Adult and Continuing Education Commons^™

Community Science Online: Building Capacity For Native Bee Monitoring, Lauren Vilen, Lisa Mason, Sarah Viders, Jill Zarestky

Journal of Human Sciences and Extension

Native bees are crucial for sustainable productivity in natural, agricultural, and urban ecosystems, but they are losing natural habitat spaces. Extension can facilitate community science programs to collect ecological data on native bee populations and support pollinator conservation. Native Bee Watch, an in-person community science program, transitioned to a hybrid format where volunteers received online training and support for conducting field-based data collection. This article presents the volunteers’ perceptions of the program training, support, and bee monitoring based on surveys and data analytics collected from technology tools. Study results indicate redesign successes and challenges and provide insight on how to …

Correlation Of Perceived Quality Of Program And Retention Among Online Non-Traditional Professional Management College Students, Rachel Axness

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

Online learning for undergraduate college students has significantly grown in demand and allows for more diverse and nontraditional students (e.g., 24 years old or older, attend part-time, work fulltime, have dependents) to pursue a college education. Although research studies indicate that online education is just as effective and robust as traditional, face-to-face delivery, students in online courses have lower retention rates (Bawa, 2016). Understanding the students’ perceived quality of online programming, along with demographic variables, will provide insight to understand retention of undergraduate students within online programs. This post-positivists, correlational research study examined two research questions including the relationship between …

Perceptions Of Business Private Sector Employers On The Employability Of Distance-Only Institution Candidates In The United States: A Case Study, Tanacha Gaines

Theses and Dissertations

The applied dissertation was designed to understand the perceptions of private-sector employers regarding the selection of candidates from distance-only higher education institutions. Guided by signaling theory as a framework, the study explored the mismatch between institutional, student, and employer expectations of skills and readiness for the labor market. Research into the employability of students and the acceptability of their distance-only degrees in the business sector could be informative as to whether the investment of students and their families provided fruitful employment opportunities. The literature showed an increase in enrollment for online learning, legislative expectations of higher education with the lack …

To Believe Or Not To Believe: Assessing The Credibility Of Social Media As Non-Formal Learning, Ralf St. Clair, Maryam Shirdel Pour Ms, James Nahachewsky

Adult Education Research Conference

Examines the criteria used by adults to assess the credibility of resources encountered online and the extent to which they differ from younger cohorts. Key information for design of adult online education.

The Relationships Between Grit, Mindset, And The Academic Success Of Nontraditional Students At Online Colleges, David W. Franklin Jr

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Grit and mindset are two of the hottest topics in education today, but research on their predictive power for academic success is inconclusive and rife with gaps and limitations. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships between grit, mindset, self-regulated learning (SRL), and academic outcomes for adult students attending online colleges. This was investigated using data from the Diagnostic Assessment and Achievement of College Skills (DAACS) project, and includes 9,276 undergraduate, mostly adult students from two online institutions in the United States. The results indicate that while grit, its two components, and mindset were significantly correlated with …

Strengthening And Supporting Photography Education Using An Online Multi-Faceted Approach, Isidro Pentzke, Andrea Suhajcik, Melissa Glynn

Graduate Student Dissertations, Theses, Capstones, and Portfolios

The purpose of this study is to fill the void in arts education specifically photography to high school students who cannot take electives during the regular school day. There is a need for free creative online support and education within public high school curriculum. By identifying curriculum gaps in the arts, this study may support high school students with the needed twenty first century skills, such as the 4 C’s to be competitive in the job market after graduation. These critical skills are known as the 4 C’s, and focus on Communication, Collaboration, Creativity, and Critical Thinking (Stauffer, 2020).

Participants …

Effects Of Gatekeeper Course Modality, Age, Gender And High School Gpa On Kaplan Subject Area Exam Scores, Vernon Hoffman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The question of equivalency regarding course modality has plagued and intrigued educators for as long as multiple modalities have existed. In the modern world of academia, the two prevailing modalities are face-to-face or traditional courses and online courses. A multitude of factors have contributed to the increase in online course offerings, including increasingly dependable technology and fiscal pressures on institutions of higher learning.

A great deal of scholarly research has compared modalities using within-course measures such as course grades and comprehensive final exams. Most of these studies have found the two modalities equivalent. However, a dearth of research exists which …

Online Certificate In Grandfamilies Leadership: Identifying And Fulfilling The Training Needs Of Grandfamily Practitioners, Jennifer Crittenden

GrandFamilies: The Contemporary Journal of Research, Practice and Policy

This practice brief discusses the development and delivery of a unique online certificate program in grandfamilies leadership designed to serve the needs of a wide variety of grandfamily professionals and support personnel. To-date the program has engaged 177 learners from across the U.S. and Hong Kong representing a diverse set of organizations and professional and lay roles. Evaluation results from the first seven learner cohorts underscore the effectiveness of the program content as well as the utility of an initial program needs assessment to guide curriculum development. Practice implications for future continuing education efforts targeting grandfamily professionals and lay leaders …

Soft Skills In Mississippi Community Colleges' Online Career And Technical Programs, Joanna Sue Alston

Dissertations

Soft skills are an essential piece in the employment puzzle, and most students’ behavioral characteristics require development, if not complete transformation, before learning can subsequently be transferred to the workplace. To that end, this facet of occupational education in community colleges’ online courses was in need of exploration to determine whether instructors were having success in implementing instructional and assessment methods for both teaching and grading students’ soft skills behaviors. This mixed methods study narrowed the focus of an extremely broad topic to four skills, specifically communication, critical thinking, teamwork, and work ethic. A look at how those skills related …

Increasing Distance Instruction Through Electronic Newsletters, Lauren Dubell, Edward "Cotton" Coslett

Library Presentations, Posters, and Audiovisual Materials

This poster details the new outreach method we utilized to increase our bibliographic instruction sessions with the distributed Brandman campuses served by the Chapman Leatherby Libraries. The use of our new electronic newsletter increased the amount of bibliographic instruction sessions that we performed during the 2017-18 year.

Self-Directed Advising For Online Graduate Students, Kalpana Gupta

Adult Education Research Conference

Self-directed advising provides advisees and advisors to take active roles in the advising process. During this roundtable session, the use of self-directed advising will be discussed to consider future implications.

Meeting The Distance Education Challenge: A Guide For Designing Online Classrooms, Patrick Allen Bungard

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The emphasis on education fluctuates with the economy. When education is encouraged, many individuals flock to colleges and universities to increase earning potential or achieve goals. Thanks to advancements in technology, distance education in the 21^st century can be similar to face-to-face education. Students spend many hours sitting in front of a computer completing course work. Although still in infancy stages, online education has vastly improved. Perspectives like teaching adults (andragogy), transformative learning, and teacher immediacy all address teaching individuals from afar. In consultation with these three perspectives, several qualitative measures have been developed aid with online course design. …

Service Learning Enhances Conceptual Learning In A Rn To Bsn Program, Henny Breen, Melissa Robinson

Faculty Publications

A qualitative study using transcript analysis was conducted to examine the effectiveness of service learning in enhancing conceptual learning in RN to BSN students. As part of their capstone course in an online program, students engaged in 64 hours of service learning in their local community. The transcripts of asynchronous discussions and journal entries formed the data for analysis. The findings illustrated that the student’s conceptual understanding was enhanced from the service learning experience. Further, the students demonstrated higher-level thinking by linking concepts that could be applied to nursing practice. Service learning reinforced the community-based philosophy of the School of …

Factors Associated With Attitudes Toward Learning In An Online Environment: Transactional Distance, Technical Efficacy, And Physical Surroundings, Jodi Elizabeth Pettazzoni

Dissertations

This study examines the relationship between a student's environment in an online course and their academic achievement. This study surveyed students who completed world literature classes in an online format that were part of their universities' general education curricula. Students responded to items assessing several constructs and personal demographic variables that together defined their learning environments: content, delivery, assessment and feedback, technical support, learner experience with technology, learner experience with distance learning, interaction, physical space, support network, characteristics of adult learners, and major. Academic achievement was the dependent variable and was defined as anticipated grade in the course. Using Spearman …