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Participants will discuss how they could use the lab concept in courses outside of the sciences to encourage and improve student engagement. The questions participants will be able to answer after attending the session will be: (1) How can I use a "lab" in my classes? and (2) How could use a lab improve student engagement?

In their book, Teaching Naked Techniques, Jose Bowen and C. Edward Watson suggest that “just calling your classroom a lab or studio will signal that you want your students to be more collaborative, self-directed, self-motivated, and intellectually ambitious.” So labs aren’t just for science courses! Join in the discussion on how you could incorporate a lab component to your classes in order to encourage and improve student engagement.

Previous studies have reported high attrition rates in large-enrollment science courses where teacher-centered instruction was prevalent. The scientific literature provides strong evidence that student-centered teaching, which involves extensive active learning, leads to deepened learning as the result of effective student engagement. Consequently, professional development initiatives have continually focused on assisting academics with the implementation of active learning. Generally, higher education institutions engage faculty in professional development through in-service workshops that facilitate learning new teaching techniques in a specific context. These workshops usually do not include self-scrutiny concerning teaching or do they provide continuous support for the implementation of strategies learned in the workshop. The purpose of this study was to explore the influence of a professional development program that consisted of a workshop focused on the implementation of active learning in large science courses and extended to include post-workshop activities, on participants’ enactment of teaching practices introduced in the workshop. More specifically, through a qualitative methodology and employing transformative learning theory, this work evaluated the influence of science instructors’ engagement in dialogue and critical self-reflection on their teaching approaches and practices. Engagement in critical reflection was facilitated through watching of teaching videotapes followed by participants’ engagement in dialogue about teaching with the researcher. Findings suggest that providing continuous post-workshop support by fostering engagement in critical self-reflection and dialogue, can lead to transformative learning about teaching. More specifically, participation in the program led to the transformation of teaching practices, while teaching approaches remained unchanged. While some obstacles to the transformation of teaching approaches were identified, major outcomes indicate that meaningful professional development can go far beyond learning how to use new teaching strategies through faculty engagement in critical reflection and dialogue on teaching.

This dissertation examines two broad topics -- emission line properties of active galactic nuclei (AGN) and the effect of hands-on, integrated science courses on student understanding of astronomy. To investigate trends in overall properties of emission lines in AGN, we apply principal component analysis (PCA) to the fluxes in the H [beta] - (O III) region of a sample of 9046 spectroscopically-identified broad-line AGN from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 5 with a redshift range of 0.1 < z < 0.56. After performing independent spectral PCA on subsets defined effectively by their (O III) equivalent width (EW), we find only the weakest (O III) objects retain the optical Fe II - (O III) anticorrelation and the correlation of EW[subscript O III] with H [beta] linewidth that have previously been found in high-luminosity AGN. The objects with strongest EW[subscript O III] do not differ from the entire data set significantly in other spectral and derived properties, such as luminosity, redshift, emission line shapes, Eddington ratio, continuum slope, and radio properties. However, our findings are consistent with previous suggestions that (O III) emission is primarily a function of covering factor of the narrow-line region. To investigate the other side of the Fe II - (O III) anticorrelation, we examine the effect of changes in the gas-phase abundance of Fe on observed variation in Fe II. Using AGN spectra from the SDSS in the redshift range of 0.2 < z < 0.35, we measure the Fe/Ne abundance of the narrow-line region (NLR) using the (Fe VII)/(Ne V) line intensity ratio. We find no significant difference in the abundance of Fe relative to Ne in the NLR as a function of Fe II/H [beta]. However, the (N II)/(S II) ratio increases by a factor of 2 with increasing Fe II strength. This indicates a trend in N/S abundance ratio, and by implication in the overall metallicity of the NLR gas, with increasing Fe II strength. We propose that the wide range of Fe II strength in AGN largely results from the selective depletion of Fe into grains in the low ionization portion of the broad-line region. We utilize photoionization models to show that the strength of the optical Fe II lines varies almost linearly with gas-phase Fe abundance, while the ultraviolet Fe II strength varies more weakly, as seen observationally. After examining the emission line properties of large samples of fairly typical AGN, we investigated the newly expanded regime of low-mass AGN (M[subscript BH] [less than or approximately equal to] 10⁶ M[subscript sun]) with respect to their emission line properties at a smaller scale. We utilize the high spectral resolution and small aperture of our Keck data of 27 low-mass AGN, taken with the Echellette Spectrograph and Imager, to isolate the NLRs of these low-mass black holes. Some of these low-luminosity objects plausibly represent examples of the low-metallicity AGN described by Groves et al. (2006), based on their (N II)/H[alpha] ratios and their consistency with the Kewley & Ellison (2008) mass-metallicity relation. We also find that these low-mass AGN have steeper UV continuum slopes than more-massive AGN based on their He II/H[beta] ratio. Overall, NLR emission lines in these low-mass AGN exhibit trends similar to those seen in AGN with higher-mass BHs, such as increasing blueshifts and broadening with increasing ionization potential. Additionally, we see evidence of an intermediate line region whose intensity correlates with L/L[subscript Edd] in these objects, as seen in higher-mass AGN. We highlight the interesting trend that, at least in these low-mass BHs, the (O III) EW is highest in symmetric NLR lines with no blue wing. This trend of increasing (O III) EW with line symmetry could be explained by a high covering factor of lower ionization gas in the NLR. We also investigate effective methods for teaching astronomy and connections between astronomical topics in student learning and understanding. After developing the curriculum for a hands-on, learner-centered astronomy course (Hands-on-Science, hereafter HoS) aimed at pre-service elementary teachers, we measure student performance in HoS compared to traditional, large lecture courses (hereafter Astro101). We utilize distractor-driven multiple choice assessments in order to quantitatively assess student understanding and evaluate the persistence or correction of common misconceptions in astronomy. We find that for the topics included in the HoS curriculum, HoS students have a higher average post-test score, and higher normalized gains, than the Astro101 students. We cannot pinpoint the exact cause of this student achievement because of the multitude of nontraditional practices incorporated into the HoS implementation. Increased time-on-task, a classroom environment structured around student discussion, or focus on conceptual understanding could each be key factors in the high achievement of HoS students. We conclude that the HoS students are better prepared in astronomy for their future careers as elementary school teachers by HoS courses than they would have been in traditional, introductory astronomy courses. When we compare directly between topics covered in both HoS and Astro101, we find that HoS students have normalized gains that are a factor of 2-4 higher than those of Astro101 students. Therefore, we conclude that curricula similar to the HoS approach would benefit Astro101 students as well, particularly for topics which are most impacted by the HoS method, such as Moon phases and seasons. Lastly, a PCA of the changes in HoS student scores reveals that there is very little systematic student variation apart from the trends apparent in the mean changes in the sample. Thus, we do not find groupings of questions that some subsets of students systematically learn more readily than others. Another way to interpret this result is that the HoS curriculum and methodology indiscriminately help all kinds of pre-service elementary teachers, despite presumptive differences in their own learning styles and strengths. / text

The State of Texas requires the completion of all six semester hours of government for graduation from a public college, but does not provide detailed guidelines regarding content, and related objectives, for these courses. Thus instructors have considerable discretion in the setting of course objectives. The problem of this dissertation, therefore, is the determination of course objectives actually set and the general orientation within political education that the objectives may reflect.

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The aging population in the United States has led to an increased demand for registered nurses. Nursing program administrators must examine ways to increase nursing program completion, which will increase the supply registered nurses. The purpose of this study was to determine the associations among length of time between core science course completion and nursing program admission, on-time completion, and National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses (NCLEX-RN) success for students at a southeastern community college. A convenience sample of 288 community students admitted to an associate degree level nursing (ADN) program between 2007 and 2012 was selected. The guiding research questions examined if the length of time from completion of core science courses, Anatomy and Physiology, and admission to a selective admission nursing program was associated with on-time completion as well as passing the NCLEX-RN examination on first attempt. Using Karen's gatekeeping theory as the theoretical foundation, this nonexperimental, nonparametric, quantitative design tested for statistical significance. A Pearson chi square with phi coefficient was utilized for data analysis. The results indicated a statistically significant association between on-time completion and completion of core science courses (X2 (4, N = 288) = 19.730, p = .001, ɸ .262); however, passing the NCLEX-RN on the first attempt was not significant (X2 (4, n = 178) = 4.182, p = .382). The study contributes to positive social change by providing research-based findings on the association between core science course timing and program completion. This knowledge may impact course scheduling and increase the number of registered nurses, which will have a positive impact on meeting the healthcare needs of society.

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Educators expect the number of institutions offering online courses and the number of students enrolling in these courses to increase as many students, particularly nontraditional students, discover the advantages of online content delivery. Online courses require new methods of communication between students and faculty as well as discovering new ways to build relationships, earn student trust, conduct appropriate assessment, and deliver useful course content. Many institutions—public, private, and for-profit—offer a wide variety of online coursework but faculty, employers, and the public have expressed concerns about the quality of online course content. In particular, online delivery of coursework in the natural and physical sciences, courses previously offered only in an on-ground format because of their laboratory components, has raised questions about efficacy. The current study was designed to investigate whether there were significant differences in student success between online and on-ground second semester anatomy courses at a community college in East Tennessee during a 5-year period. Statistical analyses were conducted on the following variables: lecture final examination grade, final lecture course grade, final laboratory course grade, sex, age, and content delivery for students enrolled in online and on-ground Anatomy 2 courses at the participating community college. The results of this study indicated that the most successful students in Anatomy 2 lecture and laboratory classes were older (nontraditional-aged) male and female students who attended on-ground classes. Older students in on-ground classes were more likely to earn an A in both lecture and laboratory classes than younger (traditional-aged) students. On-ground male and female students also gained admission into the nursing program at a greater rate than did male and female students from online sections. While age apparently made no difference in the admission rate for female students, older male students from on-ground sections had a greater admission rate than younger male students.