Digital Commons Network^™

The Online Theology Classroom: Strategies For Engaging A Community Of Distance Learners In A Hybrid Model Of Online Education, Brent A. R. Hege

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The key to success in online education is the creation and sustenance of a safe and vibrant virtual community. In order to create such a community instructors must pay special attention to the relationship between technology and pedagogy, specifically in terms of issues such as course design, social presence, facilitation of sustained engagement with course material, specially tailored assignments, and learner expectations and objectives. Several strategies for accomplishing this goal are presented here based on the author’s experiences teaching second career students in hybrid introductory theology courses at a mainline denominational seminary.

Re-Imagining The Nature Of Development: Biodiversity Conservation And Pastoral Visions In The Northern Areas, Pakistan, Nosheen Ali

Book Chapters / Conference Papers

Examines how, in the mountainous village of Shimshal, national parks and “community-based” conservation projects such as trophy hunting are deeply problematic, promoting exploitive ideologies of nature and development while delegitimizing the values and rights of pastoralists. The Shimshalis have creatively resisted the appropriations of their land by creating a Shimshal Nature Trust, implementing a model of ecological sovereignty instead of “community participation”—challenging the very logic of protected areas in international conservation.

An Experimental Study Of Instructor Immediacy In The Wimba Virtual Classroom, Lorah Wood Bodie Edd

Dissertations

The social underpinnings of learning make it important to understand how people experience themselves and form relationships in web-based educational environments. Social presence is a critical factor of a communication medium that plays an important role in building community and improving the effectiveness of instruction. The components of social presence include words conveyed, verbal and nonverbal immediacy cues, and the context of the communication. The immediacy component of social presence is most often defined as perceived psychological closeness which is created in part by nonverbal cues (e.g., smiling and using gestures) and verbal cues (e.g., utilizing humor and inclusive pronouns). …

Looking At Sustainability On The Lakeshore, Paul M. Lane, John P. Farris, Ann Marie Fauvel, Lisa Miller

Seidman Business Review

A new team-taught course with a focus on interdisciplinary teaching and integrative learning was offered at the Holland Meijer Campus. Faculty from Engineering and Marketing developed a community-focused course with an alternative schedule to engage students in the question: What will the community look like in ten years? A unique course emerged — Socially Conscious Innovation — that took place in an intense four-week semester. Students spent a significant amount of time in the community exploring local markets for innovation in the realms of sustainability, globalization, and active aging. This article focuses on issues relating to the sustainability segment of …

Slides: Beyond Rethinking: Redoing Western Water Law, Janet Neuman

Shifting Baselines and New Meridians: Water, Resources, Landscapes, and the Transformation of the American West (Summer Conference, June 4-6)

Presenter: Professor Janet Neuman, Lewis & Clark Law School

17 slides

Slides: Threats To Biological Diversity: Global, Continental, Local, J. Michael Scott

Shifting Baselines and New Meridians: Water, Resources, Landscapes, and the Transformation of the American West (Summer Conference, June 4-6)

Presenter: J. Michael Scott, U.S. Geological Survey, Idaho Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, University of Idaho

38 slides

The Impact On Rural Illinois Communities When The Local High School Is Closed, Cynthia Waldman Rich

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Rural Illinois communities are experiencing declining enrollment and population shifts resulting in the closure of local schools and community changes. This research explores the occurrence of changes in community well-being following the loss of the local high school when compared to similar communities with schools that enrolled the students and communities with unchanged schools. Community well-being is defined as attributes categorized as social, economic and housing characteristics measured by United States Census Bureau data. The sample was comprised of communities designated as rural distant or rural remote urban-centric locale codes, having comparable populations and a local high school recognized by …

Expanding The Ecological Consciousness Of Social Work Students: Education For Sustainable Practice, Peter Jones

EDU-COM International Conference

Social work has a long tradition of being explicitly concerned with the ‗person-in-environment‘, recognising the need to take account of context when working to address disadvantage and maximise wellbeing. This concern with environment, and indeed with the concept of sustainability has, however, been focused primarily on the social rather than the ecological (Coates 2003; Besthorne & McMillen 2002). At a time when increasing attention is being paid to the importance of promoting education about, and for, sustainability in higher education (Sipos, Battisti & Grimm 2008; Wright 2002; Thomas 2004), the social work profession also needs to begin engaging in a …

Collaboration Addresses Information And Education Needs Of An Urban Public Health Workforce, Deborah H. Charbonneau, Ellen B. Marks, Annette M. Healy, Carrie F. Croatt-Moore

Library Scholarly Publications

Addressing the health information needs of diverse, multiethnic, and multilingual communities can be both a challenge and an opportunity for libraries. The Vera P. Shiffman Medical Library at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, is the only academic medical library in the Detroit area open to the public. The library provides services to many communities in southeastern Michigan. The diverse geographic area served by the library includes the nation’s highest concentration of Arab Americans. A review of the literature reveals that limited research has addressed how libraries can meet the health information needs of this target community. An understanding of …

Urban Middle School Teachers' Efficacy Change Resulting From Project Adventure's Year -Long Respect Curricular Intervention: A Quasi -Experimental Design With Corroborating Data, M Brooke Moran

Doctoral Dissertations

Over 30 years of research highlight the effect teachers' beliefs about their teaching abilities (i.e., teacher efficacy) have on their professional actions (i.e., teachers' effectiveness). Yet the literature addressing this connection lacks extensive insight into how to raise teachers' efficacy. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of Project Adventure's RESPECT Program in raising middle school teachers' efficacy in four northeastern urban public schools.

This pretest-posttest quasi-experimental study tracked 68 teachers' efficacy change over the course of one school year. Teacher Efficacy (TE) change was measured using the Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale's (TSES) following subscales: Student …

Integrated Mine Action: A Rights-Based Approach In Cambodia, Sally Campbell

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

The lives of some of the most impoverished Cambodians are beginning to improve as a result of new governmental programmes and nonprofit assistance that award land, provide training and offer other opportunities. Integrating mine action with other development programmes is building a sustainable economic community in Cambodia.

Community Forests: A Perspective, Robert Mccullough

Community-Owned Forests: Possibilities, Experiences, and Lessons Learned (June 16-19)

22 pages.

"Robert McCullough teaches in the University of Vermont Graduate Program in Historic Preservation. He wrote The Landscape of Community: Communal Forests in New England."

Action Research For Female Science Teacher Development: Case Pakistan, Harcharan Pardhan

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

No abstract provided.

Institutionalizing Service Learning In Higher Education: To Change Or Not To Change?, Paula Kay Reams

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Education Policy Analysis Archives 11/08 , Arizona State University, University Of South Florida

College of Education Publications

Learn and to belong : case studies of emerging ethnocentric charter schools in Hawai'i / Nina K Buchanan [and] Robert A. Fox.

Relational Learning For A Sustainable Future: An Eco -Spiritual Model, Mary Elizabeth Westfall

Doctoral Dissertations

We are facing unprecedented environmental challenges as we enter the new millennium as human choices and practices have repeatedly led to environmental degradation. Increasingly there are individuals and groups seeking to address this environmental crisis and move toward more sustainable patterns of living. But in order to make alternative choices it will be essential to draw upon the wealth and variety of human capabilities.

For nearly 350 years Western culture has looked to reason and rationality to provide truth and direction. The affective side of being human, feelings, intuition, love, care, wonder, mystery and hope have largely been devalued. In …

African Americans And Education: A Study Of Arna Bontemps, Joseph Downing Thompson

The Courier

Using the life and work of Arna Bontemps as a case in point, Thompson examines the relationship between the formation of racial identity and the culture of educational institutions themselves, not merely the intellectual, cultural, and political traditions imparted by them.

An Investigation Of Opinions Of Public Officials And The General Public Concerning Solid Waste Issues With Implications For Extension Programming., William A. Carney Jr

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

The primary purpose of this study was to determine opinions of public officials and the general public concerning solid waste disposal, and to make recommendations for future Extension programming. The study utilized four focus group interviews to obtain qualitative data. The two urban groups were composed of municipal public officials from the parishes of Jefferson, East Baton Rouge, Lafayette and Rapides and general public participants from the parishes of East Baton Rouge, West Baton Rouge, and Livingston. The two rural groups consisted of public officials from the parishes of Acadia, Jefferson Davis and Vermilion and general public participants from the …