Theses and Dissertations at Montana State University (MSU)
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://scholarworks.montana.edu/handle/1/733
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Item The effects on student academic achievement and student self-confidence of a course-specific textbook written for applied electronics math 2(Montana State University - Bozeman, Graduate School, 2016) Phillips, JoAnne Gilbert; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Peggy Taylor.This research project was developed from the need for a good, affordable textbook for Applied Electronics Math 2 at Madison Area Technical College. When no suitable textbook was found, I chose to write a one specifically designed for that course. This study was motivated by two major research questions in relation to that text: (1) what is the effect on student achievement of using this text? (2) Does the additional emphasis on basic concepts enhance student self-confidence in field-related applications? Data for this project was collected over a period of three semesters. This included not only student grades for homework, quizzes, and exams but information on students' self-confidence levels with respect to mathematics in math and related electronics classes collected at the beginning and end of each semester. Student opinions of the textbook were collected and evaluated using surveys and interviews. Academic scores of the three test classes as compared to a baseline of previous classes taught without a textbook showed expected improvement. However, the greatest improvement was in the self-confidence levels of a majority of the students. Math anxiety was greatly reduced and students declared themselves more prepared to take on the mathematics in their other electronics classes. Student comments about the textbook itself were very favorable. The findings from this research suggest that an affordable book written for a particular course can have a positive effect on both students' academic success in that course and their self-confidence in related areas.Item Textbook reading strategies in the middle school science classroom(Montana State University - Bozeman, Graduate School, 2013) Tabor, Sarah A. F.; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Peggy Taylor.The majority of middle school students have not been specifically taught strategies to read textbooks. My goals were: to determine whether learning a textbook reading strategy would improve the students' understanding of the content, to measure any shift in attitudes towards reading textbooks after being taught specific strategies, and to evaluate any effect that teaching these strategies might have on my teaching. Many of my middle school science students struggled to locate information within their textbook during coursework. This impacted their reading assignments, which were rarely read, and homework assignments, which had low scores. The Common Core Standards mandate that technical writing and reading of informational text be incorporated into science curriculum. Two textbook reading strategies, THIEVES (Manz, 2002) and PLAN (Radcliffe, Caverly, Hand, & Frank, 2008), have been used successfully with middle school students. Over the course of four units, teaching of the reading strategies was alternated with using no reading strategy. The quantitative data that were collected included; test scores, quiz scores, homework scores, and final class grades. The qualitative data that were collected included; student surveys before and after learning the reading strategies, student interviews, and my own journaling. This study's findings were that quiz and test scores remained relatively consistent throughout the investigation, but homework scores did show an improvement during the final unit that used the PLAN reading strategy. Final academic grades remained the same for some of the students, while most students' grades improved or declined. Survey results indicated that students shifted from extreme feelings about reading textbooks, i.e. that they either loved or hated reading them, to having more neutral feelings about reading textbooks. The majority of the students preferred the PLAN reading strategy because they felt that it made them more familiar with the content and that their final product in their science notebooks had value to them, as it aided them in studying for tests. I also preferred PLAN due to the ease of teaching the strategy, the writing component that is built into the reading strategy, and the creative final product from the students.