Anatomical self-efficacy of undergraduate students improves during a fully online biology course with at-home dissections

Student enrollments in online college courses have grown steadily over the past decade, and college administrators expect this trend to continue or accelerate. Despite the growing popularity of online education, one major critique in the sciences is that students are not trained in the hands-on skills they may need for the workforce, graduate school, or professional school. For example, the Association of American Medical Colleges has recommended that medical schools evaluate applicants on their motor skills and observation skills, yet many online biology programs do not offer opportunities for students to develop these skills. In on-campus biology programs, students commonly develop these skills through hands-on animal dissections, but educators have struggled with how to teach dissections in an online environment. We designed a fully online undergraduate biology course that includes at-home, hands-on dissections of eight vertebrate specimens. Over three course offerings, we evaluated changes in four student outcomes: anatomical self-efficacy, confidence in laboratory skills, perceptions of support, and concerns about dissections. Here, we describe how we implemented at-home dissections in the online course and show that students taking the course gained anatomical self-efficacy and confidence in multiple laboratory skills. Based on open-ended responses, the students perceived that their experiences with the at-home dissections facilitated these gains. These results demonstrate that at-home, hands-on laboratories are a viable approach for teaching practical skills to students in fully online courses. We encourage science instructors to introduce at-home laboratories into their online courses, and we provide recommendations for instructors interested in implementing at-home laboratories.

Topic Modeling and Analysis: Comparing the Most Common Topics in 19th-Century Novels Written by Female Writers

Women authors from the 19th-century have had a profound impact on the literary world due to their critical approach to and inclusion of various so-cial phenomena within their work, such as women's rights, sexuality, and human psychology. This paper seeks to contribute to the discussion by quantifying thematic similarities in eight select novels by various female authors of the 19th-century. These novels were chosen due to their contribution to literature and their popularity, common use in college courses around the world, and the prominence of the female authors. This study included utilizing a programming environment known as R Studio to perform a topic model. Performing a topic model allowed for the discernment of ten main themes or topics that can be generally seen across all eight selected novels, and by extension, 19th-century literature by female authors. The research found initial evidence to sup-port the general understanding of said literature as an endeavor of the themes of social critique and in-dividual consciousness; however, the results were not absolute in conclusion because of the limited size of the corpus. A larger corpus of documents (novels) is necessary to reach further conclusions.

Adjuncts Unite! The Struggle to Unionize, Administrative Response, and Building a Bigger Movement

In the last decade, adjuncts have become the dominant faculty type at most colleges and universities, making up to 80 percent of those teaching college courses. Their conditions and struggles have been well documented in terms of their compensation and working conditions. Adjuncts have begun to organize across the nation, while also fighting for a broader movement, most notably through Service Employees International Union’s (SEIU) Faculty Forward Campaign, along with others. However, institutions of higher learning have been fighting back against these efforts in the same manners that for-profit companies have done in the past. This paper demonstrates the conflict as well as providing a framework for something bigger.

College-Based Transition Services' Impact on Self-Determination for Youth With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

Most youth in transition services with labels of intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) have poorer employment outcomes than their peers with other or without disabilities. One alternative approach to address this challenge provides youth with IDD access to transition services in the context of a college or university campus. College-based transition services (CBTS) provide students with IDD access to college courses, internships, and employment during their final 2 to 3 years of secondary education. A quasi-experimental design evaluation of one college-based transition services model, Think College Transition, found that, after controlling for student baseline scores, the college-based transition services had a significant effect on students' scores of self-determination at post-test. Implications for further refining the model are discussed.

Should Students with AP Credit Repeat Coursework in College? A Multilevel Analysis

Research on the Advanced Placement (AP) program generally shows that students scoring 4s and 5s on AP exams outperform their non-AP peers in subsequent college courses. However, faculty and academic advisors often suggest that students with AP credit should repeat prerequisite courses in college before attempting advanced coursework. We compared grades of 20,409 students in 42 subsequent courses across three groups: students who used AP credit as a prerequisite, students who earned AP credit but repeated the prerequisite courses in college, and students without AP credit. Results with two-level cross-sectional multilevel modeling showed that AP students performed similarly in subsequent courses whether they chose to repeat prerequisites or not; both groups outperformed non-AP students with similar academic backgrounds.

Rethinking Assessment: Replacing Traditional Exams with Paper Reviews

The abrupt shift to remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic left faculty at a loss of how to administer exams, which are common methods of summative assessment in college courses. This study evaluates students’ perceptions of an alternative assessment method in which they complete Paper Review Forms on relevant primary literature in a majors microbiology course.

THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN STUDENT ENGAGEMENT AND CREATIVITY OF UNDERGRADUATES IN CHINA

The purpose of the study aimed to: (a) determine to what extent undergraduates expect their college courses; (b) measure the degree to what extent what degree undergraduates engage in their college courses; (c) measure the degree to what extent undergraduate feel their capability of creativity; and (d) examine the degree to which student engagement and their creativity are associated. The study applied a non-experimental, correlational design and used survey responses from 431 randomly selected undergraduates to address the research questions. The findings are as follows. First, the majority of the students have high expectation on their courses and they put feedback as their first priority. Second, most of the Chinese students still attach great importance to their homework. However, the low percentage in reflection shows that the students still lack the habit of doing self-reflection. Third, Chinese undergraduates have fair creativity ability and the students scored their creativity on behavior highest and the creativity on knowledge system lowest. Fourth, student engagement has a positive relation to their creativity on knowledge system, creativity on behaviors, creativity on personalities and creativity on innovative thinking. Among which, the students’ enhanced engagement has a most direct impact on their creativity on behaviors.

Advanced Placement Course Credit and Undergraduate Student Success in Gateway Science Courses

Approximately two million students take Advanced Placement (AP) examinations annually. However, departmental policies that allow students to replace introductory courses with AP credit greatly vary within and across universities, even across relatively similar universities. This study examines the impact of AP credit policies on subsequent course success in Biology, Chemistry, and Physics at six large public research universities (N = 48,230 students). Examining average treatment effects for students skipping college courses using inverse-probability weights with regression adjustment, we found that students who skipped actually performed similarly well or better in subsequent courses than students who did not skip, even in contexts where lower AP scores were accepted. We also discovered wide variation in percentage of students who chose to skip when meeting their local policies. Therefore, to reduce unnecessary coursework that is burdensome for both students and universities, we suggest that departments consider modifying AP credit policies and that advisors consider encouraging students to skip when they have eligible AP scores.