The purpose of the study was to supply materials for answers to questions regarding a description of the group of individuals receiving College-Level Examination Program credit including an assessment of the academic progress of the group.Approaching these questions through an examination of related literature revealed common features of other attempts to describe and measure policies and practices of the College-Level Examination Program and similar programs. In the study, consideration was given to the basic values and assumptions that underlie both credit by examination in general and the College-Level Examination Program in particular.The final study population consisted of 246 individuals whose permanent record cards were available at the time the study was made. 284 individuals took College-Level Examination Program General Examinations between December 18, 1969, and January 23,1973.From questions raised by Ball State University Administrators, nine hypotheses were derived.By means of simple manipulation of raw numbers, percentages and extraction of means, and by means of analysis of variance and analysis of covariance techniques, the hypotheses were tested.

Community college transfer students may have to repeat one or more courses at the four-year institution or may have to take more than the required number of courses to obtain a baccalaureate degree. This uncertainty about the transfer of credits and the extra cost in higher education that goes along with it, has come about mainly due to the lack of a working definition for college-level course work. Community colleges need to insure that every course designated as a transfer course will be transferable to a receiving institution. Four-year colleges and universities should expect the courses they accept in transfer to meet the same standards required within their own curricula. The defining characteristics of "college-level" should be identified to facilitate equitable transfer of course credit and insure that transfer students are prepared academically to continue their baccalaureate studies. This study explored the defining characteristics of lower-level college course work in two North Carolina community college and universities, specifically in the areas of study in accounting and business management. Simultaneously, the characteristics of community college-level course work were compared with those of the university. The data gathering methodology utilized the qualitative research method of semi-structured elite-interviewing which allowed for in-dept exploration of the opinions of the knowledgeable individuals involved in the issue being studied. A set of broad, open-ended interview questions were designed to gather information from community college and university professors of accounting and business management. A total of 16 professors were interviewed. The analysis of the interviews included organizing the data into domains; generating categories, themes, and patterns; and comparing and contrasting the two-year analysis with the four-year analysis and the areas of study against each other. There are more similarities than differences in the comments among and between the groups, and the analysis resulted in the identification of ten categories of characteristics defining college-level course work. They include (a) Problem solving using higher level thinking skills, (b) Mastery of the subject matter, (c) Connections within and across disciplines, (d) Student maturity, (e) Essential knowledge base from high school, (f) Course content/professor expectations, (g) Pedagogical issues which include writing, reading, mathematics, student evaluation and textbook, (h) Rigor, (i) Application of the subject matter, and (j) Interpersonal skills. / Ph. D.

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The problem of this study was the effectiveness of directed study as a method of teaching American history at the college level. This method involved the use of small discussion groups, independent reading, and a limited use of special lectures.

The current study was an extension of research reported by Krohn (2010), which showed that daily credit for self-reported participation in designated credit units tended to balance participation across students (i.e., fewer non-participants, more credit-level participants, and fewer dominant participants). The purpose of the current study was to determine if similar results would be achieved by randomly selecting half of the discussion days in designated credit units for participation credit. The study was done in 3 large sections of an undergraduate class (approximately 54 students per class). Students self-recorded their in-class comments each day on specially designed record cards. At the end of each pre-selected unit, instructors randomly selected discussion days and awarded credit based on the number of comments made on the days randomly selected. Three credit points were given for each student’s first comment and two additional points for a second comment. The findings of the current study differed in several ways from those of Krohn’s (2010) comparison study. The differences mainly related to baseline percentages of different levels of participation. Compared to the current study, Krohn’s study had a higher percentage of non-participants, fewer credit-level participants, fewer frequent participants, and more dominant participants. The disparities between the baseline levels of Krohn’s study and the current study made treatment effects more difficult to achieve in the latter study. Nonetheless, there were fewer non-participants and more credit-level and frequent participants during credit units than in non-credit units. Secondarily, a survey was given at the beginning of the course to analyze student beliefs regarding participation. Using the same survey, Krohn (2010) extracted three primary factors: 1) Personal Benefits of Participation, 2) Expectation for Discussion in College Classes, and 3) Personal History and Confidence Regarding Participation. The same three factors were also examined separately and in combination in the current study. Results showed the three-factor model to predict student participation levels better than the total survey. In addition, students were given the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal at the onset of the course. A logistic regression indicated that exam and critical thinking scores, in combination, significantly predicted student participation levels.

The number of American students with insufficient post-secondary mathematical abilities is increasing and the related rate of student attrition increases alongside the upsurge in college developmental programs. As a consequence, the demand for quality remedial mathematics classes is also growing. Institutions that place learners into remedial classes must also fund these same programs and are increasingly faced with disgruntled students, the appearance of having lower standards, and a demoralized faculty. The legal implications concerning placement and access have gone as far as litigation over student rights. The threat of performance based funding means that educational institutions are in need of demonstrably effective mathematical remediation techniques. This study examines the effect of pedagogical style for college-level remedial mathematics students and the effect of the chosen assessment method in determining student success. Specifically, this study explains student achievement for college students exposed to a pedagogical style from either the constructivist or behaviorist foundation as measured with short-answer, rote-knowledge questions and with long-answer, deductive-reasoning questions. Furthermore, consideration of student self-efficacy is investigated in order to account for any variation in instructional method. Ultimately, this study describes the effects of both instruction type and assessment method on the success of college-level remedial mathematics students. The findings in this study reveal quality teaching is of paramount importance in educating the remedial college student. Students from both methods, with instruction being performed with high fidelity, demonstrated statistically significant improvement over the semester. Moreover, the findings in this study further reveal that remedial students with strong reasons to succeed (combined with the quality teaching method) find success in the developmental mathematics classroom regardless of assessment method. In fact, though students tend to score higher on short-answer questions than extended-answer questions, the amount of improvement after a semester of quality teaching is nearly equal in question types under both instructional methods.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Curriculum and Instruction / Jennifer M. Bay-Williams / The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of student attitudes in a college algebra mathematics classroom when lessons are primarily composed of standards-based pedagogy. National reports advocate for a change in teaching K-12. Nowhere is this more needed than in community colleges where students are taught in traditional formats and rarely challenged to make connections between mathematics and their personal experiences. A thorough review of the literature shows the need for mathematics reform at every level, including the college mathematics classroom. There are several national reports, Principles and Standards for School Mathematics, Adding it Up, How People Learn, and Undergraduate Programs and Courses in the Mathematical Sciences, that have been published to address the need to change mathematics teaching and learning. They are advocates for the implementation of standards-based instruction into the mathematics classroom. This study focused on students’ perceptions about the nature of mathematics and learning mathematics, specifically, does such a learning environment impact students’ perceptions of being a student of mathematics in the areas of confidence, anxiety, enjoyment, and motivation, and relevance of mathematics in personal and professional experiences. Over the course of one semester, two sections of college algebra students participated in the study. By using both qualitative and quantitative data collection methods, the study was able to see if there was an impact in student attitudes toward mathematics. The standards-based pedagogy used in this study was cooperative learning, problem solving, discourse, and the graphing calculator. Changes in attitude were determined by attitudinal surveys, student questionnaires, observations, and focus groups. College algebra students had a statistically significant change in their enjoyment of mathematics. Although the other attitudes, confidence, motivation, and value did not have a statistically significant change, the qualitative data indicates a change in these attitudes did occur. This study identified that cooperative learning, problem-solving, discourse, and graphing calculators increased student confidence in doing mathematics because they felt more competent in working problems on exams. Students also found the class enjoyable, anxiety was reduced as students became more familiar with the instructional strategies, and students recognized the value of mathematics for job skills and personal business.

As the cruise industry continues to grow at a rapid pace, additional qualifications for its management personnel are becoming increasingly important. Many new ships are built each year, leaving a void in experienced personnel. Additionally, some leave the ships in order to improve professional qualifications on shore. Whereas many of the companies are training personnel onboard using on-the-job training, the concepts addressed in college-level management programs remain lacking. The goal was to implement and evaluate delivery of formal coursework to English-speaking, multicultural cruise ship personnel onboard by using emerging technologies that are available today. College-level management courses using Web 2.0 technologies were designed, delivered and evaluated. Two courses were offered each was split into two groups using different technologies. Group 1 used non-emerging technologies via a web page with additional material to support the textbook. This group also used discussion forums, online quizzes and tests and online grade book. Group 2 used the same features as the first and Web 2.0 technologies including Wikis, blogs, vodcasts, YouTube.com video clips, and synchronous Instant Messaging. Both groups had intense, positive distant interactions with faculty and had comparable outcomes. The least effective technology was the wiki and the most, the Discussion Forum. The finding was that the cruise industry may well have developed a distinct culture is an important one that may well lead to a better understanding of acculturation. Three weeks proved an ideal length of time for students to complete the 1.5-credit courses. Dividing 4.5-credit courses into 1.5-modules proved successful. Out of the original 249 applicants, 162 students participated from 36 different countries located on 64 different ships around the world.

This study sought to form joint conceptions of success by creating a habits of mind orientational framework drawn from university administrative and practitioner scholarship and theory. Previous literature directed at university writing higher-level administrators and practitioners in first-year writing programs and writing centers was largely engaged in battle for control of determining what success means for incoming writers and how programs can support this version of success. This framework served as the basis for this study’s methodologies for the collection as well as analysis of data. Data was collected from twelve university stakeholders who support freshmen writers through first-year writing programs and writing centers at a small Catholic university in the Northeast. These data were collected using three different methods: semi-structured interviews, ranking activities and retroactive reflections. I found that the members from the three groups of university writing stakeholders shared either cognitive, interpersonal or intrapersonal orientations when conceiving what habits make writers successful and what programmatic mechanisms can help writers form these habits. These three groups did not, however, largely prioritize writers possessing or learning the same habits within each domain. The main commonality between groups sharing a cognitive domain orientation are that the habits they privileged look to preserve conventions grounded in a white Western rhetorical tradition. Yet, writing instructors and tutors mostly do not explicitly teach these conventions because they are expected to have been acquired in high school. Thus, students of color and/or from low income backgrounds are pushed to prepare themselves to meet these conventional expectations and abandon their own culture’s priorities and conventions if they are to succeed. Groups that had inter - and intrapersonal domain orientations privileged addressing each incoming writer’s individual needs through collaboration or teaching them an actionable process that can be continuously used in each new writing context. Based on these findings, I assert that utilizing a habits of mind orientational framework can benefit transitioning writers because university writing stakeholders can identify a single set of habits from each domain that can be consistently emphasized and reinforced through programmatic mechanisms. / English

In the Introduction to What is "College-Level" Writing?, editors Patrick Sullivan and Howard Tinberg state that the title asks "one of the most important questions in our profession" (xiii). However, even after 418 pages of essays written from the perspectives of high school teachers, college instructors, students, and administrators, the answer remains elusive because college-level writing does not, in fact, start in college - it starts in high school - where high school teachers believe they are instilling in their college-bound students the writing skills required by post-secondary institutions. The students, meanwhile, show up in first-year composition classes to find not only have they not been prepared for college-level writing, they haven't the faintest idea what college-level writing is. Our students have more writing demands on them now than ever before -- both in and outside of academia -- what past CCCC president, Douglas D. Hesse, terms "obliged" and "self-sponsored" writing (349). The job market has gone global and careerism is a reality for the college graduates of today. Yet, college writing instruction represents the last chance students have to learn the rhetorical traditions behind the writing skills, along with the realization that without an understanding of process and purpose, the products they do produce will never reach full potential. It is this seemingly dichotomic relationship between the "global village" job market and the rhetorical tradition that has created the exigence for this research. This study examines twelfth grade English and first-year college composition instruction from the three perspectives comprising the College Writing Contact Zone rhetorical triangle (practitioners-professional organizations-textbooks). Following the model of analysis used by Patrick Sullivan and Howard Tinberg in What is "College-Level" Writing, essays and articles written by high school teachers and first-year composition instructors involved in the "what is college-level writing?" conversation are discussed, examining each for the common threads running throughout their different viewpoints. The curricula at both the 12th grade high school and first-year college levels is also researched, in light of the mandates instituted by the professional organizations of the discipline (the NCTE and CCCC). Specifically examined are the roles these respective professional organizations played in the evolution of 12th grade high school English classes and the first-year college composition course, as we know them today. Finally, the textbooks, which inform the curricula of 12th grade high school English and first-year college composition, are investigated in regards to scope and sequence, assumptions, and authorship. The learning theories driving the textbooks are then used to construct the definition of college-level writing from the perspective of textbook publishers. The answer to the "What is college-level writing?" question emerging from this research is not what one might expect. College-level writing, as an entity, does not exist because college-level writing is the result of college-level discourse literacy. Since first year college students must step outside their comfort zone into Pratt's contact zone, perhaps, "instead of asking how to make high school writing prepare students for college writing ,. . ." we should be asking what literacy looks like"(Thompson 80). Making students aware of the different discourse communities in existence at the college level (Hesse's self-sponsored and obliged) is the first step in their being able to learn what writing is considered appropriate within each discourse community. What is needed is a new paradigm in the form of a transitional composition class that cultivates students as critically thinking writers who are the experts of their own thoughts and ideas. Whether this class belongs in the twelfth grade curriculum or the first-year college curriculum needs to be determined, but its absence is the missing link responsible for the non-transference of writing skills from the high school to the college level, as well as the non-transference of writing skills beyond the first-year composition class within academia. Our high schools, recognizing the fact that all of their twelfth grade English students are not going on to college, teach the writing skills and reading analyses needed for post-secondary school life - whatever that may be. First-year composition instructors assign their essays and research papers expecting their students to already be well-versed in the self-sponsored and obliged discourses of the academy - but they are not. The contact zone is created and the conflict begins because students need to access those discourses if they are to start creating self-sponsored knowledge of their disciplines. It is this 'knowing,' this created knowledge, that transforms our students into writers; the writers for whom we are the stewards.