Students often hold strong attitudes regarding topics they encounter during their studies, and many instructors feel that these attitudes can have strong effects on students' performance. We characterized students' attitudes toward evolution and investigated the influence of students' attitudes (precourse and post-course) regarding evolution on their performance in an evolution course, measured as their final grade. We found our students to hold positive attitudes toward evolution; these attitudes became more positive following the course. The most significant change in attitude occurred in the group of students initially undecided toward evolution. We also found that attitudes prior to the course had little influence on later achievement; however, at the end of the course, students' attitudes were positively related to final grades, although the effect was small. We argue that pedagogical techniques directly addressing students' attitudes help reduce the influence of attitudes (especially prior attitudes) on achievement. Anecdotal evidence from instructors has suggested that students' attitudes toward the subjects they study influence their performance in those subjects. In his meta-analysis of research investigating relationships between attitude and achievement, Willson (1983) concluded that attitude had a modest effect on later achievement for college students. However, recent research has been equivocal with respect to the relationship between attitude and achievement in science courses. For example, Willson, Akerman, & Malave (2000) found no association between students' attitudes and their later achievement in a college physics course. Similarly, Nicoll & Francisco (2001) reported that students' attitudes about math ability and about a particular course did not predict achievement in college-level physical chemistry. In contrast, Freedman (1997) found that attitude was positively and moderately correlated with achievement for high school
Shared vision is an important process for change projects, serving to amplify success, increase participation, and erode the divide between project leaders and constituents. Yet there are few empirical examinations of the process of building shared vision within academic departments. Using focus groups and participant observation, this study examines shared vision development within 13 large-scale change projects in engineering and computer science higher education. We find that teams of faculty, staff, administrators, and students built shared vision with stakeholders through co-orientation, formational communication, and recognition of stakeholder autonomy. Our results delineate practices for developing shared vision for academic change projects and demonstrate the benefits of inclusive stakeholder empowerment.
Cory is currently a NSF Graduate Research Fellow pursuing a Masters in Industrial and Systems Engineering and a Ph.D. in Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. He has worked to develop multiple entrepreneurial education efforts including an upper-level, interdisciplinary course on starting companies and a freshman engineering course on innovation and entrepreneurship. He has participated in trainings for and implemented both the Ice House Entrepreneurship and the Lean LaunchPad pedagogies. Cory has experience in professional engineering, higher education, and high school education. It is this combination of experience that led him to Virginia Tech to pursue a doctoral degree in Engineering Education. His professional and research interests include understanding engineering faculty members' decisions and behaviors, the institutional structures that influence both engineering education and entrepreneurship, and the interactions between educational pedagogy and entrepreneurship.
Despite the importance of professional development, for most graduate students as up-andcoming faculty members professional development is informal at best. Graduate programs often emphasize gaining technical knowledge, skills, and abilities through courses and research projects, but provide less opportunity for future faculty members to gain experience with teaching, service, communication, assessment, proposal writing, etc. To provide this experience, we developed the Rising Engineering Education Faculty Experience (REEFE). Founded on theoretical and practical models of graduate student development, REEFE is an innovative faculty apprenticeship program for engineering education graduate students that places students in visiting faculty member positions at host schools. This paper describes the foundations of REEFE and the program itself. We also offer lessons learned from the host school, sending school, and participants based on prior REEFE implementations. We hope our learnings prompt discussions regarding how to effectively prepare future engineering education faculty.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.