1. Doctoral Candidate: Higher Education Administration
Tom Castle
Doctoral Candidate:
Higher Education Administration

2. 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
A refresher stats course two years ago.
Last year: Quantitative Methods using STATA

3. Wabash National Study
Longitudinal, multi-institutional study of factors that affect liberal arts education.
Dr. Ernie Pascarella, principal investigator

4. 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?

5. 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

6. Dependent Variable: Need For Cognition, Cacioppo, Petty & Kao, 1982
The degree to which an individual enjoys engaging in effortful cognitive activities
19 item scale:

7. 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)

8. 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