Background: Working effectively in a collaborative team is not only an outcome required by ABET but also one that scholars and practitioners recognize as necessary for being a successful professional engineer. Technology-based solutions hold promise for supporting collaboration; however, research has shown that technology alone is not sufficient to develop students' collaborative skills. The authors created a combined pedagogical and technological environment-Google Drive Environment for Collaboration (GDEC)-to support collaborative problem-solving during a semester-long team undergraduate human factor engineering design project. The environment uniquely used an "off-the-shelf" tool to implement collaborative scripts to take advantage of the affordances offered by the cloud-based collaboration technology environment that may contribute positively toward learning and collaboration. We examined the following research questions: What is the relationship between the use of an online collaboration environment and student learning outcomes? What is the relationship between the use of an online collaboration environment and student collaboration skills? We used individual and per team collaborative contributions to GDEC as the independent measure of collaboration, and project scores, homework, and exam scores as dependent variables to show evidence of student learning. GDEC contributions were collected for the three project phases and regressed to student learning measures. Pre/poststudent collaboration skills were measured using the Dimensions of Teamwork Survey. Student open-ended responses to per phase surveys were analyzed for additional evidence of collaborative skills and use of the GDEC environment. Results: Regression analyses clustered by group showed statistically significant relationships between: Individual student contributions to the collaborative environment and homework and project and second exam scores. Pre-to post collaboration skill scores on all Dimensions of Teamwork scales increased; however, the differences were not statistically significant. Conclusions: We argue these results are promising as the combination of pedagogical strategies with the readily available off-the-shelf technology tools used to create GDEC and can be easily replicated. Further, student comments indicated they found the GDEC environment easy to use and effective, and they intended to use similar tools for future collaborative activities.
VonAalst (2010) used Google Scholar to identify the top four science education research journals: Journal of Research in Science Teaching, Science Education, International Journal of Science Education, and Journal of Science Teacher Education. U.S. institutional productivity for 2000-2009 for the above journals was the data for the study. The major domestic science education programs were identified for raw and weighted counts. For the top 10, there was a 100% agreement with different ranks while there was only a 60% agreement among the bottom 10. These results demonstrated that dominant science education faculty published their research in multiple empirical journals.Keywords: institutional/faculty productivity, science education research journals, domestic higher education institutions IntroductionThe first purpose of this study was to identify the major domestic science education programs based upon recognized research journals. VonAalst (2010) used Google Scholar and identified Journal of Research in Science Teaching (JRST), Science Education (SE), and International Journal of Science Education (IJSE) as the top three market shares for science education. The Journal of Science Teacher Education (JSTE) had the next greatest number of articles published. These four journals collectively were used to establish U.S. institutional productivity. In recording data for the above journals, there were a large number of multiple authors (up to eight); therefore, a second purpose was to compare raw and weighted count to determine institutional productivity.Earlier, Barrow, Settlage and Germann (2008) used eight science education journals (JRST, SE, IJSE, JSTE, Journal of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching, Journal of Elementary Science Education, School Science & Mathematics, and Journal of Science Education and Technology) that publish empirical research to identify the top 30 domestic science education programs for 1990s. They reported variation in journals where research was published. There was a greater agreement between the raw and weighted counts for the top 10 than bottom 10. Related LiteratureInstitutional research is either perception (rankings based upon perceptions [e.g., U.S. News and World Report's annual ranking of best graduate schools]) or productivity (e.g., faculty members' publications). Recently, the National Research Council (2010) published an extensive U.S. graduate review, but most areas of education, including science education, were excluded. No published study based upon perceptions on science education was located; although, many science educators probably have a personal view of the dominant programs.The vast majority of U.S. institutional research studies have been productivity oriented. Three fields (library and information science, counseling psychology, and reading/literacy education) have varied objective measures over the years.Budd and colleagues (Budd & Seavey, 1996;Budd, 2000;Adkins & Budd, 2006) have conducted a series of reviews of library information and sc...
The goal of this study is to examine how reform-based science teaching has been implemented and whether reform-based science teaching has promoted education equity through being available and beneficial for students from different socioeconomic status (SES) family backgrounds in the U.S. and Taiwan. No existing study used large-scale assessment to investigate the implementation and outcomes of the science reform movement in the U.S. and Taiwan. This study was developed to fill this gap using the Program of International Student Assessment (PISA) 2006 data including 5,611 students in the United States and 5995 students in Taiwan. A Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) was used to classify students into different science learning subgroups to understand how broadly reform-based science learning has been implemented in classrooms. The results showed that students in the U.S. had more opportunity to learn science through the reform-based learning activities than students in Taiwan. Latent Class Regression (LCR) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) were used for examining the availability of reform-based science teaching in both countries. The results showed that in the U.S., higher SES students had more opportunity to learn science reform-based learning activities. On the other hand, students' SES had no association with reform-based science learning in Taiwan. Regression Mixture Modeling and SEM were used to examine whether there was an association between reform-based science teaching and SES-associated achievement gaps. The results found no evidence to support the claim that reform-based science teaching helps to minimize SES-associated achievement gaps in both countries.
Technologies. He has worked for many years with the Department of Defense as an instructional systems designer, and has written several technical manuals on leadership and small unit tactics. Christopher's interests include problem-based learning and leadership development.
The purpose of this study was to identify the major science education programs in the United States, where the science education researchers published their research during the first decade of the twenty-first century. This research study of the scholarly productivity of science education programs at United States' institutions of higher education is compared with the last decade of 1990s (Barrow, Settlage, & Germann, 2008) . Each issue of the eight research journals (Journal of Research is Science Teaching, Science Education, International Journal of Science Education, Journal of Science Teacher Education, School Science and Mathematics, Journal of Computers in Math and Science Teaching, Journal of Science Education and Technology, and Journal of Elementary Science Education) published in the 2000sprovided the author(s) and their institutional affiliation. The resultant ranking of raw and weighted counts for the top 30 U.S science educations programs shows variation in journals where research was published. There were almost 50% of the 2000s top 30 institutions which were not listed for the 1990s. Potential explanations for variations and uses for ranking are discussed.
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