Education Commons^™

K–5 Principal Challenges Supporting Classroom Teachers In Emergency Distance Education, Catherine Marie Mlodzik

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down schools and showed how unprepared school principals were for such a rapid pivot to online. According to recent studies, principals’ roles were managerial rather than instructional, and the pivot away from the manager role toward instructional leaders, specifically related to technology, revealed many principals were unprepared to support teachers. Research has yet to establish the specific challenges related to technology implementation that occurred in this role shift for principals. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore K–5 school principals’ perceptions about the challenges they faced relating to technology leadership during …

Issues Influencing The Certification Of Online Career And Technical Educators In The Western Pacific Region, Benjamin Borja Seman

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The problem this study addressed is Career and Technical Education (CTE) teachers’ perceived concerns of the eTeacher certification process and perceived support needed to increase CTE teacher participation in the process. Although an eTeacher certification process is available and free of cost in the Western Pacific region, local secondary CTE teachers have resisted enrolling in certification courses resulting in few CTE offerings for the distance education program. The purpose of this study was to explore the perceived concerns of CTE teachers, and the perceived support needed to increase participation in the eTeacher certification process to teach online CTE courses in …

Quality Assurance, Meet Quality Appreciation: Using Appreciative Inquiry To Define Faculty Quality Standards, Ann M. Morgan, Rebecca L. Jobe, Juli K. Konopa, Lyda D. Downs

Higher Learning Research Communications

Objectives: This study outlines the journey of an online university to evaluate faculty performance standards, key performance indicators, and systems for quality assurance using an appreciative inquiry summit model. The study reveals the power of quality appreciation as an approach that elicits a shared vision for quality definitions and standards and serves as a historical marker in the higher education shift from data-driven faculty performance approaches to strengths-based, inclusive methods.

Method: The retrospective business case outlines one university’s 2018 Appreciative Inquiry Summit, 5D (define, discover, dream, design, destiny/deliver) approach, resulting deliverables, lessons learned, and conclusions.

Results: The summit and subsequent …

Investigating Employer Support As A Predictor Of Online Master's Student Retention, James Lenio

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Enrollment in master level programs has been increasing nationwide, particularly in online programs which tend to enroll older and more ethnically diverse students who are likely to be balancing work, finances, and family responsibilities with their educational pursuits. The challenges related to this balance has resulted in higher attrition rates and lower completion rates. In this quantitative study, the relationship between employer support and first-year retention for master's students enrolled in online programs at a for-profit university was examined. Bean and Metzner's model of nontraditional student attrition was used as the theoretical foundation. Archival data from the online institution were …

Multicultural Competency In Online Counseling Courses: Before And After A Multicultural Counseling Course, Sheryl Attilee

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The importance of multicultural counseling training received much attention for decades, however, studies on effective training focused on multicultural counseling training in a face-to-face environment with minimal focus on online training environments. These studies found that face-to-face interactions had the most impact on multicultural training. Therefore, the current study was an evaluation of online master's counseling students' and graduates' multicultural attitudes to determine the effectiveness of online multicultural training using Banks' transformative approach. The research questions focused on the significant difference in participants' recalled multicultural attitude scores (know, care, and act) before an online multicultural counseling course as compared to …

Utility Of The Hpt Framework For Improving Distance Education In Nigeria, Equi Nwulu

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The fusion of the Internet with instructional design, and curricula delivery methods eliminated transactional distance in online learning. However, distance education (DE) in Nigeria has not aligned its pedagogy to the new reality in technology. The purposes of this non-experimental, predictive, validity study were to determine faculty and administrators' perceived barriers and concerns to online adoption and to validate the behavior engineering model (BEM) instrument. Ninety-six respondents from four public universities in Nigeria completed the questionnaires. Descriptive statistics and structural equation modeling (SEM) were used respectively, to assess barriers and concerns militating against faculty and administrators' online adoption, as well …