This document presents the proceedings of the 20th Annual Research Forum held June 25, 2015, at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Included are the following 21 action research papers: (1) History Lives! The Use of Simulations in a High School Social Studies Classroom (Lydia Adkins); (2) Using Francophone Music in the High…

Research in higher education over the past several decades has extensively examined the extent to which various aspects of the college environment affect student persistence (Astin, 1962, 1993; Bean, 1980; Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005; Tinto, 1975, 1988, 1993). Furthermore, researchers have noted the importance of the residential living…

This study assesses the influence of student values on long-term self-regulatory decisions defined in terms of a tendency to procrastinate and how these values, indirectly through procrastination, but also directly, affect important motivational, affective, social and behavioral academic outcomes of first quarter freshmen. Results of a structural…

The Beginning College Survey of Student Engagement (BCSSE) was launched in 2007 as a companion survey to the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). In its first two years, close to 140,000 entering first-year students at 197 institutions across the United States and Canada have participated in BCSSE. Now in its third year, BCSSE continues…

Preparing high school students for work in a global economy means that high schools must reinforce personal and social responsibility inside and outside of school and simultaneously seek opportunities for students to engage in educational activities that are relevant in a changing world. This study assessed administrators' perceptions of the…

The preceptor program at the University of Hartford was designed to increase engagement among first-year students and to provide role-modeling opportunities for upper-class students. Data from the first two years of the program were examined. In the first year, 611 undergraduate students in 40 introductory-level courses (26 with preceptors, 14…

Medical education in the US has adapted to the shift of patient care from hospital to ambulatory settings by developing educational opportunities in outpatient settings. Faculty development efforts must acknowledge learners' perspectives to be effective in improving teaching and learning. Clinics provide important and unique learning…

The purpose of this study was to explore how critical pedagogy, culturally relevant curriculum, and student centered instruction impacted student engagement in reading for struggling high school readers, including first- and second-generation immigrants. The researcher/practitioner (r/p) chose to highlight Latinas in the study to understand the…

Included in this addendum are the findings for the Noel-Levitz 2011 National Freshman Attitudes Report by race/ethnicity for incoming students. These data show the percentage of students within each group that agreed with each item. Demographic breakdown of the respondents is presented on pages 7 and 8. [For related report, "National Freshman…

As educators, we have two missions. First, we must serve our students--they are both our customer and our product. Second, we aim to provide the market in general with graduates with relevant skills and knowledge for jobs that have not even been created yet. Given that most students graduating and moving into the workplace are not necessarily…

Graduates need to be prepared for working in global organisations that increasingly rely on virtual, culturally diverse teams. This paper reports on a qualitative research study concerned with the perceptions of university business students who collaborated on a virtual and international project to learn about intercultural communication. The…

What distinguishes high schools that "beat the odds" for students from traditionally lower-performing groups from schools that struggle to improve the achievement and graduation rates of these student populations? What types of programs, practices, and processes support better than expected outcomes for students at risk of failure? How…

The purpose of this study is to rigorously examine the implementation and impact of the Early College High School (ECHS) model in North Carolina. The primary goal of the ECHS model is to increase the number of students who graduate from high school and who continue on and succeed in college. Therefore, the anticipated long-term outcomes for the…

This study explores the deployment of electronic portfolios to a university-wide cohort of freshman undergraduates that included a subgroup of at-risk and lower academically prepared learners. Five evaluative dimensions based on persistence and engagement theory were included in the development of four assessment rubrics exploring goal clarity,…

The transition to middle school places many adolescents at risk for negative adjustment, especially poor and underserved ethnic minority students. In this cross-sectional study, I explored the role of student-perceived mismatch in the transition to a school with an early-college model, using a sample of predominantly African American and Latino…