Two-year public colleges educate more than 50% of all U.S. undergraduates, yet graduation rates (29%) fall far below their 4-year counterparts (63%). It is critical for students of 2-year public institutions that their faculty have the appropriate knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) to effectively guide students toward graduation. This study…

Acid-base chemistry is a key reaction motif taught in postsecondary organic chemistry courses. More specifically, concepts from the Lewis acid-base model are broadly applicable to understanding mechanistic ideas such as electron density, nucleophilicity, and electrophilicity; thus, the Lewis model is fundamental to explaining an array of reaction…

This report examines the extent to which student characteristics, achievement, and postsecondary plans can predict the likelihood of college attendance. The report compares students' self-reported plans in Spring 2019 with subsequent college attendance through the 2019-2020 school year. The postsecondary plans used in this report are obtained from…

In this study, I investigated the effectiveness of a creativity-support system that I developed in the level editor of a learning game called "Physics Playground" on improving college students' creativity. Moreover, I investigated the validity and reliability of an in-game assessment of creativity to measure students' creativity.…

There are two primary means to prevent the abuse of collegiality and transform it into a shield to protect the most vulnerable. First, colleges and universities should follow the examples of their peers by developing clear definitions of what types of behavior constitute collegiality and what types of activity are protected as academic freedom or…

The lack of an engaging pedagogy and the highly competitive atmosphere in introductory science courses tend to discourage students from pursuing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors. Once in a STEM field, academic and social integration has been long thought to be important for students' persistence. Yet, it is rarely…

When people read questions like "How many animals of each kind did Moses take on the ark?", many mistakenly answer "2" despite knowing that Noah sailed the ark. This "Moses illusion" occurs when names share semantic features. Two experiments examined whether shared "visual" concepts (facial features)…

The present study examined the psychometric properties and construct validity of scores derived from the Interpersonal Needs Questionnaire (INQ) using latent variable modeling with 5 independent samples varying in age and level of psychopathology. The INQ was derived from the interpersonal theory of suicide and was developed to measure thwarted…

In the present study, we describe the innovative use of the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) Comprehensive Basic Science Examination (CBSE) as a progress test during the preclerkship medical curriculum. The main aim of this study was to provide external validation of internally developed multiple-choice assessments in a new medical…

Objective: In recent years, developmental education (DE) reform has led to a restructuring of the placement process, redesigning of course instructional modalities, or implementing student support services to supplement developmental coursework. In Florida, recent legislative changes allowed students to opt out of placement testing and enroll…

Given the serious consequences of making ill-fated admissions and funding decisions for applicants to graduate and professional school, it is important to rely on sound evidence to optimize such judgments. Previous meta-analytic research has demonstrated the generalizable validity of the "GRE"® General Test for predicting academic…

The current article presents the findings on the development of a student evaluation instrument in which course evaluation is directly tied to student learning outcomes. With a committee consisting of instructors from six distinct disciplines brought together as part of a working group for this purpose, the instrument was developed utilizing…

The authors examined the psychometric properties of the Counseling Competencies Scale (CCS; University of Central Florida Counselor Education Faculty, 2009), an instrument designed to assess trainee competencies as measured in their counseling skills, dispositions, and behaviors. There was strong internal consistency for the 4-factor model for…

Community colleges play a vital role in postsecondary education, enrolling more than one in every three postsecondary students. While their importance has grown over the past 50 years, their students' success rates remain low. Consequently, community college stakeholders are searching with mounting urgency for approaches that increase students'…

The purpose of this study was to assess the merit of the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal as a pre-admission criterion in conjunction with the frequently utilized admission criteria of the college prerequisite grade point average and the National League of Nursing pre-admission test. Data were collected from 192 first-year nursing…