Search for: All records

Growing literature documents the promise of active learning instruction in engaging students in college classrooms. Accordingly, faculty professional development (PD) programs on active learning have become increasingly popular in postsecondary institutions; yet, quantitative evidence on the effectiveness of these programs is limited. Using administrative data and an instructor fixed effects approach, we estimate the effect of an active learning PD program on student performance and persistence at a large public institution. Findings indicate that the training improved subsequent persistence in the same field. Using a subset of instructors whose instruction was observed by independent observers, we identify a positive association between training and implementation of active learning teaching practices. These findings provide suggestive evidence that active learning PD has the potential to improve student outcomes. 

To understand instruction during the spring 2020 transition to emergency distance learning (EDL), we surveyed a sample of instructors teaching undergraduate EDL courses at a large university in the southwest. We asked them how frequently they used and how confident they were in their ability to implement each of nine promising practices, both for their spring 2020 EDL course and a time when they previously taught the same course face-to-face (F2F). Using latent class analysis, we examined how behavioral frequencies and confidence clustered to form meaningful groups of instructors, how these groups differed across F2F and EDL contexts, and what predicted membership in EDL groupings. Results suggest that in the EDL context, instructors fell into one of three profiles in terms of how often they used promising practices: Highly Supportive, Instructor Centered, and More Detached. When moving from the F2F to EDL context, instructors tended to shift “down” in terms of their profile—for example, among F2F Highly Supportive instructors, 34% shifted to the EDL Instructor Centered profile and 30% shifted to the EDL More Detached Profile. Instructors who reported lower self-efficacy for EDL practices were also more likely to end up in the EDL More Detached profile. These results can assist universities in understanding instructors' needs in EDL, and what resources, professional development, and institutional practices may best support instructor and student experiences. 

In the past two decades, one of the most important trends in the US higher education system has been the steady increase in distance education through online courses. College administrators have expressed strong support for online education, signaling that the current online expansion will likely continue. While the supply and demand for online higher education is rapidly expanding, questions remain regarding its potential impact on increasing access, reducing costs, and improving student outcomes. Does online education enhance access to higher education among students who would not otherwise enroll in college? Can online courses create savings for students by reducing funding constraints on postsecondary institutions? Will technological innovations improve the quality of online education? This chapter provides a comprehensive review of existing research on online learning’s impact on access, cost, and student performance in higher education. Our review suggests that online education has the potential to expand access to college, especially among adult learners with multiple responsibilities. Yet, the online delivery format imposes additional challenges to effective instruction and learning. Indeed, existing studies on college courses typically find negative effects of online delivery on course outcomes and the online performance decrement is particularly large among academically less-prepared students. As a result, online courses without strong support to students may exacerbate educational inequities. We discuss a handful of practices that could better support students in online courses, including strategic course offering, student counseling, interpersonal interaction, warning and monitoring, and the professional development of faculty. Yet, college administrative data suggests that high-quality online courses with high degrees of instructor interaction and student support cost more to develop and administer than do face-to-face courses. 

This online course quality rubric was developed to provide a systematic and descriptive benchmark for researchers and practitioners who are striving to develop a culture of high-quality college-level online courses. This rubric differentiates itself from others as it identifies the unique challenges associated with learning in a virtual environment and provides concrete details of how to optimize the design features and instructional practices to ease the challenges. Practitioners and researchers increasingly acknowledge two critical challenges to successful online teaching and learning: the need for stronger self-directed learning skills and greater difficulties in enabling effective interpersonal interactions. These challenges call for the importance of better scaffolding the self-directed learning skills necessary for online success as well as providing clear guidance to navigate the learning process, promoting student agency to engage students actively throughout their learning, and improving presence & interactivity intentionally and visibly. Recognizing the critical role of these three concepts in addressing the unique challenges of online learning, this rubric intends to explain how a particular course component (e.g., learning objective) can be designed to address these concepts. 

Significant advances for optical systems in terms of both performance and packaging are enabled by freeform optical components. Yet, surface form metrology for freeform optics remains a challenge. We developed and investigated a point-cloud cascade optical coherence tomography (C-OCT) technique to address this metrology challenge. The mathematical framework for the working principle of C-OCT is presented. A novel detection scheme is developed to enable high-speed measurements. Experimental results validate the C-OCT technique with the prototype setup demonstrating single-point precision of ±26 nm (∼λ/24 at the He-Ne wavelength), paving the way towards full surface measurements on freeform optical components.

 

This article presents new quasi-experimental evidence regarding the effectiveness of teaching-oriented faculty with tenure-track appointment, a model pioneered at the University of California (UC) system. Using data from six cohorts of students at a UC campus, we examine the impact of initial course-taking with three distinct types of instructors—tenure-track research faculty, tenure-track teaching faculty, and contingent lecturers—on students’ current and subsequent academic outcomes. Descriptive analyses indicate that tenure-track teaching faculty assume a substantially larger teaching load than either research faculty or lecturers. Using a three-way fixed effects model, we find limited evidence supporting differences by faculty type on either current or downstream student outcomes.