Student Voting Research Articles

College Student Political Participation in the Context of a Polarized Nation and an International Pandemic: Do Campus Civic Engagement Efforts Matter?

U.S. universities devote substantial resources to increasing student political engagement, especially voting; research identifies several factors affecting student political participation, including socialization theories (e.g. family, friends, school), distance from home (Niemi and Hanmer), and choice architecture (Thaler, Sunstein, and Balz). Other research suggests that increased party polarization leads to higher voter turnout (Abramowitz and Stone; Crepaz). Our study sought to understand student political behavior (voting and registration) and political polarization during fall 2020 in the context of a polarized nation and an international pandemic. Based on 326 surveys of undergraduates and in-depth follow-up interviews, where 85% of our student sample reported voting, results suggest support for several factors that contribute to voting: level of political information efficacy, participation in campus organizations and events, friends, and family. On measures of social distance (“polarization”), participants felt more distant from Trump and less distant from Biden, and participants who felt closer to Biden felt significantly more prepared to vote than participants who felt distant to Biden. Surprisingly, minority students were less likely to vote. A second analysis compared a subsample of student fraternity/sorority members (“Greek” members) from 2016 and those from 2020. The 2020 Greek members voted at higher rates and were more active on social media although voter registration rates did not differ. Results suggest that several factors contributed to student voting in our sample: parent/family encouragement, a cultivated campus voting culture, campus outreach efforts to first year students, and increased voting avenues during the pandemic.

Voting System using Face Recognition

This introduction explores the idea of using face recognition technology in college student voting systems. The aim is to make voting more secure, efficient, and user-friendly for students. Face recognition can enhance security by preventing fraud and speed up the voting process. It also ensures accessibility for all students. However, concerns about privacy and fairness need careful consideration. Striking a balance between innovation and protecting students' rights is crucial for successfully implementing face recognition in college voting systems. This approach promises a modern and trustworthy voting experience tailored to the needs of college students

INCREASING STUDENT ENGAGEMENT USING ‘MEME BASED’ EXERCISE INNOVATION

ABSTRACT The practice of “memes” – taking an image from pop culture and adding humorous or inspiring text to it – are an opportunity for marketing practice. We posit that memes also provide an innovative technique to help students become more engaged in marketing classes. We propose requiring students to submit one or more graded homework exercises using a meme (instead of the traditional slide deck or typed document file). Moreover, to create even more engagement and connection, we propose requiring the students to use a picture of the instructor teaching (from posted media choices by the instructor) as the background photo for the meme. Results of test usage in classes occurring in 2020 and 2021 indicate that this technique is helpful in students becoming more engaged in critical thinking toward class learning topics and class structure topics, this was especially evident when the meme course exercises leveraged competitive aspects such as student voting on them and prizes. Discussion of relevant technology adoption elements to consider in setting up exercise parameters are outlined.

Educating Students for Democracy: What Colleges Are Doing, How It’s Working, and What Needs to Happen Next

In the U.S., we have historically looked to our educators to prepare citizens for full participation in our democracy as engaged and informed voters. We examine the student voting movement that has taken root in colleges and universities across the country—a movement that offers a promising way forward in forming a new generation of engaged citizens. We detail what we know about how to increase student turnout, suggest ways to strengthen voter mobilization efforts through a broader civic education agenda, chart a path forward for future research, and offer recommendations for college administrators who seek to make voting a lifelong habit for their students. We also look beyond the student voting movement to argue for new forms of pedagogy that foster civic identity so that students think of themselves as voters who always vote, because voting is a necessary way to express themselves as engaged citizens.

Demographic and Systematic Factors Affecting Student Voter Turnout: An Empirical Study For Africa’s Largest Distance Higher Education Institution

Public HEI’s in South Africa conducts the Student Representative Council elections yearly, however, there is a paucity of studies to determine factors that affect voter turnout. This descriptive quantitative study conducted an empirical analysis of factors influencing student’s voter participation at Africa’s largest Open Distance eLearning (ODeL) institution. An electronic survey instrument was distributed amongst the sampled students and yielded a final response count of 6 851. A joint descriptive statistical analyses and a binary logistic regression model were applied to analyse data. Regression analysis revealed that there was a significant relationship between students having encountered one or more of marketing initiatives employed in the election project and voter participation. This positions marketing as a significant predictor of student voting given that respondents who encountered the SRC election marketing initiatives were seven times more likely to vote, as shown by the Odds Ratio of [OR=7.9 (95% CI:6.6-9.3), p=0.001]. The second-highest predictor of voting in this study was the closing date impact; students respondents who indicated that the voting period was long enough were two times more likely to vote compared to those who did not believe it was long enough [OR=2.2 (95% CI: 1.9-2.7), p-value <0.001]. Other significant predictors of SRC voting include gender, employment status and qualification level.Wherease study reveals a fair balance between the influence of demographic and systematic factors on SRC electoral process; institutions need to pay close attentention to systematic factors as they have great potential to constrain voter participation.

College Ballot System

This project is Entitled as “COLLEGE BALLOT SYSTEM”. Online Ballot System is a web-based voting system that will help you to manage your elections easily and securely. This voting system can be used for casting votes during the elections held in colleges and it minimizes the errors of vote counting. The individual votes are submitted in a database which can be counted to get the highest number of votes of the candidates for a given post. The system computes the election result for all the posts and provides report for the entire election process. The main objective of this system is to design, develop and implement an efficient and interactive web based student voting system. This project is titled as “COLLEGE BALLOT SYSTEM” and was developed using PHP as front end and MYSQL as back end.

169 Managing The Acutely Unwell Patient: An Interactive and Gamified Approach to Online Simulation During The COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated a transition from traditional face-to-face teaching to virtual equivalents, sometimes at the expense of teaching quality and student engagement Our aim was to demonstrate the feasibility of a novel gamified online simulation approach to teaching the management of acutely unwell patients.Using elements of gamification and interactive film, this virtual session was designed to teach prospective medical students the ‘A to E’ approach of managing an acutely unwell patient. The management of an acutely unwell patient is an iterative and dynamic process that requires one to manage uncertainty and constantly re-evaluate the clinical situation. The session was designed using interactive film, with students given the ability to influence a clinician’s actions and subsequent changes of clinical scenario dictated by student live-vote. This interactive and engaging approach allowed students to reflect-in-action and be active learners, in line with an experiential pedagogy Students attended a live session using a video conferencing service (Zoom) and their responses to clinical scenarios were recorded using an online voting tool (Mentimeter). Students were provided with a case history of an unwell patient and presented with an opening video. The session required video options to be pre-recorded to reflect the numerous potential avenues within the scenario as dictated by the students’ chosen actions. Depending on overall student voting consensus, pre-recorded videos of the clinician’s actions and changes to the clinical scenario were subsequently shown. For example, if the appropriate clinical action was selected, students would progress through the A-E approach. Students effectively guided the clinician to manage the unwell patient, with iterative and real-time feedback provided throughout the scenario. The session was concluded with a debrief, explanation of the case and key learning points.

Practical Guidelines to Redesign Introductory Chemistry Courses Using a Flexible and Adaptive Blended Format

Incorporation of increased flexibility and adaptivity in courses can support freshmen with taking responsibility for their learning process. This is especially beneficial in the case of chemistry courses given their typically abstract nature and associated need for engaging in practice and higher order thinking. Blended learning can be used to achieve course flexibility and adaptivity, and increased student engagement. Adopting blended learning requires teachers to reconsider and redesign their course setup. The willingness for this will largely be dictated by perceived practicality, however. To this end, our aim is to develop practical redesign guidelines for flexible blended learning. Such guidelines need to be instrumental, congruent, and of ‘low cost’ for a teacher. The resulting four guidelines were fine-tuned in two phases over 5 years using two introductory chemistry courses and incorporated various blended learning elements, such as slide-cast lectures, live lectures, formative in-cast multiple choice questions, tutorials, formative electronic tutorial questions, and student voting on the course schedule. The outcome of our multiyear endeavor was positive and sustainable by all metrics used, including online engagement by students, learning outcomes, and student evaluations. The teachers in phase II largely embraced the guidelines emerging from phase I, and in their course experienced them predominantly as practical while limitations were also identified. We hope that our guidelines and experiences can provide fellow teachers with a blueprint for practical incorporation of flexibility and adaptivity using blended learning in their chemistry courses.

Identifying Clicker Questions that Provoke Rich Discussions in Introductory Statistics

To identify clicker questions likely to provoke rich and engaging student discussions, we recorded the percentage of the class voting on each option on every clicker question used throughout each semester, encompassing nineteen sections of introductory statistics, taught by three instructors. Working from the hypothesis that seeing student votes broadly distributed across several different options is an indication of a good discussion question, we present the four questions with the most broadly distributed votes and discuss their use. Next, we present and consider the educational value of the questions with the lowest percentage of students voting correctly. We find that both broadly distributed votes and a low percentage of students voting correctly can be good indicators of effective discussion questions. Further, we find that questions devoid of numbers and based on general cases have fewer students voting correctly and have a significantly broader distribution of votes, thus indicating that this characteristic may be an important indicator of good discussion questions.

Society News - Fall 2020

In this edition, we present news on student voting, the 2020-2021 ECS Toyota Young Investigator Fellowships, 2020 Outstanding Student Chapters & Chapter of Excellence Winners, 2019 Journals Impact, Editorial Board Appointments, Focus Issues for ECS Journals, and ECS Blog Highlights, along with the Leadership Circle Awards, Staff News, and a winter preview.

Fostering Democratic Participation at Community Colleges: Understanding the Relationship Between Voting and Student, Institutional, and Environmental Factors

Objective: The purpose of this study is to understand the relationship between organizational characteristics, state political climate, and student civic engagement at community colleges, operationalized in this article as student voting. Method: Utilizing a unique cross-sectional dataset compiled by the Institute for Democracy & Higher Education for the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections that merges student voting data, enrollment records from the National Student Clearinghouse, and institutional data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, we employed multi-level binary logistic regression to account for individual and organizational influences. Results: The relationship between voting and student characteristics aligns with national voting trends, in that students who are female, older, and White had higher odds of voting. However, there was one notable exception in 2012 where Black students had higher odds of voting than their White peers. We also found that students enrolled full-time and those enrolled at colleges in electoral battleground states were more likely to vote in 2012 and 2016. Weak or mixed relationships emerged between voting and environmental factors such as campaign spending, ballot initiatives, get-out-the-vote programs, restrictive voter laws, and compositional diversity of the student body. Conclusion: This study provides insight for community college leaders on potential ways to engage students in an effort to promote voter turnout in a presidential election year on their campuses. Specifically, we posit that institutions could highlight the salience of public policy issues for students, lobby for less restrictive voting laws, and implement evaluation programs of their civic engagement initiatives.

State Laws and Mobilizing College Student Voter Turnout

With 20 million students across the country, student affairs professionals can affect voting in ways that can have a widespread impact on U.S. politics. Each institution is affected differently by state rules that govern who can vote. This article investigates the effect of state rules on college student voting. Findings suggest that there are several key relationships between state rules and college-student turnout, with implications for practitioners working to increase college student voting.

Addressing common errors and misconceptions in integral calculus with clickers and classroom voting

AbstractCommon student errors and misconceptions can be addressed through the method of classroom voting, in which the instructor presents a multiple-choice question to the class, and after a few minutes for consideration and small-group discussion, each student votes on the correct answer, using a clicker or a phone. If a large number of students have voted for one particular incorrect answer, the instructor can recognize and address the issue. In order to identify multiple-choice questions that are especially effective at provoking common errors and misconceptions, we recorded the percentages of students voting for each option on each question used in 25 sections of integral calculus, taught by 7 instructors, at 4 institutions, over the course of 12 years, on a collection of 172 questions. We restricted our analysis to the 115 questions which were voted on by at least 5 different classes. We present the six questions that caused the largest percentages of students to vote for a particular incorrect answer, discuss how we used these questions in the classroom, and examine the common features of these questions. Further, we look for correlations between question characteristics and the mean percentage of students voting for common errors on these questions, and we find that questions based on general cases have higher percentages of students voting for common errors.

Engaging students on their devices with Mentimeter

This technology review shares an interesting insight into snapshot cases of the online student voting tool ‘Mentimeter’ (MM) used with students in the Teacher Education Department. The use of MM in both lectures and seminars is presented along with three illustrative screenshots. Advantages and disadvantages of MM are discussed, with reference to recent literature about student engagement. The authors’ ideas for future plans with the tool are shared, with the hope of inspiring other HE colleagues to trial or further integrate MM into lectures and seminars, in order to promote student engagement and enhance the teaching and learning experience for all. Key words: Mentimeter, mobile devices, Student Response Systems, voting tool

The Impact of Market Conditions on Voting Results in a Student-Managed Fund

The authors analyze voting results for capital allocations from a student-managed fund over a period of three academic years. Primarily, they test for impacts of current and recent market activity on student votes. The fund is managed under the principle of value investing with a long-term investment horizon. A significant relationship between broad market conditions and student votes would support a distinct behavioral influence on the process. They largely find no significant influences from market returns or volatility on the voting results, which suggests students vote on their perception of the merits of the proposal instead of either intentionally or subconsciously allowing market activity to influence their decisions. In the framework of this specific fund, this result corresponds to the fundamentals of value investing and aligns with the educational goal of the program. In ancillary results, the authors find that proposals to buy (acquire a position) are more difficult to pass than those to sell.

Student-Managed Portfolios: Wisdom of Independent Crowds?

This study uses a student-managed portfolio as a novel setting to examine the effect of crowd wisdom on investment decisions. Crowd wisdom is measured by peer voting at Drexel University’s Dragon Fund, where student managers vote to accept or reject each other’s recommendations. Based on a sample of 202 stock pitches between 2008 and 2016, the main finding is that accepted stocks significantly outperform rejected stocks. For example, accepted stocks returned 3.0% in excess of their corresponding sector benchmark during the 12 weeks following the recommendation, significantly higher than the negative 2.9% excess returns of rejected stocks. The results are robust to outliers and different evaluation horizons, are not due to size and book-to-market tilts, and cannot be explained by professional observers whose expertise might influence student votes.

MyWallMate: An Investigation into the use of Mobile Technology in Enhancing Student Engagement

This paper is a report of an investigation in which mobile technologies were used during large lecture-type sessions in tandem with the Textwall™ software. This online program is able to receive and present messages from students’ devices that the lecturer may then share. It also can be used to collect student votes on multiple-choice questions, facilitating dynamic formative assessments during class. A study has been undertaken around the MyWallMate mobile application. This program has been developed by Liverpool John Moores University to expedite the process of sending messages and votes to Textwall™. Results of this study indicated that students had a positive reaction to both Textwall™ and the MyWallMate application. They reported being more comfortable in expressing their opinions via the MyWallMate mobile application and felt that using mobile technology within their lectures enhanced their learning. It has been concluded that the use of mobile technologies and BYOD-type approaches are avenues worth further exploration in global higher education.

How to learn and use your institution's student voting rates

College student political engagement levels indicate how well higher education is achieving its civic mission of developing active citizens concerned with public affairs and with addressing social problems. Voting rates are a direct measure of political engagement, and free, confidential reports of student voting rates are available to institutions from the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement. NSLVE has developed a database of 2012 and 2014 voting and college student enrollment data from over 8 million students across 900 colleges and universities in the U.S. In addition to being used to research political engagement in higher education, NSLVE is used to inform campuses about their students' voting rates through customized reports showing voting rates by age, class level, field of study, and, when available, gender and race/ethnicity. Soon NSLVE will include data from the 2016 presidential election, and comparisons across presidential elections will provide insights into changes over time in voting patterns.

The Partisan Battle Over College Student Voting: An Analysis of Student Voting Behavior in Federal, State, and Local Elections*

ObjectiveWe aim to test the hypothesis that college students provide Democratic candidates with greater electoral support and whether this varies among federal, state, and local elections. We also test whether college students mobilized by presidential campaigns are more likely to abstain from voting for state and local elections.MethodsTo examine these questions, we employed OLS and difference‐of‐means tests to analyze the distribution of votes cast in competitive elections for the November 2008 elections in 86 precincts located on 42 college campuses across five states as compared to the distribution of votes cast in noncollege precincts. College precincts were identified by representatives from each community's local Board of Elections.ResultsIn line with conventional wisdom, the results of the analyses indicate Democratic candidates for federal offices do consistently receive greater electoral support from precincts located on college campuses as compared to noncollege precincts. However, the analyses of state and local elections highlight substantial variation in the level of support that Democratic candidates receive from precincts located on college campuses. Moreover, we found many college students in 2008 cast their ballots for Obama, but chose not to participate in lower‐level elections.ConclusionRepublican fears regarding college students turning small towns on their heads via the ballot box are not supported by our analyses. On average, students vote more democratically than nonstudents but they are also more likely to simply choose not to vote for local candidates. By and large, they come to the polls to vote for national offices, not local ones.

Analyzing Student Confidence in Classroom Voting With Multiple Choice Questions

The purpose of this paper is to present results of a recent study in which students voted on multiple choice questions in mathematics courses of varying levels. Students used clickers to select the best answer among the choices given; in addition, they were also asked whether they were confident in their answer. In this paper we analyze data collected from 192 multiple-choice questions used in five courses (Precalculus, Calculus 1, Differential equations, Linear Algebra, and Real Analysis) by two instructors at two different institutions. We evaluate student votes using four categories: correct and very confident, correct but not very confident, incorrect but not very confident, and incorrect and very confident. We examine and discuss characteristics of some questions from each category. We further assert that access to confidence data of this type will be an effective planning tool for future classroom voting. Supplementary materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of PRIMUS to view the supplementary file.