Gallagher Group

Research Projects

Exploring the Strategies Used by Two-year Colleges to Support Academic Continuity in STEM Education During the COVID-19 Crisis

Funding Agency: National Sciences Foundation

Summary: This project uses the engineering resiliency framework and technology acceptance model to understand what strategies have been and are being employed by two-year technical colleges to maintain academic continuity during the pandemic.

SC:SUPPORTED

Funding Agency: National Sciences Foundation

Summary: With support from the National Science Foundation under grant #1744497 and as part of the national INCLUDES network, the SC:SUPPORTED project is examining factors associated with mathematics preparation and major selection in South Carolina. The goal of the project is to use statewide data to identify interventions that will broaden participation in engineering and engineering-related fields.

Social Networks and Communities of Practice for Mathematics Graduate Students

Funding Agency: Unfunded

Summary: Mathematics graduate students navigate conflicting communities of practice as they develop a professional identity as mathematicians. In the process, they receive mixed messages about balancing teaching and research expectations. Rather than operating in a single community of unified practice, they effectively operate in conflicting communities of teaching practice and research practice. We are using social network theory with weighted and directed edges to understand how graduate students internalize these mixed messages in forming their professional identities.

KOLBE-A Correlated to Student Performance in Hybrid Precalculus

Funding Agency: Unfunded

Summary: Clemson University uses a hybrid instructional model for a 5-unit precalculus course taken by STEM majors who are not calculus ready. The hybrid model includes an asynchronous online component and a face-to-face component with targeted direct instruction in small groups. The model works very well for the majority of the students, but not at all for others. The KOLBE-A Index is a measure of an individual’s natural work habits. We want to determine if particular KOLBE-A Index categories are particularly well-suited or poorly-suited to this course model. If we find this to be the case, we can better tailor the model to categories of students identified as "at-risk" based on their KOLBE-A Index.

Collaborators: Claire Dancz (Clemson University), Jeff Plumblee (Clemson University), Charity Watson (Clemson University), Khushikumari Patel (Clemson University).

Distractor Analysis and Student Performance in Collegiate Mathematics

Funding Agency: Unfunded

Summary: Research into teacher effectiveness at the K-12 level has established that pedagogical content knowledge – knowledge of how students learn content – is at least as important as content knowledge for teaching mathematics. In this study, we are looking at instructor ability to identify and explain the most common incorrect answer on multiple-choice exams in five highly coordinated collegiate mathematics courses to explore whether prior instructor awareness of student misconceptions is correlated to student performance in the course.

Collaborators: Jennifer Van Dyken (Clemson University).

TIFMaGS (Teacher Identify Formation among Mathematics Graduate Students)

Funding Agency: Pending

Summary: If funded, this project will develop a reliable and valid instrument for measuring teacher identity among mathematics graduate students.

Teaching Induction to Support Teacher Identity Formation for Mathematics Graduate Students

Funding Agency: Pending

Summary: If funded, this project will use a matched pairs quasi-experimental design to examine the effects of a three-semester teaching induction sequence on the teacher identity and teaching practice for incoming mathematics graduate students.

Collaborators: Meredith Burr (Clemson University).