Digital Commons Network^™

Tutors’ Experiences Of Using A Data-Free Mobile Instant Messenger For Electronic Tutoring: A Case Study In Accounting And Information Systems Courses, Fazlyn Petersen, Ronald Arendse

The African Journal of Information Systems

In South Africa, data-intensive synchronous tutoring platforms like Zoom can be exclusionary due to limited internet access at home. Challenges in electronic tutoring include device scarcity, high data costs, network issues and low digital skills. To mitigate data costs, a data-free mobile instant messenger was tested for tutoring, guided by the technological pedagogical content knowledge framework (TPACK). The study included first-year accounting and third-year information systems courses at a historically disadvantaged institution. Qualitative data from tutors revealed that technology-related knowledge was crucial for effective electronic tutoring. Tutors with strong technology and content knowledge utilised the data-free application effectively and employed …

Promoting Civic Engagement And Knowledge Amongst Middle School Adolescents Through Simulation Based Teaching Models, Karrie Palmer

Dissertations

Public schools, and education in general, were founded on the principles of preparing young people to participate in civic life as active and informed citizens. Yet, civic competency scores are consistently low and demonstrate that students are not prepared for the civic engagement required of them when they leave school. The purpose of this quasi-experimental mixed methods study is to determine if participation in simulations and utilizing experiential learning theory while teaching the government standards will lead to a greater understanding of civics, and a positive improvement in students’ beliefs and values regarding civic engagement beyond the classroom. While the …

Teacher Initiated Collaboration In Community: A Case Study Considering Communities Of Practice At A Title I Middle School, Katherine Stewart

Dissertations

This qualitative case study investigates how faculty members in a Title I middle school engage in collaborative practices to enhance professional growth without formal professional learning. Framed within a descriptive lens (Merriam, 1998) and informed by Brown and Duguid's Community of Practice (CoP) framework (1991), the study addresses two research questions: (1) How do teachers collaborate to improve their practice outside formal professional learning? (2) In what ways do these methods reflect the elements of CoP: working, learning, and innovating? Through data analysis, the study reveals that teachers predominantly collaborate on student behavior and classroom management, with curriculum being a …

Inclusivity Within The Digital Age, Jarvis Denmark

Dissertations

This qualitative study takes a phenomenograpichal interest in the experiences of students in a school district that responded to the Covid-19 pandemic by using digital tools for instruction and to support a culturally relevant learning experience. Previous research focuses on teacher beliefs and the benefits of multiliteracies as they intersect with Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, but few studies have analyzed the experiences of students who are the prime beneficiaries of culturally relevant instructional practices. The thick description in this study was aimed at optimizing student voice, especially the voices of students of color. Also, the aim of the research was to …

Teachers' Perceptions Of Technology Professional Development And Implementation In An Urban Middle School: A Case Study, Valeria Williams

Dissertations

This qualitative case study focused on understanding teachers’ perceptions of technology-based professional development sessions and the impact of technology requirements on their decisions to remain in or exit the teaching profession. The study involved seven middle school teachers with varying teaching experience and technology backgrounds. Participants shared their insights through journals, interviews, and document notes, which were then organized into themes reflecting their responses to the research questions.

The findings revealed key themes such as the structure and availability of professional learning sessions, facilitators’ positive impact, teachers’ emotions during and after training, optional learning strategies, and how these factors influence …

The Value Of Mentorship For Black Ballerinas, Anna Dunn

Dissertations

Much research has been done in other fields about the relationship of gender and race to the success of mentors to increase student confidence to pursue additional training or a career in certain fields. The purpose of this study was to articulate formally the importance of the relationship between Black ballet students and a mentor who has lived a similar life experience, having navigated the ballet industry as a Black ballerina. This research sought to answer the questions of what value do Black ballet students perceive in having a Black ballerina as a mentor and how white ballet teachers can …

The Impact Establishing A Focus On Learning Through Plcs Has On Student Growth In Elementary Mathematics, Heather Hodge

Dissertations

This quantitative study examined the impact of professional learning communities (PLCs) implementing a “Focus on Learning” in a Title I school in north central Georgia. The purpose of this study was to determine the impact PLCs can have on student growth and achievement in fourth and fifth-grade mathematics, once teachers spend time identifying essential standards for their respective grade level. The researcher conducted this study during the first year of implementation, so the findings will be used to identify ways to build and improve PLCs at their school in order to increase student growth and achievement in mathematics.

Evaluating The Need For Professional Learning That Highlights Proficient Teaching Strategies For Students With Autism In The Elementary Environment, Allison Norman

Dissertations

There is an increase in the identification of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) throughout the country. There is also an emphasis on inclusion within the classrooms in the country. This qualitative study addresses the need for teachers to grasp more knowledge about Autism so that they can help children with autism have better access to the general education curriculum and increase support for success in the classroom. Through an action research project, this study aimed to gauge elementary school teachers' existing knowledge about Autism and identify areas where they desired further education. The study involved surveying teachers to understand …

Business Students’ Perceptions Of The Influence Of Career, Technical, And Agricultural Education (Ctae) On Career Readiness And Graduation Outcomes, Spencer T. Fortson Jr

Dissertations

This qualitative study sought to identify and analyze the perceptions of business students on the influence of CTAE programs on career readiness and graduation outcomes. The study adopted a phenomenological approach to explore how and why students develop their perceptions of CTAE. Notably, the study explored how business students perceive the programs and their roles in promoting career readiness and graduation outcomes and provide recommendations to improve student engagement and interest in CTAE programs. The study was conducted in a large high school in Georgia among a diverse population – regarding gender, race, and socioeconomic status – of students. Notably, …

Closed For Storm: Open For Opportunity Revitalizing New Orleans At The Six Flags Site, Jackson Crow

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

New Orleans, a city known for its rich culture and historical significance, has faced its fair share of challenges, including natural disasters and economic struggles. One notable symbol of these struggles is the abandoned Six Flags theme park. This thesis proposal aims to explore the potential of revitalizing the old Six Flags site as a means to revive the city, while at the same time giving back to the community by enhancing its economic, cultural, and recreational offerings. The site will also double down as a safe center if another catastrophic hurricane hits the city.

Teachers’ Perceptions Of The Impact Of Iready On Student Reading Achievement For Students In Response To Intervention, Althia Gates

Dissertations

This qualitative case study aimed to explore teachers’ perceptions of the impact of i-Ready on student reading achievement for students in Response to Intervention (RTI). In this qualitative case study, participants were given an opportunity to voice their point of view and perceptions of the impact of i-Ready, including the benefits and barriers they experience when implementing i-Ready as an intervention tool for struggling readers. The need to hear teacher voices and perspectives on an RTI intervention tool is essential to providing students with the best learning experience and growth results. The study included five elementary teachers who implement i-Ready …

Digital Library Of Georgia News (April 2024), Mandy L. Mastrovita, Sheila Mcalister

Georgia Library Quarterly

News from the Digital Library of Georgia covering January 1-March 31, 2024

Get Smart About Your Money, Sharonda Singleton Brown, Imani Beverly, Jacquelyn J. Daniel

Georgia Library Quarterly

“Get Smart About Your Money” was an event held at the Atlanta University Center (AUC) Robert W. Woodruff Library for Money Smart Week 2023. The goal of the event was to introduce the new business librarian, promote financial literacy in the Atlanta University Center community, and participate in National Money Smart Week.

Supporting Ksu English Instructors In Meeting The Access Needs Of Deaf And Hard And Hearing Students, Kris Roberson

Master's Projects

The lack of instructors prepared to work with deaf and hard of hearing (DHOH) students in higher education causes course accessibility barriers (Palmer et al., 2019; National Deaf Center [NDC] of Postsecondary Outcomes, n.d) and increased stress for students and instructors (Valle-Flórez et al., 2021; Salko, 2023). These obstacles inhibit DHOH student graduation rates and workforce entry (Garberoglio, 2019). Instructors require more training to effectively support DHOH students with best practices beyond basic accommodations. This qualitative research study presents phenomenological data from six interviews conducted with participants from one large, southeastern, R2 public university (Kennesaw State University, [KSU]) and one …

Factors Influencing The Perceptions Of Human-Computer Interaction Curriculum Developers In Higher Education Institutions During Curriculum Design And Delivery, Cynthia Augustine, Salah Kabanda

The African Journal of Information Systems

Computer science (CS) and information systems students seeking to work as software developers upon graduating are often required to create software that has a sound user experience (UX) and meets the needs of its users. This includes addressing unique user, context, and infrastructural requirements. This study sought to identify the factors that influence the perceptions of human-computer interaction (HCI) curriculum developers in higher education institutions (HEIs) in developing economies of Africa when it comes to curriculum design and delivery. A qualitative enquiry was conducted and consisted of fourteen interviews with HCI curriculum developers and UX practitioners in four African countries. …

Comparing Cognitive Theories Of Learning Transfer To Advance Cybersecurity Instruction, Assessment, And Testing, Daniel T. Hickey Ph.D., Ronald J. Kantor

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

The cybersecurity threat landscape evolves quickly, continually, and consequentially. This means that the transfer of cybersecurity learning is crucial. We compared how different recognized “cognitive” transfer theories might help explain and synergize three aspects of cybersecurity education. These include teaching and training in diverse settings, assessing learning formatively & summatively, and testing & measuring achievement, proficiency, & readiness. We excluded newer sociocultural theories and their implications for inclusion as we explore those theories elsewhere. We first summarized the history of cybersecurity education and proficiency standards considering transfer theories. We then explored each theory and reviewed the most relevant cybersecurity education …

Career Technical And Agricultural Education Teachers In Rural Schools: Perceptions Of Leadership Abilities, Professional Support, And Overall Job Satisfaction Following Participation In A Teacher Leadership Professional Learning Community, Tasia Ellis

Dissertations

Career Technical Education (CTE), including Career Technical Agricultural Education (CTAE) in Georgia, are experiencing difficulty retaining quality teachers. This problem is exacerbated in rural communities, which have a smaller workforce pool and fewer nearby colleges to certify CTE/CTAE teachers (Morton, 2021). A potential solution to offset teacher retention concerns is teacher leadership. When teachers are given opportunities to take on leadership roles, they are likely to feel more valued and experience increased self-efficacy and perceptions of ability (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2009). The purpose of this phenomenographic study was to examine whether a teacher leadership Professional Learning Community (PLC) enhanced teachers' …

Integration Of Art Tools In Calming Corners In Various Content Areas At The Secondary Level, Kathleen Petka

Doctor of Education in Teacher Leadership Dissertations

This research study is a qualitative action research study that examines the best ways to support the emotional needs of students as they matriculate through high school. Specifically for this study, high school educators who teach in the four academic content areas (English, Math, Science, and Social Studies classes) implemented Calming Corners, an emotional support resource and intervention tool, in their classrooms. The teachers who participated in this study were able to assess if Calming Corners had a positive impact on students in their classrooms and in their own instructional practices. This study examined if the use of Calming Corners …

The Effect Of Teacher Identity On The Level Of Cultural Inclusion In The Classroom, Jennifer Jones

Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenographical study was to investigate high school teachers’ perceptions of cultural inclusion and the impact of teacher identity on the level of cultural inclusion in the classroom. This research study utilized semi-structured one-on-one interviews as the primary source of data and participant surveys and researcher notes taken during the interviews as the secondary sources. This study sought to address two research questions: (1) What can we learn from teachers' experiences at a southeastern suburban high school regarding the post-COVID perceptions of cultural inclusion in the classroom? (2) How does teacher identity affect cultural inclusion in …

Enhancing Teachers’ Tpack And Self-Efficacy Through Content-Based Technology Professional Development, Chloe Wilson

Dissertations

The purpose of this quantitative research study was to examine the impact of content-based instructional technology on teacher’s TPACK, specifically the technology related knowledge domains, and instructional technology self-efficacy. Demographic data was compared for correlations with TPACK or self-efficacy ratings. Additionally, the professional development model was evaluated by gathering teacher perceptions. A pre- and post-intervention survey was conducted to gather TPACK, self-efficacy, and perceptions of professional development. Findings were consistent and built upon previous research. Teachers experienced growth in all TPACK technology knowledge domains and displayed increased instructional technology self-efficacy ratings. Additionally, suggestions from previous research regarding best practices for …

Creating An Index To Graduate Theses To Support Their Discoverability, Ellen Petraits

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

As a Research and Instruction Librarian, one of the most frequent questions I'm asked is how to find past theses on a particular topic or theme. There is an active thesis culture at RISD that goes beyond writing and binding a text. An exhibition is held in the graduate gallery to celebrate a curated selection of theses at the beginning of the academic year. (See Book of Thesis Books) Theses can range in format from an artist book to a loose-leaf portfolio. Many emphasize the visual and are a bridge to the student’s studio work. They may include unusual or …

You’Re Invited! Collaborating With Faculty And Students To Create A Successful Library Event, Laura Semrau

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

To celebrate the 400^th anniversary of the printing of Shakespeare’s First Folio, the Baylor University Libraries hosted a three-day celebration; “Shakespeare 400” drew faculty members from six academic departments and leveraged the talents of both graduate and undergraduate students. The four main events drew a cumulative crowd of over 200 people. Graduate students contributed to the events through music performance, a dramatic reading, enthusiastic promotion, and engaged participation. This presentation will explore key take-aways for including graduate students in library events.

The success of Shakespeare 400 was largely due to collaborations between the library, faculty members, and graduate …

Help Or Hype? Assessing Digital Literature Review Tools For Graduate Students, Jessica Hagman, Nikki Tummon, Catherine Bowers

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

A core role for academic librarians is to support early career researchers as they develop an increasingly focused understanding of the literature in their discipline and research area in order to contribute to the development of new knowledge. Graduate students use their knowledge of the literature to develop research questions and argue for the value of their work to the broader community of scholars.

This task is both intellectually and technically challenging. A dissertation or thesis requires that students demonstrate knowledge of their field as well as cite perhaps hundreds of sources. This process has long been supported by tools …

Gateway To The University Community: Building An In-Person Toolkit For Graduate Teaching Assistants, Sojourna Cunningham, Alison Edwards

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

Library instruction programs can provide excellent support for faculty courses and do a great job of supporting graduate students with their research and publishing process, but for many graduate students, researching is only part of their role - and likely the role they have the most support for. Large research intensive universities rely heavily on graduate teaching assistants to support or teach high-enrollment or introductory level courses to undergraduate students, but effective teaching requires training, practice, and a network of support. In addition to uneven access to preparation for their teaching roles, graduate students are often new to the university, …

Publishing As Hidden Curriculum: How Learning To Publish Is A Piecemeal Process For Graduate Students, Martha Stuit, Christy Caldwell, Lucia Orlando

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

This presentation will share the results of a survey on what and how graduate students learn about the publishing process at an R1 university. This presentation will build on an earlier poster about our study, called “Making the Publishing Process More Transparent: Identifying a Baseline for Publishing Support through Researching Gaps between Graduate Students and Their Faculty Advisors’ Support,” at Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students (TLGS) 2022 (Stuit 2022). That poster covered our methods, literature review, and research questions. This full-length presentation will cover our findings and takeaways that other librarians may use in their work with graduate students.

Faculty …

Teaching A Credit-Bearing Library Course For Graduate Students: From Proposal To Postmortem, Jill Cirasella

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

For years, library faculty at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York had fantasized about some day offering a credit-bearing course to our master’s and doctoral students. In 2021, we finally transitioned from idle dreams to directed discussion. As we explored how to get a library course on the books at an institution that had never before had one, we had to rethink and rework our plans several times, in unexpected but not unreasonable ways.

For example, we had believed that a one-credit course would be most appropriate—and most palatable to the institution—but we learned that only …

Accessing The Intangible: An Exploratory Qualitative Study Of How Pivotal Sources Affect Doctoral Students’ Research Thinking, Kelly Hangauer

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

Information behavior (IB) is the study of how “individuals perceive, seek, understand, and use information in various life contexts” (Case & Given, 2012, p. 3). One component of IB—information seeking—was popularized by Carol Kuhlthau in the 1980s when she integrated the cognitive, affective, and physical acts involved in conducting a library-based research assignment. In her studies with high-schoolers and later with undergraduates, Kuhlthau developed the information search process (ISP) model. Since then, librarians have continued to draw on the ISP model and conduct information-seeking studies so that libraries may recognize “zones of intervention,” optimize the organization of library resources, and …

Building A Graduate Research Exhibits Program In An Academic Library, Alyssa Wright, Sally Brown

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

This session will describe West Virginia University Libraries’ annual Graduate Student Exhibits Award. The award, managed by our Art in the Libraries Committee, invites current graduate students to submit ideas for an exhibit to visually showcase their scholarship in new and experimental ways. These can present a visual evolution of their work, visualize their research and influences, or answer a research question. Graduate student proposals can be based on academic or creative research and lend themselves to visual interpretation with Library consultation. Awards include a $500 prize and help with design, installation, promotion, and coordination of a public program, offering …

Does Anyone Have Any Questions? Encouraging Question-Asking Behaviors In Online And In-Person Graduate Student & Faculty Workshops, Hannah Gascho Rempel, Adam Lindsley, Clara Llebot

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

Academic libraries frequently offer workshops to graduate students and faculty as a way to develop their information literacy skills, including building skills with citation managers, literature review searching, and data management. In many academic libraries in-person delivery of workshops was the norm prior to the COVID-19 global pandemic, but during the pandemic online workshops were the only option. Workshop participants now appreciate being able to choose between the modality that works for them. In our library, we now regularly offer most workshops in both in-person and synchronous online modalities. This change in how we offer workshops allows us the opportunity …

Teaching Students To Read Regression Results: A Statistical Literacy Lesson Plan For Librarians, Giovanna Badia

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

Descriptive and inferential statistics are taught to students in many disciplines. More classroom time is often spent on the theory behind different statistical methods that investigate relationships between variables rather than on how to interpret the results obtained to answer the research question that started the process. While statistical software (such as R, Stata, and SPSS) has made it easier to undertake regression with any dataset, the output produced remains challenging to understand and explain to intended audiences. To address this issue, the author created a 90-minute workshop that teaches students how to read tables of descriptive statistics and linear …