Doctoral Candidate: Higher Education Administration Tom Castle Doctoral Candidate: Higher Education Administration
My Situation In the dissertation stage of Ph.D. Earned my MBA in 1988 Teaching at Mount Mercy since 1990. Appointed Dean in 2005, and returned for a Ph.D. in 2007. 2 statistics courses between 1985-1988. A refresher stats course two years ago. Last year: Quantitative Methods using STATA
Wabash National Study Longitudinal, multi-institutional study of factors that affect liberal arts education. Dr. Ernie Pascarella, principal investigator http://www.liberalarts.wabash.edu/study-overview/
Research Question: What is the net effect of Cooperative Learning on the development of Need for Cognition among 1st year college students? Are the effects of Cooperative Learning on Need for Cognition mitigated by pre-college characteristics?
Independent Variable: Cooperative Learning: Scale Students help each other: AcadStuTeach Faculty encourage study groups: FacEncourStudyGrp Participated in study groups: AcadStudyGroup Work on projects out of class: NSSE occgrp
Dependent Variable: Need For Cognition, Cacioppo, Petty & Kao, 1982 The degree to which an individual enjoys engaging in effortful cognitive activities 19 item scale: http://www.liberalarts.wabash.edu/study-instruments/#ncs
Control Variables Background characteristics: ACT score Sex Race Parental education College experience variables: Major Institutional type Volunteer activities Living Learning Community Student Organizations Extra-curricular activities Need For Cognition Score (T1)
My project data: Wabash 2006 Cohort: First-year college students 4,501 respondents in the fall, 2006 3,081 completed follow-up in spring, 2007