Behavior-change theories reliably explain behavior, but they often lack messaging recommendations to modify behavior. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) could benefit from clear, replicable messaging strategies to target its constructs of attitudes, social norms, and perceived behavioral control (PBC) about a behavior (Ajzen, 1991). Habit Theory…

From 2016 to 2020, ten smaller schools in one regional library consortium participated in a user needs assessment project. This article documents the process for implementing a collaborative user needs assessment by utilizing the shared interest and enthusiasm of a team of librarians to create a consortial toolkit. The toolkit supplied direction…

Students' informal conversations on social media (e.g., Twitter, Facebook) shed light into their educational experiences--opinions, feelings, and concerns about the learning process. Data from such uninstrumented environments can provide valuable knowledge to inform student learning. Analyzing such data, however, can be challenging. The complexity…

In a recent study, de Araujo and Murray (2010) find empirical evidence that living on campus leads to improved student performance, finding both immediate effects (GPA improves while the student lives on campus) and permanent effects (GPA remains higher even after moving off campus). Using the same dataset, we extend the analysis to explain why…

According to many students, introductory physics is difficult. We investigated what students believe makes physics difficult and what can be done to overcome these difficulties. Our investigation included an initial free-response survey given to approximately 1400 students in an introductory physics course and a second survey, which was given to…