This exploratory study aims to contribute to the limited literature regarding the characteristics of STEM gatekeeper courses (Seymour & Hewitt, 1997; Suresh, 2006; Weston et al., 2019; Vyas & Reid, 2023) and their role in student retention and attrition by centering issues of ableism and racism (Annamma et al., 2013). I argue that…

High Impact Practices are defined as teaching and learning strategies designed to benefit college students through challenging yet confidence-building coursework, and through establishing connections to faculty, peers, and community, among other positive impacts. The ten High Impact Practices recognized by the American Association of Colleges and…

Sixty percent of college freshmen entering American colleges and universities were unprepared for college level discussion and analytical skills. Though the many researchers I detailed in the literature review showed how effective the use of controversial or difficult topics in the classroom as a means for civil discourse was for imparting the…

As higher education institutions go online to reap the benefits of technology and align their programs with a world economy that is increasingly becoming digital, the multimedia learning theory warns of possible challenges. Large device screens have been used to present related information elements of a learning task simultaneously to facilitate…

The promotion of belonging, purpose, and growth mindset through subtle social psychological interventions has been shown to positively impact student outcomes (Lazowski & Hulleman, 2016; Walton & Cohen, 2007; Yeager & Walton, 2011; Yeager et al., 2016). This study explores how instructor messaging and intentional course design can…

This study focuses on creating a reliable and valid instrument to measure high school students' perceptions of academic challenge. The research is divided into four phases: qualitative analysis, item development, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), and validation. Initial data from college students' retrospective views and high school students'…

Secondary piano and music theory are typically taught in two parallel and required sequences within the Undergraduate Music Major curriculum. The overlapping concepts presented in these sequences provide frequent opportunities for mutual reinforcement; however, due to a variety of issues, course content is not always aligned across theory and…

Digital storytelling is a promising method to improve the quality of online learning. Digital stories are short videos using multimedia elements. Digital stories can be instructional, narrative, or informative. Digital stories can be categorized in several different ways, but most often as personal narratives, instructional videos, or historical…

With the increase in online course enrollments each year, there is a continued examination of online course persistence, particularly in accelerated online courses. This examination of online course persistence has typically examined individual learner factors as contributors to persistence. However, research examining the institutional and…

This study examines the impact of high school academic indicators and participation in the federally funded Upward Bound program on college graduation rates for first-generation, low-income students. Specifically the extent to which participation in the federally funded TRIO Upward Bound program and related factors--high school GPA, course rigor,…

A well-run introductory CS1 course is essential for all students within CS education. CS1 is necessary to keep students in the major and important to attract non-majors to the CS field. Unfortunately, there are many well-known issues that most CS1 courses have in common: high drop rates, low retention, high student stress, student struggle,…

Software is an integral part of our lives. It controls the cars we drive every day, the ships we send into space, and even our toasters. It is everywhere and we can easily download more. Software solves many real-world problems and satisfies many needs. Thus, unsurprisingly, there is a rising demand for software engineers to maintain existing…

The purpose of this study was to examine the use and cognitive load associated with Open Educational Resources (OERS) and Affordable Digital Textbook (ADT) among prelicensure Baccalaureate of Nursing students in an asynchronous on-line health policy course. OERS and ADT provide low student cost curriculum options for nursing faculty. The…

Hundreds of thousands of K-12 children in the United States are enrolled in online K-12 virtual schools that consistently report poor academic outcomes. There is a need to assess how well instructors in a synchronous online environment present new material to learners in a way that best aligns with how the brain manages and integrates new…

Since the beginning of the development of massive open online courses (MOOCs), these and other online learning environments have been considered as potential partial solutions to some persistent problems in higher education. These learning environments, while they have great educational value, have not been as effective as they could be, because…