David C. Ensminger

An audience response system may influence student performance on anatomy examination questions.

This study integrated an in‐house audience response system (ARS) in the human anatomy course over two years to determine whether students performed better on high‐stakes examinations following exposure to similar interactive questions in a large lecture format. Questions in an interactive ARS format were presented in lectures via PowerPoint presentations. Students who chose to participate in the anonymous ARS sessions submitted answers via their personal wireless devices (e.g., laptops, smartphones, PDAs, etc). Students were surveyed for feedback. Student participation in ARS activities was greatest (65–80%) in the first lecture. The number of students who actively participated in ARS activities decreased over the next four sessions, and then slightly increased in the last two sessions. This trend was the same for both years. Use of the ARS did not dramatically enhance overall student performance on examination questions that dealt with content similar to content presented in the ARS sessions. However, students who scored in the lower quartile of the examination performed better on the examination questions after the ARS was implemented. Accordingly, our findings suggest that the effect of ARS to improve student performance on examinations was not uniform. The overall benefit of an ARS to enhance the lecture experience was confirmed by student surveys. Anat Sci Educ.

Development of implementation profile instrument

Recently, however, researchers have begun to focus on the implementation phase of the ADDIE model (Surry and Ely, 2001). One of the most interesting ideas that has come out of this research is Ely’s (1990, 1999) eight conditions of implementation. Research has shown that there are eight conditions that facilitate the implementation of an innovation. These conditions are: dissatisfaction with the status quo; knowledge and skills; time; resources; rewards and incentives; participation; leadership; and commitment. The goal of our research is to develop an instrument that will determine an individual’s ‘implementation profile’—how important each of the conditions is to their decision to implement an innovation. This work might ultimately lead to the development of implementation plans tailored to the profile of an organization’s personnel.

Associations between formative practice quizzes and summative examination outcomes in a medical anatomy course

Formative practice quizzes have become common resources for self‐evaluation and focused reviews of course content in the medical curriculum. We conducted two separate studies to (1) compare the effects of a single or multiple voluntary practice quizzes on subsequent summative examinations and (2) examine when students are most likely to use practice quizzes relative to the summative examinations. In the first study, providing a single on‐line practice quiz followed by instructor feedback had no effect on examination average grades compared to the previous year or student performances on similar questions. However, there were significant correlations between student performance on each practice quiz and each summative examination (r = 0.42 and r = 0.24). When students were provided multiple practice quizzes with feedback (second study), there were weak correlations between the frequency of use and performance on each summative examination (r = 0.17 and r = 0.07). The frequency with which students accessed the practice quizzes was greatest the day before each examination. In both studies, there was a decline in the level of student utilization of practice quizzes over time. We conclude that practice quizzes provide some predictive value for performances on summative examinations. Second, making practice quizzes available for longer periods prior to summative examinations does not promote the use of the quizzes as a study strategy because students appear to use them mostly to assess knowledge one to two days prior to examinations. Anat Sci Educ 8: 37–44.

Agile CS1 Labs: eXtreme Programming Practices in an Introductory Programming Course

Many students begin to form their software development habits in introductory programming courses. Although problem-solving strategies and other good practices are taught at the introductory level, early experiences in programming tend to involve small assignments and so students do not always see the benefits and value of good software engineering practices. Consequently, they develop habits which are hard to break later when faced with significant problems where good practices are essential for success. Furthermore, students report that typical CS1 lab experiences tend to be unsatisfactory and even irrelevant. In order to give the students early meaningful experiences in developing good habits using a software engineering methodology which fits the limited time-constraints of the academic environment, eXtreme Programming (XP) was employed for the lab portion of a second semester CS1 course. This paper describes how XP practices were incorporated into a semester-long project where classes met once a week in a closed lab. Specific affective objectives were also introduced which were measured quantitatively and qualitatively. This paper describes our methodology, assessment, results, and plans for improvement.

A Conceptual Framework for Primary Source Practices.

Abstract This article introduces a descriptive conceptual framework to provide teachers with a means of recognizing and describing instructional activities that use primary sources. The framework provides structure for professional development programs that have been established to train teachers to access and integrate primary sources into lessons. The framework consists of six primary source-based instructional practices that are linked to Blooms (1956) taxonomy and the revised taxonomy of cognitive processing (Anderson and Krathwohl 2001) to provide teachers a familiar educational construct as a foundation for understanding the framework.

Department chairs as change agents: Leading change in resistant environments

Change process research often discusses barriers that impede organizational change (e.g., Banta, 1997; Cavacuiti and Locke, 2013; Mutchler, 1990; Stewart et al., 2012); however, no empirical research has addressed how behaviors established in leadership models counteract these barriers. This study explored these two interconnected constructs of leadership and change in stories of secondary school department chair change attempts, and identified specific leadership behaviors described within their stories that aided the conversion of change barriers into conditions that enhanced the change process. Leadership behavior identification within department chair stories of change was guided by Blake and Mouton’s (1962) leadership theory, which has been further delineated by Yukl et al. (2002), and identification of change process barriers was guided by Ely’s (1990a) eight conditions for change. From the combined descriptions of six successful and four unsuccessful narratives of department chair-led change emerged essential conditions for change and commonly occurring change barriers. Specific leadership behaviors capable of overcoming these change barriers were also identified. Unexpectedly, this investigation also unearthed a change barrier seemingly unrelated to previously identified conditions of change: the contentious resistor. The contentious resistor was described as the most detrimental barrier to department chairs’ leadership of the change process.

Teacher Educator Identity in a Culture of Iterative Teacher Education Program Design: A Collaborative Self-Study

Abstract Faculty in the School of Education have collaborated to re-envision teacher education at our university. A complex, dynamic, time-consuming and sometimes painstaking process, redesigning a teacher education program from a traditional approach (i.e. where courses focus primarily on theoretical principles of practice through textbooks and university-based classroom discussions) to a model of teacher education that embraces teaching, learning and leading with schools and in communities is challenging, yet exciting work. Little is known about teacher educators’ experiences as they either design or deliver collaborative field-based models of teacher education. In this article, we examine our experiences in the second implementation year of our redesigned teacher education program, Teaching, Learning, and Leading with Schools and Communities (TLLSC) and how these unique experiences inform our teacher educator identities. Through a collaborative self-study, we sought to make meaning of our transformation from a faculty delivering a traditional model to educators collectively implementing a field-based model, by analyzing the diverse perspectives of faculty at different entry points in the TLLSC development and implementation process. We found that our participation in an intensive field-based teacher preparation model challenged our notions of teacher educator identity. In a culture of iterative program design, this study documents the personal and professional shifts in identity required to accomplish this collaborative and dynamic change in approach to teacher education.

Case study of an evaluation coaching model: Exploring the role of the evaluator

This study examined the role of the external evaluator as a coach. More specifically, using an evaluative inquiry framework (Preskill & Torres, 1999a; Preskill & Torres, 1999b), it explored the types of coaching that an evaluator employed to promote individual, team and organizational learning. The study demonstrated that evaluation coaching provided a viable means for an organization with a limited budget to conduct evaluations through support of a coach. It also demonstrated how the coaching processes supported the development of evaluation capacity within the organization. By examining coaching models outside of the field of evaluation, this study identified two forms of coaching--results coaching and developmental coaching--that promoted evaluation capacity building and have not been previously discussed in the evaluation literature.