scholarly journals Balancing the COVID-19 Disruption to Undergraduate Learning and Assessment with an Academic Student Support Package: Implications for Student Achievement and Engagement

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 61-71
Author(s):  
Natalie Lloyd ◽  
Rebecca Sealey ◽  
Murray Logan

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic-induced emergency pivot to online teaching and assessment, an Academic Safety Net was implemented at a regional Australian university to provide academic student support. Bayesian hierarchical models were used to compare student performance between 2019 and 2020. More students withdrew from subjects in 2020, while fewer students remained enrolled but failed. While there was no overall year effect for overall student achievement, exam achievement increased and on-course assessment achievement decreased in 2020. When achievement was analysed according to an assessment task change, a year effect emerged, with the magnitude and direction of the effect dependent on the task changes. The results indicate that the enrolment component of the Academic Safety Net was an effective equity measure that enabled students an extended opportunity to self-withdraw in response to general impacts of the pandemic; while the results component protected the integrity of results awarded during the emergency pivot.

2011 ◽  
Vol 113 (2) ◽  
pp. 325-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Mccaslin ◽  
Heidi Legg Burross

Background/Context Research is presented on teacher-centered instruction and individual differences among students within a sociocultural perspective—specifically, within a co-regulation model. Purpose of Study To determine the utility of a co-regulation model for understanding teacher and student adaptation to the press of cultural and social demands for student achievement. Research Design Multiple methods were used and quantitative procedures applied to data obtained in Grades 3–5 classrooms (N = 47) in schools (N = 5) that primarily served students living in poverty and were engaged in comprehensive school reform. Data sources include observation of classroom practices (N = 108; mean = 2 observations per classroom) to identify differences in instructional opportunity within teacher-centered instruction; students’ (N = 439) reported self-monitoring of their classroom activity to ascertain individual differences among them in their adaptation to classroom demands; and student performance on classroom-like tasks (story writing; individual student unit of analysis) and standardized tests (SAT9 language, math, and reading subtests; grade-level unit of analysis) to illuminate the dynamics of opportunity, activity, and adaptation in student achievement. Conclusions/Recommendations Results support the potential of a co-regulation model to understand and enhance teacher-centered instruction of students who differ in adaptation to classroom demands and achievement expectations in nontrivial ways. The practicable instructional opportunities that most aligned with cultural demands for improving student performance on mandated tests was a basic form of direct instruction. Direct instruction appears to cast a wide safety net, including students who are and are not yet ready to profit from this mode of instruction as expressed by mandated test performance. Students not yet ready for culturally mandated performances are nonetheless acquiring desirable and personally meaningful adaptations to learning challenges that are co-regulated by direct instruction opportunities. Unfortunately, these students remain largely invisible to sociocultural policy makers who portray them as uninvested in, if not resistant to, school learning. It is reasonable to ask how long students will continue to participate in and adapt to classroom demands without cultural validation of that participation and recognition of the learners these students are and wish to become. It is time for deliberate examination of cultural beliefs and regulations that equate student performance on mandated tests with meaningful learning, a prepared future citizenry, and the effectiveness of the public school.


Author(s):  
Nicole Buzzetto-Hollywood ◽  
Kathy Quinn ◽  
Wendy Wang ◽  
Austin Hill

Aim: This study sought to explore the role of the elusive non-cognitive skill set known as grit, or the resolve and determination to achieve goals regardless of impediments, on student success in online education. It represents an area of exploration where there is a dearth in the available literature and reports the results of a study conducted at a Mid-Atlantic minority-serving university that examined the relationship between grit and student performance in fully online courses. Methodology: Students were administered the standard 12-Question Grit Scale with the addition of a series of validated questions that sought to measure perceived self-learning efficacy. Additionally, student performances in online courses were recorded and correlations conducted. Basic statistical analyses such as mean, mode, standard deviation, variance, and confidence interval were calculated. Two hypotheses were introduced as part of this study and tested with Anovas and crosstabulations. Results: This study found that higher grit scores correlated progressively to both self-discipline and self-efficacy but that a positive relationship to student achievement in fully online courses as measured with a p value of greater than .05 could not be confirmed. Conclusion: As online education continues to grow, providing opportunities to foster and strengthen student success in online courses and programs is increasingly important. E-learning success requires that students exhibit strong self-regulation, self-discipline, resilience, dutifulness, conscientiousness, and low impulsivity all of which are attributes of grit. As such, grit is presented as a promising area of exploration for increasing student achievement in online education.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Fischer ◽  
Brandon Foster ◽  
Ayana McCoy ◽  
Frances Lawrenz ◽  
Christopher Dede ◽  
...  

Background: Many students enter into postsecondary education without the college readiness skills that allow them to face the demands of postsecondary education. Increasingly, policymakers and educational researchers are responding to calls for reforming secondary education to provide more opportunity for all students to receive high quality education and to become career and college ready. Purpose: This study attempts to identify levers to increase student performance in secondary education. In particular, it examines relationships of school, teaching, teacher, and teacher professional development characteristics with student scores on high-stakes Advanced Placement (AP) examinations in the sciences.Setting: This study is situated in the context of the large-scale, top-down, nationwide AP curriculum and examination reform in the sciences (Biology, Chemistry, Physics) in the United States. This is an unprecedented opportunity to analyze changing educational landscapes in the United States with large-scale national student-, teacher-, school-, and district-level data sets across multiple science disciplines and different stages of the curriculum reform implementation connected to a standardized and high-stakes student outcome measure.Population: This study analyzes nationwide data samples of the AP Biology, AP Chemistry, and AP Physics population during the first, second, and third year of the curriculum reform implementation. Across disciplines and years, the analytical samples include a total of 113,603 students and 6,046 teachers. Research design: This empirical quantitative study uses data from web-based surveys sent to all AP science teachers. Additionally, College Board provided student- and school-level data for all students taking AP examinations. Data preparation methods included exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Associations towards student achievement were analyzed through multi-level ordered logistic regression analysis separately by science discipline and year of the curriculum reform implementation. Afterwards, the results were aggregated through a meta-analysis. Findings: Student performance is not pre-determined by students’ background, leaving roughly 60% of the AP score variance potentially malleable for teacher and school-level factors. In particular, teachers’ perceived administrative support, self-efficacy, teaching experience, and elements of classroom instruction were related to student performance. Notably, teachers’ professional development participation has a small, mixed impact on student achievement. Conclusion: The identified levers for improving student achievement provide a strong rationale for the continued efforts of policy makers to improve school environments and to support science teachers to ultimately both increase student learning and help all students graduate prepared for college and ready for their future careers.


Author(s):  
Shanzhong Shawn Duan ◽  
Kurt Bassett

The assessment of program outcomes for ABET accreditation has become a challenge for engineering programs nationwide. Various methods and approaches have been investigated to develop good practices for program assessment. At South Dakota State University (SDSU), an approach called Faculty Course Assessment Reports (FCAR) has been explored for mechanical engineering (ME) program assessment. FCAR provides an assessment tool to correlate the ME program outcomes with the outcomes of the core ME courses, and to evaluate student performance at the course level based on ABET outcome criterion. This process begins with the development of course objectives and outcomes. Then these course objectives and outcomes are directly mapped with the ME program objectives and outcomes respectively. Further the quantitative and qualitative details generated in the FCAR are lined up directly to ABET program outcome a to k criterion through FCAR rubrics. By use of the FCAR process, all ME program outcomes are evaluated at the course level based on the ABET program outcomes. The assessment results are being used for improvement of the ME curriculum. The process was developed to provide an effective tool for the ME program outcome assessment at the course level with reasonable effort.


Author(s):  
Annemarie Palincsar ◽  
Gabriel DellaVecchia ◽  
Kathleen M. Easley

Exploring the relationships between teacher education, teaching, and student achievement is a complex undertaking for a host of reasons, including the complexity of teaching, the number of different approaches to teacher education, the challenges associated with measuring teacher knowledge and teacher effectiveness, and the multiple mediators that operate in the study of teaching and learning. Teaching expertise requires technical skills that support instruction, theoretical knowledge, codified knowledge that guides professional decision-making, and critical analysis, which, in turn, informs the enlistment of technical skills and the development of codified knowledge. There is little consensus regarding the specific teacher characteristics that consistently lead to student achievement, although one hypothesis that has received considerable attention in the literature is the importance of teacher subject-matter knowledge. One of the challenges to making definitive statements regarding teacher education and its effects on teaching is that there are multiple approaches to teacher training. These approaches differ in terms of the candidates recruited, admission requirements, course content, the duration of training, the roles and extent of field-based experiences, and relationships with schools. Among claims regarding alternative preparation programs (i.e., programs that are not university-based), for which there is emerging support, is that alternative route teacher education programs are attracting a pool of prospective teachers of diverse age and ethnicity. Furthermore, alternatively certified teachers are choosing to teach in urban settings or settings with large numbers of minoritized students. With respect to measuring the effects of teacher education, a number of methods have been deployed including correlational studies investigating, for example, the relationship between the number of reading courses a teacher has taken and student performance on reading assessments, descriptive case studies of educational systems that are identified as successful, syllabus studies, and quasi-experimental studies. The field is developing more sophisticated and comprehensive measures and methods, as well as theoretical constructs to guide the study of teacher education and its effects on teaching and learning. The study of teacher education and its effects on student learning will benefit from the use of multiple methods—for example, large-scale studies complemented by carefully constructed case studies. In addition, this area will benefit from interdisciplinary scholarship by teams that include scholars who have a deep understanding of teaching and learning, adult development, school systems, and economics so that the field can acquire a more coherent and comprehensive understanding of the complexity of becoming a teacher.


2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melinda Adnot ◽  
Thomas Dee ◽  
Veronica Katz ◽  
James Wyckoff

In practice, teacher turnover appears to have negative effects on school quality as measured by student performance. However, some simulations suggest that turnover can instead have large positive effects under a policy regime in which low-performing teachers can be accurately identified and replaced with more effective teachers. This study examines this question by evaluating the effects of teacher turnover on student achievement under IMPACT, the unique performance-assessment and incentive system in the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). Employing a quasi-experimental design based on data from the first years of IMPACT, we find that, on average, DCPS replaced teachers who left with teachers who increased student achievement by 0.08 standard deviation ( SD) in math. When we isolate the effects of lower-performing teachers who were induced to leave DCPS for poor performance, we find that student achievement improves by larger and statistically significant amounts (i.e., 0.14 SD in reading and 0.21 SD in math). In contrast, the effect of exits by teachers not sanctioned under IMPACT is typically negative but not statistically significant.


Author(s):  
Frank P. Albritton Jr.

Does taking a college level course in the principles of economics improve economic literacy? While there is debate on whether courses in the principles of economics as taught at colleges and universities improve general economic literacy, more and more of these courses are being taught online. There has been considerable research in other subjects as to whether there is a difference in student performance dependent upon whether the courses was taken in a traditional face–to–face format or online. However, in the critically important subjects dealt with in the principles of economics, there has been discussion but little research conducted about whether online delivery is equivalent in terms of student achievement to the traditional face–to–face delivery. The purpose of this paper is to determine if there is a difference in the performance of students, as measured by economic literacy, between students taking a course in the principles of economics using a face–to–face versus online format. The data was collected using an online questionnaire over two semesters at a community college and analyzed using SPSS, version 12.


1996 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 9-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric A Hanushek

Historic debates about the measurement of capital are even more complicated in the case of education and human capital. As extensive research demonstrates, education resources are not consistently related to student performance in existing elementary and secondary schools. This inefficiency in public schools implies that spending and resource measures do not accurately capture variations in school quality. This finding then has clear implications for both education policy and economic research. Because school inputs are poor policy instruments, an alternative policy focus that appears much more productive is performance incentives related to student achievement.


1976 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 163-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. W. PETTINGALE ◽  
R. W. TOMLINSON ◽  
K. C. RYAN ◽  
J. ANDERSON ◽  
GILLIAN B. CLACK

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 159
Author(s):  
Agus Wahidi

<span>This research is experimental, using first class learning a quantum model of learning with concept maps media and the second media using real environments by power point presentation. The population is all class XI Science, number 2 grade. The sampling technique is done by purposive random sampling. Data collection techniques to test for cognitive performance and memory capabilities, with a questionnaire for creativity. Hypothesis testing using three-way ANOVA different cells with the help of software Minitab 15.Based on the results of data processing, concluded: (1) there is no influence of the quantum model of learning with media learning concept maps and real environments for learning achievement chemistry, (2) there is a high impact memory ability and low on student achievement, (3) there is no the effect of high and low creativity in student performance, (4) there is no interaction learning model quantum media learning concept maps and real environments with memory ability on student achievement, (5) there is no interaction learning model quantum media learning concept maps and real environments with creativity of student achievement, (6) there is no interaction memory skills and creativity of student achievement, (7) there is no interaction learning model quantum media learning concept maps and real environments, memory skills, and creativity on student achievement.</span>


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