Education Commons^™

Youth Producing Voice: A Video-Cued Ethnography Of A Media Education Classroom, Isabel C. Castellanos

Doctoral Dissertations

From mini screens on our cell phones to large flat screens hanging in institutional hallways, visual digital media are part of our everyday lives. This is especially true for youth, who in their leisure time increasingly spend time watching and making video content. Yet there are few opportunities for youth in either their community or school settings to access formal instruction in digital media literacy, including video production. In this dissertation, I examine the possibilities and challenges for doing youth media inside schools. What do youth allow themselves to say when doing media production in school and how do they …

Incorporating Andragogy And Cognitive Theory Of Multimedia Learning Into Self-Paced Training And Development Programs, Shanshan Gao

Doctoral Dissertations

In the modern higher educational system, technology permeated almost all the provisions of educational processes and transformed individual learning transactions. Empirical evidence reveals students’ skill gaps in the digitized campus and the real-world work environment driven by technology. Technical training is of high value and in high demand in helping students to develop the skills necessary to carry out schoolwork and be prepared for the real-world work environment. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of the combined method of Andragogy and Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (CTML) in enhancing learning results and optimizing students’ learning experience …

Effects Of Teaching Argument To First-Year Community-College Students Using A Structural And Dialectical Approach, Sharon Radcliff

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to measure to what extent an experimental method of teaching argument incorporating elements from both Toulmin’s (2004) structural approach and Walton’s (2013) dialectical approach effects first-year college students’ ability to write strong arguments. This experimental instruction used critical questioning as a strategy in building a strong argument, incorporating alternative viewpoints, and creating a dialogue between claims and counterclaims, backed logically by verifiable evidence from reliable sources.

Using the Analytic Scoring Rubric of Argumentative Writing (ASRAW; Stapleton & Wu, 2015) that includes the argument elements of claims, data, counterclaim, counterclaim data, rebuttal claim, and rebuttal …

Mediating Language Fluency Development: An Action Research Study In A High-School Ap Chinese Second-Or-Foreign-Language Task-Based Language Teaching Classroom, Jing Liang

Doctoral Dissertations

Fluency development is critical in language learning; however, the teacher’s role as a mediator in a learner’s fluency development rarely has been explored in Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) classrooms. This study investigated how a teacher, as the human mediator who can be certain that stimuli in the learning environment will be available and benefit the learners, implemented mediation under the guidance of Mediated Learning Experience (MLE) theory in aiding learners’ speaking cognitive and utterance fluency development in one AP Chinese high-school TBLT classroom in the Bay Area. MLE theory, developed by psychologist Reuven Feuerstein, provided a mediation framework for this …

The Effect Of Familiarity On Learning With Video Clips Containing Seductive Details, Jonah Lee Ruddy

Doctoral Dissertations

Seductive information included in educational lessons can arouse students’ emotional and situational interest. However, research on seductive details across instructional modalities shows both helpful and harmful effects on learning. The seductive details effect describes the negative influence of interesting, but irrelevant, information on achieving learning goals. Results from studies of videos with relevant and seductive details in multimedia lessons are inconclusive. Prior knowledge of target information has been shown to moderate the seductive details effect. In this study, the moderating effect of prior exposure to, or familiarity with, seductive, rather than target, information was explored using a multifactorial design. The …

Development And Initial Validation Of A Flipped Classroom Adoption Inventory In Higher Education, Taotao Long

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to develop and initially validate an inventory to learn about the critical variables involved in a higher education instructor’s decision to adopt a flipped classroom instructional model. A flipped classroom is an instructional model in which students’ learning is divided into two phases, the self-directed pre-class learning phase and the in-class student-centered active learning phase. Both phases are typically technology-enhanced. This study addresses a gap in the recent research regarding the identification and assessment of the critical variables that are related to a higher education instructor’s decision to adopt a flipped classroom instructional model. …

College Student Engagement Patterns In Small Group Learning Activities Conducted In Courses Organized Using A Flipped Learning Instructional Pedagogy, John Creighton Cummins

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine student engagement patterns in smallgroup learning activities conducted in courses organized using a Flipped Learning Instructional Pedagogy (FLIP) at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville (UTK). A literature search on FLIP revealed no papers that examined student engagement at a fine-grained level. Classrooms were examined using an observational tool developed specifically for the examination of fine-grained student engagement. In order to observe overt engagement patterns of students during active learning in small groups, an observation tool was designed by combining an engagement framework with an in-class activity inventory.The Complex Level of Overt …

The Discursive Construction Of Language Teaching And Learning In Multiuser Virtual Environments, Douglas W. Canfield

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to broaden how researchers within computer-assisted language learning (CALL) make sense of and examine psychological and power constructs at play in language courses conducted in 3D multiuser virtual environments. 18 students and 2 teachers in 8 formal English as a Second Language (ESL) classes in the 3D multiuser virtual environment of Second Life participated in a discourse analysis study to explore the theoretical and analytic ways in which critical discursive psychology could function to explore how teaching and learning are performed as interactional events in a community of language teachers and learners in Second Life by investigating …

A Novel Approach To Using Personal Response Systems And Diagrams To Foster Student Engagement In Large Lecture: Case Study Of Instruction For Model-Based Reasoning In Biology, Johanna M. Fitzgerald

Doctoral Dissertations

At UMass Amherst a method of personal response system (clickers) use in large lecture biology called Guided Application of Model-based Reasoning (GAMBR) has been designed to give students experiences in reasoning like expert biologists: In large lecture biology many instructors appear to use clickers mainly as a quizzing and attendance tool. Less well documented and examined are uses of clickers to facilitate cognitive engagement in learning scientific models and skills. In GAMBR, clicker questions ask students to apply and perturb biological models; this is designed to engage them in model-based reasoning. In an attempt to understand such a course, an …

Augmented Reality On Mobile Devices To Improve The Academic Achievement And Independence Of Students With Disabilities, Donald Douglas Mcmahon

Doctoral Dissertations

Augmented reality (AR) is a technology that overlays digital information on a live view of the physical world to create a blended experience. AR can provide unique experiences and opportunities to learn and interact with information in the physical world (Craig, 2013). The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate uses of AR on mobile devices to improve the academic and functional skills of students with disabilities.

The first chapter is a literature review providing a clear understanding of AR and its connections with existing learning theories and evidence-based practices that are relevant for meeting the needs of individuals with …

Understanding Contradictions In Teacher-Learner Identity, Digital Video, And Goal-Directed Activity In A Blended Graduate Reading Education Course, Jennifer K. Lubke

Doctoral Dissertations

More teachers are experiencing professional development within blended/virtual learning communities, which I consider a fruitful avenue for expansion of new literacies in K-12 classrooms. However, new literacies challenge traditional structures in education even as new rules of corporate-sponsored reform and high-stakes accountability serve to reinforce these structures. Within this context of contradictions, a cohort of teachers from a rural, remote county in the southeast United States participated in a blended learning environment in their final semester of graduate-level coursework in Reading Education. Some of the teacher-learners, whose own attitudes and motivations toward technology were as diverse as the tools themselves, …

Constructing Meanings By Designing Worlds Digital Games As Participatory Platforms For Interest-Driven Learning And Creativity, Vittorio Marone

Doctoral Dissertations

This study emerges from the observation of an increasing divide between generations: a lack of a shared ground that carries profound social, cultural, and educational implications. In particular, the broadening differences between academic and “grassroots” approaches to learning and creativity are transforming formal and informal enterprises into seemingly incommunicable realms. This clash between different (and distant) practices, inside and outside of school, is inhibiting the construction of a common language between teachers and students, and, more broadly, between generations, thus hindering the development of any educational discourse.

In this study I inquired into an online participatory space in order to …

Interactive Whiteboard Transition: A Case Study, Jason S Beach

Doctoral Dissertations

This case study examined the process teachers use when incorporating interactive whiteboards in the classroom and daily curriculum. Participants were drawn from a small group of three elementary and three high school teachers who received an interactive whiteboard, but no formal training. The school system purchased over 300 interactive whiteboards and was not able to adequately train all of the teachers before the beginning of the school year. Findings were compared to relevant models of andragogy, TPACK, and CBAM. The results indicate that a teacher’s prior technological ability aids in the implementation of new technologies in the classroom. The findings …

Faculty Perceptions Of The Factors Enabling And Facilitating Their Integration Of Instructional Technology In Teaching, Charles Michael Sturgeon

Doctoral Dissertations

This study employed a survey research design to identify factors that facilitate university faculty to integrate computer-based technologies into their teaching practice. The purpose of the study was to measure the practices and perceptions of higher education faculty toward instructional technology. The designed survey instrument established a series of five personal profile categories. The five categories were used as variables manipulated to enable a series of statistical analyses to examine factors that enable faculty to use technology in their teaching. The survey was electronically administered to faculty in 36 universities in the Appalachian Region; a target population of approximately 4000 …

A Case Study Exploring The Preservice Technology Training Experiences Of Novice Teachers, Susan R. Sutton

Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative study was designed to identify and explore the preservice technology training experiences of novice teachers and examine their perceptions of how well their teacher preparation program prepared them with the knowledge and skills necessary to fulfill the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS•T). Data were collected by following an instrumental case study design utilizing semi-structured interviews, documents, and field notes. Simultaneous collection and analysis of the data helped the researcher to create a deeper understanding of the technology training experiences of novice teachers.

The findings of this study revealed that novice teachers believe there was a lack …