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This article examines the impact of course modality on student evaluation of courses and professors. Data were collected through the "Student Perception of Instruction" end of course rating form at the University of Central Florida (UCF), which contains nine items and maintains student anonymity. The findings indicate that while course modality accounts for only 1% of the variance in student evaluations, there is strong internal consistency and reliability in the rating scale. The distribution of ratings showed a concentration of scores at the high end, resulting in a high variability coefficient. However, when the long tail of low ratings was removed, the mean increased and the distribution became more symmetric, affecting various psychometric indices. The correlation matrices among the items revealed a single factor solution for each modality, suggesting that students tend to rely on a general impression when rating their courses. The multidimensional scaling process identified underlying categories such as structure, course climate, engagement, and consideration, even though students did not explicitly differentiate these elements in their responses. The study concludes that course modality has minimal influence on overall student ratings, a finding consistent across different time periods, including the COVID-19 pandemic. Although a single factor captures students' general evaluations, underlying categories shape their responses. The article also presents a classification model that predicts student ratings based on the scale items. This research addresses the complex dynamics of student evaluations, highlighting the nuanced relationship between course modality, student perceptions, and the underlying factors influencing their ratings.

This paper first introduces self-determination theory (SDT) to retention researchers and higher education professionals. Highlighted are the three basic psychological needs, that when met, are theorized to give rise to intrinsic motivation, which is associated with high levels of human performance. These are the needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. This theoretical overview is followed by a discussion of how this theory has been applied to understand the role of intrinsic motivation in fostering educational success. An outline of how SDT can be applied to increase college student retention is presented. The second part of the paper applies the understanding of self-determination theory to interpret and better understand the results of a focused literature review of 12 retention research articles. This interpretation suggests that meeting or failing to meet the psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness proposed by SDT may explain the results of research reviewed. It is theorized that college environments that meet all three psychological needs postulated by SDT will increase student retention beyond what prior approaches have achieved.

The internationalization of higher education and growth of international student mobility make higher education classrooms culturally and linguistically more diverse than ever, especially among postgraduate students (Brown and Holloway 2008; Gu, Schweisfurth, and Day 2009; Yu and Moskal 2019). However, recent research reports a common tendency for international students to be silent in the Western English-medium classroom (Choi 2015; Zappa-Hollman and Duff 2015; Morita 2004), identifying language competence and cultural difference as two main barriers to participation (Zhou, Knoke, and Sakamoto 2005). International students often bring a different cultural understanding of classroom interaction norms and conventions (Dippold 2015). Grounded in the theoretical framework of "community of practice" (Lave and Wenger 1991), this paper perceives international students' verbal participation as a "dynamic, socially situated process" (Duff 2010, 169) and classrooms as communities, in which students develop "an evolving form of membership" as they "change in how they participate in a community through the multiple social relations and roles they experience" (Lave and Wenger 1991, 53). In short, this study investigates how community members interact with and adjust to each other in order to create an equal classroom atmosphere.

The paper offers an examination of the dynamics between silence, agency and power for students and instructors in intercultural classrooms at a UK university. Silent students are often stereotyped as passive learners or incompetent in critical thinking, lacking interest or having insufficient understanding. Despite the devaluation of silence, research reveals its significant role in pedagogy and its foundations in culture. The paper explores second language (L2) postgraduate international students' classroom experiences and voices behind the silence in comparison with their peers' and instructors' perceptions and interpretations of students' lack of vocal participation. Challenging talk as the privileged form of classroom communication mode, we argue for a better understanding of L2 international students' participation and call for recognition of the pedagogical merits of silence and legitimate some forms of it as a pattern of participation.

Background: Although engineering practice occurs in social contexts, such contexts often remain obscure in engineering education. Since engineering sciences courses are crucial in shaping engineering students' knowledge and conceptions of problem-solving in engineering, students in both an augmented and a traditional section of a feedback control systems course were interviewed to explore perceptions of the social justice dimensions of engineering. Purpose: This study sought to understand student perceptions of social justice in the context of control systems courses. Design/Method: This study used a qualitative, case study methodology. Inductive analysis was used to analyze focus groups and interviews conducted over 3 years. Findings: Through inductive analysis, we identified three primary interrelated domains: (1) varied descriptions of social justice emerged; (2) diverse perceptions surfaced on how the social and technical dimensions of engineering problems interrelate; and (3) students' conceptions of engineers yielded insight into their perspectives on social justice. Conclusions: That students did not vary substantively in perceptions of social justice across course sections suggests that prior knowledge of social justice shaped student perceptions. The findings also indicate that what students value shapes what they are learning and that student perceptions were informed by students' understanding of ethics and of engineering ideologies. These findings imply a need for distributed curricular integration of social justice concepts and for presenting social justice in the context of engineering problem-solving. Such presentation could reinforce sociotechnical considerations inherent in engineering practice, clearly rendering visible inherent social justice considerations in engineering problems.

This paper presents the results of a pilot study investigating the use of the Realizeit adaptive learning platform to deliver a fully online General Psychology course across two semesters. Through mutual cooperation, UCF and vendor (CCKF) researchers examined students' affective, behavioral, and cognitive reactions to the system. Student survey results indicated that students found the system easy to use and were generally positive about their seamless transition to adaptive learning. While the majority of students were successful, learning outcome metrics utilizing Realizeit indices indicated a potential for early prediction of students who are likely to be at risk in this environment. Recommendations are presented for the benefits of cooperative research between users and vendors.

A wealth of evidence about the place and value of student evaluations of teaching (SET) exists. Issues highlight often unspoken assumptions about the separation of evaluation from core teaching-learning processes. Despite the research presenting the teacher/institutional viewpoint, few studies address student perceptions of, and engagement with, SET. To examine the converse side of the arguments about SET, this study looked at SET from the perspective of the student. Experiences and perceptions about evaluations were invited from students from two New Zealand tertiary institutions through a questionnaire. The majority of students said that they were happy to provide feedback on teaching and courses, but systems of expectation, imposition on time, lack of knowledge about consequences of the SET system and the way their responses are used are barriers to their engagement. Shifting focus of research from the SET system to the effectiveness of partnerships between students, teachers and institution is suggested as a way to take future SET research in a different direction. This may foreground the positive contribution of SET to learning and teaching rather than repeated exploration of its inherent limitations and weaknesses.

In order to effectively ensure our continued technical advantage and future cybersecurity, we need a technologically skilled and cyber savvy workforce and an effective pipeline of future employees. Our Government has identified Cybersecurity as one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation and has ear-marked cybersecurity education as a major part of its Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative. By establishing a Cybersecurity Center of Excellence as part of our Computer Science--Cybersecurity curriculum, Saint Peter's University will be well positioned to train and educate students on this very important National initiative. In addition, we will be providing our students with the skill-sets necessary to become a member of the cybersecurity workforce that is expected to increase from global revenues of $95 billion in 2014 to $155 billion in 2019.

BlendKit is a 5-week course designed by the University of Central Florida in an open, online format specifically for the professional development of higher education faculty and designers preparing to design and teach blended learning courses. The evaluation of this course provides us with interesting and valuable information on the success of using an open approach of a MOOC compared to more traditional, highly structured professional development offerings typically seen in higher education. This article will focus on the lessons learned from the third iteration of this open, online course.

The authors explore the possible relationship between student satisfaction with online learning and the theory of psychological contracts. The study incorporates latent trait models using the image analysis procedure and computation of Anderson and Rubin factors scores with contrasts for students who are satisfied, ambivalent, or dissatisfied with their online learning experiences. The findings identify three underlying satisfaction components: engaged learning, agency, and assessment. The factor score comparisons indicate that students in the general satisfaction categories characterize important differences in engaged learning and agency, but not assessment. These results lead the authors to hypothesize that predetermined, but unspecified expectations (i.e., psychological contracts) for online courses by both students and faculty members are important advance organizers for clarifying student satisfaction.

Student evaluations of teaching and courses (SETs) are part of the fabric of tertiary education and quantitative ratings derived from SETs are highly valued by tertiary institutions. However, many staff do not engage meaningfully with SETs, especially if the process of analysing student feedback is cumbersome or time-consuming. To address this issue, we describe a proof-of-concept study to automate aspects of analysing student free text responses to questions. Using Quantext text analysis software, we summarise and categorise student free text responses to two questions posed as part of a larger research project which explored student perceptions of SETs. We compare human analysis of student responses with automated methods and identify some key reasons why students do not complete SETs. We conclude that the text analytic tools in Quantext have an important role in assisting teaching staff with the rigorous analysis and interpretation of SETs and that keeping teachers and students at the centre of the evaluation process is key.

The authors describe the University of Central Florida's top-down/bottom-up action analytics approach to using data to inform decision-making at the University of Central Florida. The top-down approach utilizes information about programs, modalities, and college implementation of Web initiatives. The bottom-up approach continuously monitors outcomes attributable to distributed learning, including student ratings and student success. Combined, this top-down/bottom up approach becomes a powerful means for using large extant university datasets to provide significant insights that can be instrumental in strategic planning. (Contains 7 tables and 8 figures.)

Background and Context: Encouraging undergraduate programming students to think more about their software development processes is challenging. Most programming courses focus on coding skill development and mastering programming language features; subsequently software development processes (e.g. planning, code commenting, and error debugging) are undervalued. Moreover, many of these processes involve tacit thinking that is often seemingly invisible, meaning it can be difficult for teachers to identify and address shortcomings in student processes. Objective: In this paper, we employ a novel approach called Interpersonal Process Recall (IPR) to encourage students to think more about their software development processes. Method: We conducted IPR sessions with five undergraduate programming students--we screen captured them working on programming assignments, and then used the screen captures to stimulate reflection. IPR is hallmarked by several key features, namely its developmental (rather than evaluative) focus, and the use of a facilitator to guide reflection in a structured way. Findings: We found IPR was useful for both the teaching staff and the students, revealing incongruence between the value students placed on certain development processes and what they actually do in practice. Implications: IPR is a novel approach for shining a light on student software development processes. We hope this paper encourages other practitioners to consider adding IPR to their toolbox of approaches for encouraging students to reflect on their software development processes.

This paper looks at structural conditions or institutional arrangements that facilitate or hinder interactions for international students. Drawing on the contact and diversity theory, analyses compare Chinese students' intercultural experience in business and non-business schools in one UK university and explore how these students interpret the meaning of quality intercultural contact based on their responses to the social environment around them. Findings indicate that the overwhelming number of Chinese students, particularly in business schools, combined with obstacles these students face in establishing intercultural contact around the university potentially motivates them to explore engagement with a wider host society (e.g. Christian churches). The denial of intercultural contact due to a lack of diverse environment may lead to inequality in opportunities for cross-cultural learning and personal growth. High quality intercultural contact is not only beneficial to international students, it also enhances the intercultural competency of native students in the global market place.

The 2008 Sloan Blended Workshop evaluation track provided participants with ideas, methods, and resources with which to design and evaluate their courses, programs, and blended initiatives. The many questions that arose from participants at the Workshop provided the motivation to document our University's evaluation experiences at course, program and institutional levels. This paper presents our lessons learned including successes and challenges, with developing and conducting a longitudinal impact evaluation. (Contains 2 tables and 2 figures.)

The authors discuss elements that potentially impact student satisfaction with asynchronous learning: the media culture, digital, personal and mobile technologies, student learning preferences, pedagogy, complexities of measurement, and the digital generation. They describe a pilot study to identify the underlying dimensions of student satisfaction with online learning and present examples of techniques for engaging students in classes that respond to their uses of technology.

In large class settings, individualized student-teacher interaction is difficult. However, teaching interactions (e.g., formative feedback) are central to encouraging deep approaches to learning. While there has been progress in automatic short-answer grading, analysing student responses to support formative feedback at scale is arguably some way from being widely applied in practice. However, analysing student written responses can provide insights into student conceptions, thus directly informing teacher actions. Indeed, we argue that analysing student responses to provide feedback directly to teachers is as worthy a goal as providing individualized feedback to students and is achievable given the current state-of-the-art in natural language processing. In this paper, we analyse student written responses to short-answer questions posed in the context of a large first year health sciences course. Each question was designed to elicit deep responses. Our qualitative analysis illustrates the variability in student responses and reveals multiple relationships between these responses, course materials and the questions posed. Such information can be invaluable for teacher praxis. We conclude with a conceptual "dashboard" that categorizes student responses and reveals relationships between responses, course resources and the questions. Such a dashboard could provide timely, actionable insights for teachers and help foster deep learning approaches for students.

Academic development is often seen as a compliance activity, divorced from the teaching context and what teachers are trying to achieve in their classroom. In this case study, we researched Interpersonal Process Recall (IPR) as a reflective, non-judgmental approach to help tutors identify coherence between their teaching intentions and practice. Our results provided evidence that IPR helped tutors reflect on ways to improve their teaching. It also led to unexpected 'discoveries' not typically afforded by conventional academic development. We conclude that IPR offers a formative, teacher-focussed and contextual approach that has not been clearly defined in the literature. We offer the IPR model followed in this study for academic developers and researchers alike.

We know various factors can influence how teaching staff engage with student evaluation, such as institutional policies or staff beliefs. However, little research has investigated the influence of the technical processes of an evaluation system. In this article, we present a case study of the effects of changing the technical system for administering student evaluations at one New Zealand university. We develop a socio-technical model of the institutional evaluation system, and use this model to examine whether introducing an online system for ordering student feedback questionnaires and reducing processing time influenced academic staff engagement with evaluation. Survey responses, interview comments and data about ordering trends suggest the change did increase staff engagement by: (1) improving staff perceptions of evaluation and (2) increasing engaged behaviour, such as voluntarily ordering more evaluations. The outcomes of this study imply that the "practical implementation" of an evaluation system is an important factor in influencing engagement with evaluation. We conclude that we can increase teacher engagement with evaluation simply by improving the "practical implementation" of the evaluation system.

Public universities are currently facing a challenge in determining how to deliver quality instruction in the face of severe fiscal constraints. With recent technological advances, courses streamed over the Internet (i.e., lecture capture) are now becoming common. However, little research has been published that specifically examines student performance or perceptions of lecture capture courses. This study examined student performance, student satisfaction, and student evaluation of instruction in two large (N greater than 300) introductory Economics course sections. One section employed traditional face-to-face instruction, while the other employed lecture capture (LC). In this case, lecture capture refers to storing videos of actual course lectures on the college's computer server and making them available to students via the course website. Students may view these videos at their convenience, as often as they wish. The instructional methods, assignments, exams, and instructor were the same for each section over two consecutive semesters. At the end of each semester, participating students were asked to complete an online course satisfaction survey. Standard university course evaluations were also compared to examine instructor ratings in the two course delivery conditions. The results showed no significant differences in student performance across the two delivery formats. Results did show a higher withdrawal rate in the LC sections compared to the face-to-face sections (5.1% to 1.9%). Student perceptions of LC were quite positive. Students perceived that they had more control over their learning than in a traditional face-to-face course, and more students believed that LC enhanced their performance, compared to those who thought that it did not. Eighty percent indicated that the LC course was as good as or better than a traditional large lecture course taught face-to-face, and 73% reported that they would choose to take another LC course. The flexibility and convenience of LC were what students liked the most. Finally, students in the LC format actually gave the instructor slightly higher ratings than those in the face-to-face sections, even with all readings, assignments, and exams being the same. This research showed that instruction employing lecture capture resulted in comparable student performance and student satisfaction, relative to face-to-face instruction without lecture capture. The results confirm the viability of this course delivery modality when fiscal limitations are a factor and to improve course access for students. However, based on the observed withdrawal rates and previous research on distance learning, it appears that lecture capture courses may require more self-discipline because students must complete coursework on their own, and it is likely that freshmen and sophomores, who are less familiar with college, may find this medium more difficult. (Contains 3 tables.)

The authors make the case that implementation of a successful blended learning program requires alignment of institutional, faculty, and student goals. Reliable and robust infrastructure must be in place to support students and faculty. Continuous evaluation can effectively track the impact of blended learning on students, faculty, and the institution. These data are used to inform stakeholders and impact policy to improve faculty development and other support structures necessary for success. This iterative loop of continuous quality improvement is augmented by faculty scholarship of teaching and learning research. The evolution of blended learning at the University of Central Florida is used as a model and research collected over sixteen years illustrates that with proper support and planning, blended learning can result in positive institutional transformation. (Contains 5 tables and 3 figures.)

The authors contend that ambivalence students feel toward online courses modifies the dimensionality by which they evaluate their learning experiences. The data from this study show that as student ambivalence increases, so do the number of elements they use to evaluate their courses. As the student view of a course becomes more complex those elements by which they make judgments become much more independent of each other. The authors hypothesize that models students develop to evaluate course quality is a function of agency, psychological contracts, ambivalence, prototype theory, intuition, idealized cognitive models and satisfaction. (Contains 7 tables.)

The authors compared the underlying student response patterns to an end-of-course rating instrument for large student samples in online, blended and face-to-face courses. For each modality, the solution produced a single factor that accounted for approximately 70% of the variance. The correlations among the factors across the class formats showed that they were identical. The authors concluded that course modality does not impact the dimensionality by which students evaluate their course experiences. The inability to verify multiple dimensions for student evaluation of instruction implies that the boundaries of a typical course are beginning to dissipate. As a result, the authors concluded that end-of-course evaluations now involve a much more complex network of interactions. (Contains 4 tables.)

Today's higher education students are more technologically savvy than past generations. For metropolitan universities this phenomenon is particularly important as they attempt to provide an engaging and rigorous environment for these digital natives, who view their world somewhat differently than other generational cohorts. Because of contemporary student characteristics, the authors focus on the possible added learning value that technology can bring to higher education in the metropolitan environment.