scholarly journals A mathematical view towards improving undergraduate student performance and mitigating dropout risks

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (5) ◽  
pp. 842-860
Author(s):  
Hong Zhang ◽  
Wilson Osafo Apeanti ◽  
Saviour Worlanyo Akuamoah ◽  
David Yaro ◽  
Paul Georgescu
Keyword(s):  
Student Performance ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Undergraduate Student ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Threshold Values ◽  
Nonlinear Odes ◽  
Student Dropout ◽  
Target Values ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The Impact

In this paper, we assess the relevance of social and cognitive factors such as self-efficacy, locus of control and exposure to negative social influence in relation to undergraduate student dropout. To this purpose, we analyze a compartmental model involving a system of nonlinear ODEs, which is loosely based upon the SIR model of mathematical epidemiology and describes the academic performance of the student population. We examine threshold values that govern the stability of the equilibria and can be viewed as target values to be reached in order to alleviate undergraduate students dropout. A backward bifurcation is observed to occur, analytically and numerically, provided that certain conditions are satisfied. A sensitivity analysis is then performed to find how the threshold values respond to changes in the parameters, a procedure for estimating these parameters being also proposed. Concrete values are then computed using survey data from a Ghanaian university. The impact of parameter variation upon the dynamics of the system, particularly on certain population sizes and on threshold values, is also numerically illustrated. Our findings are then interpreted from a social cognitive perspective, realistic policy changes being proposed along with appropriate teaching and coaching strategies.

Can Undergraduate Students Help Change Older Adults’ Confidence for Making Nutrition-Related Decisions in a 45-Minute Nutrition Workshop?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
Rakhshan Kamran ◽  
Giulia Coletta ◽  
Janet M. Pritchard
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Cognitive Theory ◽  
Outcome Expectations ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Dietary Choices ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Impact

Purpose: The Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) suggests health behaviour can be modified by enhancing knowledge of health benefits and outcome expectations of changing behaviour, improving self-efficacy (confidence), and developing goals to overcome barriers to behaviour change. This study aimed to determine the impact of student-led nutrition workshops on participants’ confidence related to SCT constructs for making dietary choices that align with evidence-based nutrition recommendations. Methods: Level-4 Science students developed and delivered 9 workshops on nutrition recommendations for the prevention and management of age-related diseases. Participants attending the workshops completed pre- and post-surveys to assess SCT constructs. For each SCT construct, participants rated their confidence on a 10-point Likert scale. The number (%) of participants who rated their confidence as ≥8/10 on the pre- and post-surveys were compared using the χ2 test. Results: Sixty-three community members (60% female, mean ± SD age 71 ± 7 years) attended the workshops. The number of participants rating confidence as ≥8/10 for each SCT construct increased after the workshops (P < 0.05). Conclusion: Undergraduate students can positively influence community members’ confidence for making nutrition-related decisions. Involving students in interventions where SCT-structured workshops are used may help conserve health care resources and reach older adults who may not have access to dietitian services.

scholarly journals Mixed Method Study Examines Undergraduate Student Researchers’ Knowledge and Perceptions About Scholarly Communication Practices

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 159
Author(s):  
Melissa Goertzen
Keyword(s):  
Data Management ◽  
Peer Review ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Undergraduate Student ◽  
Review Process ◽  
Peer Review Process ◽  
Scholarly Communication ◽  
Student Researchers ◽  
Communication Practices ◽  
The Impact

A Review of: Riehle, C. F., & Hensley, M. K. (2017). What do undergraduate students know about scholarly communication?: A mixed methods study. Portal: Libraries and the Academy, 17(1), 145–178. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/pla.2017.0009 Abstract Objective – To examine undergraduate student researchers’ perception and understanding of scholarly communication practices and issues. Design – Mixed method study involving a survey and semi-structured interviews. Setting – Two major undergraduate universities in the Midwest region of the United States. Subjects – Undergraduate students who participated in or had completed undergraduate research experiences with faculty mentors. Method – The method was first approved by Institutional Review Board offices at both campuses involved in the study. Then, students received invitations to participate in a survey via email (Campus 1 = 221 students; Campus 2 = 345 students). Identical online surveys ran separately on each campus; both remained open for a period of three weeks. All respondents received a reminder email one week before the survey closed. Participants answered twelve questions related to demographics and scholarly communication practices. The survey examined knowledge and experience across five areas: the peer review process, author and publisher rights, publication and access models, impact of research, and data management. All students who completed the survey were entered in a drawing for a $50 Amazon card. The response rates were 34.8% (Campus 1) and 18.6% (Campus 2). Surveys on both campuses were administered using different software: campus 1 utilized Qualtrics survey software while campus 2 used an institution-specific survey software. Data sets were normed and merged later in the study to enable comparison and identify broad themes. Survey respondents were also invited to participate in a 15 to 20 minute follow-up interview and were compensated with a $20 Amazon gift card. The interviews consisted of four open-ended questions that further examined students’ knowledge of scholarly communication practices. The researchers coded interview transcripts and identified themes. Qualitative software was used to analyze the surveys and assess coder agreement. Finally, connections and anomalies between survey and interview results were explored. Main Results – Quantitative and qualitative data collected during the study indicate that students were most confident in their understanding of the peer-review process and data management but felt less confident in their knowledge of author and publisher rights, publication and access models, and determining the impact of scholarly research publication. In addition, they value instruction related to scholarly communication topics like the peer-review process, publication models, and data management. However, few students feel confident in their current level of knowledge or ability surrounding the previously mentioned topics. Study findings suggest that this knowledge gap is based on a lack of training or discussion of scholarly communication topics in relation to students’ research activities. Results also suggest that undergraduate students have difficulty articulating their rights as authors and their scholarly communication practices. In many cases, skill sets like data management are learned through trial and error while students progress through the research process. In some cases, faculty mentors have misperceptions and assumptions about undergraduate students’ knowledge and abilities regarding scholarly communication practices. This can create challenges for undergraduate students as they attempt to make informed decisions about research activities based on a limited foundation of experience or information. Finally, results indicate that undergraduate student researchers do not currently view the library as a place to learn about scholarly communication practices. The authors suggest that by forming strategic relationships with undergraduate research program directors, faculty, and graduate student mentors, librarians are in a prime position to incorporate scholarly communication practices into information literacy sessions or provide point-of-need coaching. Conclusion – The researchers conclude that academic libraries are in a unique position to support overarching research, teaching, and learning goals within the academic community. By developing programs that support information literacy and scholarly communication, libraries demonstrate value and align goals with teaching and learning priorities within the higher education community as a whole. Through this work, librarians support students as knowledge creators and advocate for training that emphasizes data literacy, copyright and authors’ rights, and the impact of research within specific disciplines.

scholarly journals Design, implementation, and assessment of an interactive simulation to teach undergraduate immunology students hemolytic disease of the newborn

2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-306
Author(s):  
Maurizio Costabile
Keyword(s):  
Student Learning ◽  
Student Performance ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
South Australia ◽  
Interactive Simulation ◽  
Hemolytic Disease ◽  
The University ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Interactive Simulations ◽  
Blood Grouping

Hemolytic disease of the newborn (HDN) is a potentially fatal condition caused by a Rhesus (Rh) antigen incompatibility between a mother and fetus. As a result, determining the Rh status of expectant parents is a routine clinical assessment. Both the physiological and immunological basis of this condition are taught to undergraduate students. At the University of South Australia, some undergraduate immunology students find this topic challenging. The author designed, implemented, and assessed the impact of an interactive simulation to facilitate student learning of HDN. The students were actively engaged in determining the blood grouping and Rh status of an expectant mother and father and then determining the possibility of developing HDN. The simulation was found to take only 15 min to complete yet led to a significant increase in student performance in an end of semester exam question. Student perceived understanding was found to significantly improve following the introduction of the simulation, even though the content had been covered in a formal lecture. Student feedback was highly positive of this learning approach. In conclusion, short, interactive simulations can be used effectively to enhance student learning of challenging concepts.

scholarly journals Quantifying the impact of mathematics support on the performance of undergraduate engineering and computing students

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
Calum Macdonald
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Student Performance ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Mathematical Content ◽  
Undergraduate Engineering ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
The Impact

The School of Computing, Engineering and Built Environment at Glasgow Caledonian University has provided mathematics support for all students in the school since 2012/13. This paper compares the performance of two groups of undergraduate students; those who engaged with mathematics support, through attending targeted lectures, and those who chose not to engage. Data collected over the five years from 2013/14 to 2017/18 for 4,690 engaging and non-engaging students, enrolled on modules with a substantial mathematical content, were analysed. Module marks achieved at first diet for the two groups of students, at all undergraduate levels, were selected as a measure of how mathematics support impacts on student performance. The study showed that there was a substantial and significant difference between the marks achieved by students that engaged with support and those that did not. Students who engaged on average showed an 8% increase in their module mark compared with those who did not engage. 

scholarly journals Predicting and Interpreting Students’ Grades in Distance Higher Education through a Semi-Regression Method

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (23) ◽  
pp. 8413
Author(s):  
Stamatis Karlos ◽  
Georgios Kostopoulos ◽  
Sotiris Kotsiantis
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Student Performance ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Supervised Classification ◽  
Educational Data Mining ◽  
Machine Learning Algorithms ◽  
Student Dropout ◽  
Educational Domain ◽  
Final Exams ◽  
One Year

Multi-view learning is a machine learning app0roach aiming to exploit the knowledge retrieved from data, represented by multiple feature subsets known as views. Co-training is considered the most representative form of multi-view learning, a very effective semi-supervised classification algorithm for building highly accurate and robust predictive models. Even though it has been implemented in various scientific fields, it has not adequately used in educational data mining and learning analytics, since the hypothesis about the existence of two feature views cannot be easily implemented. Some notable studies have emerged recently dealing with semi-supervised classification tasks, such as student performance or student dropout prediction, while semi-supervised regression is uncharted territory. Therefore, the present study attempts to implement a semi-regression algorithm for predicting the grades of undergraduate students in the final exams of a one-year online course, which exploits three independent and naturally formed feature views, since they are derived from different sources. Moreover, we examine a well-established framework for interpreting the acquired results regarding their contribution to the final outcome per student/instance. To this purpose, a plethora of experiments is conducted based on data offered by the Hellenic Open University and representative machine learning algorithms. The experimental results demonstrate that the early prognosis of students at risk of failure can be accurately achieved compared to supervised models, even for a small amount of initially collected data from the first two semesters. The robustness of the applying semi-supervised regression scheme along with supervised learners and the investigation of features’ reasoning could highly benefit the educational domain.

Entrepreneurship education: a need for reflection, real-world experience and action

2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 690-708 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hemant Kassean ◽  
Jeff Vanevenhoven ◽  
Eric Liguori ◽  
Doan E. Winkel
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Real World ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Entrepreneurship Education ◽  
Economic Benefits ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Classroom Activities ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Impact

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of common undergraduate entrepreneurship classroom activities on students’ motivational processes related to entrepreneurial careers. Design/methodology/approach – In total, 700 undergraduate students from a variety of majors at a large midwestern university in the USA were invited to take a web-based survey. They were asked to indicate which experiential activities they would participate/were participating in as part of their program. Findings – The findings show that students’ entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) is a driving force in classroom activities enhancing students’ intentions. However, the authors also found that the type of classroom activities that are common in entrepreneurship education negatively impact students’ ESE. Research limitations/implications – The generalizability is limited to the US region and the link from intention to behavior goes untested, but results strongly supported the adoption of social cognitive career theory to the entrepreneurship domain. Practical implications – This study lends support to the argument that promoting the learning process in entrepreneurship education should focus on real-world experience, action, and reflective processes to engage students in authentic learning, which should lead to greater entrepreneurial abilities and propensity, and eventually to enhanced entrepreneurial performance, which benefits individuals and societies. Social implications – This study suggests that the goals and pedagogical approaches to teaching entrepreneurship are issues that educators may need to revisit and update if the economic benefits of entrepreneurship are to be fully realized. Originality/value – While the relationship between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurship activity is well documented in extant literature, this study found that activities that are common in entrepreneurship education may negatively impact students’ ESE and need to be further explored.

scholarly journals The Impact of Library Instruction on Undergraduate Student Success: A Four-Year Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Jennifer Rowe ◽  
Julie Leuzinger ◽  
Carol Hargis ◽  
Karen Harker
Keyword(s):  
Student Success ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Undergraduate Student ◽  
Library Instruction ◽  
Treatment Groups ◽  
The Core ◽  
English Class ◽  
Success Indicators ◽  
Data Points ◽  
The Impact

During a four-year period, librarians collected student data by card-swiping undergraduate students who attended one of the core English composition class-based one-shot instruction sessions provided at a large state-supported doctoral-granting university. Data for students who attended library instruction was anonymized and compared to the same data points for students who were enrolled in the English class but did not attend library instruction. The authors compared student success indicators for the control and treatment groups (GPA, pass or fail status in course, and retention) and found a positive correlation between attending library instruction and student success.

scholarly journals Investigating the Impact of Online Classes on Undergraduate Degree Completion

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Wavle ◽  
Gamze Ozogul
Keyword(s):  
Student Performance ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Degree Completion ◽  
Online Courses ◽  
Online Classes ◽  
Course Grades ◽  
Program Of Study ◽  
Faculty And Administrators ◽  
Student Grades ◽  
The Impact

This study expands on current research that examines the impact of online courses on retention, degree completion, and student success. The researchers investigated the impact of online courses on degree completion by using existing graduation rate data, course enrollment data, and student grades for undergraduate students at a multi-campus 4-year institution. The researchers aimed to provide advisors, faculty, and administrators with a better understanding of how online classes fit into an undergraduate student’s program of study while completing their degrees within the desired timeframe.  The researchers additionally sought to understand the impact of taking online classes on degree completion while controlling for student demographic and academic factors (e.g. age, first-generation student status, socioeconomic status, SAT/ACT scores, and 1st semester GPA) and campus type (traditional flagship, urban research, and regional). Results indicated that regardless of campus type taking one or more online classes during their program of study increased undergraduate students’ likelihood of successful degree completion. Lastly, to provide further insight, this study compared student performance in online and on campus classes. Results for this comparison were mixed; slightly higher or slightly lower online course grades were obtained by students compared to face-to-face course grades depending on type of campus.

scholarly journals Physical education undergraduate students’ perceptions of their learning using the jigsaw learning method

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 713-730
Author(s):  
Nick O’Leary ◽  
Alison Barber ◽  
Helen Keane
Keyword(s):  
Physical Education ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Cognitive Learning ◽  
Study Data ◽  
Learning Method ◽  
Psychomotor Learning ◽  
Group Interviews ◽  
The Impact

Recognising the limited research around the use of cooperative learning in higher education, this case study sought to explore physical education students’ perceptions of learning using the jigsaw learning method. It examined the impact of two different aesthetic activities and two different groupings on students’ perceptions of their learning. A purposive sample of 36 third-year undergraduates was selected for the study. Data were collected using focus group interviews and reflective journals. Inductive analysis illustrated students’ perceptions of their own and others’ abilities, students’ empathy towards their peers, and how their perceptions of gymnastics and dance impacted on their perceptions of learning. Students felt that heterogeneous and friendship groupings have the potential to encourage high-order social and cognitive learning. However, those students with limited psychomotor abilities appear to be better served in friendship groupings to facilitate such learning. Students also favoured the ‘structured’ nature of gymnastics in comparison to dance for their own teaching and learning purposes. Irrespective of aesthetic activity or grouping utilised, students felt their psychomotor learning was limited. It is recommended that university staff consider using a mixture of groupings with a single cohort dependent on the practical ability of students and the use of more ‘structured’ activities. In doing so, students’ perceptions of their social, cognitive and psychomotor learning may improve and thereby encourage greater and more effective use of this innovative method in schools.

scholarly journals A comparison of the effectiveness of dissection and prosection on short-term anatomic knowledge retention in a reciprocal peer-teaching program

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendy L. Lackey-Cornelison ◽  
Laura D. Bauler ◽  
Jacob Smith
Keyword(s):  
Student Performance ◽  
Instructional Methods ◽  
Knowledge Retention ◽  
Peer Teaching ◽  
Student Groups ◽  
Practical Examination ◽  
Anatomical Knowledge ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Anatomy Knowledge ◽  
The Impact

Few discussions regarding instructional methods incite as much passion as the debate over dissection versus prosection. Despite numerous analyses, few studies have isolated the impact of dissection versus prosection from the numerous variables that are involved in anatomy education. This study used a retrospective design to assess the effect of peer teaching with dissection or prosection on anatomical knowledge retention of the peer teachers. Exam scores were analyzed from three cohorts of students ( N = 184) who were enrolled in a Musculoskeletal System course in an allopathic medical school between academic years 2014–2017. Students in the first 2 yr learned anatomy of an assigned region through traditional dissection, whereas students in the third year learned anatomy of the same regions on prosected specimens. The effect of these instructional methods on anatomical knowledge retention was measured by student performance on a teaching-readiness quiz, written exam, and practical examination. One advantage of this study is the stability of variables between cohorts. Student groups peer taught the same objectives; course sequencing and content remained consistent between years; students spent the same amount of time learning their material, regardless of learning modality (dissection or prosection); and students were tested in the same manner. Comparisons of student performance data suggest that anatomy knowledge was equivalent, regardless of the instructional method (dissection or prosected cadavers) but is strongly associated with prior anatomy experience. Findings from this study support previous studies that conclude that there are no disparities in the effectiveness of learning anatomy via dissection or prosection.

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