This work is focused on the measurement and prevention of procrastination behavior among college level introductory physics students completing online assignments in the form of mastery-based online learning modules. The research is conducted in two studies. The first study evaluates the effectiveness of offering students the opportunity to earn a small amount of extra credit for completing portions of their homework early. Unsupervised machine learning is used to identify an optimum cutoff duration which differentiates taking a short break during a continuous study session from a long break between two different study sessions. Using this cutoff, the study shows that the extra credit encouraged students to complete assignments earlier. The second study examines the impact of adding a planning-prompt survey prior to a string of assignments. In the survey, students were asked to write a plan for when and where they would work on their online homework assignments. Using a difference in differences method, a multilinear modeling technique adopted from economics research, the study shows that the survey led to students completing their homework on average 18 hours earlier and spreading their efforts on the homework over time significantly more. On the other hand, behaviors associated with disengagement, such as guessing or answer-copying, were not impacted by the introduction of the planning prompt. These studies showcase novel methods for measurement of procrastination behavior, as well as evaluating the effectiveness of the designed interventions to help students avoid waiting until the last minute to make progress on assigned tasks.

Published Article / Reflection and reflective practice as a method to inform facilitators' teaching and learning practices has been in use for a long time. It was first introduced by Dewy in 1933. The methodology consisted of a qualitative approach supported by a quantitative analysis and was prompted by a number of questions pertaining to reflective teaching. This article communicates how reflective teaching was embedded in the Radiographic Pathology module for undergraduates in 2007 as well as the outcomes of the process.

This research investigates faculty socialization of college physics instructors and its effect on teaching practice. Results of two studies—a statistical analysis about professional characteristics and teaching practice and an ethnography about culture, professional roles, and teaching practice—are integrated to inform our understanding of the impact of socialization on teaching practice. These findings have the potential to improve institutional and organizational faculty development, as well as improve individual teaching practice and, by extension, student persistence and success. Exploratory factor analysis, latent class analysis, and multiple analysis of variance were used to examine cross-sectional survey data collected from 1,176 postsecondary physics instructors across the United States to determine whether a difference between groups exists on the range of experiences and perceptions about teaching practice. Semi-structured ethnographic interviews ten instructors of introductory-level physics across multiple institutions in Florida inform our understanding of how physics faculty believe culture and socialization impact their professional roles, perception, and practice. Preliminary results suggest that: (a) identification with professional and organizational roles begins in graduate school and is reinforced in a full-time instructor's departmental home, and (b) teaching practice is informed by past experience and informal engagement with peers.

The advantages of postsecondary education are numerous and serve as a gateway to increased opportunity. Benefits include improved employment opportunities, lifetime earnings, job satisfaction, access to healthcare and preventative care, and overall better quality of life. In addition, valuable life skills development, including; building new social skills and relationships, developing critical thinking, personal development, how to overcome challenges, time management and organization, and deeper knowledge and understanding of the world. Enrollment rates in postsecondary education are predicted to continue to rise for students with and without disabilities. Students are often underprepared for the transition to college and the levels of self-regulation required to be self-directed learners. Executive function skills are the foundation for intentional planning and self-regulation necessary to adjust as needed to reach goals in all areas of life. Executive function skills are relied on heavily in novel situations such as the transition to college. Students with deficits in executive function lack the skills required for adjustment to college life. Development is based on experiences, highly variable, and often not fully developed until early adulthood. Coaching has shown promise as a means to help support these skills for increased persistence and degree obtainment. This dissertation aims to use three publishable articles to illustrate the potential coaching possesses in supporting all students with executive function deficits to increase their levels of success. The chapters include evidence of coaching as a solution, an in-depth literature review, a practitioner example, and a mixed- methods investigation. Overall, results demonstrate the need for executive function support for students with deficits and the potential value of coaching programs to answer this need.

Nontraditional students are increasingly more common in higher education but have lower persistence rates than their traditional peers. While educational researchers have developed several models to predict college persistence using both cognitive (e.g. entrance exam scores) and noncognitive (e.g. academic motivation) factors, most of these models were created for traditional students. The psychosociocultural (PSC) model was created to better predict academic outcomes specifically for underrepresented students using psychological, social, and cultural factors. However, the PSC model has never been used to study nontraditional students. To address these limitations, this study used the PSC model to predict the persistence of traditional and nontraditional undergraduate students at a large public research university. Students were considered nontraditional if they were 25 or older; worked an average of 30 or more hours a week; had children; or were enrolled part-time for the majority of the spring, summer, and fall semesters in 2019. It was hypothesized that (1) nontraditional students will have lower rates of persistence than traditional students; (2a) psychological, social, and cultural dimensions will predict persistence among all students; (2b) nontraditional students will have stronger relationships between the three PSC dimensions and persistence than traditional students; (3a) loneliness, self-efficacy, support from family and friends, comfort on campus, and sense of belonging will predict persistence among all students; and (3b) nontraditional students will have stronger relationships between the six variables of the PSC model and persistence than traditional students. Hypothesis 1 was tested using a chi square test of independence, and hypotheses 2 and 3 were tested using a binominal logistic regression. Preliminary analyses tested the data to determine the internal reliability for each instrument used as well as to determine whether the assumptions of the statistical tests were met. Data analysis revealed that none of the hypothesis were supported. No difference in persistence was found between nontraditional and traditional students. Neither the three PSC dimensions nor the six PSC variables were significant predictors of persistence for the undergraduate participants. Finally, student status did not moderate the relationship between the three PSC dimensions and persistence or the six PSC variables and persistence. While this study did not find that the PSC Model was useful for predicting differences in persistence between nontraditional and traditional students, the lack of significant findings was likely due to a high persistence rate among all students. While the hypotheses could not be supported, the high internal reliability of the instruments suggested that the six instruments used in this study were particularly useful for understanding nontraditional students' experiences on campus. Additionally, this study measured nontraditional and traditional students' perceived experiences on campus, which may inform outreach and services provided by student service staff. Future studies on nontraditional students might consider using these instruments to gauge students' experiences on campus at other institutions. In gathering information about students' perceptions and experiences, institutions will be better able to make informed decisions about how their policies and practice meet the needs of various student groups on campus.

As the healthcare system has continued to change in the 21st century, the creation of a more collaborative practice-ready workforce is necessary. Interprofessional education (IPE) is an accepted mechanism to cultivate interprofessional collaborative practice in health care providers to improve quality of care and address workforce needs. Development of interprofessional collaborative practice requires synergies of the health care and education systems to develop and deliver an effective IPE curriculum. This study examined the impact of an IPE curriculum on the clinical practice of physical therapy doctoral students through a mixed-methods approach. The IPE curriculum was rooted in the established Interprofessional Learning Continuum and linked to core competencies from the Interprofessional Education Collaborative. Quantitative procedures examined student clinical performance in the immediate internship following completion of the curriculum, and these criteria were compared to historical norms. Qualitative procedures sought to determine if areas of clinical performance were influenced by the curriculum and examine how students translated learning into the clinical environment. The results of this study identified numerous areas of significant impact of interprofessional learning on patient care in the clinical environment, although none of the quantitative measures identified significant differences. Several salient themes were identified which recognize the multidimensional nature of patient care in the complex clinical environment, involving an interplay of communication, experience, role understanding, and interprofessional interactions all being strongly developed within the IPE curriculum. These findings contribute to the literature calling for mixed methods analyses of influences of IPE of health care students on clinical practice in order to better understand and further develop interprofessional practice.

This dissertation demonstrates how avant-garde methods can be employed as pedagogical methods in the undergraduate Humanities classroom to promote student engagement and interdisciplinary thinking. The study first addresses pedagogy and avant-garde art within their historical contexts as separate, but related disciplines. Subsequently the study fuses pedagogy and avant-garde art and provides examples of in-class activities and out-of-class assignments that illustrate the ways in which avant-garde methods function as practical teaching and learning methods. Further, the study presents artist Nam June Paik, whose work exemplifies the theoretical and practical underpinnings of avant-garde art as pedagogy. The dissertation champions the pedagogy of John Dewey, who called for a progressive educational system. It also argues for Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy and the Jesuits' Ignatian pedagogical paradigm, both of which serve as necessary complements in achieving Dewey's goal of an experiential educational environment. Dewey believed education should co-exist with life and should not be treated as a preparation for it, and thus his theories on aesthetics, in particular, argued that art is not severed from life, an idea shared by four avant-garde movements discussed in this study: Futurism, Dada, Surrealism, and Fluxus. Each of these movements sought to change the political and cultural environment, while maintaining that art and life are on equal ground. These pedagogies, aided by avant-garde methods, encourage and challenge students to engage with and think critically about the world around them.

The increasing number of first-generation Black women enrolling in college is accompanied by educational disparities that could potentially hinder their future career aspirations. The intersection of race, gender, and being a first-generation student poses numerous obstacles and challenges, rendering the journey towards college and career success more difficult in comparison to their peers. This study adapted a transcendental phenomenological approach using a humanistic stance to investigate the lived experiences of 12 first-time-in-college (FTIC) students who were first-generation Black women, aiming to give a voice to the individuality of each participant. Its purpose was to explore how these participants interpreted their experiences of academic success and career readiness. Participants completed two virtual, semi-structured interviews. The interview data were analyzed using Colaizzi's (1978) seven-step process, as described by Sanders (2003). Six themes emerged from the analysis: (a) family and cultural values provide motivation to work hard and be successful; (b) the pressure from family and marginalized identities leads to depression and anxiety; (c) extrinsic motivation influences academic and college success, and both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation guided career success beliefs and goals; (d) participants experienced professional limitations as well as shifts in career readiness; (e) intersecting identities have overlapping and cumulative disadvantages; and (f) the merging of identities and positive experiences contributed to increased feelings of pride, honor, and accomplishment. Overall, the analyses revealed that mastery experiences had a positive impact on participants' self-efficacy, subsequently influencing their intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for success. However, academic performance pressures, racial and gender stereotypes and biases, a lack of guidance, and limited resources adversely impacted their college and career-related experiences, mental health, and perceptions of career success, which created uncertainty. This study benefits practitioners and administrators of higher education seeking to understand the experiences of this unique population and improve services and programs to further support efforts to make education more equitable for college success and beyond for all students.

As various stakeholders examine the value and quality of higher education, a greater emphasis is being put on educational outcomes. There is constant focus on improving the quality of undergraduate education and one of the keys to this is understanding what makes a good instructor. Effective instructors rely on a variety of tools and techniques to engage their students and help them learn. One common tool that instructors in higher education rely on in the classroom is humor. The primary research question this study is attempting to answer is: In what ways, if any, does humor infused instruction promote high levels of affective, cognitive, and participant perceptions of behavioral engagement among college students? The researcher's hypothesis is that college students who view video clips of humor infused instruction will be significantly more affectively, cognitively, and behaviorally engaged than students who view video clips of the same instructional content without humor. In order to test whether instructor use of humor in class increases student engagement, students were randomly assigned to one of two groups. One group watched a lecture on fallacies that includes humorous illustrations and examples while the other group watched a lecture that does not include these humorous illustrations and examples. Immediately after watching the lecture students were asked to complete an 18-item questionnaire that measured their engagement.

Purpose: The authors examined Health Sciences students’ willingness to reflect on an academic failure at the students’ point-of-entrance into university in order to gauge how students’ willingness to engage in reflective tasks might be predictive of their subsequent academic success and, ultimately, of their potential to become health professionals. Methods: Following Health Sciences students’ failure on an English diagnostic test, the authors determined the proportion of 568 Health Sciences students who voluntarily reviewed or did not review (SR and SNR respectively) their failed tests before sitting a second-chance test 60 days later. The authors then compared the improvements between SR and SNR on the second-chance test and determined three relationships: 1) whether SR or SNR showed greater improvement on the second-chance test; 2) whether SR or SNR had higher mean marks in their four requisite Health Sciences courses; 3) if SR were more likely to be subsequently placed in a health professional programme. Results: 42% (N=237) of students chose not to review their test after failing it and being advised that they could review the test. Those same students were already performing at a lower level on this first test for their Reading Comprehension (F(1,566)= 5.608, p=0.18) and Listening Comprehension (F(1,566)=4.117, p = 0.043). While SR improved more than did SNR when they sat the second test, reviewing the failed test did not significantly correlate with improved success on the second test. However, SR achieved higher mean marks across their four requisite Health Sciences courses than did SNR (Wald’s Z = 8.015, p Wald’s Z = 3.108, p = 0.002) and were more likely to be offered a place in a professional programme (Wald’s Z = 3.108, p = 0.002). Conclusions: Choosing to engage in a relatively simple reflective task following an initial failure predicts subsequent academic success for our Health Sciences students and their potential of becoming health professionals.