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A Nicholls State University student is the only Louisiana winner in a competition that brings notable projects born of young researchers to the nation’s capital for recognition by congressional representatives and their staff members.
Brooke Mazac, an education major, was selected out of hundreds of applicants as winner of the Council on Undergraduate Research’s “Posters On The Hill” competition.
Brooke’s project “Examining the Construct of Time-on-Task in an iPad Assisted Reading Intervention for At-Risk Students” explores how the presence of technology in education impacts a student’s learning. Specifically, Brooke wanted to discover if the use of electronic tablets during teaching affected the percentage of time the student remained on task. The results of the study were that in five out of the six trials students spent more time-on-task with iPads that were supplied than they did without the electronic tools. Brooke’s research is an extension of a project and research of a Nicholls professor, Dr. Cynthia Vavasseur, funded by the Louisiana Board of Regents.
U.S. Sen. John Kennedy (RLa.) welcomed Brooke to Capitol Hill last month.
“I would like to extend a sincere congratulations to one of Louisiana’s brightest young minds, Brooke Mazac,” Kennedy said. “I am proud of the work Brooke and her mentor Dr. Cynthia Vavasseur are accomplishing at Nicholls State University.”
Winners like Maxac are given an opportunity to showcase their results to members of congress, and to learn about advocacy for undergraduate research.
An abstract of the study states a premise, that “as the presence of technology in education ex pands, researchers and educators are interested in its impact on the field. The use of these educational technologies have been controversial since their introduction, and their impact is still being discovered.”
At Nicholls, the abstract says, teacher education candidates “have the opportunity to help students from local schools who may be at-risk or falling behind by facilitating reading intervention using different mediums.”
