Compulsory attendance in communication skills courses offered at colleges of engineering seems to be a problematic issue for many students because it prevents them from performing well in such courses. Many students believe that time spent on these courses comes at the expense of focusing on core courses and worsens their overall performance in…

Strands in the extant literature show many students graduate from high school illprepared to be successful in the postsecondary environment. The purpose of this study is to better understand best practices for achieving first-year student success within the realm of higher education. First-year college students may experience challenges in…

This dissertation examines the impacts of a last-dollar promise program on high school-to-college enrollments at a very large community college (VLCC) district in Texas. The research intends to add to the current literature on the growing popularity of promise programs at two-year community colleges. Specifically, this quantitative study examines…

This research provides new empirical evidence of the gender gap in university studies in the economics-business area based on econometric analysis (mean difference, OLS, quantile regression, logit/probit). The sample includes 717 first-year students of the 2016-2020 economics, business administration and management, and marketing degree courses at…

Engineering education research can benefit from comprehensive tools for assessing student self-concept and its relationship to identity development. This research addresses this gap by introducing a novel framework for evaluating engineering self-concept and exploring its influence on identity status transitions among first-year students. Key…

Calls for research in multimodality and multiliteracies have provided the field of writing studies with theories and outcomes suggesting that more research is necessary in FYC students' multimodal composing processes and literacy practices. Much of the research in New Literacies Studies (NLS) focuses on students' final products. This dissertation…

M-bridge was a sequential multiple assignment randomized trial (SMART) that aimed to develop a resource-efficient adaptive preventive intervention (API) to reduce binge drinking in first-year college students. The main results of M-bridge suggested no difference, on average, in binge drinking between students randomized to APIs versus…

Positive teacher-student relationships have been identified as important for teacher and student well-being and for high-quality teaching and learning processes and outcomes. However, research on the perceptions of teachers in higher education on a high-quality relationship with students and the perceived antecedents is still scarce. This study…

Abstraction in business processes (BP) modeling arises from the recognition of similarities to the detriment of its differences. However, teaching modeling to beginning students in the context of process management is a hard task to perform, given the high level of abstraction required for these students to develop. This paper uses BP fragments to…

The purpose of this study was to examine first-year change in appreciative attitudes toward Muslims by non-Muslim students. To this end, we longitudinally assessed 6229 undergraduate students at the beginning and end of their first year in college. We performed a hierarchical linear modeling analysis and found evidence that Muslim appreciation can…

Objective: This study explored the burgeoning youth practice of possessing a fake, secondary Instagram account known as a "Finsta" in relation to exposure to alcohol-related content and college drinking. Participants: First-year university students with at least a primary Instagram account (N = 296) completed online surveys. Method:…

Mathematics education research has been aware that calculus students can draw on single definite integrals as a model to compute areas (SImA), without minding whether the function changes its sign in the assigned interval. In this study, I take conceptual and empirical steps to understand this phenomenon in more depth. Building on Fischbein's…

Contribution: This article proposes and applies a new systemic 3-D model and a methodology for empathy awareness and development, integrating different partial approaches found in the literature for developing empathy as a transversal competence. Background: Empathy is a competence linked to collaboration and teamwork. Perspective taking (PT) is…

This article focuses on first-year university students' understanding of concepts related to third-degree polynomial and trigonometric functions that they encountered during their study of Grade 12 mathematics. In this study three online questions from two first-year mathematics quizzes at the University of KwaZulu-Natal were analysed. The first…

The first academic year involves a variety of challenges students must overcome to maintain their commitment to enter the teaching profession. Students can build on their initial experience in the second semester, while everything is new in the first semester. This longitudinal study investigates the interplay of academic self-efficacy and time…