Teacher reports on school organizational functioning, curricular processes, and student engagement are a reliable means of ascertaining valuable information about classroom climate and learning outcomes. Yet, to date, the vast majority of quantitative teacher-reported data, where teachers themselves reach judgments about educational processes, have been summary rather than lesson specific, where teachers evaluate classroom experiences at the moment of instruction. In this study, we examine how lesson-specific teacher survey reports generate insight into the relationship between student engagement and instruction. Results suggest that this underutilized design has significant application for procuring data on within-teacher variability in practice, especially in studies focused on student engagement, active change in teacher practice, and/or teacher buy-in as a mediator of outcomes. Ultimately, we argue that lesson-specific teacher reports may be a valuable tool for researchers in measuring instructional change.
Boosting engagement with educational software using near wins
Boosting engagement with educational software has been
promoted as a means of improving student performance. Various engagement
factors have been explored, including choice, personalization,
badges, bonuses, and competition. We examine two promising and relatively
understudied manipulations from the realm of gambling: the nearwin
effect and anticipation. The near-win effect occurs when an individual
comes close to achieving a goal, e.g., getting two cherries and a
lemon in a slot machine. Anticipation refers to the build-up of suspense
as an outcome is revealed, e.g., revealing cherry-cherry-lemon in that
order drives expectations of winning more than revealing lemon-cherrycherry.
Gambling psychologists have long studied how near-wins affect
engagement in pure-chance games but it is difficult to do the same in
an educational context where outcomes are based on skill. In this paper,
we manipulate the display of outcomes in a manner that allows us to
introduce artificial near-wins largely independent of a student’s performance.
In a study involving thousands of students using an online math
tutor, we examine how this manipulation affects a behavioral measure
of engagement—whether or not a student repeats a lesson. We find a
near-win effect on engagement when the ‘win’ indicates to the student
that they have attained critical competence on a lesson—the competence
that allows them to continue to the next lesson. Nonetheless, when we
experimentally induce near wins in a randomized controlled trial, we do
not obtain a reliable effect of the near win. We discuss this mismatch of
results in terms of the role of anticipation on making near wins effective.
We conclude by describing manipulations that might increase the effect
of near wins on engagement.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1631428
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10074163
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Nineteenth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education
- Volume:
- 19
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 171-175
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
more » « less
-
Student engagement, especially among Engineering and Computer science majors (E/CS), has been a priority for researchers. Although considerable efforts have been made to improve college students' engagement and interest, underrepresented minority groups and first-generation students are still at risk of dropping out of engineering majors due to lack of inclusiveness, motivation, and other related factors. According to Kuh (2008), student participation in High-Impact Educational Practices (HIEP) is correlated with student outcomes such as persistence, performance, achievement, and intent to complete their current major. The present study reviews the existing National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE, 2012, 2017) data from two western land-grant universities to fully capture participation through the survey of first-year students and seniors (N = 674). The HIEP considered include service-learning, learning communities, research with faculty, internship or field experience, study abroad, and culminating senior experience. These practices are designed to encourage meaningful interactions between faculty and students, foster collaboration with students within different demographics groups, and facilitate learning outside the classroom. Insights were gleaned from how the students interacted with HIEP based on special characteristics such as sex, race, age, enrollment status, and residence. The purpose of the present study is to examine the extent to which E/CS students participate in HIEP and its effects on student outcomes. This study also offers comparisons or possible relationships between student demographics, student success, and HIEP involvement. For example, the participation rates of HIEP on different engineering and computer science majors, including civil, chemical, electrical, mechanical, and materials engineering, etc., are analyzed to examine the practices that work for a particular E/CS major. The present study reports findings from NSSE 2012 and 2017 surveys. Results show that among the E/CS seniors, service-learning, learning community, and study abroad program are the HIEP with the lowest participation rate with 41% (service-learning), 59% (learning community), and 68% (study abroad program), indicating that they do not plan to engage in these practices in their senior year. Conversely, internships and culminating senior experiences had the most participation among E/CS seniors with 52% (internships) and 68% (culminating senior experiences. Interestingly, first-year students showed a significant interest to participate in the following HIEP: internships, study abroad programs, and culminating senior experiences – with 76% (internships), 47% (study abroad program), and 68% (culminating senior experiences) indicating plans to engage in these practices. Finally, findings show that participation or engagement in HIEP is a significant predictor of student learning outcomes. Findings of this review may serve as a guide for future research in E/CS student participation in HIEP. The paper concludes with theoretical and practical implications of the findings on student engagement and learning. Key words: NSSE, high impact educational practices, Engagementmore » « less
-
Effects of High Impact Educational Practices on Engineering and Computer Science Student Participation, Persistence, and Success at Land Grant Universities: Award# RIEF-1927218 – Year 2 Abstract Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), this project aims to investigate and identify associations (if any) that exist between student participation in High Impact Educational Practices (HIP) and their educational outcomes in undergraduate engineering and computer science (E/CS) programs. To understand the effects of HIP participation among E/CS students from groups historically underrepresented and underserved in E/CS, this study takes place within the rural, public university context at two western land grant institutions (one of which is an Hispanic-serving institution). Conceptualizing diversity broadly, this study considers gender, race and ethnicity, and first-generation, transfer, and nontraditional student status to be facets of identity that contribute to the diversity of academic programs and the technical workforce. This sequential, explanatory, mixed-methods study is guided by the following research questions: 1. To what extent do E/CS students participate in HIP? 2. What relationships (if any) exist between E/CS student participation in HIP and their educational outcomes (i.e., persistence in major, academic performance, and graduation)? 3. How do contextual factors (e.g., institutional, programmatic, personal, social, financial, etc.) affect E/CS student awareness of, interest in, and participation in HIP? During Project Year 1, a survey driven quantitative study was conducted. A survey informed by results of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) from each institution was developed and deployed. Survey respondents (N = 531) were students enrolled in undergraduate E/CS programs at either institution. Frequency distribution analyses were conducted to assess the respondents’ level of participation in extracurricular HIPs (i.e., global learning and study aboard, internships, learning communities, service and community-based learning, and undergraduate research) that have been shown in the literature to positively impact undergraduate student success. Further statistical analysis was conducted to understand the effects of HIP participation, coursework enjoyability, and confidence at completing a degree on the academic success of underrepresented and nontraditional E/CS students. Exploratory factor analysis was used to derive an "academic success" variable from five items that sought to measure how students persevere to attain academic goals. Results showed that a linear relationship in the target population exists and that the resultant multiple regression model is a good fit for the data. During the Project Year 2, survey results were used to develop focus group interview protocols and guide the purposive selection of focus group participants. Focus group interviews were conducted with a total of 27 undergraduates (12 males, 15 females, 16 engineering students, 11 computer science students) across both institutions via video conferencing (i.e., ZOOM) during the spring and fall 2021 semesters. Currently, verified focus group transcripts are being systematically analyzed and coded by a team of four trained coders to identify themes and answer the research questions. This paper will provide an overview of the preliminary themes so far identified. Future project activities during Project Year 3 will focus on refining themes identified during the focus group transcript analysis. Survey and focus group data will then be combined to develop deeper understandings of why and how E/CS students participate in the HIP at their university, taking into account the institutional and programmatic contexts at each institution. Ultimately, the project will develop and disseminate recommendations for improving diverse E/CS student awareness of, interest in, and participation in HIP, at similar land grant institutions nationally.more » « less
-
In an era of high-stakes accountability and widespread calls for improved student performance in science, technology, engineering, and math (National Research Council, 2002), it is critical that we also focus on how to support and enhance teachers’ learning. Teachers have long been understood to play a key role in the performance of students (e.g., Nye, Konstantopoulos, & Hedges, 2004). Educational policymakers have become increasingly focused on “value-added” approaches to gauging teacher performance (McCaffrey, Lockwood, Koretz, Louis, & Hamilton, 2004), which attempt to directly link the contribution of individual teachers to their students’ subsequent test performance, in both the near and far term. We take the position that, no matter what one thinks about the current testing and evaluation regime, it makes sense to conduct research to improve our understanding of how to support teachers’ ongoing learning and efforts to improve their practice related to student outcomes. This paper reports on a study of teacher learning in a context that is especially apt in the current policy climate – how teachers learn to teach a curriculum associated with a recently-revised high stakes examination. In particular, we report early results from a study of high school teachers learning to teach the revised Advanced Placement Biology curriculum as they prepare students for a high-stakes examination. We examine the role of professional development in supporting teachers’ learning to use the revised Advanced Placement Biology curriculum and the relationship between teachers’ professional development choices and subsequent student performance on the Advanced Placement Biology examination.more » « less
-
Teachers' efforts to support students, both academically and socially, can play a role in how high school students productively engage with mathematics in the moment. To examine the connection between teacher support and student engagement, we conducted an exploratory mixed-methods study combining data from 20 high school classroom observations with student self-reports taken during the observed activity. Our findings indicate that when teachers provide academic support to their students during a lesson, they are also likely to provide social support. Higher teacher support of both kinds correlates with higher student self-efficacy, as well as social and cognitive engagement. Investigating relationships between observations of teaching and students' self-reports of engagement in-the-moment is a potentially revealing approach for uncovering engaging instructional strategies in secondary mathematics classrooms.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- The DOI is not currently available.
