Nurse educators play a critical role in preparing prelicensure students for the updated NCLEX-RN, which focuses on clinical reasoning and judgment. Despite evidence in the nursing and education literature supporting active teaching-learning strategies, faculty continue to use lecture-based approaches. Little is known about the factors influencing…

Women continue to be underrepresented in undergraduate STEM majors. Prior studies identify women's sense of belonging, or the extent to which one feels like an accepted member of an academic community, as a key contributor to their decisions to stick with or leave their STEM majors. Women's social connectedness and perceived competence have been…

Mathematics is the language and foundation for the science, engineering, and technological fields that define and enhance our lives in the 21st century. Proficiency in math requires problem solving, logical reasoning, and critical thinking skills that are essential to success in college, the workplace, and everyday life. Unfortunately, math has…

Mind mapping is the most flexible visual learning and active instructional approach. It has many applications, such as brainstorming, taking notes, memorizing, and conceptualizing complex topics using associations between images and keywords, colors, and visuospatial characteristics. Students can elaborate mind maps individually and…

The Professional Marketing Association was experiencing decreased engagement in its Chartered Marketer professional program. The purpose of this qualitative case study is to examine stakeholders' expectations of online engagement and determine actionable recommendations that can be used to increase engagement in the Chartered Marketer program. The…

Previous research has shown the importance of regulating learning and collaboration in instructional design. Moreover, learners often struggle to regulate their learning and collaborate effectively, which can hinder knowledge acquisition and academic achievements. To address these challenges, the Understand, Plan, Monitor, and Reflect (UPMR)…

The research in this dissertation consists of two parts: An active learning algorithm for hierarchical labels and an embedding-based retrieval algorithm. In the first part, we present a new approach for learning hierarchically decomposable concepts. The approach learns a high-level classifier (e.g., location vs. non-location) by separately…

This study advances the understanding of providing effective professional development for elementary teachers in the field as the Pennsylvania STEELS standards require inquiry-based learning as a component of the science classroom. I sought out elementary teacher perceptions surrounding professional development as it pertained to their ability to…

The study investigated the relationship between self-rated servant leadership among post-secondary faculty and perceived student engagement in online educational environments. While existing literature has demonstrated a positive effect of servant leadership on student engagement, it has primarily centered on student perspectives and often…

Medical schools in the United States have been incorporating biostatistics education as part of its core curriculum for over 75 years. During that time, while the discipline has drastically changed, the curriculum has seemingly for the most part stayed the same. Numerous national organizations have published documents of objectives and…

A virtual learning environment aims to engage the student, enabling them to interact and express their understanding of the material. Virtual learning engagement for adult learners is essential for active learning. The lack of active learning is a problem, as evident through researched university learner responses. In this descriptive method…

This study assesses the role a teacher-led social studies group played in the evolution of three teachers' professional biographies over the course of seven years. It uses a conceptual framework based on Priestley, Biesta and Robinson's (2015) theory of teacher agency to explore the ecological relationships between professional biography, the…

This study examined the impact of a newly created Academic Advising Professional Development (AAPD) online program focused on the three major components of the "Concept of Academic Advising" for new and experienced advisors. The four-unit training, created in Blackboard, was designed to educate advisors on the meaning and application of…

Project-Based Learning has been a heavily debated topic in education for several years. The most recent push from multiple education departments highlights the need for a user-friendly online database. Although the Internet is filled with sites that provide many different instructors' options to develop or implement a Project-Based Lesson, there…

Math anxiety negatively affects student learning and academic performance. Students with high math anxiety exhibit physical, mental, and emotional symptoms. As a result, they tend to avoid mathematics and mathematics-related situations, perform poorly, and exhibit deficiencies in working memory. Research studies have shown that inquiry-based…