Enrollment In Courses Research Articles

Experiences of Dual Enrollment: Wisconsin Student Reflections on Its Role in Shaping Their Thinking of Their Educational Trajectory

Research indicates that engaging in dual enrollment (DE) courses positively impacts college performance and degree completion time, evidenced mostly by static outcome measures (e.g., success in college, college admission, grades). These indicators are important, but do not fully examine how students perceive/experience DE opportunities. The current study used focus groups with DE students across Wisconsin (N=49) to explore how they thought about their experiences and how it informed their thinking about their future educational trajectories. Five themes emerged from thematic analysis of focus groups. First, they were able to maximize their experience thanks to onboarding support. Second, they gave a general description of how they saw their own growth as learners. Third, throughout their in-person interactions on campus, DE had the biggest influence on how this individual understood themselves. Fourth, logistical problems made the experiences less enjoyable. Fifth, the fact that DE credits offered faster and less expensive routes to and through college served as a motivator for many. Student responses indicated that DE courses on college campuses, rather than high schools, yielded more benefits. Overall, the study points toward the value of exploring student experience and particularly in relation to modality of DE.

Expressions of Trust: How University STEM Teachers Describe the Role of Trust in their Teaching

Positive teacher-student and student-student relationships are among the most significant factors contributing to learning, motivation, wellbeing, and graduation rates in higher education. Trust is commonly understood as a key element for the development and sustenance of positive educational relationships, yet relatively little empirical research investigates trust in higher education classrooms. In this study, we explore how science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) teachers (n=29) from universities in four countries (Canada, New Zealand, Sweden, and USA) describe their intentions and actions related to trust in one of the large enrollment courses they teach. We consider the ways that teachers understand and value trust in their teaching, and what this might suggest about how they approach trust-building with and among their students. We report on four broad approaches to trust expressed by teachers in this study, framed as teacher statements to students: “trust me,” “trust yourself,” “trust each other,” and “I trust you.” This research has implications for teachers, SoTL scholars, and academic developers in higher education.

Mentoring Matters When Growing Your Own Educators

The journey to establish the Future Educator Pathway (FEP), formerly known as Project Teacher Development, has been a long yet gratifying one. My colleagues and my students have been instrumental in helping to design a pathway for middle school and high school students of color to pursue a career in education. The whole process began with the Color of Teaching Mentoring Program (CoT) established in 2007 and now includes the CoT, Side-by-Side (SBS) in-school seminars for high school students, a Future Educator Academy (FEA), which is a summer residential college experience, and an opportunity for high school students to take up to four dual enrollment courses to jump start their college careers. The mentoring components of the FEP are the most crucial as they establish effective mentor-mentee relationships to foster a sense of belonging on a college campus, encourage exploration of careers in education, support mentees’ goal achievement, and endeavor to diversify the educator workforce. This paper describes the development and impact of the FEP on recruiting and retaining students of color to pursue a career in education. Findings indicate that mentees who participate in at least two of the four FEP programs persist toward their goal at a higher rate, and mentors report growth in their understanding of the importance of being culturally responsive mentors and educators demonstrating the reciprocal nature of mentoring.

Dually Noted: Examining the Implications of Dual Enrollment Course Structure for Students’ Course and College Enrollment Outcomes

Dual enrollment (DE)—where students earn college credits during high school—is expanding rapidly. To facilitate DE, institutional actors across K-12 schools and colleges must build or repurpose structures across separate organizations to determine course offerings, assignments, modality, and composition. Yet the organization and implications of those structures remain a black box. Using statewide administrative data from Texas, we describe DE coursetaking and course characteristics for traditional Texas public high school students and examine how DE course characteristics predict students’ course performance and subsequent college enrollment. Our descriptive analyses illuminate striking differences between academic and career and technical education DE, both in students’ backgrounds and course structures. Our regression analyses illustrate how several malleable DE course characteristics predict student outcomes.

Exploring generative AI assisted feedback writing for students’ written responses to a physics conceptual question with prompt engineering and few-shot learning

Instructor’s feedback plays a critical role in students’ development of conceptual understanding and reasoning skills. However, grading student written responses and providing personalized feedback can take a substantial amount of time, especially in large enrollment courses. In this study, we explore using GPT-3.5 to write feedback on students’ written responses to conceptual questions with prompt engineering and few-shot learning techniques. In stage I, we used a small portion (n=20) of the student responses on one conceptual question to iteratively train GPT to generate feedback. Four of the responses paired with human-written feedback were included in the prompt as examples for GPT. We tasked GPT to generate feedback for another 16 responses and refined the prompt through several iterations. In stage II, we gave four student researchers (one graduate and three undergraduate researchers) the 16 responses as well as two versions of feedback, one written by the authors and the other by GPT. Students were asked to rate the correctness and usefulness of each feedback and to indicate which one was generated by GPT. The results showed that students tended to rate the feedback by human and GPT equally on correctness, but they all rated the feedback by GPT as more useful. Additionally, the success rates of identifying GPT’s feedback were low, ranging from 0.1 to 0.6. In stage III, we tasked GPT to generate feedback for the rest of the students’ responses (n=65). The feedback messages were rated by four instructors based on the extent of modification needed if they were to give the feedback to students. All four instructors rated approximately 70% (ranging from 68% to 78%) of the feedback statements needing only minor or no modification. This study demonstrated the feasibility of using generative artificial intelligence (AI) as an assistant to generate feedback for student written responses with only a relatively small number of examples in the prompt. An AI assistant can be one of the solutions to substantially reduce time spent on grading student written responses. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Economic shocks and skill acquisition: Evidence from a national online learning platform at the onset of COVID-19

We study how large shocks impact individuals’ skilling decisions using data from a large, government-sponsored, online learning platform in Saudi Arabia. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic brought about a massive increase in online skilling, and demand shifted towards courses that offered skills, such as telework, likely to be immediately valuable during the pandemic. Consistent with a model where individuals trade off reskilling costs with their expectations of future labor market conditions and their duration of work, we find that shifts into telework courses were largest for older workers. In contrast, younger workers increased enrollments in courses related to new skills, such as general, occupation-specific, and computer-related skills. Using national administrative employment data, we provide descriptive evidence that these investments in skills in early 2020 helped users maintain employment over the course of the pandemic.

Estimate Undergraduate Student Enrollment in Courses by Re-purposing Recommendation Tools

Resource allocation in educational institutions is a very challenging task in higher education. To prepare for every new semester, academic administration faces various challenges in allocating instructors, classrooms, sessions, teaching assistants, and laboratories for different possible courses considering students' needs and the limited available resources. Predicting the number of students enrolled in a specific class in the next semester can help with this task. To address this problem, we investigate various machine learning models (direct and indirect methods) using different features of course enrollment data of past students to predict the number of enrollments in possible courses in the upcoming semester. In this work, we propose to use a course recommendation model as a first step to generate suggestions for students, and then, use those to estimate student enrollment in the courses of the next semester. We test four course recommendation models, two time series models, three regression models, and three baseline approaches for course enrollment prediction. The experimental evaluation demonstrates that our proposed approach achieves good behavior and similar or better performance compared to other competing approaches to predict student enrollment in courses.

Distributed Active Learning (DAL): An Approach to Reduce Class Size in Large Enrollment Courses

Distributed Active Learning (DAL): An Approach to Reduce Class Size in Large Enrollment Courses

What's in a word? Student beliefs and understanding about green chemistry

For the past decade, the College of Chemistry at UC Berkeley has iteratively redesigned general chemistry laboratory courses to introduce students to green chemistry concepts, while simultaneously using green chemistry as a relevant context to learn chemistry. To investigate the effectiveness of this curriculum we developed approaches to investigate student understanding of green chemistry. We adapted a constructivist educational framework to iteratively design fixed and free response items appropriate for large enrollment courses that probe student knowledge of green chemistry concepts and practices. Two free response items were designed to probe students’ ability to define green chemistry and make green chemistry decisions in the context of a case study. A set of fixed response items were designed to probe particular aspects of green chemistry knowledge that were included in the course. Together, we used these items to characterize (1) changes in student understanding of green chemistry and (2) how prior “green” knowledge impacts student learning of new green chemistry principles in the general chemistry laboratory course. Analysis of student responses indicated that, on average, students demonstrated increased green chemistry understanding after completing this green chemistry aligned laboratory course. Students were able to integrate more normative green chemistry principles in their answers and began to indicate awareness of complex interconnected systems. Because the items focused on assessing student knowledge of green chemistry, rather than their self-assessment of knowledge, they provided valuable insight regarding students’ prior green chemistry knowledge that will be used to develop future versions of the curriculum.

Una aproximación al fenómeno de la deserción estudiantil en la Universidad Nacional Abierta y a Distancia:

This article presents an in-depth review of the state of the art and the general configuration of the research process called Model of permanence for the reduction of early dropout in first enrollment students in undergraduate programs, carried out as a thesis in the Doctoral Program of the Faculty of Psychology and Education of the University of Deusto in Spain. Its objective is to design a model of permanence with intervention strategies that contribute to the reduction of early desertion in students of the first enrollment courses of the Interdisciplinary Basic Training field - IBC at the Universidad Nacional Abierta y a Distancia - UNAD of Colombia. It is a descriptive-projective type of research because it seeks to explore, describe, predict and propose feasible strategies based on what has been explored Hurtado y Barrera (2017) Universidad Pedagógica Experimental Libertador (2006); with a mixed approach to data collection that allows collecting quantitative and qualitative information reaching "more solid inferences because the data are observed from multiple perspectives" Pole (2009) Creswell (2014). During the research process, a deep analysis and exploration of the background and the theoretical, conceptual and methodological proposals that led to the definition of the problem Balestrini (2006) Arias (2006), of the main characteristics and factors associated with early dropout and to open up the possible structure of the permanence model was carried out, that is why it is important to highlight the details of this review giving depth to the contributions that from different perspectives allow thinking and rethinking on the continuous improvement of the educational quality in distance and virtual higher education scenarios.

“Well-educated people speak English,but better educated people speak Frenchas well”

Abstract With the possibility to enroll in courses in nineteen different languages, the free university of Brussels (ULB) has opted for a linguistic offer that reflects the city’s highly multilingual character. In the faculty of languages and literature, students interact in and with multiple languages on a daily basis. In a study which interrogated these students on their linguistic representations, representations related to prestige were shown to be an important part of the collected responses. This paper aims to provide an overview of the different manifestations and interpretations of the ‘language of prestige’ linguistic representation in this sample of participants regarding the languages taught at the faculty. It also explores various implications that this representation has for language learning, as well as questions raised by the possible interpretative bias of the researcher trying to observe and study linguistic representations. In addition, this paper written in English relating research conducted in French addresses the issue of ‘epistemological translation’ and the challenges it poses.

CTE-focused Dual Enrollment: Participation and Outcomes

Abstract Recent policy efforts have attempted to increase the number of dual enrollment courses offered within Career and Technical Education (CTE) pathways, and there is evidence to suggest that this practice is widespread. However, there is very little research on student participation in CTE dual enrollment and on its impacts. This study examines participation in the CTE Dual Enrollment Pathway in North Carolina, finding that about 9 percent of North Carolina students participated in CTE dual enrollment courses in eleventh or twelfth grade and disparities in participation among subgroups were less than for college transfer dual enrollment courses. Using a propensity-score weighing approach that compared outcomes for participating students with a weighted group of nonparticipants, the study found that participation in CTE dual enrollment was positively associated with college credits earned in high school, graduation from high school, and overall enrollment in college within one year after high school. The study also examined results by subgroup.

Let Students Work: Analysis of the Role of Differing Facilitation on Student Engagement in a Large Stadium-Style Lecture Hall.

The classroom environment is shaped by factors such as facilitation style, curricular design, and classroom layout. These factors are all inputs into student framing of the classroom environment and affect a student's comfort interacting within it. Promoting student discourse in active learning environments provides students the opportunity to explain their thinking and develop their understanding of natural phenomena. However, successfully implementing these practices in large lecture environments is often difficult. Undergraduate introductory chemistry lectures were investigated to identify the effects that instructional practices had on student engagement. Instructor facilitation, question level, and student interactions were analyzed and compared to provide insights into what instructional practices may promote or hinder student engagement in a large enrollment course. Overall instructors were positioning themselves as an authority on knowledge in the classroom by leading questions authoritatively like instructor-focused didactic lecturing that led to a decrease in student engagement. These results highlight the complexity of the classroom ecosystem related to student interactions and the role that facilitation plays in social and cognitive engagement.

Fostering Pharmacists to Succeed in a Drastically Changing Society

In 2006, Japan's pharmaceutical science education was revised to a 6-year enrollment course, placing greater emphasis on cultivating practical clinical ability. Quality Assurance (QA) measures have been implemented including offering education based on a model core curriculum and third-party assessments. In August 2021, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) launched an investigative commission to review the above. For QA, the commission summarized a comprehensive report in August 2022 for items including: modality of selecting entrants; revising enrollment limits; securing education management; information disclosure; corresponding to pharmaceutical education assessments. For revising the model core curriculum, the commission is reviewing correspondence to: demographic changes due to decreasing birthrates, an ageing population, changes in the structure of diseases; rising and emerging infectious diseases; utilizing Big Data and artificial intelligence (AI). As Japan's ageing population is forecast to peak in 2040s, pharmacists must be fostered to provide safe and quality medicine towards a drastically changing future. Medical care is provided through the collaboration of various professions. In such changing demographics, team medicine is crucial to provide quality medical care. Moreover, towards all medical professions sharing the same vision, revisions to the model core curricula for medical and dental education are also being reviewed. The commission is now reviewing detailed curricula to foster pharmacists with competencies to: comprehensively assess patients and ordinary citizens; utilize information science and technology; professionalism. Towards securing quality pharmaceutical education, pharmaceutical departments at universities must also organize and implement an educational curriculum based on the Model Core Curriculum for Pharmaceutical Education. This paper will introduce the investigative commission's review.

Preparing for the STEM Pathways? Dual Enrollment and College Major Choice in STEM

ABSTRACT Guided by the STEM pathway model, our study hypothesizes that dual enrollment can serve as an effective strategy to improve and equalize college students’ access to STEM programs. We analyzed a nationally representative dataset to disaggregate the influence of dual enrollment course-taking (i.e. participation, dual credits in Math/Science, number of dual credits) on students’ STEM major selection, with a focus on traditionally underrepresented students in STEM. We found that taking dual enrollment courses in general is positively associated with the probability of majoring in STEM, especially at the baccalaureate level. However, taking dual enrollment courses in Math/Science is not associated with the probability of majoring in STEM when compared with students with no dual enrollment courses in Math/Science. The relationship between dual enrollment course-taking and STEM outcomes varies across different student background groups: It is consistently positive for students of higher household income to major in STEM but not statistically significant for low-income students. We discussed practical implications and future research with a focus on the role dual enrollment plays in advancing postsecondary STEM access.

Dual Enrollment, First-Year Retention, and Graduation: Analyzing the Impact of Dual Enrollment on Student Success Outcomes at a Public Research University

As more higher education institutions participate in offering college-level courses to high school students (often referred to as dual enrollment) it becomes increasingly important to evaluate the impact of participation in these courses on subsequent higher education student success outcomes, such as first-year retention and graduation rates. In recent years, there has been an increase in the body of literature devoted to this topic, however, much of this literature is aimed at analyzing the impact of dual enrollment courses on performance in community colleges. This study will examine the relationship between high school students taking dual enrollment courses and their later performance at a public, R1 university. Additionally, this study will employ Classification and Regression Trees (CART), a type of supervised statistical learning for identifying the success factors for dually enrolled students based on academic, demographic, and socio￾economic features. This study intends to offer results that provide generalizable knowledge for institutional decision-making pertaining to dual enrollment and success in higher education.

Understanding the Concurrent Enrollment Instructor Credentialing Cliff from the Instructors’ Perspective: A Qualitative Study Utilizing Principal-Agent Theory

ABSTRACT A credentialing standard clarification brought forth by the Higher Learning Commission could result in the elimination of approximately half of the liberal arts concurrent enrollment instructors in Indiana, Minnesota, and other locations under HLC accreditation. Concurrent enrollment instructors who were affected by this evolution in credentialing and needed to complete additional coursework to retain their eligibility to instruct concurrent enrollment courses were interviewed for this research. Using the lens of principal-agent theory, the authors share the reasoning, factors, and commonalities behind the findings as to why concurrent enrollment instructors did or did not complete the required coursework before the upcoming credentialing deadline to maintain their eligibility as a concurrent enrollment instructor. Implications for the field and recommendations for policy changes further research are offered.

189 Network Analysis of Survey Results from a Large Enrollment Course: Investigating Dynamics Among Background, Career Aspirations and Decision-Making of Students Related to Anima Science

Abstract The objective of this study was to investigate how a diverse student cohort was influenced by a general introductory Animal Science course offered to non-majors. To achieve this goal, an online survey was offered to students upon course completion and received 270 responses, from a total of 634 enrolled students. Reponses were coded using deductive coding according to pre-established research interests. A total of 81 different subcodes, grouped into 17 parenting codes were defined to characterize the following overarching themes: 1) Academic and agricultural background; 2) Career aspirations; 3) Course experience; 4) Course influence on future career; and 5) Course influence on consumer decision making. Correlation between codes was evaluated using Pearson Correlation Coefficient and only statistically significant (P ≤ 0.05) correlations were included in the matrices for network analysis. Network analysis maps were generated from the matrices at 3 levels of significance (P ≤ 0.001; P ≤ 0.01 and P ≤ 0.05). Interpretation of generated network analysis map (7 clusters; P ≤ 0.01; Q = 0.713) regarding student academic and agricultural background and career aspirations revealed close relationships between major, background and career aspirations. Similarly, a stronger agricultural background was correlated to majors in agricultural fields. Other interesting findings include the relationship of students classified as Freshmen and agricultural majors, indicating that students in agricultural majors may show an interest in Animal Science earlier in their academic career compared with those in other majors. The interpretation of generated network analysis map (3 clusters; P ≤ 0.05; Q = 0.413) reveals Structure and design and Informative as important positive comments connecting two large clusters relating to overall course experience. These two specific clusters differ mainly by the class of student represented and how they are influenced by the course, with Seniors showing decreased interest in Animal Science, while Freshmen and Sophomores declaring greater interest in the subject after the course. Analysis of course influences on future career and on decision making as consumers of animal products (3 clusters; P ≤ 0.05; Q =0.465) shows a clear separation delineated by the student perception of the course relevance. Each of the three clusters contains either Relevant directly, Relevant indirectly or Irrelevant, categories referring to perception of the students of the course related to their career. Greater behavioral changes toward a more conscious consumption of animal products were observed in the Relevant directly cluster. This cluster also contained careers in the agricultural sector and as a veterinarian, in comparison with the Irrelevant cluster, which contained corporate careers. In conclusion, these data present information regarding student perception of animal science as classified by their major. This may provide a foundational framework for studying how individuals from different backgrounds interact with animal agriculture.

Equity Levers: What Predicts Enrollment in and Number of College‐Level Courses Taken in High School?

This study explores the extent to which student, family, peer, and school factors predict (a) whether students take Advanced Placement® (AP®) courses, International Baccalaureate (IB) courses, and dual enrollment courses and (b) in models limited to course takers, how many courses they completed. Our findings, based on a nationally representative, longitudinal sample, suggest that, when it comes to college‐level high school course taking, the relative advantage of higher socioeconomic status (SES) is less for African American students than it is for White and Asian students. Ninth‐grade math skills are the strongest predictor of AP or IB and dual enrollment course taking, above and beyond demographic background characteristics like SES and race or ethnicity. High school girls take AP/IB and dual enrollment courses at a higher rate than boys, and they take more of these courses. The level of academic focus of students and their peers is associated with both AP or IB and dual enrollment course taking, whereas having parents focused on college preparation and course taking only predicts AP or IB course taking. School factors associated with AP or IB course taking include U.S. region and rural location; the percentage of math teachers with a master's degree is also positively associated with the number of AP or IB courses students take. These findings highlight the importance of equitable educational opportunities starting from a young age. They also indicate a need for increased early attention to student math skills and for more supports for parents and school staff to enable them to encourage and prepare all students, especially those from historically marginalized groups, to take college‐level courses in high school.

Deploying Contemporary Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Solutions for Academic Delivery in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) – The USIU-Africa Experience

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have a fundamental role to play in enhancing the development and nurturing of demand driven digital and technical skills because of their quadruple mission, namely, teaching and learning, research and scholarship, public service and engagement, and innovation and entrepreneurship. The COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on global economies has meant that as with every other sector, higher education institutions face major transformations that require continuous reform to make them better responsive to the unyielding and unpredictable demands of the 21st century societies. This paper details the authors’ experience and learnings at USIU-Africa in as far as using cutting-edge technology to set up learning and administrative platforms using an incremental approach over the years. These initiatives have invariably contributed towards blurring the boundaries between learning modalities, supporting students' sense of belonging and connectedness and student enrolment in courses that enable them to participate on site, synchronously online, or asynchronously online as preferred via the HyFlex mode of delivery.