Digital Commons Network^™

The Mundanity Of Ai, David Westerman, Nicholas Bowman

Journal of Communication Pedagogy

The emergence of ChatGPT in late 2022 brought with it a reemergence of utopian and dystopian claims of the grand power of AI. Yet, AI has failed to achieve such lofty expectations and instead has trended toward far more banal, yet productive, tasks and goals. We argue that this mundanity is precisely what makes AI an important technology, and moreover, those “mundane tasks” are central to communication education. Specifically, we advocate for a decreased focus on the hyped ideas of AI that dominate popular discourse and obfuscate more reasoned analyses of AI as communication technology. A more pragmatic focus should …

Ai Didn’T Break Our Teaching, It Revealed Our Teaching, Michael G. Strawser

Journal of Communication Pedagogy

The rapid emergence of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has prompted widespread concern about academic integrity, student learning, and the future of higher education. While AI is often framed as a disruptive force, this commentary argues that many of the challenges attributed to AI predate the technology itself. Rather than creating new problems, AI has exposed long-standing tensions embedded within higher education and communication pedagogy. Three tensions that have become increasingly visible in the presence of AI are identified: learning versus completion, efficiency versus depth, and human connection versus algorithmic mediation. First, AI challenges assumptions that the successful completion of assignments …

Teaching Ai Through Communication: Rethinking Evidence, Interaction, And Learning, Chad Edwards, Matthew J. A. Craig, Varun Rijhwani, Habeeb Abdulrauf

Journal of Communication Pedagogy

This conceptual essay advances a central claim: Communication pedagogy is increasingly engaged in teaching AI through communicative interaction. Moving beyond the familiar distinctions between teaching with AI and teaching about AI, it argues that classrooms function as sites where AI communication is shaped through prompting, critique, revision, and ethical evaluation. Drawing on human–machine communication scholarship, the essay reconceptualizes evidence of learning as visible in students’ reasoning, justification, and contextual adaptation rather than in polished outputs. By foregrounding relational engagement, transparency, and communicative judgment, it positions teaching AI as a defining pedagogical task in AI-mediated educational environments.

How To Blow Up An Ai Data Center, Tyler Rife

Journal of Communication Pedagogy

This essay advocates a critical pedagogical orientation to AI guided by a politics of refusal. I pursue this advocacy by, first, showing how the social and environmental harms of AI technology outweigh any promises to its social good and then, second, locating resonances between our contemporary technological situation and similar inflection points in the histories of labor organizing and environmental justice activism. Together, these material implications of the emergent technology help form a pedagogical framework for how communication educators can advance critical literacy about AI in the classroom as a constructive counterpoint to its uncritical adoption in the learning process. …

Ai And Agency: Policy As Problem Posing In The Introductory Communication Studies Classroom, Deanna L. Fassett, Nancy Park

Journal of Communication Pedagogy

This forum essay examines artificial-intelligence policy in introductory communication courses through the lens of critical communication pedagogy. It identifies a tension between institutional pressures for readily enforceable, surveillance-oriented AI policies and relational approaches that support instructors’ and students’ long-term agency. Drawing on problem-posing pedagogy, the authors argue that prepackaged policies can position teaching assistants as policy enforcers rather than reflective educators. They propose collaborative policy development as a means of fostering dialogue, ethical discernment, human connection, and critical engagement with AI’s role in communication education.

From Weaponized Doubt To Educated Doubt: Critical Communication Pedagogy’S Deconstruction Of Post-Truth, David H. Kahl Jr.

Journal of Communication Pedagogy

Powerful and hegemonic entities in society disseminate post-truth messages in order to gain wealth, maintain power, and increase control. Unsuspecting individuals encounter these inimical messages and often find themselves experiencing difficulty discerning fact from fiction because they are largely unprepared to deal with this type of deceitful persuasion. Specifically, unethically utilizing principles of communication pedagogy through what I deem the post-truth process of weaponizing doubt, hegemonic actors deter people from responding and taking action. Because of this, a critical communication pedagogy is needed, utilizing dialogue to prebunk and debunk the process to help people learn to develop educated doubt that …

Creating Safe(R) Classrooms: Trauma-Informed Teaching Practices In Higher Education, Shannon Pappas, Nolan Bowers, Lili R. Romann

Journal of Communication Pedagogy

Trauma is a public health issue, with effects being increasingly harmful for adolescents. While instructors cannot control how students respond to trauma, they can work to create traumainformed teaching practices to support student learning and safety. Based on the principles of trauma-informed pedagogy, this manuscript details how safety, trustworthiness and transparency, choice, collaboration, and empowerment can be implemented in higher education communication courses. Additionally, a sixth principle, responding to the current climate, is introduced. Currently, instructors are grappling with supporting vulnerable students and answering to those in power. These practices offer insights into classroom adaptations to assist instructors in these …

Decolonizing Communication Pedagogy: Toward An Afro-Rhetorical Framework, Lionnell Smith

Journal of Communication Pedagogy

This essay introduces Afro-rhetorical pedagogy as a decolonial framework for communication pedagogy. Building on Adam Key’s 2022 call for an Applied Africana Studies framework for public speaking pedagogy, this essay conceptualizes Afro-rhetorical pedagogy grounded in Afrocentric thought and African communication theory. Through a close reading of Molefi Kete Asante’s 2011 address on African curriculum, this essay establishes three foundational principles for Afro-rhetorical pedagogy: (a) epistemological agency, (b) decolonized knowledge production, and (c) institutional reconstruction. This pedagogical framework addresses communication education’s reproduction of white cultural hegemony by promoting African-centered principles, practices, and precepts that reposition communication pedagogy as a more liberatory …

Community Problems Need Community Solutions: Feminist Collaboration Across Campuses To Create Transformative Outcomes Through Community Engaged Learning, Elizabeth Wilhoit Larson, Jasmine R. Linabary, Ziyu Long, Kylie J. Johnson

Journal of Communication Pedagogy

This study presents a multi-institutional engaged pedagogy project responding to college food insecurity that involved partnerships among students, instructors, and campus food pantries from three U.S. universities. Through analysis of pre- and post-class surveys, class assignments, and instructor and community partner reflections, we argue that our feminist collaborative approach resulted in transformative outcomes in three areas: (a) heads, as the collaboration enabled critical understandings of food insecurity and how to combat it; (b) hearts, as the collaboration fostered a culture of care and (re)ignited shared passion in doing change work, and (c) hands, as the collaboration inspired actions to address …

The Co-Educators Framework: An Illustrative Account Of Shared Pedagogical Practice And Inclusive Teaching In A Large-Enrollment Communication Course, Divya S, Man Luo, Jisha Jacob, Shahla Shahnaz Dyuti, Victoria Michelle Main

Journal of Communication Pedagogy

Large-enrollment courses present structural challenges to inclusive and relational pedagogy, particularly when instructional labor is shared across teaching teams that include graduate teaching assistants (GTAs). This study examines inclusive teaching as a communicative and practical process enacted through co-education, the coordinated instructional work of faculty and GTAs. Using a diary-based reflexive design, four doctoral GTAs contributed teaching journals across one semester of an undergraduate Communication Theory course. Reflexive thematic analysis identified four themes: collaborative course design, communication as pedagogical infrastructure, equitable assessment, and reflexive care. The study offers the Co-Educators Framework as an illustrative account of how shared, communicative pedagogical …

Exploring Power In The Classroom Through The Lens Of Relational Power, Aubree A. Herman, Narissra Maria Punyanunt-Carter Phd

Journal of Communication Pedagogy

This study explores how French and Raven’s relational power model shapes student communication in higher education. Through a survey of 530 undergraduates, the research investigates how TA age and gender, and student gender, impact student perceptions of power. Results indicate that TA gender and age impact student perceptions of referent power, but not expert power; however, expert and referent power emerged as the strongest predictors of course satisfaction and intention to take future courses, while coercive power negatively predicted both outcomes. These findings underscore the importance of expertise and interpersonal interaction in the TA–student relationship and suggest that French and …

Designing Inclusive Stem Curricula: A Design-Based Study Of Teacher Learning And A Queer Inclusive Framework, Kyle Nolting

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education has historically marginalized queer identities, shaping inaccurate curricula and fostering unwelcoming classroom environments. To address this, my research uses design-based research to investigate the design of queer-inclusive STEM curricular resources. I partnered with in-service secondary STEM teachers amidst a series of professional development courses to co-create curricular resources. My research is grounded in queer theory, using a Gender Inclusive Framework to collaboratively develop inclusive design principles. My findings revealed a strong desire by teachers for more authentic and fluid representations of gender and sexuality in STEM curricula, particularly beyond the biological science discipline. …

The Development And Validation Of Gains-Id, A Guidebook For Adapting Intervention Sessions For Students With Intellectual Disability, Kayla Mccreadie

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Targeted interventions can equip students with intellectual disabilities (ID) with essential academic skills that support positive post-secondary outcomes. However, the lack of interventions specifically designed for this population creates barriers to equitable education. Until more interventions are developed, educators may benefit from resources that help adapt evidence-based practices to meet the needs of students with IDD.

The first manuscript introduces GAINS-ID (Guide for Adapting INtervention Sessions for Intellectual Disabilities). Based on best practices and Universal Design for Learning (UDL), the guide offers examples of adaptations to various intervention components—such as time, materials, environment, …

Exploring The Impact Of Artificial Intelligence Tools On Special Education Teachers’ Workload And Burnout In Colorado: A Qualitative Phenomenological Study, Rawa Suhail Abu Alsamah

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the United States, special education (SPED) teachers face complex workloads, high caseloads, and extensive documentation responsibilities, contributing significantly to burnout and retention issues. The recent integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into educational settings presents promising opportunities to alleviate teachers' instructional and administrative demands. To better understand the impact of AI on SPED teachers, this phenomenological qualitative study explored the lived experiences of licensed K–12 SPED teachers in Colorado who use AI tools in their professional practice. This study also examined how AI tools supported workload management, as well as their perceived impacts on burnout and intentions to remain in …

Norman H. Cromwell, Unl Chemistry; Nu System Dean; Eppley Cancer Center Director, Norman H. Cromwell, Pete Boughn, Mark A. Griep

UNL ORCA Interview Series

This 1980 interview of Normal Cromwell was done by Pete Boughn at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. He asked about Cromwell’s history but mostly about his time as director of the Eppley Cancer Center. The interview is reproduced with permission from the UNMC McGoogan Library.

Cromwell was born in 1913 in Terre Haute, Indiana. In 1935, he earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in his hometown. In 1939, three things happened: he earned a doctorate in organic chemistry from the University of Minnesota, he got married, and he was hired …

Critical Policy Analysis Of Student School Board Members: From Symbolic Seats To Shared Power, Reina M. Cruz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this study was to critically examine student voice in school boards, specifically how student representation is enacted, negotiated, or constrained in public school board meetings across multiple states. This study used a critical political analysis, multi-site, multi-year case study, as I wanted to showcase the different forms of student board memberships and the enactment of policy. In total, three school years of public regular board meetings were observed across three different school districts. The study employed a critical policy analysis to examine state statutes, district bylaws, board policies, meeting recordings, agendas, minutes, and transcripts.

I examined variations …

A Policy Analysis Of Higher Education Support For Foster Youth In The Colorado Child Welfare System, Krystal Robles

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

This policy analysis examines how two Colorado laws, House Bill 22-1374 (Foster Care Success Act), and Senate Bill 22-008 (Higher Education Support for Foster Youth), aim to improve educational outcomes and long-term stability for youth who age out of the foster care system. Critical Policy Analysis (CPA) and Resilience Theory are used in this paper to examine how these policies address systemic inequities, promote resilience, and offer protective factors that support educational attainment. Using policy review, state policy comparison, stakeholder interviews, and community perspectives, I evaluated how the implementation, effectiveness, and limitations of these bills shape real-world impact. The findings …

A Bibliometric And Descriptive Analysis Of The Disciplinary Affiliations Of Research About Students With Disabilities In College-Level Science Education, Tongriang N. Daspan M.Ed, Aaron C. Wenger Phd, Brandy Pleasants Phd

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

Despite the global emphasis on equity and the need for inclusive science education, students with disabilities (SwDs) encounter persistent barriers in college-level science learning environments. While prior research has explored isolated challenges faced by SwDs, few studies have examined how these challenges vary across science disciplines. Yet, science education research is often situated within distinct disciplinary traditions, such as biology education research or geoscience education research, known collectively as Discipline-Based Education Research (DBER). Understanding the disciplinary distribution of research on SwDs is essential to identifying gaps and fostering cross-disciplinary learning. This study maps trends and patterns in the disciplinary affiliations …

Learning Engineering Design Through Making: Affordances Of A Nonformal Tinkering Environment, Cristina Simarro, Digna Couso

Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)

The maker movement has been increasingly adopted as a means for promoting interdisciplinary approaches to STEM learning. However, empirical evidence regarding how making supports the development of engineering design skills remains limited and inconclusive. This study provides an in-depth examination of a nonformal educational initiative grounded in tinkering, a creative and improvisational subset of making, by analyzing the tasks undertaken by primary school children in a tinkering setting. Our results confirm the capacity of tinkering activities to foster specific engineering design practices and elucidate the interrelationships between them. Furthermore, the findings highlight the potential of such approaches to facilitate the …

Looking Beneath The Surface: Understanding Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder Through The Caregiver’S Lens—Support, Advocacy, And Self-Care, Melissa Fredin

Master of Arts in Human Services

Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) is a lifelong neurodevelopmental disability resulting from prenatal alcohol exposure that can affect cognitive functioning, adaptive skills, communication, emotional regulation, and daily living abilities. Individuals with FASD and their caregivers often face complex challenges while navigating behavioral, educational, healthcare, human service, and criminal justice systems. Although awareness of FASD continues to increase, gaps remain in caregiver education, professional understanding, and access to coordinated, trauma-informed supports. The literature indicates that caregiver education is central to improving outcomes for individuals with FASD and is associated with stronger advocacy, more effective support strategies, greater caregiver resilience, and improved …

Emotional Intelligence Deficits And Behavioral Escalation Among Justice-Involved Populations, Aleasa M. Word

Master of Arts in Human Services

This capstone examined the relationship between deficits in emotional intelligence and behavioral escalation among justice-involved populations, who frequently demonstrated challenges with emotional regulation, impulse control, aggression, and behavioral escalation. However, many correctional interventions, including traditional anger management programming, emphasized behavioral compliance rather than the underlying emotional processing deficiencies that contributed to these behaviors. This project synthesized existing peer-reviewed literature from psychology, criminology, forensic behavioral health, and correctional rehabilitation research to examine how low levels of emotional awareness, emotional regulation, empathy, and interpersonal functioning are associated with aggression, recidivism, and escalating behaviors. Findings suggested deficits in emotional intelligence were consistently associated …

20260821: Marshall Magazine (Print Copies), 2020-2025, University Communications

Guides to University Archives

These items include materials from the office of University Communications at Marshall University from 2020-2025. Items were received as each issue was published and include paper copies of the Marshall Magazine from the date range.

Alumni Correspondence For Homecoming 1949, Pearl Sparks, Executive Secretary Of Alumni Association, Fstc And Mr. Earl Young, Chariman

Documents

Correspondence letter from Ms. Pearl Sparks to Alumni committee members/Response in writing from Mr. Earl Young, Chairman, 1949.

August 21, 2026 Ereporter, University Of Alabama At Birmingham

eReporter (campus newsletter)

No abstract provided.

20260821: Student Publications And Collections, 1945-1980, Student Publications, Student Collections

Guides to University Archives

These items include materials from student organizations on campus. Items in this collection include Brigadier Marshall High School Yearbooks from 1963 and 1964 (signed by John Stone), a Marshall College Scrapbook from the Alpha Beta Alpha undergraduate library science fraternity in the 1950s, a photo album from 1945 titled "Launching of the S.S. Marshall Victory, Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyard in Baltimore Maryland from 1945, and a Marshall University Medical Laboratory Technician (MLT) Program Self-Evaluation report from the 1980s.

The Effect Of Escape Room Simulation On The Self-Efficacy And Communication Levels Of Novice Critical Care Nurses, Lauren A. Femino, Kim Chapman, Julie A. Marshall, Shelby A. Trull, Jennifer A. Dibenedetto

The Lahey Journal

Abstract 

Introduction: Novice critical care nurses often report having low self-confidence and effective communication skills when transitioning to the ICU practice, often due to stress, limited experience, and unfamiliarity with critical care environments. These challenges can not only affect their job satisfaction and retention rates, but also pose serious risks to patient safety and outcomes. The purpose of this evidence-based practice (EBP) project was to assess the impact of an escape room simulation on the self-efficacy and communication skills of novice critical care nurses.

Methods: An evidence-based practice (EBP) project with pre-test and post-test design was conducted to …

Florence State College Homecoming Schedule, 1958, Florence State College

Documents

Schedule of Homecoming activities for Saturday, October 25, 1958, at Florence State College.

Memorandum From President E.B. Norton, 1955, E. B. Norton, President, Florence State Teachers College

Documents

Request from President E.B. Norton for membership on the 1955 Homecoming Committee.

Una Homecoming 2016, Office Of Alumni Relations/University Of North Alabama

Documents

"Our Pride Can't Be Tamed" Homecoming Program, 2016.

An Act-To Provide For The Construction Of Additional Buildings For The State Normal School At Florence, Alabama, The Brown Printing Company, State Printers And Binders Montgomery, Alabama

Documents on Education and Progress of the University

Act No. 366-To provide for the Construction of additional buildings for the State Normal School at Florence, Alabama, and for providing for the furnishing and equipment of the same, and for the repairs of existing buildings, and to appropriate funds therefor.

-Legislature of Alabama Session of 1911-