Education Commons^™

The Everydayness Of Instructional Design And The Pursuit Of Quality In Online Courses, Jason K. Mcdonald

Faculty Publications

This article reports research into the everydayness of instructional design (meaning designers’ daily routines, run-of-the-mill interactions with colleagues, and other, prosaic forms of social contact), and how everydayness relates to their pursuit of quality in online course design. These issues were investigated through an ethnographic case study, centered on a team of instructional designers at a university in the United States. Designers were observed spending significant amounts of time engaged in practices of course refinement, meaning mundane, workaday tasks like revising, updating, fine-tuning, or fixing the courses to which they were assigned. Refining practices were interrelated with, but also experienced …

Informal Practices Of Localizing Open Educational Resources In Ghana, Emily Durham Bradshaw, Jason K. Mcdonald

Faculty Publications

Research on the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) often notes the potential benefits for users to revise, reuse, and remix OER to localize it for specific learners. However, a gap in the literature exists in terms of research that explores how this localization occurs in practice. This is a significant gap given the current flow of OER from higher-income countries in the Global North to lower-income countries in the Global South (King et al., 2018). This study explores how OER from one area of the world is localized when it is used in a different cultural context.

Findings indicated …

The Influence Of Policy Implementation In The Midwest: How A Sstem Program Broadens Participation And Enhances Engineering Identity For Community College Students, Sarah L. Rodriguez, Maria L. Espino, Brian D. Le, Kelly J. Cunniham

Faculty Publications

This qualitative research study describes how a Midwest community college’s implementation of an Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (SSTEM) program influences engineering identity development for its students with financial need. Using a phenomenological approach, the study finds that the program enables community college students to have greater financial freedom and an ability to focus on engineering identity. In addition, the SSTEM program enhances student connections with STEM faculty, program staff, and peers. The study highlights the need for creating spaces for engineering identity development, developing connections between faculty, staff, and students, and enhancing transfer connections through different experiences. …

This Is My Vision’: How Students Depict Critiques Along With Themselves During Critiques, Jason K. Mcdonald, Esther Michela

Faculty Publications

In this article we consider critiques within the design studio as how students press forward into possible forms of the self that are opened up through studio participation. We contrast this with a view of critiques as primarily being a pedagogical or socialising technique under the control of instructors and other critics. We carried out our inquiry using interviews with six studio students, studying how they depict critiques and how they depict themselves when being critiqued. Students’ depictions of critiques included their being: a) signal in the noise; b) windows into their critics’ character; c) a type of text to …

Going In Thinking Process, Coming Out Transformed: Reflections And Recommendations From A Qualitative Research Course, Donald Mitchell Jr., Elizabeth Byron, Jeffrey Cross, Oj Oleka, Stephanie Van Eps, Phyllis Clark, Natalie Sajko

Faculty Publications

This article presents reflections and suggestions of an instructor and students from a doctoral-level qualitative research course. Given qualitative research courses often lack guidance for best practices and the well-being of doctoral students learning qualitative research is often overlooked, the purpose of this article is threefold: 1) to provide an introductory skeleton for designing a qualitative research course that is structured for classmates to interview each other throughout the semester, what the authors call a student-as-researcher-and-participant design; 2) to provide student reflections from the course; and finally, 3) to offer recommendations for using a student-as-researcher-and participant design for a qualitative …

Towards An Assumption Responsive Information Literacy Curriculum: Lessons From Student Qualitative Data, Rob Morrison, Deana Greenfield

Faculty Publications

This chapter will describe how the collection of data on college student assumptions impacted the development and revision of credit courses in digital information literacy. Drawing on qualitative data from pretests, assignments, questionnaires, reflection journals, and student evaluations, the authors will detail their teaching experiences and the development of an assumption responsive curriculum which challenges students to draw connections between new material and prior questions, concerns, and beliefs. We will also discuss the impetus for the development of our pretest survey tool, thoughts on why student assumptions matter in the classroom, and provide excerpts from the qualitative student data that …

Save Our Schools Rally Chicago, March 17, 2013, Todd Alan Price

Faculty Publications

Using a video camera, I documented the historic Save our Schools Rally Chicago, March 27, 2013. Included was a march led by President Karen Lewis of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), interviews respectively of Reverend Jesse Jackson, a special education teacher-Diana, and a healthcare worker, and footage of community members performing civil disobedience. Perhaps most compelling are the voices of students—high school seniors— who spoke eloquently against school closings.

A Look Inside Mathematics Coaching: Roles, Content, And Dynamics, Rejoice Mudzimiri, Elizabeth A. Burroughs, Jennifer Luebeck, John Sutton, David Yopp

Faculty Publications

Mathematics classroom coaching is used across the United States as a means for improving instruction, with the ultimate goal of improving student learning. The job assignments of coaches can vary widely across schools and districts. Regardless of the various forms that coaching can take, there is the consistent expectation that a coach's day-to-day work will positively influence classroom instruction. The study reported here attempts to gain a more complete picture of the job of an elementary mathematics coach based on the observation of seven coaches in five different districts for a day. We report the variety of ways we observed …

Acl 546 Research Methodology, Rob Morrison

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Inward, Outward, Onward: Autoethnography Of A Dissertation In (Qualitative) Transitional Space, Genevieve Harris

Faculty Publications

This article presents the connection of a personal dissertation process to the wider world of qualitative research. Using the concept of transitional space as a metaphor, the author chronicles her theoretical transition from critical race theory to poststructural theory to emerging questions about material feminism. This transition is mapped to three major qualitative research moments within the field: modernist, crisis of representation, and the future. Autoethnography and found text are used to present the micro and macro telling of the dissertation process. White racial identity development among Christian teacher educators at a religious university was the original dissertation focus. Ethical …

Imaginative Instruction: What Master Storytellers Can Teach Instructional Designers, Jason K. Mcdonald

Faculty Publications

Good instructional storytelling engages students’ attention and cognitive abilities to the end of more effective learning, and instructional researchers have discussed whether the principles of storytelling could lead to the same or similar results if applied to educational situations beyond only telling traditional stories. But despite this potential, the principles of storytelling are seemingly underutilized by today’s instructional designers. This study investigates what instructional designers might learn from another design field that is more experienced in the art of storytelling, specifically that of film production. Eight filmmakers who have successfully produced films that motivate, inspire, and educate were interviewed to …