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1	The Dynamics on Innovation Adoption in U.S. Municipalities: The Role of Discovery Skills of Public Managers and Isomorphic Pressures in Promoting Innovative Practices January 2013 (has links) abstract: Research on government innovation has focused on identifying factors that contribute to higher levels of innovation adoption. Even though various factors have been tested as contributors to high levels of innovation adoption, the independent variables have been predominantly contextual and community characteristics. Previous empirical studies shed little light on chief executive officers' (CEOs) attitudes, values, and behavior. Result has also varied with the type of innovation examined. This research examined the effect of CEOs' attitudes and behaviors, and institutional motivations on the adoption of sustainability practices in their municipalities. First, this study explored the relationship between the adoption level of sustainability practices in local government and CEOs' entrepreneurial attitudes (i.e. risk taking, proactiveness, and innovativeness) and discovery skills (i.e. associating, questioning, experimenting, observing, and networking) that have not been examined in prior research on local government innovation. Second, the study explored the impact of organizational intention to change and isomorphic pressures (i.e., coercive, mimetic, and normative pressures) and the availability and limit of organizational resources on the early adoption of innovations in local governments. Third, the study examines how CEOs' entrepreneurial attitudes and discovery skills, and institutional motivations account for high and low sustaining levels of innovation over time by tracking how much their governments have adopted innovations from the past to the present. Lastly, this study explores their path effects CEOs' entrepreneurial attitudes, discovery skills, and isomorphic pressures on sustainability innovation adoption. This is an empirical study that draws on a survey research of 134 CEOs who have influence over innovation adoption in their local governments. For collecting data, the study identified 264 municipalities over 10,000 in population that have responded to four surveys on innovative practices conducted by the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) in past eight years: the Reinventing local government survey (2003), E-government survey (2004), Strategic practice (2006), and the Sustainability survey (2010). This study combined the information about the adoption of innovations from four surveys with CEOs' responses in the current survey. Socio-economic data and information about variations in form of government were also included in the data set. This study sheds light on the discovery skills and institutional isomorphic pressures that influence the adoption of different types of innovations in local governments. This research contributes to a better understanding of the role of administrative leadership and organizational isomorphism in the dynamic of innovation adoption, which could lead to improvements in change management of organizations. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Public Administration 2013 Public administration Organization theory City Manager Discovery Skills Entrepreneurial Attitudes Innovation Adoption Institutional Isomorphism Sustainability Practices
2	Evaluation of a Novel Biochemistry Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) Stefan M Irby (6326255) 15 May 2019 (has links) <p>Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) have been described in a range of educational contexts. Although various learning objectives, termed anticipated learning outcomes (ALOs) in this project, have been proposed, processes for identifying them may not be rigorous or well-documented, which can lead to inappropriate assessment and speculation about what students actually learn from CUREs. Additionally, evaluation of CUREs has primarily relied on student and instructor perception data rather than more reliable measures of learning.This dissertation investigated a novel biochemistry laboratory curriculum for a Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) known as the Biochemistry Authentic Scientific Inquiry Lab (BASIL). Students participating in this CURE use a combination of computational and biochemical wet-lab techniques to elucidate the function of proteins of known structure but unknown function. The goal of the project was to evaluate the efficacy of the BASIL CURE curriculum for developing students’ research abilities across implementations. Towards achieving this goal, we addressed the following four research questions (RQs): <b>RQ1</b>) How can ALOs be rigorously identified for the BASIL CURE; <b>RQ2</b>) How can the identified ALOs be used to develop a matrix that characterizes the BASIL CURE; <b>RQ3</b>) What are students’ perceptions of their knowledge, confidence and competence regarding their abilities to perform the top-rated ALOs for this CURE; <b>RQ4</b>) What are appropriate assessments for student achievement of the identified ALOs and what is the nature of student learning, and related difficulties, developed by students during the BASIL CURE? To address these RQs, this project focused on the development and use of qualitative and quantitative methods guided by constructivism and situated cognition theoretical frameworks. Data was collected using a range of instruments including, content analysis, Qualtrics surveys, open-ended questions and interviews, in order to identify ALOs and to determine student learning for the BASIL CURE. Analysis of the qualitative data was through inductive coding guided by the concept-reasoning-mode (CRM) model and the assessment triangle, while analysis of quantitative data was done by using standard statistical techniques (e.g. conducting a parried t-test and effect size). The results led to the development of a novel method for identifying ALOs, namely a process for identifying course-based undergraduate research abilities (PICURA; RQ1; Irby, Pelaez, & Anderson 2018b). Application of PICURA to the BASIL CURE resulted in the identification and rating by instructors of a wide range of ALOs, termed course-based undergraduate research abilities (CURAs), which were formulated into a matrix (RQs 2; Irby, Pelaez, & Anderson, 2018a,). The matrix was, in turn, used to characterize the BASIL CURE and to inform the design of student assessments aimed at evaluating student development of the identified CURAs (RQs 4; Irby, Pelaez, & Anderson, 2018a). Preliminary findings from implementation of the open-ended assessments in a small case study of students, revealed a range of student competencies for selected top-rated CURAs as well as evidence for student difficulties (RQ4). In this way we were able to confirm that students are developing some of the ALOs as actual learning outcomes which we term VLOs or verified learning outcomes. In addition, a participant perception indicator (PPI) survey was used to gauge students’ perceptions of their gains in knowledge, experience, and confidence during the BASIL CURE and, therefore, to inform which CURAs should be specifically targeted for assessment in specific BASIL implementations (RQ3;). These results indicate that, across implementations of the CURE, students perceived significant gains with large effect sizes in their knowledge, experience, and confidence for items on the PPI survey (RQ3;). In our view, the results of this dissertation will make important contributions to the CURE literature, as well as to the biochemistry education and assessment literature in general. More specifically, it will significantly improve understanding of the nature of student learning from CUREs and how to identify ALOs and design assessments that reveal what students actually learn from such CUREs - an area where there has been a dearth of available knowledge in the past. The outcomes of this dissertation could also help instructors and administrators identify and align assessments with the actual features of a CURE (or courses in general), use the identified CURAs to ensure the material fits departmental or university needs, and evaluate the benefits of students participating in these innovative curricula. Future research will focus on expanding the development and validation of assessments so that practitioners can better evaluate the efficacy of their CUREs for developing the research competencies of their undergraduate students and continue to render improvements to their curricula.</p> Biochemistry Education Course-based Undergraduate Research Course-based Research Experiences CURE anticipated learning outcomes ALOs ALO CURAs research abilities PICURA ALO matrix BASIL weighted-relevance WR verified learning outcomes VLOs CUREs biochemistry computational biochemistry bioinformatics biochemistry education chemistry education chemistry teaching laboratory upper-division ACE-Bio experimental competencies Authentic science inquiry chemical education assessment assessment design Student understanding student difficulties biochemistry laboratory experiments biochemistry teaching laboratory chemistry teaching laboratory chemistry teaching laboratories predicting protein function protein inquiry-based learning inquiry-based teaching content analysis open-ended survey interviews semi-structured interviews PPI participant perception indicator assessment triangle CRM conceptual reasoning mode conceptual-reasoning-mode model curriculum evaluation experimental abilities discovery skills learning objectives learning outcomes LO LOs collaborations collaborative course implementation implementation student difficuluties experimental learning experimental literacy data-representation ACE-Bio Network Likert-survey

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The Dynamics on Innovation Adoption in U.S. Municipalities: The Role of Discovery Skills of Public Managers and Isomorphic Pressures in Promoting Innovative Practices

Evaluation of a Novel Biochemistry Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE)