High attrition of nursing students in the United States may contribute to a shortage of registered nurses and inefficient use of scarce resources. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between nursing student grades in 3 science prerequisites and length of time to program completion on each of the study college's 4 campuses. Ausubel's theory of subsumption, wherein a learner's ability to meaningfully learn new data depends on the existing cognitive structure within which the new material is assimilated, was used as a theoretical framework. Prerequisite science course grades for 575 nursing students attending a Midwestern technical and community college with 4 campuses were obtained along with data on program completion. Grade data from 2005-2015 were analyzed using a 1-way or Welch ANOVA and Pearson product-moment correlation. Significant differences were found among campuses in both mean science grades and time to completion. Most science course grades did not demonstrate a significant correlation with time to completion. Based on these findings, it is possible that student preparation in general science courses is not equivalent among campuses and may not provide the cognitive structure necessary for meaningful learning in nursing courses. To enable faculty from both disciplines to collaboratively document, examine, and align content in science and nursing courses, a curriculum mapping project was designed. Registered nurse graduates contribute to the economic and social well-being of their communities. By providing more insight about science and nursing courses and degree completion, this study is intended to promote positive social change.

Prerequisite skill structure graphs represent the relationships between knowledge components. Prerequisite structure graphs also propose the order in which students in a given curriculum need to be taught specific knowledge components in order to assist them build on previous knowledge and improve achievement in those subject domains. The importance of accurate prerequisite skill structure graphs can therefore not be overemphasized. In view of this, many approaches have been employed by domain experts to design and implement these prerequisite structures. A number of data mining techniques have also been proposed to infer these knowledge structures from learner performance data. These methods have achieved varied degrees of success. Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, none of the methods have employed extensive randomized controlled trials to learn about prerequisite skill relationships among skills. In this dissertation, we motivate the need for using randomized controlled trials to refine prerequisite skill structure graphs. Additionally, we present PLACEments, an adaptive testing system that uses a prerequisite skill structure graph to identify gaps in students’ knowledge. Students with identified gaps are assisted with more practice assignments to ensure that the gaps are closed. PLACEments additionally allows for randomized controlled experiments to be performed on the underlying prerequisite skill structure graph for the purpose of refining the structure. We present some of the different experiment categories which are possible in PLACEments and report the results of one of these experiment categories. The ultimate goal is to inform domain experts and curriculum designers as they create policies that govern the sequencing and pacing of contents in learning domains whose content lend themselves to sequencing. By extension students and teachers who apply these policies benefit from the findings of these experiments.

This report examines the rhetorical strategies employed in several judicial cases during the 1920s in which the U.S. government contested the racial eligibility of Hindus for naturalization under a law providing that only “white persons” were eligible for naturalization. Through a close examination of the arguments and evidence in the cases, the report argues that the decisions in the cases were inextricably linked to the the conflict between the British and a rising Hindu nationalism movement in the struggle for Indian independence during the period surrounding World War I, and thereby highlight the significance of a wide variety of group identities to racial identification as the courts in the cases negotiated the boundaries of America’s global identity through the lens of race. / text

Master of Science / Food Science Institute / Fadi Aramouni / The brewing industry has, historically, had little food safety regulation. In response to the September 11th attacks, new legislation culminating in the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010 was established and reinforced food safety regulations for the brewing industry. Under this expanded regulation, breweries are required to comply with the modernized Current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMPs). The regulatory climate for the brewing industry is very complicated. The brewing industry is regulated primarily under the jurisdiction of the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau and the Food and Drug Administration. Based upon the regulatory environment and business considerations, Boulevard Brewing Company has opted to develop a Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) plan. Before a HACCP plan can be implemented a foundation of prerequisite programs, based on the FDA’s cGMPs, must be in place. Prerequisite programs establish the operational and environmental conditions required for a successful HACCP plan. Failure to comply with the cGMPs can lead to fines, re‐inspection fees, forced recalls, and possible criminal prosecution. Prerequisite programs were developed for the following areas: facilities, including sanitary design principles, utilities, traffic and product flow; production equipment, including preventive maintenance and calibration; receiving, warehousing, and shipping, including supplier control, chemical control, and raw material testing; pest control for insects, rodents and birds; cleaning and sanitation under a Master Sanitation Schedule; specifications, including ingredients, products, and packaging materials; personal hygiene for both employees and visitors; and lastly a system of traceability and recall. These prerequisite programs, based on cGMPs, are required to ensure regulatory compliance while minimizing regulatory and fiscal risks.

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Adaptive learning is a crucial part in intelligent tutoring systems. It provides students with appropriate tutoring interventions, based on students’ characteristics, status, and other related features, in order to optimize their learning outcomes. It is required to determine students’ knowledge level or learning progress, based on which it then uses proper techniques to choose the optimal interventions. In this dissertation work, I focus on these aspects related to the process in adaptive learning: student modeling, k-armed bandits, and contextual bandits. Student modeling. The main objective of student modeling is to develop cognitive models of students, including modeling content skills and knowledge about learning. In this work, we investigate the effect of prerequisite skill in predicting students’ knowledge in post skills, and we make use of the prerequisite performance in different student models. As a result, this makes them superior to traditional models. K-armed bandits. We apply k-armed bandit algorithms to personalize interventions for students, to optimize their learning outcomes. Due to the lack of diverse interventions and small difference of intervention effectiveness in educational experiments, we also propose a simple selection strategy, and compare it with several k-armed bandit algorithms. Contextual bandits. In contextual bandit problem, additional side information, also called context, can be used to determine which action to select. First, we construct a feature evaluation mechanism, which determines which feature to be combined with bandits. Second, we propose a new decision tree algorithm, which is capable of detecting aptitude treatment effect for students. Third, with combined bandits with the decision tree, we apply the contextual bandits to make personalization in two different types of data, simulated data and real experimental data.

Numerous methods to assess student knowledge are present throughout every step of a students€™ education. Skill-based assessments include homework, quizzes and tests while curriculum exams comprise of the SAT and GRE. The latter assessments provide an indication as to how well a student has retained a learned national curriculum however they are unable to identify how well a student performs at a fine grain skill level. The former assessments hone in on a specific skill or set of skills, however, they require an excessive amount of time to collect curriculum-wide data. We've developed a system that assesses students at a fine grain level in order to identify non- mastered skills within each student€™s zone of proximal development. €œPLACEments€� is a graph-driven computer adaptive test which not only provides thorough student feedback to educators but also delivers a personalized remediation plan to each student based on his or her identified non-mastered skills. As opposed to predicting state test scores, PLACEments objective is to personalize learning for students and encourage teachers to employ formative assessment techniques in the classroom. We have conducted a randomized controlled study to evaluate the learning value PLACEments provides in comparison to traditional methods of targeted skill mastery and retention.

This thesis' main theme is successful principal leadership in secondary schools within the Swedish education system. Successful principal leadership is examined from three perspectives: What are the processes of a successful principal? Do the leadership processes relate to successful academic and social outcomes of schools? What are the prerequisites for successful principal leadership? The Frame Factor Model and the three concepts of prerequisites, processes and outcomes constitute an overarching framework. The prerequisites are categorized as internal prerequisites (the particular characteristics of individual principals) and external prerequisites operating within the Swedish educational environment. The successful principal processes are viewed as pedagogical leadership processes, on one hand as providing prerequisites for teaching and learning and, on the other hand as leading the core processes of teaching and learning. The definitions build on the empirical data, on the Swedish national curriculum and demands for pedagogical leadership, and on international findings on what successful principals do. The outcomes of successful principal leadership are here defined as the academic and the social outcomes of schools. The research undertaken is part of the research project 'Structure, Culture, Leadership - Prerequisites for Successful Schools?' The empirical data for this thesis are gathered in twenty-six Swedish secondary schools whereof five are regarded successful schools based on both academic and social outcomes. The findings, reported on in four articles, derive from interviews and questionnaires to principals and teachers. The principals in the main identify prerequisites of importance that are within their own realm of influence, such as themselves, teachers and school district level. They consider a limited area of responsibility and support from district level specialists as providing possibilities for their success. The principals accept the national governance of schools and principals via the national curriculum. The principals in the five successful schools however take a higher degree of responsibility for setting direction towards national goals, for processes inside schools and for school outcomes than do principals in less successful schools.They as pedagogical leaders attend to a higher degree both to providing prerequisites for teaching and learning and to leading the core processes of teaching and learning than do principals in less successful schools. In schools with a successful implementation of social goals, which shows as successful social outcomes, the principals, according to teachers, overall take responsibility for their national objectives and obligations to a higher degree than principals in schools with a less successful implementation of social goals. The implementation of social goals is of importance not only from an outcome perspective but also from a process perspective. It requires collaborative interpretation which can promote principal-staff professional relations and ultimately student learning. The identified overall differences between principals' leadership processes and processes in the twenty-six schools raise questions around consequences for equivalence in education. / Struktur, kultur, ledarskap- förutsättningar för framgångsrika skolor?

Begreppet medarbetarskap är långt ifrån ett välkänt uttryck idag. Det handlar om medarbetarens förhållningssätt till sin arbetsgivare, till sitt arbete och till sina kollegor. Syftet med denna uppsats är för det första att få mer kunskap om begreppets innebörd. För det andra är syftet att få kunskap om hur medarbetare i en kommunal verksamhet uppfattar och praktiserar medarbetarskap utefter en kommunal policy. För det tredje är syftet att ge förslag till hur medarbetarna i undersökningen fortsättningsvis kan bidra till att uppnå ett gott medarbetarskap. Detta för att synliggöra medarbetarnas möjligheter till att påverka sin arbetssituation. Undersökningen har utförts med en kvalitativ metod, där resultatet bygger på åtta intervjuer tillsammans med medarbetare från två arbetsgrupper som tillhör hierarkins lägsta nivå. Resultatet visar att det skiljer sig mellan gruppernas upplevelse och praktiserande av det rådande medarbetarskapet, trots att de tillhör samma organisation och förväntas arbeta utifrån samma kommunala policy. / The concept of employeeship is far from being a well-known expression today. It deals with how employees relate to their employers, their own work and to their fellow employees. The aim of this study is first to gather more knowledge about the concept employeeship and to illustrate similarities and differences between other close concepts. Second, the aim is to gather more knowledge about how employees in two workgroups within the public sector understand and practice employeeship in accordance with municipal policy. Third, the aim is to illuminate how public sector workers can contribute to accomplish a well-developed employeeship. This enables employees to influence their work situation. The research has been carried out with a method of high quality interviews with eight workers from two workgroups at the lowest level. The results reveal that there are differences in how the groups experience and practice the prevailing employeeship, in spite of belonging to the same public sector and are expected to work on the basis of the same municipal policy.

No description available.