Browsing by Author "Most, David, advisor"

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Open Access
A retrospective study of equalization funding in California community colleges and its association with student success and student course retention
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2009) Hollabaugh, Kristin M., author; Davies, Timothy Gray, advisor; Most, David, advisor
The Serrano v. Priest decision is very important in California. In 1971, it was decided by California State Supreme Court in 1971 that California school financing system was unconstitutional under the equal protection provision of the State constitution. As California public education financing has long had disparate funding levels, the purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the association between equalization funding and student course success and student course retention in California Community Colleges. Archival student success and student course retention data was used for 107 California Community Colleges, and the years reviewed were: Year 1 (2002-03); Year 2 (2003-04); Year 3 (2004-05); Year 4 (2005-2006); Year 5 (2006-07); Year 6 (2007-08). First year of equalization funding was 2004-2005, or Year 3 of the study. Only the Fall and Spring terms were analyzed for each of the years. No summer or intercessions were included in the data calculations. In addition, for the purposes of this study, a college was treated as a funded college if it was eligible for funding for the first year of the equalization program (2004-2005). Conversely, a college was treated as a non-funded college if it was not eligible for additional funding for the first year of the equalization program. The time-over-change study produced several findings. First, when only looking at two subgroups (funded and non-funded) there was an association between equalization funding and student course success. In other words, the mean success lines became markedly closer together at the end of the study than at they were at the beginning of the study. Second, when those subgroups were then broken down by multi-campus college districts and single-campus college districts, again there appeared to be association between student success and infusion of equalization funding. What became apparent, however, was the uniquely-shaped lines of colleges in the Los Angeles Community College District, so a decision was made to pull those ten colleges out of the mix. In addition, Basic Aid District Colleges were pulled out of the subgroups. When Los Angeles colleges and Basic Aid District Colleges were pulled out of the mix, there was not a meaningful association between course success and equalization funding. In addition, in all cases, there was no meaningful difference for course retention-on any level.
Open Access
An exploration of the use of problem-based learning at allopathic family medicine residency programs in the United States
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2013) Benè, Kristen Leigh, author; Most, David, advisor; Timpson, William, advisor; Anderson, Sharon, committee member; Bright, Alan, committee member; Marvel, M. Kim, committee member
Background: Problem-based learning (PBL) is a learner-centered approach that allows learners to be self-directed and learn content in the context where it will be applied. Recent research on outcomes shows strong evidence for a positive impact on physician competency. PBL was designed by Barrows to teach students in the preclinical medical school years; however, it is an approach well suited for adult learners, like those at the graduate medical education level. It is not known whether and to what extent PBL is used in graduate medical education in any specialty. This study provides an original contribution to knowledge by describing the use of PBL in graduate medical education specifically focusing on family medicine. Method: Surveys were sent to program directors at 444 allopathic family medicine residency programs in the United States. Results: One hundred seventy five programs (39.4%) responded to the survey. Of those responding, 82.9% used PBL as defined in this study; however only one-third of respondents used the term PBL at their programs. Use of PBL did not vary by program types or program location. Almost all (97.2%) programs used physician faculty to facilitate PBL and over half (56%) trained PBL facilitators with formal faculty development. Over 90% of programs relied on actual patient cases to provide case content for PBL. The majority of program directors felt their implementation of PBL was a success. Conclusions: PBL is widely used at family medicine residency programs and there is great consistency across programs for facilitator training, case creation, and perceptions of success with this method. It is a method that warrants further study based on its broad use.
Open Access
Graduation hazards and surviving college: a descriptive study of the longitudinal nature of low-income, first generation, and minority student enrollment and graduation
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Novak, Heather, author; Most, David, advisor; De Miranda, Michael, committee member; Lacy, Michael, committee member; Thayer, Paul, committee member
There are ambitious institutional and national goals that aspire to improve the six year graduation rate for undergraduate students. An important element of increasing the overall rate lies in decreasing the educational attainment gaps for low-income, first generation, and other historically underserved students. Comprehensive theoretical approaches to student success show that campuses have the opportunity to influence these achievement gaps with intentional and integrated programming and policy; however, the first step of initiating campus changes is to understand how the longitudinal nature of enrollment varies for demographically different students. This study utilizes a competing risk event history analysis on six cohorts of Colorado State University (CSU) fall-start freshmen over eight academic years in order to describe their dropout and graduation trajectories across a variety of demographic and academic preparation variables. Results indicate that all students have the highest hazard of graduation at year five and the greatest dropout hazard at year one; however, the shapes of these hazards are different based on a student's demographic characteristics. Students with high risk characteristics have much lower graduation hazards after year five and much higher dropout hazards after year one when compared to their low risk peers. Thus, findings from this analysis indicate that high risk students at CSU need to be directed on educational paths that keep them on track to graduate in five years and that these students may also need continued retention support during their second and third years.
Open Access
Grandma, could this dissertation be my Indigenous Tayal facial tattoo? An autoethnography of overcoming the fear of statistics through the dichotomous use of p-values
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Lin, Hsiao-Ching, author; Most, David, advisor; Aragon, Antonette, advisor; Doe, Sue, committee member; Faircloth, Susan, committee member; Timpson, William, committee member
This dissertation's idea began with my class notes and questions in the statistics courses I attended in my doctoral program. These notes and questions originally were about the concepts of the bell shape, statistical distribution, and hypothesis testing. They then became my inquiries of p-values because what I learned in the courses about how the dominant use of p-values have generated inequities such as academic bias and misleading statistics education; they caught my attention as inequities were at the root of my learning growing up as a Taiwanese Indigenous student and woman. I reference Indigenous critical theories' (ICT) concept of challenging the mastery of knowledge via centering Indigenous intelligence in the knowledge (Justice, 2016) as the primary epistemology to conduct this autoethnographic study. All in all, using autoethnography as the research method, I ask four research questions to explore my meaning-making of learning the dichotomous use of p-values: 1. How do I make meaning of the dichotomous use of p-values in the statistics courses I attended? The exploration of this research question illustrates how and why I was drawn to the issue of p-values and what is the essential problem of using p-values dichotomously. Using p-values dichotomously means using statistical significance to decide the effectiveness of a research treatment or intervention. 2. How do I make meaning of the dichotomous use of p-values in the literature of this study? The analysis of this research question shows the broader contexts of the canonical teaching and use of p-values and that of inequities engendered by them. To answer this research question, I explored the history and philosophy of the connection between statistics and scientific research and inequities caused by using p-values dichotomously. These inequities explored and explained in this study are death, job loss, life threats, and academic bias. 3. How do research questions 1 and 2 help me address inequities discussed in this study as an Indigenous woman researcher? The answer to this research question explains how the inequities generated from improper use of p-values. It also aligns with the inequities I have encountered as an Indigenous woman and graduate student in a country not of my birth. 4. How do research questions 1, 2, and 3 help me overcome my fear of statistics? Pondering this question led me to complete this dissertation—Grandma, Could This Dissertation Be My Indigenous Tayal Facial Tattoo? An Autoethnography of Overcoming the Fear of Statistics Through the Dichotomous Use of P-Values. This study not only critiques the dichotomous use of p-values but also explains the inequities generated from it by unraveling the social norm ingrained in the use of p-values. It also heals me from feeling unintelligent, timid, and small about statistics as, during the process of completing this dissertation, I have overcome the fear that accompanies emotional trauma associated with the numeric dimension of confirming realities.
Open Access
The understanding of intentionality in children with Williams syndrome and Down syndrome
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Hahn, Laura J., author; Most, David, advisor; Fidler, Deborah, advisor; Balgopal, Meena, committee member; Lunkenheimer, Erika, committee member
This dissertation examined the development of the understanding of intentionality in two different neurogenetic disorders, Williams syndrome (WS) and Down syndrome (DS). The study of intentionality focuses on how children come to understand the intentions of others. Meltzoff's (1995) behavioral reenactment paradigm is a nonverbal procedure wherein a child is presented with a series of objects. Prior to each presentation, the examiner either performs a successful action (e.g. the target action) or an unsuccessful action (e.g. the failed intentional action). A child's understanding of intentionality is assessed by their ability to interpret the experimenter's intention during failed attempt trials, and their subsequent completion of the task. This examination of intentionality was divided into two studies. Study 1 was designed to test Tager-Flusberg and Sullivan's (2000) hypothesis that there is a dissociation between social-perceptual abilities and social-cognitive abilities in individuals with Williams syndrome. In order to explore this dissociation, the behavioral reenactment procedure was administered with and without experimenter affective cues. Participants were 25 children with a confirmed diagnosis of WS. There were two groups of WS, one that received affective cues (N=13) and one that did not (N=12). Also, children with WS in the no affect group were compared to 12 mental-age matched children with developmental disabilities. The findings of this study indicates that the understanding of intentionality improves with developmental status in children with WS. Also, this study indicates that there may be a dissociation between social-perceptual and social-cognitive skills in this population during early social-emotional development. Specifically, it seems that the presence of emotional cues during intersubjective tasks leads to an emotional response instead of a response based on social cognition. Study 2 was motivated by past research suggesting that children with DS demonstrate deficits in some aspects of social cognition, even though many children with DS have strengths in other aspects of social-emotional functioning. Therefore, it is likely that the understanding of intentionality in children with Down syndrome may be influenced by other foundational cognitive abilities (i.e. joint attention and affect sharing in early childhood and executive functioning in middle childhood). Participants were 40 children with a confirmed diagnosis of Down syndrome, 16 young children with DS and 24 older children with DS. In addition, the 16 young children with DS were compared to 16 mental-age matched children with other developmental disabilities. The results of this study suggests that the understanding of intentionality improves with developmental status for young children with DS. This study also suggest that difficulties in joint attention and EF lead children with DS to miss the target relevant information during the behavioral reenactment procedure leading them to perform more "other actions". This dissertation is the first study to examine the development of intentionality in WS and DS. From these studies, it may be possible to begin to characterize how the understanding of intentionality develops in children with WS and DS. Characterizing social cognition in WS and DS will help to identify areas for targeted intervention to prevent the possible cascading effects of difficulties in social cognition on other aspects of development.