Surveys are the preferred approach for collecting data from large numbers of students about their college experiences. Many instruments are locally developed, used a few times and discarded. Others, such as the College Student Experiences Questionnaire (CSEQ) (Pace & Kuh, 1998) and the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) instruments (Astin & Sax, 1999), are nationally normed and administered annually. It is not unusual for items used on nationally normed instruments to be adapted for use on local surveys because researchers perceive them to be "good" and "reliable," especially if psychometric analyses demonstrate that the items are sound.
s newest experimental classroom, the "Collaboration Café," was designed to facilitate active and collaborative learning while also exploring a new classroom design that shares café-style characteristics. The room includes limestone accents, plentiful natural light, and brightly colored seating (Lei 2010). There are high and low bistro-style tables at the center, booths, and soft sofa seating clustered around small coffee tables (see Figures 4.1 and 4.2). The technology in the room includes multiple projection possibilities and collaborative tables that support the sharing of laptop images on video monitors, as well as access to six or more PCs and a networked printer, all to facilitate student engagement with course materials and each other. Unlike other active learning classrooms, the design of the Collaboration Café does not assume any particular pedagogical approach; rather, the space is intended to provide a flexible, technology-rich, collaborative space for faculty to use in whatever ways best enable them to achieve their instructional goals.
Why We Conducted the StudyThe overarching goal of this study was to understand how instructors were using this experimental classroom and whether this new style of classroom provides an environment that facilitates active and collaborative learning.
MethodThe following sections provide details regarding the subjects of this study, the research instruments used, and our data collection methods.
This chapter describes the ongoing development of a survey of students' workplace skills, civic engagement, and global awareness that colleges and universities can use to document their contributions to the public good.
Incentives are often included in survey design because they are known to improve response rates, at least moderately. This paper describes the changes in the response rates when
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