Ademola Amida, Isaac Chang and David Yearwood
This paper aims to present the finding of a practical lab assessment used to evaluate students’ mastery of Ohm’s law. The researchers used an approach combining different…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to present the finding of a practical lab assessment used to evaluate students’ mastery of Ohm’s law. The researchers used an approach combining different instruction types and lab formats to examine whether this combination produced a unique effect on students’ performance. This multifaceted approach provided evidence about how assessment design could affect students’ lab performance. The study also discussed various strategies that could guide instructors and curriculum designers about how to incorporate lab tasks into their curriculum to facilitate students’ mastery of subject content.
Design/methodology/approach
This study was a quantitative experiment that used a factorial repeated measures design. The design allowed the researchers to measure participants’ task scores and time across different treatment conditions, hence enabling the effects of lab format and instructional type to be observed. All participants were recruited through the convenience sampling strategy.
Findings
The results suggested that there was a statistically significant difference in the time taken to complete the task. However, no statistically significant difference was recorded in the participants’ task scores. Overall, it appeared that participants performed better in the simulation-based labs with expository instructions.
Originality/value
The current study contributes to the body of knowledge on the effect of lab format and instructional type on students’ performance in lab-based assessments. The results presented here may also help instructors to determine the most appropriate form of lab formats and instruction types to be used in an electronics course.
Details
Keywords
Ademola Amida, Sameera Algarni and Robert Stupnisky
This study explored graduate students' academic success by testing a hypothesized model based on the self-determination theory (SDT), which posits that motivation, time management…
Abstract
Purpose
This study explored graduate students' academic success by testing a hypothesized model based on the self-determination theory (SDT), which posits that motivation, time management and career aspiration predicts perceived success.
Design/methodology/approach
A quantitative methodology was employed to garner data from a population of 324 graduate students, and then analyzed using structural equation modeling in R.
Findings
Intrinsic motivation was the strongest motivation type that predicted graduate students' perceived success. Time management was another important predictor of perceived success, while career aspiration did not impact students' perception of success. Doctoral students showed significantly higher relatedness when compared to master degree students. In addition, male students showed significantly higher career aspirations than females, while female students showed significantly higher time management than their male counterparts. The results of this study support the SDT as a framework to understand graduate students' academic success.
Originality/value
Implementing the research findings may increase graduate students' academic success. This study suggests direct ways of increasing graduate students' achievement through intrinsic motivation, time management and autonomy, as well as reducing amotivation (lack of motivation) to indirectly enhance academic success.