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Helping First-Year Engineering Students Select a Major
Get PDFThis evidence-based practice paper evaluates a set of resources to help first-year engineering students choose their major among four fields. Choosing a major can be a daunting task for first-year college students, especially if the choices span fields with which students have little experience. In order to provide first-year engineering students time to discern, a set of resources and course activities were designed to assist students in this decision-making process. The educational theory that serves as a framework for this study is social cognitive career theory, developed by Lent, Brown, and Hackett in 1994. In particular, resources, activities, and experiences in the introduction to engineering course were designed to assist students with self-efficacy beliefs and personal goals.
At this University all engineering and computer science students take an introduction to engineering course that covers the engineering process, teamwork, communication skills, the different branches of engineering, ethics, and co-curricular and extracurricular opportunities. Section sizes are ~30 students, so students can build community with peers and their professor. The professor of the Introduction to Engineering course is the academic advisor for his/her set of students. Students declare or confirm their major by the end of the first semester. Resources to help students choose a major include laboratories, advisor meetings, student panels, a semester - long team project, student chapters of professional society meetings, and on-line resources.
In the fall 2012 offering of the course, we collected paper surveys from students, asking them to rate the effectiveness of a suite of resources in helping them choose their major. We asked about exposure to engineering and/or computer science prior to entering college and course materials and activities that were helpful for selecting a major. Based on the responses, we created a new set of videos and blogs featuring upper-class students who shared their journeys in how they chose their major and what they value about their major. We added new labs for the 2015 version. In fall 2015, we again asked students about the impact of all the course activities and their confidence in their major selection.
The professor as advisor, laboratories and the course project have the most impact on helping students decide their major. More informational activities such as talking to other students, attending club meetings, and watching videos of other students had less impact. Based on these results, students seem to need personal, hands-on experience to determine if their self-efficacy beliefs and the values of the outcomes align with the intended major. 145 of 154 (94.2%) of students were somewhat or very confident about their major at the end of the semester.
This paper describes a suite of resources and activities along with students’ evaluation of those materials in terms of discernment of their major. By disseminating the information, other universities can adopt and adapt these activities to use in their programs
British Collusion in the Irish War on Terror: Analyzing the Legal and Ethical Implications of Deploying Collusion Tactics to Defeat Terrorism
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Innovating for Impact: The next Evolution of Library Consortia
Get PDFAcademic library consortia have traditionally focused on resource sharing and e-resource purchasing as core programs and value propositions for members. However, as academic libraries increasingly look beyond financial value and seek to demonstrate impact on institutional priorities and student outcomes, consortia must evolve to provide services that support those goals. This paper presents selected examples of innovative consortial programs that can have a significant impact on teaching, learning, and research at members’ institutions as suggested models for other consortia that may be engaged in reviewing strategic priorities and programs
The Case for Biocalculus: Design, Retention, and Student Performance
Get PDFCalculus is one of the primary avenues for initial quantitative training of students in all science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields, but life science students have been found to underperform in the traditional calculus setting. As a result, and because of perceived lack of its contribution to the understanding of biology, calculus is being actively cut from biology program requirements at many institutions. Here, we present an alternative: a model for learning mathematics that sees the partner disciplines as crucial to student success. We equip faculty with information to engage in dialogue within and between disciplinary departments involved in quantitative education. This includes presenting a process for interdisciplinary development and implementation of biology-oriented Calculus I courses at two institutions with different constituents, goals, and curricular constraints. When life science students enrolled in these redesigned calculus courses are compared with life science students enrolled in traditional calculus courses, students in the redesigned calculus courses learn calculus concepts and skills as well as their traditional course peers; however, the students in the redesigned courses experience more authentic life science applications and are more likely to stay and succeed in the course than their peers who are enrolled in traditional courses. Therefore, these redesigned calculus courses hold promise in helping life science undergraduate students attain Vision and Change recommended competencies
The Historical Thinking Gap: High School History Teachers’ Self-Reported Practices, Beliefs, and Identities
Get PDFThis quantitative study explored the practices, beliefs, and identities of history teachers in Oregon high schools. In recent decades, research from the field of history education has advocated for a shift in the way history should be taught in high school—away from a content-based curriculum to one that emphasizes “historical thinking” skills, i.e., “thinking like a historian.” But scholars have expressed concern as to what extent these skills are indeed being taught in high school classrooms. Very few research studies regarding actual high school history teacher practices exist, and those that do are primarily qualitative case studies. We also know little about why high school history teachers teach the ways they do. The study addressed three main questions related to history teaching in high schools. The first question was, who is teaching high school history? What is their education background and their demographics? Secondly, how is history being taught? Does it tend towards traditional content and instructional methods? To what extent is historical thinking being taught? And finally, why is history being taught the way it is? Two theoretical frameworks that emerged from identity theorists—community of practice (Wenger, 1998) and discourse community (Swales, 1990)—framed these questions and provided the basis for a teacher survey asking questions about teacher educational backgrounds, beliefs, communities, and identities. 186 Oregon high school history teachers anonymously responded to the survey. The data from this study suggested important patterns in the educational backgrounds and teaching practices of Oregon high school history teachers. High school history teachers tend to be veteran teachers with graduate degrees. They reported using primary sources often with their students as well as more traditional resources and instructional methods. Correlating teacher practice data with data on their educational backgrounds, beliefs regarding the purpose of teaching history and historical thinking, communities, and identities as historians, the study also showed significant relationships between teacher practices and their education experiences and beliefs but only limited relationships between their communities and identities. Further analysis revealed that teachers have complex and divergent understandings and beliefs about the role they play and the role historians play in the community of practice of history and its relationship to the discourse community of history. Teachers see themselves as historians when they understand the role of historians as the passer-on of knowledge. They do not feel like historians when they see the role of a historian as a researcher and creator of history. Both beliefs reveal they do not believe the role of a historian to be that of a teacher of the historical process. The results of this study will guide those interested in helping high school students learn how to “think like historians.
