As psychology grows in popularity, most students select professions related to therapy, which constantly deem statistics courses as irrelevant and accentuate negative attitudes. This study explores perspectives of knowledge, also known as epistemological frames, that students enrolled in a psychology-based course in statistics generate and the…

College students are asked to make critical decisions about which academic major to choose and subsequently to make specific career decisions. Students come to college with a myriad of different skill sets, backgrounds, developmental levels, cognitive processes, familial support, and levels of self-efficacy that may influence how they make these…

This dissertation explores how varied delivery strategies may influence college student affective learning in a mediated setting. I employed a hybrid-grounded approach to the exploration of student-participant interviews wherein student-participants engaged with one of two online media literacy learning modules. The results of this study…

The debate on campus regarding speech and inclusion has largely come to be framed as a two-sided issue: one side for free, open expression, clashing with the other side for diverse inclusion. All sides of the debate -- the proponents of free expression, most inclusionists, and those who seek the co-existence of the two values -- invoke the notion…

All engineering careers require some level of programming proficiency. However, beginning programming classes are challenging for many students. Difficulties have been well-documented and contribute to high drop-out rates which prevent students from pursuing engineering. While many approaches have been tried to improve the performance of students…

This exploratory study was designed to establish a foundation for understanding the relationship between college students' epistemic fluency, the need (self-concordance); want (self-determination); and ability (self-efficacy) to think about their learning; their regulatory mode orientation (locomotion versus assessment), and their academic goals.…

In recent decades, higher education institutions have been increasingly called upon to prepare students for work after college. STEM programs in particular have been provided with increasing federal- and institutional-level support in order to meet the demands of a competitive global marketplace as well as to provide revenue generation for…

With intergroup conflict on the rise in the U.S., we are reminded of the critical role higher education can play in preparing individuals for life in an increasingly diverse, complex, and polarized society. Developed in the late 1980s, the University of Michigan's unique approach to intergroup dialogue (IGD) brings together students from different…

Arguing for the importance of decolonial pedagogy in human rights education, this research is located at the intersection of human rights education, pedagogy, and justice studies, and is situated in the context of a contested neoliberal university in order to learn about and understand some of the challenges in implementing pedagogical change…

The purpose of this grounded theory study was to develop a theory that explains the process of self-authorship development of college students in China. Little research exists that explicitly explores the integrated development of college students in China and influences on that development from the educational environment. Despite the extensive…

At universities across the United States the epistemological beliefs of students have been observed to deteriorate after a semester of instruction in an introductory physics course. What this indicates is that after taking a course in physics most students, for example, may become less capable of delineating between evidence-based reasoning and…

Classical mechanics challenges students to use their intuitions and experiences as a basis for understanding, in effect to approach learning as "a refinement of everyday thinking'' (Einstein, 1936). Moving on to quantum mechanics (QM), students, like physicists, need to adjust this approach, in particular with respect to the roles that…

In this thesis, I study some aspects of how students learn to use math to make sense of physical phenomena. Solving physics problems usually requires dealing with algebraic expressions. That can take the form of reading equations you're given, manipulating them, or creating them. It's possible to use equations simply according to formal rules of…

College students, on average, do not consume enough fruits and vegetables. Contributing to poor eating habits is an overall decline in young adults' cooking skills as compared to previous decades, with today's college students often relying on ubiquitous convenience food options. The detriments associated with these food choices are linked to a…

Community colleges have played an important role in providing access to higher education via the transfer process to 4-year institutions. However, the varying results associated with the academic success and degree attainment of transfer students cast doubts on how effective institutions are in facilitating these particular outcomes. The…