This quantitative study utilized secondary data from one large four-year, state university in the southwestern US. The relationship between registration time and academic performance was examined as well as the relationship between registration time and retention of first-time-in-college (FTIC) undergraduate students during their first semester of enrollment at the university. The differences between decided and undecided students were tested regarding students’ academic performance and retention of the same population. The study population for the fall 2011 semester included 6,739 freshmen, and the study population for the fall 2012 semester included 4,454 freshmen. Through multiple and logistic regression models, registration time was shown to statistically have a relationship with academic performance and retention (p < .05). Later registrants showed to have a negative relationship with GPA and were less likely to return the following spring semester. The explained variance (R2) for both measures of academic performance and retention along with descriptive statistics are also presented. A Mann Whitney U test and chi square test indicated that a statistically significant association between decided and undecided students exists for academic performance and retention (p < .05). Decided major students performed better as measured by semester GPA performance and were more likely to return the following spring semester. Recommendations and implications are issued regarding future research, policy, and practice.

The purpose of this study is to gather information related to the characteristics of two groups of undergraduate non-science majors; namely, those students who once considered science as a career and subsequently changed to a non-science major and those who have never considered a career in science. It is frequently observed that children in the elementary school have an intense interest in science. One of the principal concerns of this study is how and for what reasons has the interest in science changed between elementary school and college? It is also the purpose of this study to gather information related to the attitudes of these college students toward the science courses they have had in high school and toward their science teachers. In attempting to arrive at an answer, the group who once considered a science career and those who have never considered an occupational choice in a field of science will be compared in the following areas: 1. General information such as sex, age, size of high school attended, rank within their graduating classes, college classification and military experiences. 2. Occupations and hobbies of parents. 3. Experiences which may influence attitudes toward science such as elementary school science, high school science courses, high school science teachers, attitudes toward science requirements, high school courses liked most, high school courses liked least, and membership in science clubs. 4. College science courses completed. 5. Extent of the interviewees' present interest in science, Finally, the circumstances surrounding the tentative choice of a science career by those who once considered such a career will be discussed.

The bibliography will comprise books, current magazines, annuals, and bulletins available in the North Texas State College Library. Some publications from other libraries in the area will also be included; namely, the Texas Woman's University Library, Denton; the Dallas Public Library; the Fort Worth Public Library; and Southwestern Medical College Library, Dallas. The bibliography is intended primarily for freshmen majoring in art, although the publications will be of value also to those students minoring in art.

Submitted by Verena Pereira (verenagoncalves@uefs.br) on 2018-07-13T21:40:59Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao_Mestrado___Bianca_Santana_VF.pdf: 15500523 bytes, checksum: c68a13df2b7edb9a38dcd4a535b47768 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-07-13T21:40:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao_Mestrado___Bianca_Santana_VF.pdf: 15500523 bytes, checksum: c68a13df2b7edb9a38dcd4a535b47768 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-04-06 / Funda??o de Amparo ? Pesquisa do Estado da Bahia - FAPEB / The proposed approach combines the use of the Scratch environment in a context of game creation, the Python programming language associated with the turtle graphics library, and image manipulation with the Jython Environment for Students (JES). We conducted two exploratory case studies with Civil Engineering students attending a CS1 course at our institution to analyze the impact of this approach on student motivation and learning. Our results describe the motivation present during the course in terms of the Attention, Relevance, Confidence and Satisfaction (ARCS) model, and identify the practical factors that may contribute to increase or decrease student motivation. We also present a framework that shows the positive and negative impacts of the elements of our approach on each of the categories of the ARCS model. Various such elements are common in several teaching-learning situations. From a learning point of view, our findings also show that contextualized and spiral learning has enhanced the learning of concepts such as loops and functions. Scratch facilitates the learning of programming logic, select and repeat structures. Python with Turtle enhances learning of these same concepts with the addition of functions. Finally, the media computation approach has shown potential for learning the concepts of functions and arrays. We believe that the practical factors presented in this work can support the design of CS1 courses for non-majors / Estudantes que n?o s?o da ?rea de TI, chamados non-majors , usualmente apresentam falta de interesse e maiores dificuldades na aprendizagem de programa??o em rela??o a estudantes de cursos como Ci?ncia da Computa??o. Neste trabalho descrevemos a concep??o, aplica??o e avalia??o de uma abordagem de ensino-aprendizagem de Programa??o, destinada a estudantes non-majors , cujo intuito ? aumentar a sua motiva??o e amenizar as suas dificuldades em aprender programa??o. A abordagem proposta combina o uso do ambiente l?dico Scratch em um contexto de cria??o de jogos, a linguagem de Programa??o Python associada ? biblioteca TurtleGraphics e ? manipula??o de imagens por meio do ambiente de desenvolvimento JythonEnvironment for Students (JES) . Realizamos dois estudos de caso explorat?rios com estudantes de Engenharia Civil cursando uma disciplina introdut?ria de programa??o em nossa institui??o para analisar o impacto desta abordagem sobre a motiva??o e aprendizagem dos estudantes. Nossos resultados descrevem a motiva??o presente durante o curso em termos do modelo Aten??o, Relev?ncia, Confian?a e Satisfa??o (ARCS), e identificam os fatores pr?ticos que podem contribuir para aumentar ou diminuir a motiva??o dos estudantes. Geramos um quadro que evidencia os impactos positivos e negativos dos elementos de nossa abordagem sobre cada uma das categorias do modelo ARCS, sendo que muitos destes elementos s?o comuns em diversas situa??es de ensino-aprendizagem. Do ponto de vista da aprendizagem, nossos achados demonstram que o ensino contextualizado e em espiral potencializou a aprendizagem de conceitos como loops e fun??es. Scratch potencializa a aprendizagem de l?gica de programa??o, loops e estruturas de sele??o. J? Python com Turtlepotencializa a aprendizagem destes mesmos conceitos com a adi??o de fun??es. Finalmente, a abordagem com m?dias demonstrou potencial para a aprendizagem dos conceitos de fun??es, vetores e matrizes. Acreditamos que os fatores pr?ticos apresentados nesse trabalho podem apoiar o design de disciplinas introdut?rias de programa??o para non-majors

Undergraduates' field of study is intricately linked to inequality in the US, where women have surpassed men in most indexes of academic achievement but continue to be less likely than men to complete STEM degrees. This gendered variation in major selection has substantial implications for stratification: college major choice is closely related to labor market outcomes and advancement to future degrees. Building on recent theoretical developments in social aesthetics and field theory, the project argues that academic interests are developed in concert with encounters in the environment, and that position in academic fields at the start of university, gendered distributions of interest patterns, and peer influence play a critical role in gender differentiation in college major choice. The project uses a unique longitudinal data combining complex administrative databases from an elite American university, merging admissions, housing, course, financial aid, and alumni data. Multiple correspondence analysis shows that students' interests are organized in academic fields characterized by divisions between knowledge domains: science interests oppose social sciences, economics interests oppose humanities, and life sciences are differentiated from hard sciences. Knowledge domains share features of retention and attraction, and movement between disciplines that are close together in students' interest spaces are more common. Using clustering methods, the project shows that there are important distinctions in how students are interested in disciplines: some students are particularly devoted to knowledge domains, while other students are generalists. These finding have important implications for women and men, who have different interest patterns. There is durability in gender differences in high school interests reinforced by both retention and attraction to disciplines once at school. The last chapter of the dissertation explores the role that peer influence plays in these outcomes. Because students' interests are organized in academic fields, peer influence on academic major choice is better understood as a field effect. Utilizing the fact that roommate assignment is random at this university, the project shows that choosing a major is associated with roommate's interests coming into college, and this association depends on students' own initial interests when applying to university. Generalist science students are more likely to complete science degrees when they have science or engineering roommates compared to those who have humanities roommates, while devoted science students are less mutable. Because women are less likely to have roommates who are in sciences and engineering, gender segregation of roommates contributes to gender difference in STEM outcomes. By reframing choice as a question of social aesthetics, the project makes important contributions to understanding choice, inequality and peer influence.

For musicians of all kinds, practice is an essential component in establishing and refining their skills. How a musician learns the art of practicing, and at what point in their musical and cognitive development can vary drastically. The purpose of this research is to understand how two groups of musicians, undergraduate vocal performance majors and undergraduate piano performance majors, developed (or consequently failed to develop) their respective knowledge pertaining to effective practice prior to entering the university setting, and how their practice habits changed (or consequently failed to change) after beginning study with a university instructor. This is accomplished by comparing the practice habits of the two groups prior to entering the university setting, and, after gaining admission into the degree program. Findings are supplemented with recent research pertaining to the study of learning and various types of practice.

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which controllable institutional variables, as perceived by Black college students, are related to their academic performance. The population for this study came from an historically Black college in Atlanta, Georgia. Using an Ex Post Facto research design, the study focused on the freshman year experience by asking 38 second year computer science and mathematics majors to review their freshman year retrospectively. Data were collected from the population using the Student Survey on Awareness and Utilization Instrument. Pearson correlation and regression were used to analyze the data. The study revealed that there is a significant relationship between 7 of the awareness and utilization variables (independent) and students• academic performance (dependent). The study concludes by recommending that colleges institutionalize certain practices for freshmen in order to enhance their academic prowess.

This study is concerned with the problem of providing a program of formal advising for aiding elementary education majors in their selection of an academic area of specialization. .

The purpose of this study was to assess content and concurrent validity of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT). The subjects were thirty-four art majors at North Texas State University between the ages of nineteen and thirty-nine. Content validity for the TTCT, as assessed by seven judges (art professors), was very high; concurrent validity was very low. Only one judge's ranking of the criterion was significantly intercorrelated with that of the other judges (p<.05). There were no significant rho correlations between the TTCT and the criterion (p<.05). The t-ratio differences between the males and females, for all tasks of the TTCT, were non-significant (p<.05). It was concluded that the TTCT were not appropriate for use with adult art majors.

The problem of this study is to determine a profile of the typical industrial arts major at North Texas State University, based on scores made on the American College Testing Program Battery, and to compare this profile with profiles of four other local subgroups. ACT scores representing nine categories of student information were analyzed from a total sampling of 286 North Texas State University students of the Industrial Arts Department, School of Business Administration, School of Education, and College of Arts and Sciences. Data were from tests administered during regular ACT testing sessions in 1966-67.