Poster Session
Community Connections in a Digital World: Learning Communities, Community Engagement, and Micro-credentials
Poster Session Tracy Bonoffski
This project focuses on a learning community for first-year students at a large, urban university in the US that has a community engagement theme. The learning community offers students an opportunity to earn a community engagement micro-credential that is designed highlight specific skills and competencies, including: cultural awareness, civic engagement, community based research, innovation and entrepreneurship. This high impact program is designed to model the idea that giving back to the community is an important college outcome, and that working with community partners is good preparation for citizenship, work, and life. Students within this learning community have the opportunity to not only mold their professional trajectory with an academic major or minor, but also through the completion of micro-credentials. Micro-credentials are short, competency-based pathways that provide students with recognition and demonstrate mastery in intentionally, focused area(s). The integration of micro-credential pathways are meant to be personalized, flexible, and performance-based so that learning community students have a marketable quality to share with future employers and graduate programs. These students are earning a community engagement micro-credential designed to increase cultural awareness and collaborate with diverse populations.
Artificial Intelligence and Collaborative Learning Platforms: Promoting an Inclusive Environment
Poster Session Jennifer Lanham, Garreth Smith, Elizabeth Ann Moore
Integrating artificial intelligence (AI)-powered approaches into social work pedagogy is essential to creating an inclusive learning experience that addresses students' diverse and unique needs while promoting inclusivity. Utilizing AI and collaborative learning platforms, online social work education becomes more accessible and flexible, enabling a broader group of learners to participate in the program and fostering a more welcoming learning environment. In my presentation, I discuss the interactive tools for collaboration and engagement, where students can participate in active discussions, assignments, and projects. Additionally, I share instructional strategies for proper oversight and regulation to ensure innovation and authenticity.
More Than a Test Score: A Case Study of Career Readiness Programming in Rural Minnesota High Schools
Poster Session Maggie Velasco
This mixed-methods, multi-site case study explores the implications of a robust career readiness program that utilizes national readiness metrics, on the implementation and design of rural Minnesota high school career readiness programming. Building leadership teams involving administrators, educators, and counselors utilize a distributed leadership model to design and implement a career readiness program that focuses on maximizing resources, measures student impact, engages communities and higher education, and provides opportunities for small rural school districts to work collaboratively. There are legislative, national and statewide, implications of this research. Along with providing rural districts with a blueprint for effective career readiness programming using a distributed leadership model, this research provides an alternative lens for assessing and communicating student achievement and district health. Paired with state and national test scores, the Redefining Ready metrics can enhance the picture of instructional success and inform leadership on how best to maximize resources for greatest student impact.
Communicating Educational Research Effectively in Light of Teachers’ Epistemological Beliefs
Poster Session Elana Joram, Anthony Gabriele
Teaching has long been considered a profession that draws on the personal intuition and craft knowledge of teachers, as well as a rich body of knowledge about learning and instruction, grounded in educational research. Studies of teachers’ research use, however, demonstrate that they most often refer to personal knowledge or that of a trusted colleague, with published educational research rarely mentioned. Studies of teachers’ research utilization have primarily drawn attention to various impediments such as lack of time or research training, while teachers’ beliefs about knowledge sources have received less attention. In this proposal, we report on data from a qualitative study of middle and high-school teachers’ epistemic beliefs about the use of educational research for their practice. We present a conceptual framework of teachers’ beliefs about research utilization that is informed by their practical values, epistemic and practical goals and aims, and epistemic beliefs about educational knowledge. Based on this model and our participants’ responses, we offer recommendations for effective research communication strategies with teachers, taking their epistemic beliefs into account. Although not typically included in discussions of research literacy and utilization, we suggest that including research communication strategies in these discussions is essential for increasing the likelihood of research use by practitioners.
Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Education in Geopolitics: STEM Higher Education as 'Soft Power’
Poster Session Abhijit Sen
Higher education can be a powerful form of 'soft power' for a country where students receive world-class education and engage with the local culture by creating networks of like-minded people and contributing billions of dollars to the growing economy. Soft power initiatives are viewed as an important segment of a nation’s 'public diplomacy' by promoting a combination of its culture, political values and foreign policy objectives. The power of attractive ideas and the ability to influence what other countries want is subtly connected to ‘intangible power' sources such as culture, ideology, institutions and education that other countries want to emulate. To sustain the stability, peace and ‘rules based international order,’ maintaining and promoting principles of U.S. ideology, science & technology, and culture in the form of soft power, are crucial to achieving the intended goals in geo-politics. Methodology used in analyzing texts, analytical reports, news commentary, and opinion pieces for my study is textual-narrative analysis which is a subset of media research methods known as interpretive analysis. The theoretical basis of this paper is the concept of 'soft power.' Soft power arises from the positive elements and images of a nation’s culture, political ideals and policies. Soft power is also the ability to get what one wants through enticements and attraction rather than through coercion or bribery. First postulated by Joseph Nye, a Harvard scholar, the theory conceptualized a nation’s ability to persuade and influence other nations via soft power as an alternative to hard power.
Bringing Ethics into the Introductory Finance Curriculum: A New Approach
Poster Session Valeria Martinez
Despite many years of bringing ethics to the forefront as crucial to doing business, we still see the need for improved ethics instruction and behavior among business professionals. Current research indicates there is a need for innovative pedagogy in business ethics. This study introduces an innovative ethics pedagogical tool in the undergraduate introductory finance classroom. The objective of this pedagogical innovation is to improve ethics education among future business professionals in the finance field by increasing students’ ethical awareness in the business-finance world. The new ethics pedagogical tool consist of introducing students to a series of practical and concise questions that guide them through the analysis of the ethics of a finance situation. Students then use this series of questions during the semester of our introductory finance course to analyze the ethics of various financial situations that occur in the news during the time of our course. I assess the effectiveness of this tool by analyzing students’ ethical perceptions before and after the ethics pedagogical tool is implemented in the introductory finance classroom.
Project-based EFL Learning with ChatGPT
Poster Session Beatriz Martín Marchante
Despite the benefits that AI can bring to teaching in general and English as a foreign language (EFL) in particular, the emergence of ChatGPT has raised concerns in a sector of the educational community. This situation highlights the need to carry out studies on how to achieve an ethical and responsible application of ChatGPT and to discuss the benefits, risks, and problems that the use of this type of chat can cause in the academic work of students. It is equally important to discuss whether its use should be prohibited or avoided. This project proposes tasks aimed at Design Engineering students taking Technical English and Specialised English at the Universitat Politècnica de València. The tasks we present require the use of ICT and AI (mainly ChatGPT) and are framed in an active methodology that incorporates collaborative work based on projects. Different forms and rubrics are included to implement self-assessment, peer assessment, and corrective feedback. The main objective of this study is to check the pedagogical effectiveness of the proposal we present for the development of different specific and transversal competencies, as well as its usefulness in preparing students to function in multilingual professional contexts through effective communication.
Wide-open Spaces: International Studies as Transformative Learning in Global Competency
Poster Session Elizabeth Peters
International studies is one of the most exciting, transformative learning approaches that not only gives students a growth opportunity of a lifetime, but also introduces them to important skills that will help them serve as global citizens in an increasingly diversified world. Studies show that experiences from travel abroad raises GPA, increases employment opportunities, and results in students earning higher salaries post-graduation when compared with non-traveling cohorts. Empirical research also shows that students who study abroad gain a host of soft skills employers are looking for such as critical thinking, empathy, cultural appreciation, communication, global awareness, problem-solving, confidence, and leadership. This assessment included global learning competencies as a transformative learning experience. The assessment group consisted of N=12 participants in the OSU-OKC Travel Abroad Program to London & Paris, Spring 23. Participants had to have been present to consent and complete the pre-assessment at the pre-travel meeting on February 28th, 2023, as well as completed the travels to London and Paris, and the post-test after travel. Difference scores were analyzed in SPSS as a one-way within-subjects Analysis of Variance with repeated measures. Results showed overall statistical significance between the pre and post-test scores, which was recognized as an associated function of the travel abroad experience to London and Paris. The multivariate tests showed a significant effect between pre and post-test scores. Wilk’s Lambda = .51, F(1,11) = 10.70, p < .05, multivariate ƞ^(2 )= .50. Results indicated a significant increase in learning as an associated result of the students' travels abroad.
