This study investigates the development and evaluation of a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)-based statistics tutor designed to assist students with quantitative analysis methods. The RAG approach was employed to address the well-documented issue of hallucination in Large Language Models (LLMs). A computer tutor was developed that utilizes…

Background: Complex skills, like analytical thinking, are essential in preparing students for future professions. Serious games hold potential to stimulate the online acquisition of such professional skills in an active and experiential way. Objective: Rubrics are proven assessment and evaluation instruments, but were never directly integrated…

Following the switch to remote online teaching in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the plant taxonomy course at the University of Georgia (UGA) switched to iNaturalist for the specimen collection portion of the course requirements. Building off extant rubrics, the instructors designed project guidelines for a fully online plant collection…

This dissertation comprises three complementary studies that aim to advance the understanding and practice of Individualized Education Programs (IEP) and Present Levels of Academic Achievement and Functional Performance (PLAAFP) development in special education. In the first study, we systematically reviewed empirical research measuring IEP…

This qualitative study explored whether novice principals believed their principal development program had adequately prepared them for high-performance ratings on the principal evaluation rubric. Over the past two decades, legislation has stressed that student achievement is an essential component of leadership effectiveness (Pannell &…

Curriculum mapping can be used to visualize, align, and assess the ability of online degree program graduates to meet stated learning outcomes (Rawle et al., 2017). Though consensus has yet to be established on standardized outcomes for curriculum in some disciplines (e.g., criminal justice), educators remain in charge of preparing current and…

Drawing, constructing, and explaining a model of a given abstract phenomenon is a challenging task. In this study, students were engaged in the "Project-Based Inquiry Science (PBIS)-Air Quality" learning unit, as part of their chemistry curriculum. The study aim is to determine how well students understand chemistry conceptually after…

Cooperative Extension professionals are using webinar technologies to accommodate time constraints, travel distances, and limited budgets as well as to reach a broader audience. Although checklists and planning worksheets are readily available, there is a lack of resources to intentionally utilize reflective teaching practice and measure…

This qualitative-interpretive study explored technology as an innovation, design principles of digital badges, the core features of professional learning, and adult learning theory's assumptions to conceptualize digital badge quality and rigor and facilitate digital badge evaluation as a professional learning design. A problem exists in designing…

Laboratory exercises have created benefits in student learning. Making laboratories open ended pushes students to have an independent perspective and to think harder. An open-ended experiment is where students are given the flexibility to develop their own experiments. Outcome-based education is an educational theory that bases each part of an…

Information literacy refers to a set of skills that allow its user to find appropriate resources and use them to develop, define and defend arguments. In many undergraduate programms, including biology and STEM related fields, students are expected to utilise these skills in writing lab reports, paper analyses, and in developing testable…

Quality Matters certification is regarded by many American universities, including the university where the study was conducted, as the industry standard for quality online course design. Although a wide body of research has been completed on Quality Matters rubric effectiveness in changing course design, research was needed to explore faculty…

The purpose of the current study was to examine the effect of utilizing a program based on post-constructivism to develop adult learners' English language fluency. The study started with the literature review and previous studies handling post-constructivism and English language fluency. The researcher nominated a group of pre-intermediate to…

A significant number of instructors, researchers and students have claimed that chemistry is a challenging subject to teach and learn at all education levels. Its main learning difficulties are in line with certain sights of its phenomena that are abstract, and some chemistry teachers do not specify what to be learned and assessed in chemistry…

Introducing undergraduates to the peer-review process helps them understand how scientific evidence is evaluated and communicated. In a large biology course, technical writing was taught through mock peer-review. Students learned to critique original research through a multistep framework, calibrating their assessment skills with class standards.…