Educational Psychology
159 EdSciB
56 East River Rd
Tel:612/624-0691
gaddy001@umn.edu

M.A., San Jose State University
Ph.D., University of Minnesota

I completed a bachelor’s degree in industrial psychology from California State University, Hayward and a master’s degree in experimental psychology from San Jose State University before coming to the U of M to pursue a Ph.D. in educational psychology. My emphasis was in learning and cognition, and I was involved in research on text comprehension. Specifically, my research focused on understanding the processes readers use to comprehend content-area texts. My background in statistics led to several opportunities to teach both undergraduate- and graduate-level introductory statistics courses within the department, and I enjoy introducing students to the wonders of statistics and showing them that statistics can in fact be fun. I played a large role in developing online versions of two of our introductory statistics courses and our intermediate statistics course, and I currently teach these courses. Recently, I have begun to explore how to best structure the online statistics course. In particular, I am interested in ways in which active learning can be fostered in the online environment.  I am the recipient of the College of Education and Human Development’s 2009 Distinguished Teaching Award.

Courses I teach
(all EPSY courses)

Publications

1. Everson, M. (2006, April). Group discussion in online statistics courses. eLearn Magazine, http://www.elearnmag.org/.
2. van den Broek, P., Virtue, S., Everson, M. G., Tzeng, Y., & Sung, Y. (2002). Comprehension and memory of science texts: Inferential processes and the construction of a mental representation. In J. Otero, J. A. Leon, & A. C. Graesser (Eds.), The psychology of science text comprehension (pp. 131-154). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
3. Gaddy, M., Sung, Y., & van den Broek, P. (2001). The influence of text cues on the allocation of attention during reading. In T. Sanders, J. Schilperoord & W. Spooren (Eds.), Cognitive approaches to text coherence (pp. 89-110). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.
4. Linderholm, T., Everson, M. G., van den Broek, P., Mischinski, M., Crittenden, A., & Samuels, J. (2000). Effects of causal text revisions on more- and less-skilled readers’ comprehension of easy and difficult narrative texts. Cognition and Instruction, 18, 525-556.

Statistics Instructors Lost in Cyberspace:
A New Online Statistics Teaching Discussion Group

http://groups.google.com/group/onlinestats

This group connects online statistics instructors and provides a place for them to share ideas and resources. It is a place where those of us who teach online can support one another, collaborate, and commiserate. Teaching online can pose many unique challenges and opportunities for the statistics instructor, and sometimes, it’s nice to share these things with others who understand, and to get new ideas about the many things that can be done in the online statistics course. If you would like more information about this group, please contact Dr. Michelle Everson at gaddy001@umn.edu.