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Faculty Member - Experimental Psychology

Roman Taraban, Ph.D.

Position:

Professor of Psychology and Associate Department Chair

Education:
  • Post-doc, 1988-1989, University of Massachusetts at Amherst (Cognitive Psychology)
  • Ph.D., 1988, Carnegie Mellon University (Cognitive Psychology)
  • M.A., 1981, University of Chicago (Educational Psychology)

Contact:

Phone: (806) 742-3711 ext. 247

Fax: (806) 742-0818

Email: roman.taraban@ttu.edu

Web site: http://www.cognition.ttu.edu/

Vita: CV

Professional  
service:
  • Associate Editor for the Journal of Educational Psychology (beginning January 2008)
  • President of the Society for Computers in Psychology (SCiP) (2006-2007)
  • Assessment Coordinator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) supported Science Education Program at Texas Tech (2002-present)
  • Member of the Governing Board of the Texas Tech Teaching Academy (2006-2009)

Awards and
honors:
  • Inducted into the Texas Tech University Teaching Academy in 2003
  • 2010 Fulbright-Nehru Research Scholar

Research  
support:
  • NSF CCLI Refinement of Introductory Engineering Thermodynamics Computer-Based Learning Modules (2001-2004)
  • HHMI (Howard Hughes Medical Institute) Undergraduate Sciences Education Program (2002-2012)

Research  
interests:
  • Language learning, category induction, connectionist modeling
  • Undergraduate study behaviors, engineering problem solving, reading comprehension

Selected  
research:
  • Taraban, R., & Logue, E. (in press). Academic factors that affect undergraduate research experiences. Journal of Educational Psychology.
  • Taraban, R., Craig, C., & Anderson, E. E. (2011). Using paper-and-pencil solutions to assess problem solving skill. Journal of Engineering Education, 100(3), 498-519.
  • Taraban, R. (2011). Information Fluency Growth Through Engineering Curricula: Analysis of Students' Text-Processing Skills and Beliefs. Journal of Engineering Education, 100(2), 397-416.
  • Taraban, R. (2008). An impoverished machine: Challenges to human learning and instructional technology. Behavior Research Methods, 40(3), 639-646.
  • Taraban, R., & Blanton, R. L. (Eds.) (2008). Creating effective undergraduate research programs in science: The transformation from student to scientist. New York: Teachers College Press.
  • Taraban, R., Definis, A., Brown, A., Anderson, E. E., & Sharma, M. P. (2007). A paradigm for assessing conceptual and procedural knowledge in engineering students. Journal of Engineering Education, 96(4), 335-345.
  • Taraban, R., Box, C., Myers, R., Pollard, R., & Bowen, C. (2007). Effects of active-learning experiences on achievement, attitudes, and behaviors in high-school biology. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 44(7), 960-979.
  • Taraban, R., Anderson, E. E., Definis, A., Brown, A., Weigold, A., & Sharma, M.P. (2007). First steps in understanding engineering students' growth of conceptual and procedural knowledge in an interactive learning context. Journal of Engineering Education, 96(1), 57-68.
  • Taraban, R., Anderson, E. E., Hayes, M. W., & Sharma, M. P. (2005). Developing on-line homework for introductory thermodynamics. Journal of Engineering Education, 94, 339-342.
  • Taraban, R. (2004). Drawing learners' attention to syntactic context aids gender-like category induction. Journal of Learning and Memory, 51, 202-216.
  • Taraban, R., Hayes, M. W., Anderson, E. E., & Sharma, M. P. (2004). Giving students time for the academic resources that work. Journal of Engineering Education, 93, 205-210.
  • Taraban, R., McKenney, C., Peffley, E., & Applegarth, A. (2004). Live specimens more effective than World Wide Web for learning plant material. Journal of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Education.
  • Taraban, R., Kerr, M., & Rynearson, K. (2004). Analytic and pragmatic factors in college students' metacognitive reading strategies. Reading Psychology, 25, 67-81.

Teaching interests  
and activities:
  • Cognitive psychology
  • Language and literacy
  • Cognitive development

Applied interests  
and activities:
  • Problem solving procedures and strategies used by undergraduate engineering students
  • Positive benefits of participation in undergraduate research