than the North American master's programs. The educational and economic factors possibly underlying these trends are discussed.     

Standardization of Statistical Symbolism

Measurement of students’ preferred characteristics of instructors may provide a basis for action to increase enrollment in university courses and enhance the effectiveness of instructors in these courses. This article outlines an institution-specific method for determining these characteristics. This method includes the use of factorial designs, monotonic analysis of variance, and cluster analysis. In the particular case used to illustrate this method, the preferred characteristics included factors such as work load, grading, classroom style and format, and teacher style which could be considered in course and curriculum design.     

DEVELOPMENTAL MATHEMATICS: AN EX POST FACTO STUDY

Virginia Western Community College (VWCC) conducted a two‐year follow‐up of its developmental mathematics students. The students left a statistical path that led to some important implications about the efficiency of VWCC's program and that identified some variables and relationships that other developmental educators may want to investigate. Some major findings were: (1) Blacks and males enrolled in and failed developmental mathematics at significantly higher rates than whites and females. (2) Female instructors exhibited significantly higher pass rates than male instructors, and there appeared to be an interaction between the sex of the instructors and the sex of the students. (3) The developmental program effectively prepared its graduates for all of the college level mathematics courses except business mathematics. (4) The pass rates of the developmental teachers varied significantly, but there was no correlation between their pass rates and the college level success rates of their graduates.     

Web-Supported Chemistry Education: Design of an Online Tutorial for Learning Molecular Symmetry

This paper describes our use of the ADDIE protocol to design and develop an interactive tutorial for students learning molecular symmetry operations and point groups. The tutorial provides a 3-D environment where students can examine molecules, structures, and symmetry elements. Most such tutorials are connected to courses or instructors in ways that make them difficult for others to use. Our goal was to create a freely available tutorial that would be independent of course, textbook, or instructor but would scaffold student learning of these abstract concepts. A usability study was also conducted in order to assist the designers in creating or improving key features of the tutorial and to determine whether the tutorial would be viewed as valuable to students. We found that students appreciated the features, especially mouse-overs and applets that afforded the opportunity to freely rotate accurate images of molecules.     

In-class examinations in college-level science: New theory,new practice

Every faculty member knows that exams drive student behavior. Testing and grading are part of every course, but generally of lesser importance to faculty members than course content itself. Recently, instructional methods and pedagogy. But as issues of grade inflation, student attrition, accountability, and authentic assessment grow in importance, we see some interesting innovations in testing methods and some interesting innovations. The authors are publishing a collection of some of these as described in their own words, by faculty themselves. Two questions underlie the study: 1) why is it so difficult to change tests and testing traditions in college-level science and 2) will the enormous efforts underway to reform pedagogy and curriculum in these disciplines have any lasting effect if testing does not have a prominent place on the reform agenda?     

Who teaches mathematics content courses for prospective elementary teachers in the USA? Results of a second national survey

This article reports on a second national survey of higher education institutions in the USA to answer the question “Who teaches mathematics content courses for prospective elementary teachers, and what are these instructors’ academic and teaching backgrounds?” and addresses valuable information not collected with the first survey conducted in 2010. We surveyed 1740 institutions and a faculty member from each of 413 institutions (23.7%) participated in the survey. The survey results demonstrate that the majority of these institutions are not meeting the recommendations of the Conference Board of Mathematical Sciences (2012) and the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators (2017) for prospective elementary teachers to take at least 12 semester-hour credits of mathematics content designed specifically for them. The data do indicate that there is movement toward more activity-based approaches for these courses as compared to the 2010 survey. Additionally, there is an increase in these courses having instructors with doctorates in mathematics education as well as an increase in instructors having grades 7–12 teaching experience. Most instructors for these courses do not have elementary teaching experience and have likely not had opportunities to think deeply about the important ideas in elementary mathematics. While most institutions still do not provide training and/or support for these instructors, formalized support and training appear to be increasing since the 2010 survey.

     

Reconsidering assessment: From checklist to dialectic

When composition teachers evaluate student essays, how well-aligned is their grading practice with what those teachers profess is important about writing? How do instructors discover this alignment? This article describes the consequences of inadvertent misalignment by analyzing a document typically found in many writing programs—an instructor's essay evaluation checklist. A critique of this common assessment instrument reveals that, in trying to promote evaluative consistency, the checklist privileges product over process, the authority of academic discourse over the autonomy of students' own voices, and an analytic predisposition to student writing as opposed to an instructor's reader-response. In so doing, the checklist undercuts the kind of composition pedagogy instructors claim to espouse in their classroom practice. Perhaps these conflicts cannot be overcome, but, in response to this precarious predicament, this essay poses this question: Can assessment find its direction and vitality by acknowledging such conflicts? A dual heuristic, of sorts, is proposed for locating assessment techniques that directly address the conflicts inherent in the checklist. This heuristic seeks out in assessment what the checklist clearly lacks: dialogic and dialectic dimensions. Defining which assessment methods best fulfill this heuristic—and in so doing more honestly align pedagogy with evaluation—is the purpose of the concluding remarks in this essay.     

Element‐and‐Principles Instruction,Perceptual Drawing and Paul Klee's Pedagogical Sketchbook

This study examines the key concepts of elements‐and‐principles art instruction, as defined in the publications by Vorkurs (preliminary course) instructors at the Bauhaus. Elements‐and‐principles instruction was for decades central to formalist art training, and continues to play a role, albeit limited, today. Preceding accounts of the elements‐and‐principles have not considered contextual matters worthy of attention, specifically, two other instructional frameworks. One is perceptual drawing that dominated in Western art culture before the inception of the elements‐and‐principles approach. The second is the instructional model Paul Klee proposed in his well‐known but under‐examined instructional publication of 1925, Pedagogical Sketchbook. With regard to the latter, scholars have failed to undertake detailed analysis that would explain Klee's instructional model and, in particular, its central (and idiosyncratic) concept of ‘trichotomy’. Trichotomy is a structure rather than a formal element, providing visual equivalents for extra‐visual events. The peculiarity of trichotomy and related concepts in Pedagogical Sketchbook has kept the publication a faint presence in elements‐and‐principles instruction and in related scholarly inquiry. With a more precise presentation of Klee's pedagogical focus, this study distinguishes heretofore overlooked dissimilarities between the Pedagogical Sketchbook model and elements‐and‐principles approach, and enables recognition of affinities between Klee's model and current conversations about embodiment pedagogies in visual arts education.     

Emerging instructional technologies: Exploring the extent of faculty use of web 2.0 tools at a midwestern community college

The purpose of this research is to provide insight into the several aspects of instructional use of emerging web-based technologies. The study first explores the extent of Web 2.0 technology integration into face-to-face classroom activities. In this phase, the main focus of research interests was on the types and dynamics of Web 2.0 tools used by community college instructors. In the second phase, we were predominantly interested in instructors’ preferences toward tools and the major barriers instructors confront in integrating these tools in a traditional educational setting. The study reveals the extent of instructors’ use of Web 2.0 tools in the classroom relates to a) their level of education and b) training on the tools. Results clearly indicate that level of education and current use of web 2.0 technologies in instruction are major determinants of the instructors’ preferences toward different groups of Web 2.0 tools. Finally, lack of faculty training opportunities was identified as the main barrier for using Web 2.0 technologies. The study offers research based evidence which undoubtedly represent the current trends and issues in the process of technology integration into course curriculum at a community college level. Considering obtained findings, we suggest implementation of an institutional and systematic approach to reinforce inclusion of Web 2.0 technologies in traditional teaching and learning.