The expectations gap -- the difference between the level at which high schools prepare students and the preparation colleges expect -- is believed to be accountable for hindering access to, and success in, higher education. It has been largely attributed to misalignment of priorities and lack of communication among policy makers and educators and…

Students in an animal physiology course are required to have completed prerequisite cell biology and genetics courses that include discussion of basic properties and functions of the cell membrane. However, while many students remember basic information about membrane structure, they often have difficulty relating that structure to membrane…

This article provides the first causal evidence of a system-wide corequisite reform in Tennessee, which mainstreams underprepared students into college-level courses with concurrent support. Using regression discontinuity and difference-in-regression-discontinuity designs, we find that, for those on the margin of college level, students placed…

A required first-year laboratory course was overhauled into a semester-long biosciences course-based undergraduate research experience (BioCURE) with a goal of enhancing learning and improving retention. Student attributes and outcomes were continually monitored by the University's Institutional Research office over a 5-year period and compared…

In the past 10 years, new data science courses and programs have proliferated at the collegiate level. As faculty and administrators enter the race to provide data science training and attract new students, the road map for teaching data science remains elusive. In 2019, 69 college and university faculty teaching data science courses and…

The transition of the educational system in the Philippines vastly affects basic and higher education. A mismatch of pre-requisite Mathematics learning competencies from the basic education level occurred when the student reached higher education. This descriptive-developmental method of the study utilized the developed contextualized learning…

Revisiting the seminal 2010 Nolan and Temple Lang article on the role of computing in the statistics curricula, we discuss several trends that have emerged over the last ten years. The rise of data science has coincided with a broadening audience for learning statistics and using computational packages and tools. It has also increased the need for…

This study attempted to answer whether strategically designed and placed metacognitive prompts within an online prerequisite teacher education course can make a difference in the amount and quality of student self-reported use of metacognitive strategies. The study found significant metacognitive results for students in an online introductory…

My dissertation evaluates two efforts to improve undergraduate economics education---the College Fed Challenge (CFC) competition and requiring intermediate algebra as a prerequisite for taking introductory economics courses. Using survey data of undergraduate students who participated in the CFC competition and a control group of students who did…

Consumer electronics are creating huge job markets for graduates with the programming back-ground, and more and more computer science departments are launching embedded software subjects to meet this demand. However, most students majoring computer science do not have the background in electronics, or even circuits. Due to this reason, how to…

A personalized and media-rich learning framework called "Knowledge and Curriculum Integration Ecosystem" (KACIE) has been developed and implemented in a junior-level fluid mechanics course in Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, and Spring 2018, in a prominent HBCU. This model shares characteristics of blended instruction as well as a…

There is a low enrollment of African American high school students in advanced mathematics. High school advanced mathematics are prerequisites to college calculus, one of the basic courses in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines. African Americans earned only 7.6% of all bachelor's degrees in science, technology,…

Given the recent interest in the use of video self-modeling (VSM) to provide instruction within iPod apps and other pieces of handheld mobile assistive technologies, investigating appropriate prerequisite skills for effective use of this intervention is particularly timely and relevant. To provide additional information regarding the efficacy of…

Seventy undergraduate class sections were examined from the database of Astronomy Diagnostic Test (ADT) results of Deming and Hufnagel to determine if course format correlated with ADT normalized gain scores. Normalized gains were calculated for four different classroom scenarios: lecture, lecture with discussion, lecture with lab, and lecture…

This study investigated the effects of two sequences of instruction--theory-to-application and application-to-theory--on medical students' cognitive preferences in preclinical science teaching. Results indicate that presenting an example of the clinical application of biochemical theory before presenting the theory itself increased students'…