The choice not to use computers: A case study of community college faculty who do not use computers in teaching

The primary purpose of this investigation is to study the motives of community college faculty who decide not to use computers in teaching. In spite of the fact that many of the environmental blocks that would otherwise inhibit the use of the computers have been eliminated at many institutions, many faculty do not use a computer beyond its word-processing function. For the purpose of the study non-adoption of computers in teaching is defined as not using computers for more than word-processing. ^ The issues in the literature focus on resistance and assume a pro-innovation and pro-adoption bias. Previous research on the questions is primarily surveys with narrowly focused assumptions. This qualitative research directly asks the participants about their feelings, beliefs, attitudes, experiences, and behaviors in regard to computers in teaching. Through the interview process a number of other correlated issues emerge. ^ The investigation was conducted at Miami-Dade Community College, a large urban multicampus institution, in Miami-Dade, Florida. It was conducted through a series of in-depth phenomenological interviews. There were nine interviews; eight within the profile; two were pilots; and one was an extreme opposite of the profile. Each participant was interviewed three times for about 45 minutes. ^ The results indicate that the computer conflicts with the participants' values in regard to their teaching and their beliefs in regard to the nature of knowledge, learning, and the relationship that they wish to maintain with students. Computers require significant changes in the values, beliefs, and consequent behaviors. These are changes that the participants are not willing to make without overwhelming evidence that they are worth the sacrifice. For the participants, this worth is only definable as it positively improves learning. For even the experts the evidence is not there. Unlike the innovator, the high end computer user, these participants are not willing to adopt the computer on faith. ^

Thinking in three dimensions: Exploring students' geometric thinking and spatial ability with the Geometer's Sketchpad

Current reform initiatives recommend that geometry instruction include the study of three-dimensional geometric objects and provide students with opportunities to use spatial skills in problem-solving tasks. Geometer's Sketchpad (GSP) is a dynamic and interactive computer program that enables the user to investigate and explore geometric concepts and manipulate geometric structures. Research using GSP as an instructional tool has focused primarily on teaching and learning two-dimensional geometry. This study explored the effect of a GSP based instructional environment on students' geometric thinking and three-dimensional spatial ability as they used GSP to learn three-dimensional geometry. For 10 weeks, 18 tenth-grade students from an urban school district used GSP to construct and analyze dynamic, two-dimensional representations of three-dimensional objects in a classroom environment that encouraged exploration, discussion, conjecture, and verification. The data were collected primarily from participant observations and clinical interviews and analyzed using qualitative methods of analysis. In addition, pretest and posttest measures of three-dimensional spatial ability and van Hiele level of geometric thinking were obtained. Spatial ability measures were analyzed using standard t-test analysis. ^ The data from this study indicate that GSP is a viable tool to teach students about three-dimensional geometric objects. A comparison of students' pretest and posttest van Hiele levels showed an improvement in geometric thinking, especially for students on lower levels of the van Hiele theory. Evidence at the p < .05 level indicated that students' spatial ability improved significantly. Specifically, the GSP dynamic, visual environment supported students' visualization and reasoning processes as students attempted to solve challenging tasks about three-dimensional geometric objects. The GSP instructional activities also provided students with an experiential base and an intuitive understanding about three-dimensional objects from which more formal work in geometry could be pursued. This study demonstrates that by designing appropriate GSP based instructional environments, it is possible to help students improve their spatial skills, develop more coherent and accurate intuitions about three-dimensional geometric objects, and progress through the levels of geometric thinking proposed by van Hiele. ^

Connecting visual and analytic reasoning to improve students' spatial visualization abilities: A constructivist approach

Current reform initiatives recommend that school geometry teaching and learning include the study of three-dimensional geometric objects and provide students with opportunities to use spatial abilities in mathematical tasks. Two ways of using Geometer's Sketchpad (GSP), a dynamic and interactive computer program, in conjunction with manipulatives enable students to investigate and explore geometric concepts, especially when used in a constructivist setting. Research on spatial abilities has focused on visual reasoning to improve visualization skills. This dissertation investigated the hypothesis that connecting visual and analytic reasoning may better improve students' spatial visualization abilities as compared to instruction that makes little or no use of the connection of the two. Data were collected using the Purdue Spatial Visualization Tests (PSVT) administered as a pretest and posttest to a control and two experimental groups. Sixty-four 10th grade students in three geometry classrooms participated in the study during 6 weeks. Research questions were answered using statistical procedures. An analysis of covariance was used for a quantitative analysis, whereas a description of students' visual-analytic processing strategies was presented using qualitative methods. The quantitative results indicated that there were significant differences in gender, but not in the group factor. However, when analyzing a sub sample of 33 participants with pretest scores below the 50th percentile, males in one of the experimental groups significantly benefited from the treatment. A review of previous research also indicated that students with low visualization skills benefited more than those with higher visualization skills. The qualitative results showed that girls were more sophisticated in their visual-analytic processing strategies to solve three-dimensional tasks. It is recommended that the teaching and learning of spatial visualization start in the middle school, prior to students' more rigorous mathematics exposure in high school. A duration longer than 6 weeks for treatments in similar future research studies is also recommended.

Contingency, contiguity, and development: The ontogeny of contingency learning in northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) chicks

The purpose of this study was to investigate the ontogeny of auditory learning via operant contingency in Northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus ) hatchlings and possible interaction between attention, orienting and learning during early development. Chicks received individual 5 min training sessions in which they received a playback of a bobwhite maternal call at a single delay following each vocalization they emitted. Playback was either from a single randomly chosen speaker or switched back and forth semi-randomly between two speakers during training. Chicks were tested 24 hrs later in a simultaneous choice test between the familiar and an unfamiliar maternal call. It was found that day-old chicks showed a significant time-specific decrement in auditory learning when trained with delays in the range of 470–910 ms between their vocalizations and call playback only when training involved two speakers. Two-day-old birds showed an even more sustained disruption of learning than day-old chicks, whereas three-day-old chicks showed a pattern of intermittent interference with their learning when trained at such delays. A similar but less severe decrement in auditory learning was found when chicks were provided with motor training in which playback was contingent upon chicks entering and exiting one of two colored squares placed on the floor of the arena. Chicks provided with playback of the call at randomly chosen delays each time they vocalized exhibited large fluctuations in their responsivity to the auditory stimulus as a function of delay—fluctuations which were correlated significantly with measures of chick learning, particularly at two-days-of-age. When playback was limited to a single location chicks no longer showed a time-specific disruption of their learning of the auditory stimulus. Sequential analyses revealed several patterns suggesting that an attentional process similar or analogous to attentional blink may have contributed both to the observed fluctuations in chick responsivity to the auditory stimulus as a function of delay and to the time-specific learning deficit shown by chicks provided with two-speaker training. The study highlights that learning can be substantially modulated by processes of orienting and attention and has a number of important implications for research within cognitive neuroscience, animal behavior and learning.

An Investigation of Participants’ Perspectives About a Learning Assistant Program and Their Thinking about Becoming a Mathematics Teacher

A Learning Assistant program that recruits strong STEM undergraduates to become mathematics teachers was explored through a qualitative study. Three program participants were purposely selected and interviewed. The program reaffirmed one participant’s choice to become a teacher and clarified for one that it might be a career for him.

Effects of Family, Child, and Teacher Demographics on Prekindergarten Children's Access to and Use of Numeracy and Spatial Materials in the Early Education Setting

Florida’s Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten program (VPK) aims to ensure that all 4-year-olds are prepared to excel in K-12 mathematics. Early numeracy/spatial skills are predictive of success in K–12 mathematics. No research has examined whether VPK classrooms are equipped with the materials necessary to teach numeracy/spatial skill. The Pre-Kindergarten Numeracy and Spatial Environment Survey was created to examine the frequency of access to and use of numeracy/spatial materials in VPK classrooms. The 69-item survey was completed by the lead educator from a sample of 62 pre-kindergarten classrooms in Miami-Dade County. Regression analysis results suggest the location of the pre-kindergarten center, the sex distribution of the children in the classrooms or the number of years of experience that the educator has as a lead teacher along with the extra training courses undertaken by the teachers does not affect the access to or the use of, numeracy and spatial materials in the classrooms.

The Effect of Mobile Technology as an Active Student Response System on the Acquisition of U.S. History Content of Secondary Students with Specific Learning Disabilities

Students with specific learning disabilities (SLD) typically learn less history content than their peers without disabilities and show fewer learning gains. Even when they are provided with the same instructional strategies, many students with SLD struggle to grasp complex historical concepts and content area vocabulary. Many strategies involving technology have been used in the past to enhance learning for students with SLD in history classrooms. However, very few studies have explored the effectiveness of emerging mobile technology in K-12 history classrooms. This study investigated the effects of mobile devices (iPads) as an active student response (ASR) system on the acquisition of U.S. history content of middle school students with SLD. An alternating treatments single subject design was used to compare the effects of two interventions. There were two conditions and a series of pretest probesin this study. The conditions were: (a) direct instruction and studying from handwritten notes using the interactive notebook strategy and (b) direct instruction and studying using the Quizlet App on the iPad. There were three dependent variables in this study: (a) percent correct on tests, (b) rate of correct responses per minute, and (c) rate of errors per minute. A comparative analysis suggested that both interventions (studying from interactive notes and studying using Quizlet on the iPad) had varying degrees of effectiveness in increasing the learning gains of students with SLD. In most cases, both interventions were equally effective. During both interventions, all of the participants increased their percentage correct and increased their rate of correct responses. Most of the participants decreased their rate of errors. The results of this study suggest that teachers of students with SLD should consider a post lesson review in the form of mobile devices as an ASR system or studying from handwritten notes paired with existing evidence-based practices to facilitate students’ knowledge in U.S. history. Future research should focus on the use of other interactive applications on various mobile operating platforms, on other social studies subjects, and should explore various testing formats such as oral question-answer and multiple choice.

The effect of mobile technology as an active student response system on the acquisition of U.S. history content of secondary students with specific learning disabilities

Students with specific learning disabilities (SLD) typically learn less history content than their peers without disabilities and show fewer learning gains. Even when they are provided with the same instructional strategies, many students with SLD struggle to grasp complex historical concepts and content area vocabulary. Many strategies involving technology have been used in the past to enhance learning for students with SLD in history classrooms. However, very few studies have explored the effectiveness of emerging mobile technology in K-12 history classrooms. ^ This study investigated the effects of mobile devices (iPads) as an active student response (ASR) system on the acquisition of U.S. history content of middle school students with SLD. An alternating treatments single subject design was used to compare the effects of two interventions. There were two conditions and a series of pretest probesin this study. The conditions were: (a) direct instruction and studying from handwritten notes using the interactive notebook strategy and (b) direct instruction and studying using the Quizlet App on the iPad. There were three dependent variables in this study: (a) percent correct on tests, (b) rate of correct responses per minute, and (c) rate of errors per minute. ^ A comparative analysis suggested that both interventions (studying from interactive notes and studying using Quizlet on the iPad) had varying degrees of effectiveness in increasing the learning gains of students with SLD. In most cases, both interventions were equally effective. During both interventions, all of the participants increased their percentage correct and increased their rate of correct responses. Most of the participants decreased their rate of errors. ^ The results of this study suggest that teachers of students with SLD should consider a post lesson review in the form of mobile devices as an ASR system or studying from handwritten notes paired with existing evidence-based practices to facilitate students’ knowledge in U.S. history. Future research should focus on the use of other interactive applications on various mobile operating platforms, on other social studies subjects, and should explore various testing formats such as oral question-answer and multiple choice. ^

Ensemble Stream Model for Data-Cleaning in Sensor Networks

Ensemble Stream Modeling and Data-cleaning are sensor information processing systems have different training and testing methods by which their goals are cross-validated. This research examines a mechanism, which seeks to extract novel patterns by generating ensembles from data. The main goal of label-less stream processing is to process the sensed events to eliminate the noises that are uncorrelated, and choose the most likely model without over fitting thus obtaining higher model confidence. Higher quality streams can be realized by combining many short streams into an ensemble which has the desired quality. The framework for the investigation is an existing data mining tool. First, to accommodate feature extraction such as a bush or natural forest-fire event we make an assumption of the burnt area (BA*), sensed ground truth as our target variable obtained from logs. Even though this is an obvious model choice the results are disappointing. The reasons for this are two: One, the histogram of fire activity is highly skewed. Two, the measured sensor parameters are highly correlated. Since using non descriptive features does not yield good results, we resort to temporal features. By doing so we carefully eliminate the averaging effects; the resulting histogram is more satisfactory and conceptual knowledge is learned from sensor streams. Second is the process of feature induction by cross-validating attributes with single or multi-target variables to minimize training error. We use F-measure score, which combines precision and accuracy to determine the false alarm rate of fire events. The multi-target data-cleaning trees use information purity of the target leaf-nodes to learn higher order features. A sensitive variance measure such as f-test is performed during each node’s split to select the best attribute. Ensemble stream model approach proved to improve when using complicated features with a simpler tree classifier. The ensemble framework for data-cleaning and the enhancements to quantify quality of fitness (30% spatial, 10% temporal, and 90% mobility reduction) of sensor led to the formation of streams for sensor-enabled applications. Which further motivates the novelty of stream quality labeling and its importance in solving vast amounts of real-time mobile streams generated today.