Digital Commons Network^™

Chatgpt In Higher Education: Considerations For Academic Integrity And Student Learning, Miriam Sullivan, Andrew Kelly, Paul Mclaughlan

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

The release of ChatGPT has sparked significant academic integrity concerns in higher education. However, some commentators have pointed out that generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT can enhance student learning, and consequently, academics should adapt their teaching and assessment practices to embrace the new reality of living, working, and studying in a world where AI is freely available. Despite this important debate, there has been very little academic literature published on ChatGPT and other generative AI tools. This article uses content analysis to examine news articles (N=100) about how ChatGPT is disrupting higher education, concentrating specifically on Australia, …

International Café: A Collaborative Approach To International Student Wellbeing And Support, Yohann Devezy, Braden Hill, Liz Beresford, Rose Williams, Shirley Farr, Em Readman, Clair Mermejo

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Prior to 2020, ongoing discourse in the higher education sector underscored the increasingly complex mental health and wellbeing challenges faced by students. The “post-COVID-19” period witnessed a resurgence of international students arriving in Western Australia. Emerging cost of living pressures, accommodation shortages, and changing visa work hours have amplified the distinct challenges international students encounter, prompting renewed discussions surrounding a need for effective support interventions. Drawing inspiration from successful initiatives at Edith Cowan University, Murdoch University introduced the Murdoch International Café—a program focused on providing distinct spaces of support for international students. This supportive environment enables social connection, effective information …

“I Tell My Brothers That It Can Be Done”: Indigenous Males Navigating Elite Australian Higher Education, Garth Stahl, James A. Smith, Andrew Harvey, Braden Hill, Himanshu Gupta, Sam Moore, Jianing Wang

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

As Australian higher education grapples with its colonial history, there has been significant attention to recruiting Indigenous students. However, while we have seen increases in Indigenous participation, males lag significantly behind. Very few Indigenous males enter university and even fewer enter the upper echelons of the stratified higher education sector. In this paper, we investigate the experiences of four Indigenous young men who attended an elite Australian higher education institution. Central to our analysis is how their identities are realised in relation to their sense of Indigeneity and Western ways of knowing, being and doing. In capturing the complex identity …

Student Evaluation Of Teaching: Reactions Of Australian Academics To Anonymous Non-Constructive Student Commentary, Marie Hutchinson, Rosanne Coutts, Debbie Massey, Dima Nasrawi, Jann Fielden, Megan Lee, Richard Lakeman

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Within Australian higher education, student evaluation of teaching (SET) is regularly conducted and data are utilised for quality control and staff appraisal. Within current methodologies, students can anonymously provide further feedback as written commentary. There is now growing evidence that, once this narrative becomes derogatory or abusive, it may have the potential to create harm. To investigate staff reactions to receiving anonymous non-constructive commentary, a one group point in time design was constructed, and a survey conducted. Participants (N = 741) from a broad cross-section of Australian universities responded to Likert questions asking about their reactions. A significant impact was …

Student Motivations, Perceptions And Opinions Of Participating In Student Evaluation Of Teaching Surveys: A Scoping Review, Daniel Sullivan, Richard Lakeman, Debbie Massey, Dima Nasrawi, Marion Tower, Megan Lee

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Several times each year the teaching performance of academics at higher education institutions are evaluated through anonymous, online student evaluation of teaching (SET) surveys. Universities use SETs to inform decisions about staff promotion and tenure, but low student participation levels make the surveys impractical for this use. This scoping review aims to explore student motivations, perceptions and opinions of SET survey completion. Five EBSCO® databases were searched using key words. Thematic analysis of a meta-synthesis of qualitative findings derived from 21 papers identified five themes: (i) the value students’ place on SET, (ii) the knowledge that SET responses are acted …

Gender, Vulnerabilities, And How The Other Becomes The Otherer In Academia, Esme Franken, Fleur Sharafizad, Kerry Brown

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

This article draws on the work of Judith Butler, particularly the notion of vulnerability in/as resistance, to explore the gendered experiences of women in Australian academia. Through employing an arts-based research method, Draw, Write, and Reflect, with women academics in Australia, we explore the ways in which vulnerabilities are identified and navigated in the context of academia. Our study identified three key forms of vulnerabilities: the expectation paradox, the body, and age and experience. Such vulnerabilities appeared to be navigated through acts of othering, denying, and overcoming. We return to Butler's call for the creation of gender trouble in making …

The Importance Of Trust And Authenticity Among Stakeholders Involved In Higher Education Data Infrastructure Redevelopments: An Australian Critical Discourse Study, Elizabeth Cook

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Governments require higher education providers (HEPs) to be transparent in their use of public funds and have developed specialised higher education (HE) data infrastructure to enable the data transfer from HEPs to government departments. In 2018, Australia’s Department of Education, Skills and Employment launched Transforming the Collection of Student Information (TCSI) to enhance HE data infrastructure for student data transfer. This critical discourse study explores the discourses, discursive strategies and perspectives surrounding TCSI. Findings included HEP issues and concerns that the interviewees believed were inadequately addressed or ignored despite the Department’s claims of extensive engagement with HEPs to achieve mutually …

Digital Transformation To Advance High-Quality Development Of Higher Education, Zongkai Yang

Journal of Educational Technology Development and Exchange (JETDE)

Digitization will bring unlimited potential and a new vision for education, and the digitization of education is a historical process and an inevitable trend of education reform. This paper first puts forward the connotation, foundation, core of education digital transformation and the typical stages of development. Then extracts a series of practices launched in China to cope with the demand in digital transformation from four aspects: platform construction, curriculum supply, teaching methods and evaluation methods. Finally, the exploration and practice carried out by three typical universities are presented where the author has served as president, namely Central China Normal University, …

Effects Of Synchronous And Asynchronous Online Instructional Approaches On English-Learning Undergraduate College Students: An Exploratory Study, Ivana Markova, Cristina Azocar

Journal of English Learner Education

Although the significance of the use of online classes remains evident due to their growing prevalence at US universities, they still remain an untested experience for countless English learners (ELs). This research explores EL students’ perceptions of the opportunities for interaction in synchronous and asynchronous online university classroom modalities. It also examines how socioacademic relations and Bandura’s social learning theory can explain the interactions between students and instructors that influence EL students’ literacy development. Participants (n=105) were selected from a large sample pool of 261 EL undergraduate student participants aged 18 to 35. A mixed methods design was …

United States Accreditation In Higher Education: Does It Dilute Academic Freedom?, Michael H. Romanowski, Ibrahim M. Karkouti

Faculty Journal Articles

US higher education accreditation agencies provide exter-nal quality evaluation for institutions and programmes todeliver quality control and assurance. Although there isample discussion about the benefits and drawbacks of theaccreditation process, this article reviews the academic lit-erature to consider the impact that accreditation mighthave on the academic freedom of the teaching staff.Specifically, this article centres on how standardisation,assessments and the fundamental elements of accreditationaffect academic freedom in higher education and howthese might dilute academic freedom.

A Case Study Of Transformational Leadership Practices Utilized To Increase National Rankings Of An Hbcu Through Strategic Planning, Titilayo B. Evans

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this single instrument case study was to explore the transformational leadership practices utilized by university leaders in the implementation of a strategic plan first executed in 2011 at Pride University, a pseudonym used for the setting of the study, a Historically Black College or University (HBCU). The central research question of this study was, “How were transformational leadership strategies utilized in the execution of the strategic plan implemented at Pride University?” Over the years, transformational leadership has been commonly embraced by organizations and has worked well for leaders and followers alike. Although there has been much research …

Understanding Student Experiences Of College Mental Health-Related Resources And Policies Since The Covid-19 Pandemic: A Qualitative Study, Donna Aron Sepulveda-Shelton

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand the experiences regarding mental health-related resources and policies since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic for undergraduate students at higher education institutions in northern Georgia. The theory guiding this study is Bandura’s social cognitive theory, as it explores motivators and factors for human behavior and attitude. A phenomenological research design was used to determine common themes among college students enrolled in higher education institutions in northern Georgia before and throughout the entirety of the COVID-19 pandemic. The higher education institutions were within an 80-mile radius, as these colleges were required to …

A Phenomenological Study Of African-American Students' Spiritual And Identity Development At Predominantly White Institutions, Jeffery Clayton Smith Ii

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study is to document the lived experiences of African American (AA) students attending predominantly White institutions (PWI’s). The importance of capturing these experiences is to better understand how PWIs are properly equipped to serve the needs of their AA students. This study describe how AA students are experiencing spiritual and identity development while they are enrolled at a PWI. The two guiding theories of this study are Fowler’s Faith Development Theory and Erikson’s Identity Development Theory. These guiding theories have been paired together to address students’ spiritual development during their emerging adulthood years. The …

Canadian And Iranian Graduate Students’ Conceptions Of Critical Thinking: A Comparative Study, Farzaneh Ojaghi Shirmard

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

This study compares Canadian and Iranian international students’ conceptions of critical thinking during their graduate studies in Canada. Critical thinking is an essential skill in Canadian higher education. It enables students to make reasoned judgments from their observations and experimentation. This narrative inquiry using open-ended interviews describes the narratives of eight students from different master’s programs at a university in western Canada to examine their experiences and notions of critical thinking. The preliminary findings reveal that while all Canadian participants had knowledgeable perspectives about critical thinking, Iranian participants required more knowledge to build their critical thinking conceptualizations. Moreover, content knowledge, …

The Role Of Academic Mobility In The (De)Construction Of Internationalization: Dialogues And Perspectives From, In And On Global South & Global North, Ana Rachel M. Mendes

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

International mobility has played a central role in the views, policies, and actions of internationalization of higher education, despite representing a highly excluding, elitist process with flows that tend to reinforce asymmetrical relationships and colonial domination by the Global North of the Global South. Therefore, this study seeks to investigate how the international mobility is related to the construction of internationalization. To this end, the views of students and professors participating in the academic mobility of one university in Brazil, the Global South, and another in Spain, the Global North, will be analyzed through interviews and later they will be …

Introduction: 14(6) 2022: Emerging Scholars Issue

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

No abstract provided.

Developing A Healthy Masculinities Program On A University Campus, David A. Scott, Freeman Woolnough, Tony W. Cawthon

New York Journal of Student Affairs

Amid increased concerns about mental health, sexual violence, and substance use among college students, college campuses are looking toward developing targeted programming to help counteract these concerning trends. This practitioner paper highlights the development and impacts of a program at a Canadian institution, which focuses on healthy masculinity and identity development. Although still in the early stages, the feedback and observations are indicative of the powerful potential of this type of programming to improve healthy masculinity on college campuses.

Spatial Metaphors In Introductory Statements Of Humanities And Stem Disciplines: A Study Of English And Mechanical Engineering Departments, Olalekan T. Adepoju

Publications and Research

Advances in higher education, specifically in science and technology, have engendered a significant shift of interest from a mainly liberal arts curriculum to STEM-related fields of study, creating a rift in the value systems undergirding the two academic domains. One of the ways the disciplinary disparity is institutionally expressed is through the language used in describing the core values of these disciplines, specifically in the introductory statements of departments. Using the lens of spatial metaphor to consider how the language expresses distinct realities that align with the public perceptions of the disciplines, this paper examines the metaphorical framings in the …

The Effectiveness Of Project-Based Learning On Emirati Undergraduate Students In A Microbiology Course, Carole Ayoub Moubareck

All Works

Purpose: A composting project was introduced into an undergraduate microbiology course, to evaluate its efficacy against traditional lecturing for teaching environmental sustainability. Design/methodology/approach: The research project was a semester-long intervention. Three groups of students participated in the study: a group of 47 female undergraduate students were involved in a composting project, a group of 43 female students were exposed to a traditional lecture and a group of 34 students were the control group. A pretest and a posttest were used, along with poster presentations for the composting project students. In addition, a questionnaire was used to examine students' attitudes toward …

A Phenomenological Study Of Collegiate Recovery Leadership, Marni Goldberg

Teacher Education, Educational Leadership & Policy ETDs

Due to the marginalized status of the population they serve, collegiate recovery programs are generally underfunded and employ one staff member who typically holds other job tasks in addition to those of collegiate recovery leader. The consequence of the varied nature by which collegiate recovery programs are founded and implemented is inconsistency, which can threaten the longevity of the field. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to elicit information directly from collegiate recovery leaders to gain a deeper understanding of their lived experience, in order to determine how to best serve and support higher education students in recovery from …

How Universities Use Twitter To Communicate About Mental Health, Sarah Elizabeth Polhill

Theses and Dissertations

From a sample of over three million tweets from universities in the US, we described the characteristics of universities' communication about mental health on Twitter, including common keywords, bigrams, linked resources, and hashtags, as well as the frequency of dialogic communication and mental health tweets over time, especially in the context of the COVID-19 Pandemic. This study uses data mining to collect tweets from official university Twitter accounts and selected accounts of university wellness and counseling programs. Relevant tweets were collected from a large sample using keywords and bigrams relevant to mental health from the Twitter accounts of IACS accredited …

Critical (Re)Approach To Higher Education Admission Policy: The Impact Of Open Enrollment Policy Implementation, Shirdonna Yvonne Lawrence

Theses and Dissertations

Federal and state policies affecting higher education, like the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1832, Brown vs. Board of Education, and Higher Education Act of 1965 have posited change regarding the proliferation of diversity and expansion of access (Thelin, 2011).

I analyzed BOT policies for enrollment and conducted a socio-diagnostic CDA on the implementation of admission policy to understand the impact of the policies’ implementation. I focused on 1) exploring how open enrollment (OE) policies were constructed, 2) how institutions adopt and interpret these policies, and 3) how individuals at the institution enact these policies, by conducting a discourse-historical analysis …

The Effects Of Professional Experience On Ethical Profiles Of Housing And Residence Life Staff, Sirena L. Cantrell, Sirena L. Cantrell

Theses and Dissertations

The intent of this study was to explore and understand the effects of professional experience on the ethical profiles of housing and residence life staff. Through a survey design, this study used the Managerial Ethical Profile (MEP) to analyze the professional experience of members of the Association of College and University Housing Officers – International (ACUHO-I). The MEP scale measures the range of influences on respondents and describes the major tendencies by placing respondents in ethical profiles. Results from this study indicated that professional experience does influence respondent ethical profiles. This study contributes to the field of higher education by …

Impact Of Organizational Structure On Community Engagement Outcomes, Christy Arrazattee

School of Education Doctoral Projects - Higher Education

Community engagement has been embedded into higher education institutions since the early 1990s, yet scholars and practitioners still debate if there is an ideal reporting structure for coordinating offices (Jacoby, 2014). This study involved a quantitative analysis of 72 institutions who submitted information to the National Inventory of Institutional Infrastructure for Community Engagement survey (NI³CE – pronounced “nice”) between 2017 and 2020. Institutions were categorized by organizational structure (centralized vs. decentralized) and by reporting line (Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, Joint Academic Affairs/ Student Affairs, Outreach, and decentralized). Using the NI³CE inventory and scoring system, points were awarded to institutions based …

“And There The Pagans Reigned”: Epideictic, Shared Appreciation, Social History, Stephen Schloesser

History: Faculty Publications and Other Works

John W. O’Malley, S.J. highlighted the “pagan” origins of the texts recovered from classical antiquity by Renaissance humanists. Although these ancient writers had no relationship to either the Jewish or Christian religions of the Book, their writings were nevertheless valued for offering wisdom and moral insights. Thanks to the epideictic rhetorical genre, shared appreciation across boundaries was emphasized. However, O’Malley also avoided rigidity or literalism in applying principles of the past to contemporary circumstances. Ancient documents are one kind of source; the “social history” in actual practice and application of those documents is another kind of source. This essay surveys …

Assessing The Performing Arts Experience At A Stem-Based Institution, Benjamin Willmott

Theses

Past studies examined the role of performing arts within a STEM-based curriculum, but there has been little research to date on how to fully integrate the two into one unified program at the higher education level. A qualitative study was conducted utilizing a phenomenological approach vis-à-vis four focus groups with students engaged in the Performing Arts Scholarship Program at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY. The commitment-trust theory of relationship marketing as well as self-efficacy theory were considered to ground the theoretical framework surrounding the success of the program and the experiences of a sample of 951 Performing Arts …

Elements Of Early Warning Systems: Identifying Students Who Need Support Early Enough To Change Their Trajectory Towards Graduation, Samantha Mayse

Masters Projects

Student success initiatives have been a focus at many institutions of higher education to help with retention rates but identifying the students who need the student success resources most can be challenging. Scholarships increase access to higher education but do not necessarily contribute to student success. Thus, this research project sought to analyze early alert systems used by mid-sized universities in the U.S. Midwest to help similar institutions in developing their own early alert system. Using mixed methods, this study included a qualitative analysis of institution’s policies and procedures for early warning systems and a quantitative analysis of GVSU institutional …

A Transcendental Phenomenological Study Exploring The Perception Of Scholarship Requirements For Tenure And Promotion In Health Professions Programs, Harrynauth Persaud

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this study is to explore the perception of scholarship requirements for faculty members teaching in Health Professions Programs (HPP) at a public institution of higher learning located in NYC. This research was guided by the self-determination theory (SDT), which examines how an individual's social interaction can influence different types of motivations. Guided by a central research question and two sub-questions, this study utilized a transcendental phenomenological approach to gain a better understanding of HPP faculty perceptions regarding the requirements for academic scholarship. Three different data collection approaches were used, including individual in-depth interviews, word association, and journal …

Unsettling Colonial Structures In Education Through Community-Centered Praxis, Kimberley Greeson, Steven Sassaman, Katherine Williams, Abby Yost

Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs

In the context of settler colonialism in the US, mainstream education practices function as ongoing enactors of colonial processes. Decolonizing pedagogy seeks to challenge these dominant practices by centering place, Indigenous epistemologies, and rehumanizing values. In this paper, we discuss how faculty and students used community-based experiential learning projects (CBEL) to challenge these dominant and normative educational structures. By integrating an anti-racist and anti-colonial lens, CBEL projects themselves can work to dismantle power structures, build community, and promote experiential learning in a variety of educational spaces. The student projects presented here seek to unsettle colonial educational frameworks of white supremacy …

Pacific Magazine 2022, University Of The Pacific

Pacific Magazine and Pacific Review

No abstract provided.