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In the veterinary professional curriculum, methods of examination in many courses are transitioning from the traditional paper-based exams to electronic-based exams. Therefore, a controlled trial to evaluate the impact of testing methodology on examination performance in a veterinary physiology course was designed and implemented. Formalized surveys and focus group discussions were also used to determine student attitudes toward the examination formats. In total, 134 first-year veterinary students and 11 PhD/MS students were administered a total of 4 exams throughout 1 semester (2 on paper and 2 electronically) using a split-halves design. The paper (P) and electronic (E) exams contained 25 identical multiple-choice questions. Students were randomly assigned to two groups and were given exams in one of two sequences (E-P-E-P or P-E-P-E). Participants consented to and completed two anonymous surveys vis à vis their experience. Out of a maximum raw score of 25, the mean score for electronic examinations (20.8; 95% confidence interval, 20.3-21.2) was significantly (P = 0.01) greater than that for paper examinations (20.3; 95% confidence interval, 20.0-20.7). However, students expressed numerous concerns with the electronic examination format, and, at the completion of the study, 87% preferred to take their examination on paper rather than the electronic format. These data show that student attitudes concerning the examination format are not primarily determined by examination results, and that the additional anxiety related to the electronic examination format plays a large role in student attitudes.

Nearly 30 years ago, Critical Race Theory (CRT) was introduced to the field of education. Ladson-Billings and Tate argued that in order to understand educational inequities in the United States, it is essential to analyze the intersections of race and property. Throughout the past three decades, scholars within the field of education have utilized CRT to gain a greater understanding of educational outcomes and the experiences of students, teachers and administrators of color in schools. Presently, CRT has gained nation-wide attention. Conservative media has co-opted the theory and rebranded it as an indoctrination tool to teach students to hate whiteness. The authors of this paper have found CRT useful in unpacking our experiences as graduate students at a predominantly white public university and in our work as teacher educators. This paper was penned in response to the misinformation campaign targeting CRT. The authors use a tenet of CRT, centrality of experiential knowledge, to discuss their raced experiences within their doctoral programs.

This paper offers a meta-analysis scoping study of doctoral dissertations completed in the last 20 years in one doctoral programme of Educational Leadership (EL) at a higher education institution in Texas, aiming at identifying topical foci, epistemology, methodology and main themes. Therefore, we systematically collected, documented, securitised and analysed completed dissertations following the steps identified by PRISMA guidelines. The review aimed to answer the following four questions: (1) What are the general trends of doctoral dissertations in the studied programme? (2) What is the topical foci of these dissertations? (3) What are the prevailing epistemological constructs and genres informing this work? (4) What are the gaps in this research focus within the scope of educational leadership and policy? Based on our analysis, four main key themes were identified: educational leadership and policy, public education, equity and social justice, and race and ethnicity. Further implications, utility of research and future dissertations in educational leadership in this programme and other similar programmes are fully discussed.

The paper describes the international research conducted in collaboration between the University of Padova, University of North Texas, and Windesheim University of Applied Sciences. The study explores how higher education faculty involved in professionalizing courses for the educational area perceive the pandemic-induced transition to digitalized education (DE), after one year of experience with it. This paper introduces the second phase of a research study that began as early as spring 2020, with an online survey distributed worldwide. It seeks to investigate possible changes after one year of digitalized education related to (1) perceptions of institutional support and professional training offered; (2) potential and challenges of DE; and (3) professional intentions for future uses of DE. Details on the instrument's reliability and structure will also be provided. We are exploring how the DE is changing teachers' routines and whether these changes are paving the way for collaborative, reflective, and student-centred approaches that could have long-term consequences. This is to help focus future training pathways to better support teachers in teaching effectively and efficiently for learning, both in times of crisis and in times of normalcy.

This study was conducted to determine the success for the diffusion of the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics (COIA) white paper Framing the Future: Reforming Intercollegiate Athletics. The Stages of Concern Questionnaire (SoCQ) and personal interviews were utilized to collect data and purposeful sampling was used to identify one NCAA Division I university in the state of Texas. Athletic personnel and faculty senate members were asked to complete the SoCQ and participate in an interview for the study. Findings provide evidence that the participants share common concerns in relation to the adoption of the COIA white paper such as creating a balanced approach to academics and athletics, increasing campus pride, and academic integrity. Participants also felt that meaningful collaboration among faculty and staff members can prove beneficial to helping individuals take ownership in the adoption process. (Contains 1 figure.)

Do high school students who are predisposed to enroll in dual-credit courses already possess high levels of motivation or college and academic self-efficacy? Students in this study reported being academically motivated, but they did not report high levels of confidence in their ability to perform certain college-associated tasks. Of 52 items pertaining to self-efficacy, students expressed even a modest level of confidence in just one area: the ability to research and write a good term paper. Other results indicated that high grades correlated only minimally to students' overall levels of self-efficacy. College and academic self-efficacy did not appear to be precursors for dual-credit enrollment decisions, implying that the dual-credit programs themselves may play a role in increasing self-efficacy and helping high school students transition successfully to college.

As an instructor of the developmental reading and writing course at Texas State University, Barrie McGee is required per state mandate to design a course as an accelerated version of an integrated reading and writing (IRW) course. Furthermore, she is uniquely positioned as a student enrolled in the program in developmental education to access literature on theory and research relevant to integrating reading and writing to help inform her instructional choices. For example, Bartholemae and Petrosky's (1986) seminal work, "Facts, Artifacts, and Counterfacts," has done much to help her envision what such a course would look like including, assignments and reflections on student writing and insights of the difficulty underprepared students have imagining themselves as readers and writers. However, it is Salvatori's (1996) difficulty paper assignment, the topic discussed in her article, "Conversations with Texts: Reading in the Teaching of Composition," which resonates with McGee as paving a way for students to engage in conversation with the text and to prepare for class discussions by writing a one-page description of any difficulty they noted in a given reading. Drawing from Salvatori's (1996) article, McGee argues that the difficulty paper assignment provides a flexible framework for instruction in the IRW course that reflects the features of Rosenblatt's transactional theory of reading and writing and which perceives what she terms "leaning into difficulty" as a way to build new knowledge. In this article, she begins broadly with a short discussion on the fundamentals of an IRW course according to Bartholemae and Petrosky (1986), and then moves into a more specific focus on Salvatori's (1996) rationale for and particulars of the difficulty paper assignment. McGee expands this view of the difficulty paper by examining its use in Sweeney and McBride's (2015) study to further highlight the flexibility of the assignment to gain insight into student experiences with reading. Final thoughts conclude the article.

The fields of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) have seen massive growth in recent years. Numerous degree programs have started to redesign their curricula to meet the high market demand for people qualified to fill related job positions. In this paper, the authors perform a content analysis of online job postings hosted on Indeed.com and provide a skill classification framework for AR/VR job positions. Furthermore, they present a ranking of the relevant skills for such positions. The paper contributes to the extant literature on curriculum design in degree programs by presenting the popular skills in the AR/VR domain.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore middle and secondary mathematics preservice teachers' (PST) perceptions of the benefits, challenges and impacts of implementing lesson study. Design/methodology/approach: This paper presents a single case study in the university context. Embedded units of analysis included a group of middle and a group of secondary mathematics PSTs, who were in the internship year of a teacher preparation program. Findings: This paper presents several perceived benefits, challenges and impacts according to PSTs. PSTs indicated benefits included their focused student observations and their collaboration in lesson design. Perceived challenges included observing as a nonparticipant observer and aspects of planning. The different impacts occurred in three phases: planning, observing during teaching and reflection. Research limitations/implications: First, the study participants included a small group of middle and secondary mathematics PSTs from one university in central Texas. Second, the PSTs in this study were not able to reteach the lesson, which may have influenced their perceptions. Practical implications: Mathematics teacher educators could use insights from this study as they implement lesson study or other field experiences to support PSTs in their growth as mathematics teachers. Originality/value: This paper examines PSTs' perceptions, which could benefit mathematics teacher educators as they consider how to introduce or implement lesson study with PSTs.

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Instructional labs: Improving traditions and new directions.] This paper presents a historical analysis of the development, implementation, research, and assessment of an evidence-based introductory algebra-based physics course. The course is laboratory based and taught with an inquiry-based pedagogy. The course has remained unique and has been taught consistently for over 20 years. It is taught predominantly to health science majors and is completely laboratory based without a lecture and without a required text. Students learn by working through a guided inquiry manual in groups, doing experiments to explore the nature of the world around them. They develop both quantitative and qualitative models based on their experiments. The focus is as much on critical thinking, modeling, and thinking like a scientist, as on physics content. I discuss the course throughout the years, presented in the context of the field of physics education research historically and the state of our department locally. The results of multiple forms of assessment are presented chronologically. The assessments were designed to answer research questions about the students' conceptual understanding and thinking skills, the effects of class size expansion, and questions about learning assistants' pedagogical content knowledge. One finding was that the conceptual understanding of students in the inquiry-based course was significantly higher than students taught traditionally but not significantly different from students taught by other research-informed pedagogies. However, we found that students taught in the inquiry-based format showed more evidence of the application of thinking skills as assessed by our thinking skills rubric in free-response exam problems. We have demonstrated that it is possible to expand a laboratory-based, inquiry-based physics course from sections of 24 students to sections of 60 students with the help of learning assistants and we have developed and validated a set of questions that can be used to measure learning assistants' pedagogical content knowledge or for learning assistant training purposes.

In this paper we demonstrate that using mixed reality (MR) technology can innovate our chemical engineering laboratory curriculum at Prairie View A&M University, a Historically Black College/University (HBCU). Particularly, we describe the development of a MR proof of concept to carry out a traditional fluid mechanics lab -- pressure drop as a function of flow through a straight-run pipe -- that can allow for the possibility of remote instruction for a traditionally hands-on practicum.

States have adopted a variety of policies to encourage universities to expand research production, with the hope of supporting economic growth and competitiveness. This paper considers whether a state-level initiative succeeded in influencing university-based research outputs among regional public universities. We test whether the Texas Research Incentive Program increased research production at a set of state universities as measured by total research spending, federally-funded research spending, the number of scholarly publications, and the share of publications published in high impact factor journals. Using a novel dataset and difference-in-differences analytic strategy, we found that TRIP adoption was associated with a 19%-25% increase in research expenditures at emerging research universities in Texas relative to a matched set of comparable universities. However, TRIP did not influence federally-funded research expenditures or journal publication outputs. We also show that federally-funded research expenditures influence publication outputs -- both in amount and quality -- and that number of full-time faculty influences both federal research expenditures and publication outputs. We discuss contributions to the literature on regional public universities, loose coupling, and research production, as well as implications for policy.

This paper discusses Texas Examinations of Educator Standards Program Languages Other Than English -- Spanish exam (TExES LOTE - Spanish) and its potential bias, particularly against teacher candidates with Spanish as a heritage language (HL) background. In Texas, most teacher candidates, or college students of Spanish preparing for secondary teacher certification, are heritage speakers of Spanish. However, while they are competent Spanish speakers, many fail their TExES LOTE - Spanish exam. In light of recent demographic trends and a growing body of research on HL learners, Spanish teaching in higher education and, to a lesser extent, in secondary schools has begun to move away from teaching so-called prestigious varieties of Spanish (e.g., Spain) toward inclusion of other varieties of Spanish, especially those spoken in the U.S. and those that reflect students' heritage. Despite this pedagogical shift, we posit that TExES LOTE - Spanish exam does not reflect current Spanish curricular content, which negatively affects these students' performance. We provide examples and available exam statistics to support our claim. Through this conversation about the mismatch between student background and TExES LOTE - Spanish content, we hope to start a dialogue about a much-needed revision of this exam in the near future.

Using critical policy analysis, this study considers state policies that impede technical credit transfer from public 2-year colleges to 4-year institutions of higher education. The states of Ohio, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin are considered, and seven policy benchmarks for facilitating the transfer of technical credits are proposed. (Contains 10 tables and 1 figure.)

The importance of updating, expanding and improving what is taught in cybersecurity curricula is increasing as the security threat landscape becomes more dangerous, breaches become more frequent, and the number of deployed Internet of Things (IoT) devices, known for their security challenges, grows exponentially. This paper argues that a profile of "T-shaped" skills, which is known to be desirable in many consulting and design professions, is being reflected in the latest manifestations of cybersecurity curriculum design and accreditation. A model of learning that yields "T-shaped" professionals combines the ability to apply knowledge across domains (breadth) with the ability to apply functional and disciplinary skills (depth). We present the design of a junior- or senior-level cybersecurity course in which the horizontal stroke of the "T" (representing breadth) spans knowledge areas that cut across the people, process and technology triad. The vertical stroke of the "T" (representing depth) is provided by two aspects of the course design: first, learning the foundational principles of cybersecurity, including practical examples from cryptography and network security; and second, applying the principles of cybersecurity to a semester project, allowing students to expand the core "T" of the course to satisfy their own passions and interests. Our paper concludes with student and instructor reflections on the implementation of this cybersecurity course, as well as broader implications of the lessons learned after the initial offering of this course.

Educational approaches in structural engineering have focused on classical methods for solving problems with manual calculations through assignments, quizzes, and exams. The use of computational software to apply the learned knowledge has been ignored for decades. This paper describes an educational approach to tackle the lack of applicable practical exercises in the structural engineering class "CE 506-Prestressed Concrete" at a university in the western United States during the spring of 2017. The class was designed to provide students with the theoretical concepts of prestressed concrete and the ability to interpret applicable design codes. In their project, students continued to build this knowledge by designing a prestressed bridge superstructure according to a unique state design manual. Students prepared a literature review of their selected state in the U.S.A. and used commercial software to perform an analysis and design of their bridge. Additionally, students were asked to backcheck their design using theoretical methods through manual calculations. By the end of the class, students presented their projects in a head-to-head presentation format, to contrast the differences between their designs in a competitive style. This paper summarizes the class structure, the outcome of the design project, and recommendations for future applications of computer technology in structural engineering education.

This paper contends that, although there is much to commend in the remediation reform movement, it is unlikely to attain its goals. These goals include the Lumina Foundation's target of having 60% of Americans attain a degree or certificate, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's goal of doubling the number of low income students who earn a post-secondary degree, and President Obama's goal of the U.S. having the world's highest percentage of degree holders by 2020. This is due to several factors including (a) the failure to distinguish between remedial and developmental education, (b) the limited focus of reform on remedial and gateway courses, (c) the mistaken assumption that there is a causal relationship between remediation and attrition, (d) the failure to address students' reading problems, (e) the non- systematic nature of most reform efforts, (f) and the subsequent failure to address other causes of student attrition and the difficulties of many community college students' lives. There are, of course, many commendable efforts to improve student performance in the community college. This paper describes the most popular of these efforts. It also discusses data on their effectiveness. In spite of their success, community colleges will need to do more if they are to dramatically enhance degree and certificate completion, particularly among minority, low income, and first-generation students. The authors suggest that there are three phases involved in attaining the dramatic increase in college completion desired by foundations and government. The first phase is to improve the quality of teaching and learning in community college classrooms. This will require a substantial faculty development effort, particularly for adjunct instructors. The second phase is to fully integrate courses and student support services. At present, the academic and the student affairs divisions of community colleges usually operate randomly and independently of each other. Their full impact cannot be obtained unless support services are more directly linked to course goals and objectives and courses are more directly connected to the services designed to support them. The third phase is expanding the connections between community colleges, public schools, and community services. High schools and colleges need to collaborate more closely to insure that the exit standards of secondary education are more consistent with the entry standards of post-secondary education. In addition, community colleges need to establish closer ties and better relationships with services available in the local community to address the varying nonacademic needs of our least advantaged students. The authors then provide concrete examples of how community colleges might implement all three phases of student completion. Some of these examples represent new thinking about how community college courses and services might be organized and delivered. Many, however, represent things we already know but have, for a variety of reasons, failed to implement.

There is growing international concern about the lack of civic engagement among the youth in many nations. These concerns have sparked renewed interest in the quantity and quality of civic education in public schools in the United States. The objective of this study is to determine if the concerns about civic education are about the sufficiency of academic content related to civic education or if the concerns reflect a lack of consensus regarding the question of "What makes a good citizen?" To address this question, this paper examines state social studies content standards from five U.S. states to determine if specific perspectives on citizenship are present in the standards and which perspectives are emphasized. University websites are also analyzed to assess their focus on citizenship. The study finds that the citizenship education in K-12 schools is robust, and specific perspectives are emphasized. This emphasis on specific perspectives, as opposed to a lack of academic content related to civic education, may be at the heart of the debate over citizenship education. [Paper originally prepared for presentation at the International Association of Schools and Institutes of Administration conference, July 6-10, 2015, Paris, France.]

The Pell Grant is the foundational need-based student aid program in the United States, providing students of lower socio-economic status a pathway to afford college costs and educational expenses. Currently, over one-third of all U.S. undergraduate students receive Pell. This paper examines federal Pell assistance and institutional costs for students at the 38 publicly controlled regional Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), which serve high average percentages of low-income students and students of color. By deploying the University of Alabama Education Policy Center's new Mission-Driven Classification System to enrollment, tuition and fees, and other costs metrics along with federal Pell and student loan data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), a more direct apples-to-apples comparison of the 38 public regional HBCUs to the 182 public regional non-HBCU in the same 19 southern states, is revealed, as are comparisons to the universe of 461 public regional universities nationally. This paper finds that America's most financially disadvantaged students rely on Pell Grants to alleviate financial constraints at public regional HBCUs, where 55 percent of students are Pell recipients, a rate 24 percent higher than their non-HBCU counterparts. Moreover, the data underscore an opportunity for Congress to construct a meaningful federal role in higher education by providing stable and sustainable funding for the Pell Grant program.

Considerable scholarly attention has been paid to various efforts aimed at preparing graduate students for careers as practitioners of public administration. One such approach is hiring practitioners-in-residence (PIR) or employing professors of practice. This paper first reports results of a web content analysis of 355 NASPAA programs that determined the extent of use of PIRs. Results show that only 17% of programs explicitly list a practitioner-in-residence. Given that less than a fifth of programs have practitioners-in-residence on their faculty, this paper provides an in-depth description of one such initiative i.e., Texas State University's experience with the Manager-in-Residence (MIR) program. Numerous ways in which the MIR program helped connect MPA students with the practice side of public administration are described. Finally, the implications of such a program for public administration pedagogy and practice and its potential for adoption by programs are discussed.

This paper presents a mixed method study examining the relationship between teacher advanced degree attainment and student achievement. This study utilizes teacher demographic data along with standardized test scores from 702 public schools in south central Texas. First, OLS regression analyses were employed to measure the relationship between the percent of teachers with advanced degrees and student achievement. The results of these analyses indicate that the percentage of teachers with advanced degrees made a statistically significant independent contribution to the variance in student outcomes on the state exam in English Language Arts, Science, and Social Studies. Following the analysis of the quantitative data, semi-structured interviews were conducted with principals identified as having the top 1% of teachers on staff with advanced degrees within this region. A constructivist approach was used to identify common themes for how these principals recruit and retain faculty with advanced degrees. Five themes emerged. These principals: employ a focused hiring philosophy, foster a learning organization, encourage teacher autonomy, participate in higher education partnerships, and support graduate degree attainment. Each of these themes are explored and practical suggestions for school leaders is presented.

In this paper, we describe an innovative design for a multidisciplinary service-learning course on supply chain management in the industrial distribution program housed in the College of Engineering at a large research university in Texas. The purpose of this course was to increase students' technical expertise and build a mindset and skills needed to tackle current societal issues, raising their social responsibility and enhancing civic-mindedness. The course combined curricular learning with community service, applying the content of academic disciplines to practice. It brought students from industrial distribution and sociology together to help food pantries to improve their operational efficiencies so that the food pantries can serve more people and work toward their goal. In this project, student groups identified the specific needs of community food pantries. They recommended solutions to improve operational efficiency so that they could use their technical skills to address the challenges and make an impact on the communities. In addition, student groups interacted with partner agencies via technologies that aided distance communication, which facilitated partnerships in remote locations. We also evaluated this project. The results reveal that this project had an impact on students' personal and professional development as well as the community.

This study assessed student research papers using a rubric to determine the information literacy skills of students in introductory composition classes. Librarians taught a pilot composition course that infused information literacy (IL) into the traditional English curriculum. The students' IL skills were compared to those of undergraduates enrolled in a traditional composition class, who received only a one-shot library instruction session. Students in the information literacy composition course scored better than their counterparts in six of seven IL skill categories. Results support greater integration of information literacy and composition curricula as a path forward for student success.

In this paper, we entangle Latino/a youth activism with ritual culture in U.S. higher education. Specifically, we analyze ethnographically-generated data from Gildersleeve's (2015; 2016) study of Latino graduation ceremonies, emplacing our analyses within new materialist philosophy. We theorize the Latino graduation ceremony as assemblage (DeLanda, 2006) and produce new sensibilities about the significance of Latino/a youth activism in contemporary U.S. higher education. The purposes of this paper are two-fold. First, we hope to contribute to the knowledge-base around how Latino/a youth use/claim space in their efforts for social change. Second, we hope to contribute to the growing literature in education that draws from new materialist philosophy and develops new methods/analyses to help reveal youth experiences.

Although minority-serving institutions (MSIs) educate nearly one fifth of the nation's college students, there is to date little research on MSI's return on investment (ROI). To address this, the University of Pennsylvania and Educational Testing Service commissioned four papers focusing on the ROI for MSIs, which were presented originally in December 2015 at the National Convening on Return on Investment for Minority Serving Institutions. This report contains the four papers presented at the seminar, as well as an introduction: (1) Introduction (Marybeth Gasman, Andrés Castro Samayoa, William C. Boland, Amanda Washington, Chris D. Jimenez, & Paola Esmieu); (2) Return on Investment for Hispanic-Serving Institutions in Texas: A Comparative Analysis of Institutional Types (Toby J. Park, Stella M. Flores, Christopher J. Ryan, Jr., & Chris D. Jimenez); (3) Reframing Return on Investments for Tribal Colleges and Universities: Aligning Analyses With Tribal Priorities and Educational Missions (Stephanie Carroll Rainie & Ginger C. Stull); (4) A Return on Investment Analysis for Black Graduates of Historically Black Colleges and Universities: Insights From Three Studies (Terrell L. Strayhorn); and (5) The Return on Investment for an AANAPISI-Funded Program: Outcomes for Asian American and Pacific Islander Community College Students (Cynthia M. Alcantar, Margary Martin, Bach Mai Dolly Nguyen, Robert T. Teranishi, & Jossie Muñoz).

The year 2020 will forever be known as the year of the COVID-19 pandemic which has affected the entire population in one way or another. What began in January 2020 still has the world population firmly in its grip a year later. The students' responses, in their own words, to changes in living, daily `routines, and health fears can be seen in the following paper. In this article, the responses of students in several undergraduate classes at a Hispanic serving institution in south Texas were collected and synthesized. The 155 responses were divided into seven frequently observed and repeated themes: jobs and job related, school and courses, routine, family, positivity, infection and stress. Findings for this second half of 2020 period differ from those collected during the first half of 2020 (Blankenship & Jones, 2020) (EJ1293618) in that two new themes (infection and stress) were added, and two themes (graduation and shopping/groceries) were deleted from the mix. Teaching professionals must be mindful to continue providing added support to assist students as they navigate this changing time.

The increased demand for online courses correlates to increased workloads for faculty, staff, and leadership. Hiring, staffing, and other logistical matters often trump the emphasis on course quality. This paper introduces a strategic framework for creating and sustaining a successful distance education model. Tarrant County College Connect Campus is the provider of online courses and programs within a larger, urban, two-year public institution. Established as a campus in 2014, TCC Connect Campus reflects an intentional framework to ensure quality. Ten specific strategies for quality assurance in online delivery include: Online Instructor Certification, Peer Developed Courses, E-Faculty Coaching, Faculty Performance Indicators, Supplemental Evaluation Feedback Form, adoption of external standards, data dashboards, campus data team, faculty and leadership repositories, and course readiness checklist. These research-based tenets may be adapted and modified to address the needs of other distance education providers.

As the rhetorical performances of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) work continue to proliferate and sell a movement towards more equitable institutions, the authors challenge this rhetoric as merely a new mode of epistemological and territorial expropriation. Instead, the authors put forth the concept of shadow work, which happens as a result of the failures of DEI work. Through a dialogue among the three authors, they parse where, how, and why shadow work happens to compose collective understandings of shadow work. Through collaborative storytelling, the authors invite readers to begin a practice of bearing witness to the structural work that must be done in the shadows, quietly and collaboratively, to remain on this "side" of the profession's gated faculty community. The authors invite readers to engage in their own critiques of the academic assembly line reproducing dominant rhetorics of diversity.

Despite high attrition rates and abundant criticisms, online graduate programs continue to grow. This paper describes the efforts of one online doctoral program that focused on developing programmatic support structures to increase community. Utilizing a qualitative, case study research design, including surveys and semi structured interviews, this study examined two research questions: a) In what ways did students experience a sense of community? b) What elements of an online professional doctoral program did students find most influential in developing a learning community? Findings indicate that students experience community through peer collaboration, program support, and shared learning and networking. A sense of community was developed through the cohort model, strong student support services, synchronous live sessions, and relationships formed with faculty. As a result, a community of practice was formed among program participants. Findings from this study have the potential to aid other online graduate programs as they design and implement structures to foster student success and retention.

Texas A&M University-Commerce has implemented supplemental instruction (SI) for Calculus since the fall of 2013. A direct display of the ABC rates from fall 2005 to spring 2021 only presents fluctuation from semester to semester, and one can hardly deduce that the ABC rates are increasing. In this paper, the "moving average" technique is used to reveal the effectiveness of SI in improving the percentage of students earning a grade of A, B, or C (ABC rates) in Calculus. Our longitudinal data under the "moving average" also shows that the SI implementation increased the ABC rates of major ethnic groups.

The purpose of this study was to examine our music teacher educator (MTE) identity construction. Our research questions were: (a) How did we describe our MTE identity construction during our doctoral education? and (b) What experiences were most salient in our MTE identity construction during our doctoral education? We used basic qualitative methods to conduct a self-study of our transition from music educators to teacher educators. Hermans and Hermans-Konopka's dialogical self theory was our theoretical framework. Through analysis, our findings coalesced around three themes: (a) experiences of uncertainty and tension related to who we were as people; (b) wrestling with uncertainty through internal conflict, open-ended mentorship, gradually adopting nuance, fearing rejection, and seeking acceptance; and (c) an expanded sense of self as we incorporated parts of being an MTE into our whole selves, embraced agency in meaning-making, accepted tension, and began offering transformative experiences to our students. Implications for music teacher education are discussed. [This study was presented at the 2021 International Symposium on the Sociology of Music Education, virtual conference hosted by the Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences.]

An emerging body of literature seeks to design, implement, and analyze best practices in service-learning at undergraduate universities. What scholars have not examined as well as service-learning as applied to students at Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI's). Given that students at such universities are in unique learning environments, there is a question of how well standard practices in service-learning apply to HSI students. This paper presents the analysis of two semesters' worth of service-learning requirements in an Introduction to American Politics course at an HSI in Texas. Using the feedback provided by the students on the final course evaluations, I conclude that the current pedagogy applies reasonably well to students at HSI's, but there are certain areas in which pedagogy should be adjusted to reflect the unique aspects of students at HSI's, such as accounting for the socioeconomic needs of HSI students.

Misinformation about climate change is a consequential societal issue, causing polarization and reduced support for climate action. However, the seriousness of the problem does not preclude non-serious solutions. There are numerous potential benefits to humor as a strategy to counter misinformation, such as attracting attention and engaging disengaged audiences. This paper describes a humorous serious game--"Cranky Uncle"--developed in the U.S. to inoculate players against climate misinformation. The game combines psychological research into active inoculation, critical-thinking work on misleading rhetorical techniques, communication research into cartoon debunking, and gamification. The game's cartoon humor and the creative potential of active inoculation lends it to classroom applications; educators have thus used classroom activities to complement the game in order to improve students' climate literacy and critical-thinking abilities. We present several qualitative U.S.-based case studies, in formal English-speaking tertiary classrooms and informal public education settings, to illustrate the utility of a humorous, game-based approach to building resilience against climate misinformation. The approaches adopted in our case studies are offered as a model for other educators looking to use interactive games to teach critical thinking.

The purpose of this paper is to document the indirect effects of the Texas Top Ten Percent Plan on professional school degrees awarded and to propose the far reach of the law as an alternative argument in support of race-conscious admissions policies challenged under the strict scrutiny standard. Designed around the two tests of strict scrutiny, this study first highlights the essential need for a diverse constituency of professionals to enable societal advancement as a compelling state interest established by the courts and then provides empirical evidence to support additional narrowly tailored race-conscious admissions policies. Complementary interrupted time series analysis and logistic regression find that current admissions policies fail to improve diversity in professional school degrees awarded.

Field-based education is interactive, hands-on, and based on real world experience and methodology, and during the COVID-19 pandemic, it has faced special challenges. As many institutions may struggle to maintain this vital component of geographic education, this resource paper aims to illustrate the impacts of the pandemic and provide some strategies to overcome the challenges from the experience of teaching a field methods course at a university in Texas. While many studies have focused on evaluating field instruction amidst the pandemic, our commentary focuses on both a ground-based perception from instructors and students and a comparison before and after the outbreak of the pandemic. We found that virtual attendance is disadvantageous to teaching and learning, and transferable skills like teamwork and communication are compromised due to a reduction in social interaction. However, intrapersonal skills such as observation, note-taking, and organization were better received in students' learning. Students expressed minimal safety concerns about the on-campus fieldwork given the conformity to the safety and health protocols. Based on the existing literature and our experience, we conclude with four generalized recommendations to share with colleagues in a similar situation, hoping to help retain the critical role of field-based education even under disruption.

With the growth of online higher education and the increasing diversification of college and university students, there is a need to focus on addressing the inequities of online learning and responding to the needs of diverse students. Students experience greater challenges in academic performance and in persisting and completing online programs, especially among particular student subgroups and course subject areas. Although research has identified some of the facilitating factors and barriers to online student persistence in coursework, supporting diverse online students requires attention not only to course design and instruction, but also broader institutional commitments. Christian higher education can present unique challenges to these students but might also be able to provide support and remedies that are not immediately available at other types of institutions. This paper synthesizes the literature on the needs of diverse learners in online education and provides an example of how the online campus of Abilene Christian University is attempting to meet the needs of its diverse learners.

Though demonstrated as an effective strategy for enhancing academic performance and course persistence in higher education, traditional Supplemental Instruction (SI) relies on face-to-face interaction in a classroom setting. Consequently, students who have other obligations or feel apprehensive in a group setting often cannot attend traditional SI sessions. This paper focuses on an innovative alternative to traditional SI: an online SI program currently being implemented at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi (TAMUCC). This paper describes TAMUCC's online SI program and discusses results from a pilot study that compared the STEM course performance and persistence of TAMUCC undergraduates (N=585) randomly assigned to SI groups (i.e., traditional SI or online SI) in the spring semester of 2015.

Inspired by critical race and feminist perspectives, this paper complicates the conversation on preparing arts educators for diversity and equity. The authors ground their research on the premise that arts educators committed to challenging social inequalities must understand sociocultural influences on art, curriculum, teaching, and learning. The paper reports a qualitative study that investigated how pre-service arts educators make sense of sociocultural differences (i.e., the dynamics of race, class, gender and sexuality). Findings articulate key curriculum flashpoints that emerged when art teacher candidates engaged with sociocultural knowledge. These flashpoints include identity formation, questioning knowledge, and discourses of offense. The authors argue that these flashpoints present curricular provocations that can assist in developing the critical capacities of art educators. The conclusion explores the implications of these findings for organizing and teaching sociocultural content as foundational knowledge for arts educator preparation.

Teacher education remains a largely unexplored area within the history of American education. This paper is an example of the types of state-specific stories that are needed as university administrators and policymakers make critical decisions about the content and purpose of teacher ed curriculum. These decisions, in turn, have a direct impact on the status of the teaching profession and, by extension, the quality of schooling that children receive. A guiding assumption of this paper is that the status of the teaching profession within K-12 schools is directly tied to the status of teachers, teaching, and teacher education within colleges and universities. The more that the nation's leading universities prioritize teaching and teacher education, the higher the public perception will be of the profession. The opposite, of course, is true as well. The purpose of this study is to pursue these assumptions while at the same time seeking a better understanding of the history of teacher education within the state of Texas. The study focuses on the immediate post-World War II period because of the intense change that took place during this time, and because the period gave rise to momentous decisions on the part of those who were leading institutions for teacher education.

Entrepreneurial skills are being sought by companies as they consider college graduates, particularly engineers, for future employment. Technical skills have become the baseline while the ability to apply these skills in a business environment has become a key differentiator in the value of employees in corporate environments. To address this need some universities have incorporated entrepreneurial skill development in curricular and extra-curricular offerings. This paper chronicles how Texas A&M University has developed an extra-curricular program which focuses on experiential learning to develop an entrepreneurial mindset in students whilst following the engineering design process. Appropriately named: "Aggies Invent."

The purpose of this paper is to share a model of a principal preparation program that is socially responsible. The program is collaborative with two departments at the Texas A&M University College of Education and Human Development: Educational Administration and Human Resource Development and Educational Psychology (Bilingual Education). The program is being tested as (a) a four-semester program for 36 credit hours, (b) a year-long residency with an intensive summer residency, (c) a randomized control trial study with the treatment students receiving virtual mentoring and coaching, and (d) an analysis of family-community involvement program and dual language program development by the candidates. How we are evaluating the project is also shared.

Writing support programs for students in writing-intensive, disciplinary courses are well established and take many forms, including communication centers, web-based skill development programs, and embedded writing consultants. This paper assesses the effectiveness of a program that embeds a writing grader, who assesses only the grammar of students' submissions, to encourage and support business faculty in including written assignments. Our analysis of grammar errors across three writing assignments showed that students rarely included Status Marking Errors (e.g., nonstandard verb forms and double negatives) and did reduce errors from the first to last assignments. However, the cause of the error reduction and the program's long-term effectiveness in improving students' grammar skills is inconclusive. Based on our findings, we offer recommendations to program organizers for better aligning a program's stated and practical goals when providing writing support.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, almost all universities in the United States switched to online learning in March 2020. We, as educators, faced the reality of switching to online teaching using Zoom. Our approach was to use COVID-19 as the course content to help motivate preservice teachers (PSTs) and alleviate some of the challenges of online teaching, an approach that was also used recently by Sadler at al. (2020) with high school teachers. The present paper describes the challenges we encountered during the six-week period of online teaching and the strategies we used to overcome these challenges. We briefly describe the course, the revisions we made to the course using the COVID-19 pandemic as content, the challenges we faced with online or virtual teaching, and the opportunities we provided the PSTs. Finally, we reflect on what we have learned from this experience.

This paper details methods that were adopted during the transition to an online learning environment for students enrolled in Human Anatomy & Physiology and Microbiology courses at a community college designated as a Minority Serving Institution (MSI) in light of shelter-in-place orders established to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Traditionally carried out in a physical setting, strategies for teaching inquiry-based activities using virtual software will be described. The use of home laboratory science kits for the purposes of engaging students, aligning with Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB), and maintaining a hands-on approach will also be described. Challenges of transitioning to online instruction and how they were addressed will be further discussed.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic resulting in school closures, shifting to online instruction poses unique challenges for educators. The purpose of the paper is to inform practitioners on how online instruction was facilitated in a science methods course for preservice teachers (PSTs) enrolled in a public university across three campuses. The major challenges were providing constructivist approaches to learning online and PSTs were unable to teach their 5E lesson in field placements. To overcome the first challenge, the instructors developed virtual engagement through iNaturalist and Virtual Engagement (VE) activities on Effective Questioning, Technology, Assessment, and Game-based Learning. To address the second challenge, PSTs integrated what they learned from the VE activities to develop their 5E lesson online which was shared with their field placement teachers and students. The implications of adapting to online instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic are discussed.

Ethical engineering practice is a global issue. However, cultural norms and social realities may result in differences in ethical behavior. A basic instructional challenge is developing the ability of students to understand ethical practice and to facilitate discussion of ethical issues across regional and cultural boundaries. The present project seeks to facilitate discussion and analysis of ethical practices of undergraduate engineering students at our university, Texas Tech, and peers at universities in Ukraine and India, our partnering countries. An undergraduate ethics course for engineering majors and the website https://EthicalEngineer.ttu.edu are currently the primary channels through which this project is being developed and implemented. The paper describes (1) steps in developing the website, which is currently operational, (2) progress developing partnerships and recruiting participants, and (3) results from preliminary tests of machine-assisted methods for analyzing students' submissions to the website. The Ethical Engineer is an emerging web-based innovation for facilitating cross-cultural discourse in engineering ethics.

This paper examines service-learning case studies in Argentina, Mexico, and the United States. It analyzes whether Andragogy, the study of how to teach adult learners, is equally applicable and effective in different country contexts. First, we argue that service-learning is the most natural and appropriate teaching technique that aligns with the Theory of Andragogy. We then discuss how a clear understanding of Andragogy is the key to helping mature students process knowledge. Two cases of service-learning in an international context provide a research platform for examining differences in learning concepts, constructs, and student competences. We juxtapose Argentina and Mexico governance against U.S. governance, and we differentiate the public policy challenges within the two contexts. Our methodological approach employs grounded theory to identify themes of knowledge transfer through problematic environments. By comparing service-learning strategies in Argentina and Mexico vis-à-vis in the U.S., we find variations in assumptions of public administration practice, teaching methods, and student learning outcomes.

Data analytical skills are essential to compete in today's competitive economy. The ability to understand, use, codify, and manipulate data to make business decisions is an essential factor of information competence. One way to ensure that students are well-prepared in terms of their technological literacy is through the use of certifications in course offerings. This paper details the process of providing the Microsoft Office Specialist Excel Core Certification Exam to students in our Computer Information Systems program. We discuss how we integrated the certificate program into our curriculum, the necessary pedagogical changes, and technologies used. We also review our successes, pitfalls, and results.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the development, implementation and outcome of a field-based learning flow-charting project that was conducted in an accounting information systems (AIS) course. The emphasis for the project was strengthening the students' critical thinking skills. This paper advances AIS education by sharing a field-based learning project geared toward AIS.

This paper examines an alternate approach to the "flipped" classroom paradigm for an upper level history class using a blended on-line and in-class format. The concept of the flipped classroom has received increasing emphasis based on its potential to create a student-centered learning environment that incorporates practical instruction along with collaborative techniques. The use of flipping has largely been tied to the incorporation of video technology either in the form of a student practicum or an instructor lecture via on-line delivery combined with a classroom meeting involving collaboration and/or application exercises in the face-to-face session. With respect to flipping the history classroom, this paper offers the results from an upper division history course in which historical primary sources were introduced in the on-line portion of a hybrid class. The use of the primary sources also included a bi-modal collaborative mechanism, since students collaborated by sharing their thoughts prior to class and the start of the class incorporated a student-centered collaborative exercise based on the primary sources. This collaborative discussion on the primary sources served as the gateway into the broader topic discussion. This paper describes this process and uses student feedback to evaluate the effectiveness of this methodological approach.