About
These publications illustrate the research of CTRL staff on a specific topics in teaching and pedagogy, with an occasional inclusion of articles in other topical areas. Our team utilizes this space to not only highlight their intellectual output, but to share valuable learning insights and best practices.
Furthermore, the publications page is an archive of CTRL related content that serves as a searchable database for our community and external partners.
Faculty Perceptions of the Spring 2020 Transition from Face-to-Face to Online Instruction: A Case Study of American University with Takeaways and Lessons Learned
Horan, E. M. & Kim, K. (2021). Faculty perceptions of the spring 2020 transition from face-to-face to online instruction: A case study of American University with takeaways and lessons learned. Journal on Centers for Teaching and Learning, 12, 169-188.
A survey of faculty toward the end of the semester revealed general satisfaction with the support they received in transitioning to online instruction and with student learning outcome attainment. Faculty who had taught online before were more likely to show self-efficacy in online instruction compared to those who had not taught online before, despite similar, high satisfaction with student learning outcomes. We offer insights on key aspects of our efforts and the institutional structure that undergirded the largely successful transition of AU’s faculty to online instruction.
Recognizing COVID-19 as Trauma: Considerations for Student Affairs Educators and Faculty Developers
William L. Harder and Brian L. McGowan (2020). Recognizing COVID-19 as Trauma: Considerations for Student Affairs Educators and Faculty Developers. ACPA, College Student Educators International.
COVID-19 has disrupted the academic lives and professional trajectories of college students, faculty, and staff in an unprecedented manner. Over the course of a few frantic weeks in March 2020, higher education and student affairs educators began determining how to provide their services online and support students remotely.
“A Community Built Just for Me”: Black Undergraduate Men Bridging Gaps to Community Cultural Wealth
Brian L. McGowan and David Pérez II (2020). “A Community Built Just for Me”: Black Undergraduate Men Bridging Gaps to Community Cultural Wealth. Journal of The First-Year Experience & Students in Transition, Vol. 31, No. 1, pp. 43-57.
Summer bridge programs are cited as a beneficial precursor for historically underrepresented students who are transitioning from high school to college. Using Yosso’s (2005) community cultural wealth framework, this exploratory study examined how 11 Black undergraduate men gained familial, navigational, and aspirational capital through their men’s peer networks during and after their time in a summer bridge program at a historically White institution. Findings highlight the different ways this study’s participants sustained bridges to capital and how they created bridges to cultural wealth as a strategy to persist in college. The findings from this study have implications for college access and pre-college programs.
We Have a Rubric for That: The VALUE Approach to Assessment
McConnell, K., Horan, E. M., Zimmerman, B., & Rhodes, T. (2019). We have a rubric for that: The VALUE approach to assessment. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities.
We Have a Rubric for That: The VALUE Approach to Assessment—compiles ten years of evidence to provide an argument-based framework for the assessment of student learning in higher education using the VALUE rubrics. This publication presents a wide range of sources to provide timely evidence of the power of the VALUE approach to assessment.
Pa. politicians shine on Twitter
Harder, W. L. (2019, September 4). Pa. politicians shine on Twitter. Look to hot dog maps, wedding plans, and @PaTreasury for proof. The Philadelphia Enquirer. Retrieved from https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/pennsylvania-politicians-twitter-accounts-patreasury-john-fetterman-20190904.html.
In the last month on Twitter Lt. Gov. John Fetterman agreed to officiate a wedding and has been publicly planning it with the couple, Gov. Tom Wolf’s crowd-sourced map of the best hotdog shops in the state is up to 147 locations, and the Pennsylvania Treasury let its feelings be known on Jeff Bezos’ “blasting his dumb rockets into the sun, so he can feel like a god.”
In addition to these buzz-generating tweets there is another — less visible — conversation happening between Pennsylvania elected officials and their constituents that largely is not happening elsewhere in the country.
Peer Support and STEM Success for One African American Female Engineer
Watkins, S., & Mensah, F. (2019). Peer support and STEM success for one African American female engineer. Journal of Negro Education, 88(2), 181-193. http://doi.org/10.7709/jnegroeducation.88.2.0181
This research used counter-storytelling, a critical race theory methodology, to chronicle the lived experiences of one African American female PhD engineer as she recounted her undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral STEM experiences at three postsecondary institutions. Using interviews and narrative to capture her first-hand perspective as a woman engineer of color, peer support was revealed as a dominant factor in her attainment of a PhD in engineering.
A longitudinal study of spatial skills and number sense development in elementary school children
Carr, M., Horan, E., Alexeev, N., Barned, N., Wang, L., & Otumfuor, B. (2019, May 16). A longitudinal study of spatial skills and number sense development in elementary school children. Journal of Educational Psychology. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/edu0000363
Spatial skills have been consistently linked to mathematics achievement in older students and adults, but we know little about their relationship to mathematics achievement in elementary school. This study examined how spatial skills influenced the development of number sense, and subsequent mathematics competency, as students progressed from the 2nd to the 4th grade. Gender, verbal working memory (VWM), and socioeconomic status (SES) have also been found to predict number sense development and to be linked to spatial skills; as such, they were included as covariates in this study.
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