Showing papers by "Mark Daniel Ward published in 2021"
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated the psychosocial effects of participating in a residential research-oriented learning community regarding students' interest and motivation in pursuing researchoriented careers, research and data self-efficacy beliefs, sense of belongingness with the learning community, and socialization levels and career awareness in research oriented fields.
Abstract: Research on learning communities has primarily focused on identifying institutional outcomes such as student achievement and retention. However, more research is needed on how the learning community experience impacts the motivation, beliefs, and perceptions associated with student success. This study investigates the psychosocial effects of participating in a residential research-oriented learning community regarding students’ interest and motivation in pursuing research-oriented careers, research and data self-efficacy beliefs, sense of belongingness with the learning community, and socialization levels and career awareness in research-oriented fields. This study also investigated the mediating effects of students’ initial research self-efficacy beliefs on differential gains regarding career awareness, motivation and interest, and sense of belongingness and socialization after one year of participating in a residential research-oriented learning community. Participants of the study consisted of five cohorts of the learning community, each composed of twenty students. Students in each cohort participated in a pretest-posttest design survey study. Findings suggest that alignment of student interest with the learning community discipline is a key mediator of student growth in their self-efficacy beliefs, sense of belongingness with the learning community and levels of socialization, and career awareness in the selected field. Implications include recommendations for the thoughtful design of learning communities that promote cognitive apprenticeships by orchestrating the content, method, sequencing, and sociology of the learning environment.
9 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a large-scale living learning community (LLC) for undergraduate students of any major or background is described, where students are united by a desire to learn data science skills.
Abstract: In this article, we describe a large-scale living learning community (LLC) for undergraduate students of any major or background. Our students are united by a desire to learn data science skills an...
6 citations
Posted Content•
TL;DR: In this article, the authors established Taylor's series expansions of several functions involving the inverse tangent function, and analyzed some properties, including generating functions, limits, positives, negatives, monotonicity, and logarithmic convexity, of the coefficients in the series expansion of Wilf's function.
Abstract: In the paper, with the aid of the Fa\`a di Bruno formula, be virtue of
several identities for the Bell polynomials of the second kind, with the help
of two combinatorial identities, by means of the (logarithmically) complete
monotonicity of generating functions of several integer sequences, and in the
light of Wronski's theorem, the authors establish Taylor's series expansions of
several functions involving the inverse (hyperbolic) tangent function, find out
Maclaurin's series expansion of a complex function posed by Herbert S. Wilf,
and analyze some properties, including generating functions, limits,
positivity, monotonicity, and logarithmic convexity, of the coefficients in
Maclaurin's series expansion of Wilf's function. These coefficients in
Maclaurin's series expansion of Wilf's function are closed-form expressions in
terms of the Stirling numbers of the second kind. The authors also derive a
closed-form formula for a sequence of special values of Gauss' hypergeometric
function, discover a closed-form formula for a sequence of special values of
the Bell polynomials of the second kind, present several infinite series
representations of the circular constant Pi and other sequences, recover an
asymptotic rational approximation to the circular constant Pi, and connect
several integer sequences by determinants.
2 citations