A Case Study: Assessment of Civic Learning Knowledge amongst Informatics Faculty and Undergraduate Students’ Attendees of Civic Workshops at Mercer University

Authors

  • Awatef Ahmed Ben Ramadan Mercer University/ College of Professional Advancement/ Department of Mathematics, Science, and Informatics
  • Feng Liu
  • Colleen Stapleton

Abstract

Background: In 2018, the informatics faculty team at the Department of Mathematics, Science, and Informatics at Mercer University were awarded an AAC&U mini-grant on Civic Learning in the Major. To meet the grant’s requirement, the department conducted different activities. These activities included two intensive workshops.

Aim: To assess the workshops audiences’ civic- and service-learning knowledge before and after exposure to intensive information about Civic and Service Learning.

Methodology: The study design was before and after quasi-experimental research of two steps:

1. Piloting the study survey on the informatics faculty who attended the first mini-grant workshop.

2. A before and after quasi-experimental trial, on the students and the informatics faculty who attended the second workshop and did not participate in the first workshop.

Results: First workshop: Faculty (n=5). The participants’ teaching experience was as follows: range = 9-29 years, mean = 15.6 years, and median = 13 years. There was no significant statistical relationship between the participants’ teaching experience and the percentage of the questions the participants correctly answered (P-value=0.63, α = 0.1). Second Workshop: Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test used to measure the relationships between before- and after-responses of the participants. There was a significant statistical difference between the studied variables (P-value=0.06, α =0.1).

 

Author Biography

Awatef Ahmed Ben Ramadan, Mercer University/ College of Professional Advancement/ Department of Mathematics, Science, and Informatics

I hold MBBCh, MPH, Ph.D. in Health Informatics from the University of Missouri Informatics Institute (MUII).  I am an assistant professor at the Mathematics, Science, and Informatics department at the College of Professional Advancement at Mercer University (Atlanta-Campus).  I worked as a physician and a supervisor of the immunization program in a community health center, researcher and lecturer at the Family and Community Medicine Department from 2003-2008, and worked as a graduate research assistant at the Missouri Cancer Registry and Research Center at the University of Missouri for the period from 2014 to 2017.  I presented several posters and oral presentations in many peer-reviewed national and international conferences. Published several peer-reviewed articles and submitted the other two manuscripts for well-respected informatics journals. 

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Published

2021-04-26

Issue

Vol. 12 (2021): JSLHE (Winter 2021)

Section

Articles

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