College-level Courses Research Articles

College Comes to High School: Participation and Performance in Tennessee’s Innovative Wave of Dual-Credit Courses

We analyze the rollout of a Statewide Dual-Credit (SDC) program intended to expand access to college-level courses during high school. We find that SDC increased early postsecondary course-taking among students in the middle of the achievement distribution, especially through courses in vocational subjects, without decreasing participation in Advanced Placement (AP). However, SDC was mostly offered by schools already providing courses in similar subject areas and was less frequently offered in small relative to large schools, thus doing little to ameliorate placed-based gaps in course-taking opportunities. Furthermore, a majority of students failed the end-of-course exams necessary to secure college credit, and those who passed closely resemble students who pass AP exams. Low SDC exam pass rates predict school-level discontinuation of SDC courses over and above a range of other factors that reflect student demand and staffing capacity.

Informing the Public and Educating Students on Plastic Recycling

Approximately 300 million tons of plastic waste is generated per year. The major portion of this plastic waste is landfilled, while part of it leaks into the environment. When plastic waste enters the terrestrial or aqueous environment, it can have negative impacts on ecosystems, human health, and wildlife. Increasing the amount of plastic waste that is recycled will correspondingly reduce the amount of plastic waste that enters the environment. By educating the public and industry on plastic recycling, current recycling programs can be used more efficiently, and new programs can be created. Education material on plastic recycling is available through professional and industry associations, foundations with an environmental focus, university courses, and short courses offered with private companies. This review assembles and analyzes the current education material on plastic recycling that is available from these providers. The material compiled here can be used to gain insight into specific plastic recycling-related topics, to identify areas of recycling education that can be improved, and as a resource to help build university level courses. There is currently a dearth of plastic recycling courses offered at the university level. Educating more students on plastic recycling will equip them with the knowledge and skills to make informed decisions as consumers, and to implement plastic recycling systems at the professional level.

An Archive of Interfaces: Exploring the Potential of Emulation for Software Research, Pedagogy, and Design

This paper explores the potential of distributed emulation networks to support research and pedagogy into historical and sociotechnical aspects of software. Emulation is a type of virtualization that re-creates the conditions for a piece of legacy software to operate on a modern system. The paper first offers a review of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), and Science and Technology Studies (STS) literature engaging with software as historical and sociotechnical artifacts, and with emulation as a vehicle of scholarly inquiry. It then documents the novel use of software emulations as a pedagogical resource and research tool for legacy software systems analysis. This is accomplished through the integration of the Emulation as a Service Infrastructure (EaaSI) distributed emulation network into a university-level course focusing on computer-aided design (CAD). The paper offers a detailed case study of a pedagogical experience oriented to incorporate emulations into software research and learning. It shows how emulations allow for close, user-centered analyses of software systems that highlight both their historical evolution and core interaction concepts, and how they shape the work practices of their users.

Dual-Enrollment, Peer Relationships, and Internalized. Variables: A Comparative Analysis Among Adolescents

While the importance of dual enrollment programs has been demonstrated, the potential impact of completing college level courses during high school has on the emotional and mental wellbeing of adolescents has not been explored. This study used a nonexperimental, comparative, research design to explore the impact of completing college level courses during high school and the relationship to emotional and behavioral well-being of adolescents. Findings indicated self-esteem levels were statistically significant, specifically, dual enrolled students reported lower levels of self-esteem. School counselors are in a unique position to foster a successful, academic environment that also enhances emotional and mental wellness.

Dual-Enrollment, Peer Relationships, and Internalized. Variables: A Comparative Analysis Among Adolescents

While the importance of dual enrollment programs has been demonstrated, the potential impact of completing college level courses during high school has on the emotional and mental wellbeing of adolescents has not been explored. This study used a nonexperimental, comparative, research design to explore the impact of completing college level courses during high school and the relationship to emotional and behavioral well-being of adolescents. Findings indicated self-esteem levels were statistically significant, specifically, dual enrolled students reported lower levels of self-esteem. School counselors are in a unique position to foster a successful, academic environment that also enhances emotional and mental wellness.

Teaching economics of climate change and sustainability as an introductory interdisciplinary elective using critical reading of supplementary sources

Critical thinking skills are widely considered to be important transferable skills gained from taking college-level economics courses that are also highly valued by employers. Yet, the literature on intentionally teaching critical thinking skills in undergraduate economics classes is still relatively sparse. The author of this article outlines an innovative approach to teaching critical thinking skills through class participation activities designed to promote critical reading of outside sources in an interdisciplinary climate economics course. The course goal is to equip students with the skills to articulate how economists contribute to the thinking on climate change and apply basic economics tools to explain and evaluate climate policy.

Capacitating civic engagement with deliberative democracy initiatives

ABSTRACT Polarization in political culture and the decline of public education for civic engagement have become serious challenges to a healthy constitutional federal republic in the United States. Communication as a field of study in American universities is well-poised to address these challenges and contribute meaningfully to improving the civic capacity of individuals and communities. This paper provides an overview of one model of doing this work through university-level communication courses that bring university faculty, students, and community agencies together. This model advocates for cooperative initiatives based on the principles and practices of deliberative democracy and participatory action research leading to annual or semi-annual public for a where structured dialogue and deliberation address specific issues of local, national, and international salience. Such a model may result in stronger university-community relations, applied learning for communication students, meaningful classroom learning activities, authentic public discussion, and situated cognition debriefings. The model shared here is based on a pilot project conducted through the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Humboldt State University during the 2018/2019 Academic Year.

Interdisciplinary Team Teaching: Reflections on Praxis and Pedagogy in an Undergraduate Classroom

Much scholarship available on team-teaching focuses on K-12 programming, with limited examples in post-secondary education. Adding to the growing research on college-level team-taught courses, this reflection describes how interdisciplinary team-teaching can offer not only a pedagogically innovative experience for students but also highlight the strengths of the faculty in their teaching and research areas. In addition to reviewing the differences between interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary curricula, we reflect on our experience delivering Globalization as a team-taught course, designing learning outcomes and course material, and negotiating classroom strategies, highlighting successful components and considering future iterations.

Do Colleges Perform the Same Following Developmental Education Reform? The Case of Florida\u2019s Senate Bill 1720

Developmental education (DE) reform took place among the 28 Florida College System (FCS) institutions in 2014. In this study, we examine how cohort-based passing rates in college-level English and math courses changed at different colleges for pre- and post-policy period and explore what institutional characteristics were related with various institutional trajectories of cohort-based course passing rates in the post-policy period. Employing longitudinal data analysis, we found that colleges performed similarly regarding cohort-based passing rates in both college-level English and combined math courses before DE reform and had a similar elevation in the cohort-based English course passing rates when DE reform took place in 2014. However, colleges experienced different change patterns in the years following DE reform. Specifically, colleges located in rural areas and with more White students experienced relatively lower college-level English passing rates in the post-policy period than their counterparts. Different colleges had slight differences in the trajectory of college-level math passing rates by cohort after SB 1720 in 2014, but institutional characteristics in this study did not adequately capture inter-institutional differences.

Accelerating College Remediation: Examining the Effects of Math Course Redesign on Student Academic Success

ABSTRACT American colleges are redesigning the ways in which they offer remedial courses, including mainstreaming students into college-level courses and making greater use of learning-technology to tailor the curriculum to students’ specific academic needs. Exploiting a statewide cutoff on a remediation placement exam along with data on student outcomes prior to and after a course redesign effort in Tennessee, I estimate the effects of three different institutional redesign efforts (acceleration, modularization, and corequisite math remediation) on students’ short, moderate, and long-term academic success. I find that students exposed to accelerated and corequisite developmental math courses had more positive outcomes than their peers exposed to traditional developmental math courses, but those in modularized courses did not. The magnitude of the estimated effect differs by the type of math redesign and the level of academic need of the students. These results provide insight into the extent to which the particular instruction and delivery methods of developmental courses affect performance in college-level math, credit accumulation, and persistence to degree.

College-level mathematical modelling with mobile devices

PurposeThis work is devoted to increasing the effectiveness of a mathematical modelling lesson with the help of mobile devices. It verifies the authors' hypothesis which states that enabling students to solve mathematical models on mobile devices improves their academic results in the discipline.Design/methodology/approachThe paper describes an experiment conducted among 38 college students in an extracurricular mathematical club where they solved mathematical models with the help of their own smartphones. The authors describe the mathematical models assigned to students, analyse their academic performance and gather their opinions.FindingsThe usage of mobile devices in the mathematical modelling class positively affects students' scores and interest in the subject. The percentage of positive grades among students working on mobile devices is higher than among students working on desktop computers.Originality/valueThe authors discover that in the context of the college-level mathematical modelling course, mobile devices can be successfully used as an alternative replacement for traditional desktop computers.

An On-Ramp to Student Success: A Randomized Controlled Trial Evaluation of a Developmental Education Reform at the City University of New York

Most community college students are referred to developmental education courses to build basic skills. These students often struggle in these courses and college more broadly. CUNY Start is a prematriculation program for students assessed as having significant remedial needs. CUNY Start students delay matriculation for one semester and receive time-intensive instruction in math, reading, and writing with a prescribed pedagogy delivered by trained teachers. The program aims to help students complete remediation and prepare for college-level courses. This article describes the results of an experiment at four community colleges (n ~ 3,800). We estimate that over 3 years, including one semester that students spent in the program and two-and-a-half years after the program was complete, CUNY Start substantially increased college readiness, slightly increased credit accumulation, and modestly increased graduation rates (by increasing participation in CUNY’s highly effective Accelerated Study in Associate Programs [ASAP]).

Real-World Ethical Dilemmas in Laboratory Safety for Microbiology Under-Resourced and Outreach Teaching.

With modernization of safety standards for microbiology outreach teaching laboratories, ethical challenges arise in teaching microbiology for the public good without short-changing students in under-resourced situations, or when institutional support is subpar. Still, educators want students to engage using applied skills for inquiry, research-based microbial learning activities – safely. Following several United States microbial outbreaks, federal investigation traced sources back to teaching laboratories. Policy discussions ensued. The American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Task Force provides recommended but not mandated guidelines; however, guidelines are not amenable by all. Here, a real-world, ethical scenario of a university-level outreach microbiology laboratory course hosted at several locations provides context for under-resourced challenges in safety compliance. In this example of biomedical and public health ethical considerations, upper administration puts the onus on instructors to assure safe labs for their students and the general public. Temporarily hired instructors without curriculum or sufficient institutional support are put in precarious positions with often egregious practices to get the job done. This scenario is examined with different public health ethical frameworks and principles: non-maleficence, beneficence, health maximization, efficiency of policy regulations, respect for institutional and instructor autonomy, justice, and proportionality balancing stakeholder concerns. Sample curricular strategies are employed to mitigate these challenges. Taking a utilitarianism framework of the greatest good for the most benefit, this paper advocates for social justice supporting access to education as a moral duty. Administrations should ensure instructors are supported sufficiently to provide safe, authentic learning experiences. Solutions for under-resourced outreach teaching are needed for public trust.

Using Crayfish Burrows to Illustrate Simple Ecological Field Techniques

Ecological field techniques such as transect surveys are long-used, integral means of immersing students in field exercises to illustrate ecological measures. Many species of crayfish create conspicuous burrows within or near aquatic habitats. Such burrows can easily be identified and measured by students during an ecological field exercise. In this article, we describe a field activity we developed as part of a college-level course in which students utilized transects and calipers to collect counts and measurements of crayfish burrows in order to evaluate their distribution and size among different substratum types along a small stream. This field exercise could be incorporated, with or without modification, into an applicable high school or introductory/intermediate college biology course as a means of illustrating ecological concepts, sampling technique, and/or behavioral biology.

Is That Minnow in Your Bait Bucket an Invasive Species? An Inquiry-Based Activity for Teaching Taxonomy in College-Level Courses

Despite the importance that taxonomy and species identification have in our current understanding of ecology, evolution, and conservation of organisms, it is a challenging topic to teach. One of the primary reasons for this challenge is the lack of student motivation to learn organism classification and identification, which is often reinforced by curricula that do not show the practical value of taxonomic knowledge. This article describes an inquiry-based learning activity designed to show students the real-world value of organism identification. In this activity, students relate the misidentification of baitfish to the spread of invasive species via the baitfish industry. Students role play as fish ecologists and help a bait shop owner identify the specimens in their baitfish supply and subsequently develop a strategy to ensure that the business is not contributing to the spread of invasive species. By relating the field of taxonomy to species invasions, instructors can show students that they are learning information and gaining skills that have utility outside of the classroom. We found this to be an appealing alternative to other species identification activities, which typically focus on low-level learning, and we are excited to share our approach with the readers of The American Biology Teacher.

Seeds of equity: cultivating critical food literacy in the land-grant undergraduate classroom

ABSTRACT This pedagogical piece reports on the successes and challenges of developing and teaching an undergraduate “critical food literacy„ course in a land-grant university’s college of agriculture. The United States agricultural industry is built upon a foundation of stolen land and stolen labor, and depends to this day on the labor of marginalized populations. Despite these hard truths about who grows our food, colleges of agriculture remain overwhelmingly white demographically, culturally, and epistemologically. Though scholars have called for greater incorporation of social justice themes in college-level agriculture courses, there is little research to date on the effectiveness of various suggested teaching methods. To address this gap and contribute to the necessary work of diversifying curricula across colleges of agriculture, we conducted a qualitative assessment of the course “Seeds of equity: Exploring race, class, and gender in our food system„ while simultaneously developing and teaching it. We use our personal experiences and research findings to argue that critical food literacy is an effective framework for teaching students at a large, Midwestern land-grant university about race, class, and gender in the food system. We also offer concrete suggestions of course materials, assignments, and teaching methods that can be utilized in myriad food studies and agricultural education classroom contexts.

Heterogeneity in the Effects of College Course Placement

Traditionally colleges have relied on standalone non-credit-bearing developmental education (DE) to support students academically and ensure readiness for college-level courses. As emerging evidence has raised concerns about the effectiveness of DE courses, colleges and states have been experimenting with approaches that place students into credit-bearing coursework more quickly. To better understand which types of students might be most likely to benefit from being placed into college-level math coursework, this study examines heterogeneity in the causal effects of placement into college-level courses using a regression discontinuity design and administrative data from the state of Texas. We focus on student characteristics that are related to academic preparation or might signal a student’s likelihood of success or need for additional support and might therefore be factors considered for placement into college-level courses under “holistic advising” or “multiple measures” initiatives. We find heterogeneity in outcomes for many of the measures we examined. Students who declared an academic major designation, had bachelor’s degree aspirations, tested below college readiness on multiple subjects, were designated as Limited English Proficiency (LEP), and/or were economically disadvantaged status were more likely to benefit from placement into college-level math. Part-time enrollment or being over the age of 21 were associated with reduced benefits from placement into college-level math. We do not find any heterogeneity in outcomes for our high school achievement measure, three or more years of math taken in high school.

Teaching Programming in Secondary Schools: Stepping and Stumbling Stones

Programming is introduced in secondary education in a growing number of subjects. This results in an increasing number of teachers teaching programming in their classes, often without proper training. Learning programming might be complicated, even more so is teaching it. In this context, there is a need to understand teachers’ perspectives on teaching programming. This paper aims to identify challenges that teachers in secondary schools face and might negatively impact their teaching, i.e., stumbling stones, as well as elements that promote teaching and give motivation, i.e., stepping stones. The paper is based on the analysis of reflection notes delivered by in-service teachers attending a university-level course on teaching programming. The teachers compile the reflection notes after they complete their final project. Projects are centred around the definition of teaching plans to be tried out in class. The reflection notes of 173 students are analysed to identify issues related to: programming; teaching programming; recurrent didactic issues; and external challenges. The analysis is then summarised in a set of stumbling and stepping stones. For example, time is identified as one of the main stumbling stones by teachers. On the other side, motivation is one of the central stepping stones that we can identify in the data, often connected to the excitement of teaching something that was not previously taught in schools or that teachers perceive as highly relevant for society and the future job market. Implications for teacher training are also identified.

"It's all about conversation"

As colleges and universities continue their commitment to increasing access to higher education through offering education online and at scale, attention on teaching open-ended subjects online and at scale, mainly the arts, humanities, and the social sciences, remains limited. While existing work in scaling open-ended courses primarily focuses on the evaluation and feedback of open-ended assignments, there is a lack of understanding of how to effectively teach open-ended, university-level courses at scale. To better understand the needs of teaching large-scale, open-ended courses online effectively in a university setting, we conducted a mixed-methods study with university instructors and students, using surveys and interviews, and identified five critical pedagogical elements that distinguish the teaching and learning experiences in an open-ended course from that in a non-open-ended course. An overarching theme for the five elements was the need to support students' self-expression. We further uncovered open challenges and opportunities when incorporating the five critical pedagogical elements into large-scale, open-ended courses online in a university setting, and suggested six future research directions: (1) facilitate in-depth conversations, (2) create a studio-friendly environment, (3) adapt to open-ended assessment, (4) scale individual open-ended feedback, (5) establish trust for self-expression, and (6) personalize instruction and harness the benefits of student diversity.

Enhancing student engagement through heterogeneous pedagogical approaches: action research in a university level course in Saudi Arabia

PurposePrevious studies have mainly discussed the impact of student engagement on different facets of academic performance. Research on the approaches to promote student engagement in a classroom setting (i.e., micro-level practices) is relatively sparse. This paper provides a framework for enhancing student engagement in a university undergraduate classroom setting.Design/methodology/approachThis study builds on action research. At the core of this approach is making interventions through a set of pedagogical approaches, derived from the literature. The impact of these interventions was measured, followed by reflections on the outcomes and developing a future improvement strategy.FindingsStudent engagement can be enhanced by using heterogeneous pedagogical approaches that positively influence student performance. Further, the use of mixed pedagogical approaches helps students and teachers acquire meta-cognitive knowledge (i.e., knowledge of their learning preferences) and sets the direction for learning.Research limitations/implicationsThe key contribution of this study is providing a student engagement framework applicable in a sophomore-level classroom setting. The framework discusses a set of techniques, their theoretical underpinnings, the course of their execution and the challenges faced in this process. The framework can be used to guide enhancing student engagement.Originality/valueContrary to the macro-level measures, research on micro-level measures for promoting student engagement approaches is scarce. This study discusses not only different strategies but also details the dynamic course of their deployment. The study, therefore, is unique in its contribution.