Cathy Maahs-Fladung - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Cathy Maahs-Fladung

Arizona Board of Regents, for and on behalf of Northern Arizona University. PO Box 4087, Flagstaff, AZ 86011. Web site: https://nau.edu/coe/ejournal/, 2012

This was a study about the New Century Scholarship (NCS) program offered to Utah high school stud... more This was a study about the New Century Scholarship (NCS) program offered to Utah high school students at commencement for earning an Associate of Arts (AA) degree by the time they graduate from high school. An Associate of Arts degree is earning 60 college credits toward a specific AA program. The goal of the NCS program was to assist students to bachelor degree completion faster than the traditional time. This program has been in Utah for 20 years, but no research about the program exists. Annually, the cost to taxpayers is $2 million dollars. This study was conducted to determine if the New Century Scholarship (NCS) expedites bachelor degree completion and if so what variables on the career pathway assisted toward quicker completion. The spring of 2012 the Utah Systems of Higher Education (USHE) emailed and mailed surveys to three cohort groups of high school graduates. The response rate was 56%-high enough to generalize results. Descriptive data, statistical analysis, and multiple-regression tests were run on the data. The most significant discovery was the fact that the NCS does expedite bachelor degree completion for both males and females with an average time to completion of 3.57 years. Females did complete their degree earlier than males by half a year. This is less time than the national average of 4.7 years to bachelor degree completion (Complete College America, 2009). This calculation by Complete College America is without an Associate of Arts degree at the time of high school graduation. Another important finding was the rate of completion for NCS recipients with a bachelor degree at 83.2% for the three year cohort group. The variables that were significant in expediting graduation for the NCS scholarship recipients were gender, college major, and college selection. The multiple-regression analysis identified additional variables that expedited bachelor degree completion. These variables were attending school full-time, enrolling in and attending only one college, and the number of Associate of Arts courses accepted toward bachelor degree completion.

Journal of International Students, 2012

The purpose of this paper was to determine what institutional, program, and recruitment character... more The purpose of this paper was to determine what institutional, program, and recruitment characteristics influenced international students to attend institutions in the United States. Two hundred sixteen international students at a Southern public research university responded to the survey (53% response rate) from 56 countries representing 8 regions. An empirical analysis using t-tests and analysis of variance was conducted to determine what characteristics international students found to be most important when selecting an institution. Regardless of degree level, all students ranked faculty/student ratio as an important program characteristic. Second, students ranked both the admission process and time to degree as important characteristics. Third, doctoral, master’s, and bachelor’s students respectively ranked funding as an important characteristic in their decision making process. There are three basic implications for recruitment officers. First, as size matters, international s...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020

The authors note that Dataset S1 and Tables S1 and S2 in the SI Appendix appeared incorrectly due... more The authors note that Dataset S1 and Tables S1 and S2 in the SI Appendix appeared incorrectly due to a data file error that affected one variable used in the analysis. After correcting the error and reanalyzing the affected comparisons, the authors note that the coefficients and P values for two comparisons reported in Tables S1 and S2 were incorrect. The SI has been corrected online. These errors do not affect the conclusions of the article.

Learning and Instruction, 2018

Cognitive load theory (CLT) holds that discovery learning and other instructional strategies impo... more Cognitive load theory (CLT) holds that discovery learning and other instructional strategies imposing high levels of extraneous load on novice learners hinder learning. Such learning conditions are also associated with significant drops in persistence, a key measure of motivation. However, research within the CLT framework typically engages motivation as a necessary precursor to learning, rather than as an outcome of instruction. In this study, we examine changes in motivational beliefs as outcomes of learners' cognitive processes through a CLT lens as they engage with instruction. Using a double-blind quasi-experimental design, we manipulate the level of cognitive load imposed on participants through instruction and assess changes in selfefficacy from pre-to post-intervention. In an analysis of data from students enrolled in an undergraduate biology course (n=2,078), students in the treatment condition demonstrated significantly higher performance on end-of-semester lab reports and self-efficacy measures. However, post-instruction self-efficacy was not significantly related to performance, controlling for pre-instruction self-efficacy, gender, and scientific reasoning ability. These findings introduce the possibility that the cognitive load imposed on working memory during instruction may affect motivational beliefs and provides a foundation to further explore connections between historically distinct theoretical frameworks such as CLT and social cognitive theory.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2017

Many PhD programs incorporate boot camps and summer bridge programs to accelerate the development... more Many PhD programs incorporate boot camps and summer bridge programs to accelerate the development of doctoral students’ research skills and acculturation into their respective disciplines. These brief, high-intensity experiences span no more than several weeks and are typically designed to expose graduate students to data analysis techniques, to develop scientific writing skills, and to better embed incoming students into the scholarly community. However, there is no previous study that directly measures the outcomes of PhD students who participate in such programs and compares them to the outcomes of students who did not participate. Likewise, no previous study has used a longitudinal design to assess these outcomes over time. Here we show that participation in such programs is not associated with detectable benefits related to skill development, socialization into the academic community, or scholarly productivity for students in our sample. Analyzing data from 294 PhD students in ...

Journal of Science Education and Technology, 2017

Most interventions with Bmaker^technologies take place outside of school or out of core area clas... more Most interventions with Bmaker^technologies take place outside of school or out of core area classrooms. However, intervening in schools holds potential for reaching much larger numbers of students and the opportunity to shift instructional dynamics in classrooms. This paper shares one such intervention where electronic textiles (sewable circuits) were introduced into eighth grade science classes with the intent of exploring possible gains in student learning and motivation, particularly for underrepresented minorities. Using a quasi-experimental design, four classes engaged in a traditional circuitry unit while the other four classes undertook a new e-textile unit. Overall, students in both groups demonstrated significant learning gains on standard test items without significant differences between conditions. Significant differences appeared between groups' attitudes toward science after the units in ways that show increasing interest in science by students in the e-textile unit. In particular, they reported positive identity shifts pertaining to their perceptions of the beliefs of their friends, family, and teacher. Findings and prior research suggest that student-created e-textile designs provide opportunities for connections outside of the classroom with friends and family and may shift students' perceptions of their teacher's beliefs about them more positively.

Mathematics Education Research Journal, 2015

This paper focuses on understanding the role that affordances played in children's learning perfo... more This paper focuses on understanding the role that affordances played in children's learning performance and efficiency during clinical interviews of their interactions with mathematics apps on touch-screen devices. One hundred children, ages 3 to 8, each used six different virtual manipulative mathematics apps during 30-40-min interviews. The study used a convergent mixed methods design, in which Math Ed Res J

This project focused on building theory and knowledge about the nature of young children’s ways o... more This project focused on building theory and knowledge about the nature of young children’s ways of thinking and interacting with virtual manipulatives using touch-screen mathematics apps. To conduct cutting edge research on novel topics such as this requires researchers to develop new and different tools to be used to answer unique questions, collect new kinds of data, and analyze the data in different ways. During the project, researchers interviewed 90 children ages 3 to 8 while the children interacted with mathematics apps on iPads. A variety of research tools needed to be developed to conduct the research. These tools included: interview protocols, procedures for app selection, observation protocols, parent surveys and interaction protocols, and data analysis protocols. This paper reports on the processes researchers used to develop the research tools for the project.

This study examined second-grade children’s interactions with six virtual manipulative mathematic... more This study examined second-grade children’s interactions with six virtual manipulative mathematics apps on the iPad. Following 30-40 minute interviews where children interacted individually with the apps under the guidance of an interviewer, pre and post assessments revealed statistically significant differences in second graders performance and efficiency using one series of apps to learn skip counting concepts, but no significant differences when using a series of apps to learn place value concepts. Results are discussed in terms of differences among the virtual manipulative apps that produced differing outcomes for children. Introduction “Apps” are technology applications for mobile devices with a touch screen (Groger, Silcher, Westkamper, & Mitschang, 2013). Many mathematics apps contain virtual manipulatives that students can manipulate to support the visualization of mathematics concepts. Virtual manipulatives (VMs) are defined by Moyer, Bolyard, and Spikell (2002) as “an interactive, Webbased visual representation of a dynamic object that presents opportunities for constructing mathematical knowledge” (p. 373). In a recent analysis of the Education Category of Apple’s App Store (Shuler, 2012), findings revealed that, of the over 500,000 apps available on iTunes and over 300,000 on Android, 72% of the top selling apps target preschool or elementary aged children, and the second most popular subject for apps is mathematics (13%). Yet there is very little research on how mathematics apps benefit children’s learning. The purpose of this study was to examine young children’s learning performance and efficiency during clinical interviews in which each child interacted with a variety of virtual manipulative mathematics iPad apps. Theoretical Perspective and Review of the Literature VM iPad apps have become popular because they use representations to display abstract mathematical concepts in a pictorial way and children can interact with these representations. Theorists like Bruner (1964) proposed that during cognitive development children make sense of their world through enactive means (i.e., the manipulation of physical objects) that then connect with iconic (visual images, pictures) and symbolic (words, numbers, symbols) representations. Therefore, interactions with representations are important for children’s cognitive development. Proponents of embodied cognition theories argue that children’s physical manipulations of representations and their abstractions of mathematical ideas do not follow one from the other, but rather they go hand in hand (Lakoff & Nunez, 2000). Our position on the use of virtual manipulatives for touch-screen devices is that tool fluency and mathematical understanding are not simply a process of internalizing concrete artifacts into mental representations (Nemirovsky, Kelton, & Rhodehamel, 2013). We concur with Nemirovsky et al. that when children are interacting with representations on touch-screen devices, there is no separation between mind and body because action and thought are intertwined. Manipulating objects on a touch-screen device is not a precursor to mathematical thought – it is, itself, mathematical thought. Most studies examining the use of touch-screen devices for mathematics learning are fairly new. For example, Paek, Hoffman and Black (2013) conducted a series of quantitative studies of a VM mathematics app and reported results on connecting feedback (i.e., audio and visual) and interaction types (i.e., touch versus mouse) in firstand second-grade students’ learning. Generally, their studies suggested that audio feedback may be important initially, but interaction type (i.e., touch-screen vs. mouse) has more influence long-term. Other studies about the use of touch-screen devices are much more general in nature, and rather than examining features of the touch-screen environment, they focus simply on the use of the iPad for mathematics instruction in general. Methods This paper is part of a larger study that used an initiation mixed methods research design (Greene, Caracelli, & Graham, 1989). Other papers from the larger research project detail children’s learning progressions, explore app affordances and their influence on learning, and describe specific strategies children used (see e.g., Moyer-Packenham, forthcoming). This paper asked: How do interactions with VM iPad apps immediately impact young children’s learning performance and efficiency? Learning performance was defined as accuracy on pre and post assessment tasks using VM iPad apps. Learning efficiency was defined as changes in the speed with which children completed a variety of learning tasks using the VM iPad apps. Participants Thirty-two children, ages 7 and 8, enrolled in Grade 2, participated in this study. Children were recruited from elementary schools using informational brochures/letters. Most children were Caucasian (85%) and one-third of children reported low Socio-Economic status (33%)…

Competition in the Global Economy

Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 2009

To assess snacking patterns, self-efficacy, barriers, stage of change, and awareness of healthful... more To assess snacking patterns, self-efficacy, barriers, stage of change, and awareness of healthful snacks among middle-income midwestern women. Self-administered questionnaire. An urban church. Convenience sample of 56 women, mean age 43.9 years and mean body mass index (BMI) 25.9 kg/m(2). A snack quality index (SQI) assessed healthfulness of snack choices; subscales identified self-efficacy and barriers; and a test measured knowledge of healthful snacks. SQI scores were based on energy density and frequency of consumption. Correlations identified associations between SQI scores and self-efficacy and barriers. Analysis of variance identified significant differences between subscale scores for self-efficacy and barriers. Statistical significance was P &amp;amp;amp;lt; .05. The mean SQI score was 64.9%. Participants felt least confident to choose healthful snacks when experiencing negative emotions, and the most important barrier to healthful snacking was an unfavorable taste perception. The majority of the women (86%) were in the pre-action and 14% in the action stages of change for healthful snacking. The mean score on the snack knowledge test was 84.2%. These women need information concerning snacks high in fiber and low in trans fat, and interventions for enhancing self-confidence for healthful snack selection under challenging circumstances and for overcoming barriers.

The Journal of General Education, 2008

Journal of Women in …, 2009

EJ859473 - Perceptions of Leadership Behaviors by Female Principals in North Carolina.

Journal for Civic …, 2009

Page 1. Journal for Civic Commitment Vol. XIII, No. 1, September 2009 * Cheryl McFadden, EdD, Ass... more Page 1. Journal for Civic Commitment Vol. XIII, No. 1, September 2009 * Cheryl McFadden, EdD, Associate Professor, Educational Leadership, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC 27858, email: mcfaddench@ecu.edu; Cathy Maahs-Fladung, Associate Director, Institutional ...