Dr. Frances M. Vázquez Padilla holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Nursing, few years later completed a Master’s degree in Advanced Practice in Nursing. In 2020, she completed an Ed. D. in Educational Management and recently she completed a professional certification in Neurolinguistic Programing and Coaching. She is currently doing another certification related to educational neuroscience. She has 14 years of experience working in the field of education in several positions as Faculty, Academic Director, Academic Dean at NUC University. Currently she serves as Chancellor at NUC University, Ponce Campus in Puerto Rico.
La Dra. Yubelkys Montalvo trabaja para el Hispanic Educational Technology Services Consortium (HETS, por sus siglas en inglés) desde el año 1999. Desde que fue designada Directora Ejecutiva en el 2006, su enfoque principal es el crecimiento de la organización y la diversificación de los beneficios para las instituciones miembros del Consorcio. Entre las iniciativas desarrolladas se destacan: la creación de nuevos servicios como la revista arbitrada HETS Online Journal, el programa de Estudiantes Embajadores y la colaboración para proponer nuevas alternativas educativas tecnológicas y compartir las mejores prácticas a través de eventos educativos como el Best Practices Showcase y el Student Leadership Showcase y recientemente, webinars para facultad, administradores y estudiantes. Además, ha coordinado y dirigido numerosos adiestramientos internacionales en universidades de Colombia y México, y ha participado en numerosas conferencias y foros Nacionales e Internacionales. La Dra. Montalvo posee un Bachillerato en Comunicaciones de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, Recinto de Río Piedras, y una Maestría en Relaciones Públicas de la Universidad de Sagrado Corazón. Actualmente, completó su doctorado en el programa: Educación en Liderazgo e Instrucción en la Educación a Distancia de la Universidad Interamericana de PR, Recinto de Ponce.
Project Director Title V PPOHA Graduate Grant Albizu University-Miami Campus
Dr. Diana M. Valle-Riestra is the Project Director of the Title V PPOHA Graduate grant and a faculty member in the Speech & Language Pathology graduate program at Albizu University-Miami Campus. She has a Ph.D. in Special Education and Reading and an M.S. in Learning Disabilities and Emotional Disturbance from the University of Miami, School of Education. She has over 16 years of experience in higher education teaching undergraduate and graduate courses and has served as the Project Director or Principal Investigator for several multi-year education grant projects totaling over $9.5 million in competitive funding.
In addition to Dr. Valle-Riestra’s project management experience and grant writing activities, she is a researcher with interests in the areas of special education, postsecondary inclusive education, working with diverse families, and leadership and advocacy issues within the context of special education. She has experience managing and coordinating undergraduate and graduate programs in special education, research projects, and local school district program evaluations; has consulted and published research on exceptional populations; and has served on several professional Executive Boards.
Director, Graduate Student Research Center Albizu University, Miami Campus
Dr. Amanda Giust holds an Ed.D. in Adult Education and Human Resource Development from Florida International University. She has experience educating young children, adolescents, and adults of all abilities. Dr. Giust has eight years of experience managing a variety of community and federal grants and three years of experience in classroom teaching. Dr. Giust’s research interests include diverse learners, learning across the lifespan, self-directed learning, and career development
Learning Design Lead Lecturer, School of Education California State University, Channel Islands
Megan Eberhardt-Alstot is the Learning Design Lead for California State University Channel Islands (CSUCI) Digital Learning Unit. She is also a Lecturer in the School of Education. She earned her BA and Teaching Credential from Pepperdine University and her Master’s in Educational Leadership and Administrative Credential from CSUCI. Prior to joining CI, Megan spent ten years as a K-12 Educator. As part of the Learning Design Team she designs, develops and facilitates faculty learning experiences specific to online and mixed-modality teaching. She also co-created Learning Online 101, an online micro-course to prepare students for success as online learners. Megan is interested in learning innovation, learning science, and the intersection of pedagogy and technology to create empathetic, equitable and responsive learning environments.
Assistant Professor of Health Science California State University, Channel Islands
Lydia Z. Dixon is an Assistant Professor of Health Science at California State University, Channel Island and holds a PhD is in Anthropology from the University of California, Irvine. Her research is primarily ethnographic and examines health systems and health disparities in the US and Mexico. Specifically, Dr. Dixon has published on midwifery, reproductive health, community health and obstetric violence. Her teaching focuses on ethics, community health, and research methods. She is passionate about inspiring her students towards careers in research and practice through active learning in classroom and virtual spaces.
Associate Professor, Nursing California State University, Channel Islands
Jaime Hannans PhD, RN, CNE is Associate Professor of Nursing at California State University Channel Islands. Dr. Hannans obtained her BSN and MSN from CSU, Chico, and PhD from University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Dr. Hannans has been teaching at CSUCI since 2009, with 20-years critical care nursing experience. She is also the CSU Affordable Learning Solutions (AL$) Campus Co-Coordinator, where the campus effort has saved students over five million dollars in the past five years. Her research interests focused on immersive virtual reality, mixed reality, simulation, technology in teaching and learning, textbook affordability, and the use of open educational resources in higher education.
Assistant Professor California State University, Channel Islands
Dr. Linton has a PhD in social work and has been teaching and mentoring Latinx students for seven years; she utilized high-impact practices, such as service learning and undergraduate research. As a social worker and disability expert, she is dedicated to assessing and addressing inequities in education.
Associate Professor, Department of English, Queensborough Community College-CUNY
Beth Counihan is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Queensborough Community College of the City University of New York. While in an administrative position at Lehman College, she worked on the HETS Virtual Plaza FIPSE grant and she has been teaching at Queensborough since Fall 2001. Her interests include High Impact Practices, reading theory and pedagogy, and nature across the curriculum. Her work has been published in English Education, Community College Humanities Review and the edited volume What is College Reading
Author: Beth Counihan Department of English, Queensborough Community College-CUNY
Author Note: I have no known conflicts of interest to disclose.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to: Beth Counihan, Queensborough Community College-CUNY, 222-05 56 Ave, Humanities 428, Bayside, NY 11364. Email: bcounihan@qcc.cuny.edu
Introduction
As the world begins to emerge from the Covid-19 Pandemic, college faculty are ever more mindful of the high cost of textbooks and other necessities of student life. Assigning open educational resource (OER) texts lightens the financial burden and helps contribute to a more equitable campus. Faculty also need to have in our pedagogical tool boxes strategies that work well both in the traditional and virtual classrooms, as we now know we must be prepared for any situation. With this in mind, I would like to share the promising findings of a qualitative study a colleague and I conducted pre-pandemic, in Fall 2018 with our ENGL101: Freshman Composition students, one that suggests further inquiry. We assigned an open educational resource, Flesh-Kincaid Readability Statistics, to complement our work teaching college reading and writing skills. Our limited data, the students’ own writing, indicated that using Readability Statistics supported the skill of revision in particular.
At our urban public community college, seventy-three percent of our students received full financial aid the semester of our study (QCC Fact Book 2020). We serve a highly diverse student body with no one dominant group. In addition, our community college is a designated Hispanic-Serving Institution and HETS member institution, with Hispanic students or their families largely from the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Mexico and Ecuador. Our students each have access to a free subscription to the New York Times–paid through student activity fees, so there is no out-of-pocket expense. I assign the New York Times as a required text in all levels of my English courses. We read articles pertaining to our course topics, but also I assign students to read and write summaries of articles of their own choice, each according to their own interests. Students interested in video games and smart phone technologyread and summarize articles in the Times Personal Tech section, for example. Students concerned about equity and social justice read and summarize articles about racial reckoning and immigration issues.
To reinforce our classroom work on academic writing revision strategies, I assign students to use OER sites like readable.com (although not all features on the site are no-cost). Students paste their summaries into a text box on the site and the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Statistics program is applied, giving students an immediate measurement of the grade level of their writing. As students revise their New York Times article summaries in readable.com, they can see the grade level rise in real time. They see how the grade level rises when they are strategic and mindful about revision, with most studentswho participated in our study in Fall 2018 seeing an increase of two grade levels in their revised summaries.
When students feel connected to the instructor, they are more likely to remain motivated, engaged, and persist toward completing an online course. Rarely have studies compared connectedness in three modalities: online only, blended, and face-to-face. This study compared perceptions of connectedness among students (N = 27) from an Hispanic Serving Institution with their instructor and peers in a research methods course. The sample of students took the same course in three different sections- each taught in a different modality by the same white instructor. Connectedness and students’ grades were lower for students who took the course fully online. However, student ratings of teachings were highest for those who took the online-only section. Latinx students reported less connectedness in the online-only section than others. The results inform decisions about teaching modalities during the pandemic and in the future; synchronous learning is critical to obtain equitable connectedness among Latinx students.
This study examines the pre-test and post-test outcomes of newly developed graduate student workshops covering topics in the area of writing and research. A total of two (2) workshops were completed by 102 graduate students at a predominantly Hispanic serving institution in the southeastern United States. T-test analyses indicated that there was a combined significant difference between pre-test and post-test outcomes, t(101) = -9.63, p < .001, suggesting that both workshops were effective in increasing graduate students’ knowledge base.
Keywords:Graduate Students, Hispanic Serving Institutions, Student Support
Este artículo describe y resume los resultados de un estudio cualitativo exploratorio sobre el aprendizaje móvil en la educación a distancia en Puerto Rico, realizado en cuatro universidades privadas. El propósito del estudio fue precisar si se considera el aprendizaje móvil como parte del diseño instruccional de los cursos en línea, si la integración se hace con un modelo instruccional definido y determinar cómo las plataformas de aprendizaje contribuyen a esta integración. Para el estudio se desarrolló un marco conceptual propio sustentados en una amplia revisión de literatura y se creó un instrumento con preguntas enfocadas a dos aspectos: el pedagógico y el tecnológico con sus respectivas dimensiones que permitió recopilar la información a través de una entrevista semiestructurada a 15 participantes seleccionados intencionalmente de cuatro instituciones privadas de educación superior. Las conclusiones más relevantes del estudio fueron que la mayoría de los participantes indicaron que se integra el aprendizaje móvil en diferentes fases del diseño instruccional de los cursos en línea, pero esto no responde a una planificación pedagógica enfocada al aprendizaje móvil por parte de los profesores o administradores involucrados. Por otro lado, se investigó sobre las herramientas tecnológicas de las plataformas y cómo contribuyen a la integración del aprendizaje móvil. En este caso, el estudio encontró que estas herramientas pueden lograr una experiencia paralela a la computadora. Los resultados del estudio y su marco teórico pueden ayudar a clarificar el concepto de aprendizaje móvil y lo que conlleva la integración en los cursos en línea. Igualmente, pueden ayudar a subsanar la carencia de la literatura sobre aprendizaje móvil en Puerto Rico y colaborar con instrumentos de investigación.
Palabras claves: Aprendizaje móvil, educación a distancia, diseño instruccional, plataformas de aprendizaje, modelos de diseño instruccional y modelos de aprendizaje móvil.
Este estudio de diseño descriptivo correlacional, longitudinal y por cohortes investigó la relación entre el nivel de liderazgo del profesor y la retención estudiantil. El estudio fue basado en los planteamientos teóricos del modelo de liderazgo completo de Bass y Avolio (1994) y el modelo de partida institucional (Tinto, 1993). Se administró un cuestionario para la determinación del nivel de liderazgo del profesor y se utilizó el sistema de información estudiantil de la institución para determinar la retención estudiantil. El cuestionario Nivel de liderazgo del profesor, fue validado y sometido a análisis de confiabilidad arrojando 0.92 en la prueba Alpha de Cronbach.
El nivel predominante entre los docentes fue el nivel En desarrollo. En términos de la tasa de retención de los facultativos, la muestra obtuvo una tasa de retención general de 88.5%. El análisis del coeficiente de correlación Spearman’s arrojó un 0.039 rs con un valor p >0.05 determinando que no existe relación entre el nivel de liderazgo del profesor y la retención estudiantil. Los hallazgos de este estudio validan la retención como fenómeno multifactorial donde el nivel de liderazgo de facultad y la retención estudiantil no se asocian como factores que inciden en la retención estudiantil.
Abstract
This cohort, longitudinal, correlational descriptive design study investigated the relationship between faculty leadership level and student retention. The study was based on the theoretical approaches of the complete leadership model of Bass and Avolio (1994) and the institutional departure model (Tinto, 1993). A questionnaire was administered to determine faculty level of leadership and the institution’s student information system was used to determine student retention. Faculty Leadership Level questionnaire was validated and submitted to reliability analysis, resulting 0.92 in Cronbach’s Alpha test.
The predominant leadership among faculty was developing level. In terms of the retention rate of faculty, the sample obtained an overall retention rate of 88.5%. The analysis of the Spearman’s correlation coefficient yielded 0.039 rs with a p value> 0.05, determining that there is no relationship between the level of faculty leadership and student retention. The findings of this study validate retention as a multifactorial phenomenon where the level of faculty leadership and student retention are not associated as factors that affect student retention.
Identificar como elegir o poner en práctica un sistema de gestión de aprendizaje de un programa de español como lengua extranjera en una institución de educación superior es muy importante. Para ello será primordial identificar la demanda del mercado que el programa está diseñado a satisfacer. La demografía y las características de los estudiantes son partes esenciales para determinar la asignación de una plataforma o realizar algún cambio en ellas. Detectar el proceso utilizado para evaluar la efectividad de la enseñanza y como consecuencia realizar ciertos transformaciones y recomendaciones puede ser primordial para impulsar el aumento de las inscripciones en un programa de español. Aunque existen diversas y diferentes plataformas o tecnologías de aprendizaje se procederá a comparar dos sistemas de gestión de aprendizaje; la plataforma Blackboard y la plataforma Canvas. La elección de una de ellas permitirá realizar cambios oportunos y mejorar el currículo de enseñanza proporcionando así los mejores recursos a los estudiantes consiguiendo tanto el éxito estudiantil como éxito el institucional.
Palabras clave: Sistema de gestión de aprendizaje, español como lengua extranjera, educación en línea, Blackboard, Canvas.
Abstract
Identifying how to choose or implement a learning management system for a Spanish-as-a-foreign language program in a higher education institution is very important. To do this, it will be essential to identify the market demand that the program is designed to meet. Demographics and student characteristics are essential parts of determining or making any changes to a platform. Detecting the process used to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching and as a consequence perform certain transformations and recommendations can be essential to promote the increase of registrations in a Spanish program. Although there are different and different platforms or learning technologies, two learning management systems will be compared; Blackboard platform and Canvas platform. Choosing one of them will allow to make timely changes and improve the teaching curriculum thus providing the best resources to students achieving both student success and institutional success.
Keywords: Learning management system, Spanish as a foreign language, online education, Blackboard, Canvas.
