Education Commons^™

A Value-Driven Exploration Of Online & In-Person Learning For Professionals, Tammy S. Sanders

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to undertake a learner-centered exploration of delivery mode relevance in professional learning. Given the increasing pervasiveness of technology-mediated online delivery in nondegree professional learning at the individual and enterprise levels, this study has a particular focus on learning value ascribed by learners to online and in-person delivery in relation to their professional development.

Qualitative and quantitative methods were used in this study to collect and examine data from adult professionals in an effort to determine how value is ascribed to learning. With this aim in mind, this study focused on the following research questions: …

Teaching Competencies For The Online Environment, Heather M. Farmer, Jennifer Ramsdale

Publications and Scholarship

The goals of this study are to identify key competency areas that lead to success in online instruction and to develop a framework that supports professional development and self- assessment. To identify the key competency areas, skills and behaviours presented within current literature were analyzed. Secondly, gaps were identified and levels of competence were determined within each key competency area. The resulting analysis produced the Online Teaching Competency (OTC) Matrix including five competency areas: Community & Netiquette, Active Teaching/Facilitating, Instructional Design, Tools & Technology, and Leadership & Instruction. This leveled competency matrix can be used to inform professional development in …

Sense Of Community, Perceived Learning, And Achievement Relationships In An Online Graduate Course, Jesus Trespalacios, Ross Perkins

Educational Technology Faculty Publications and Presentations

The ubiquity of online programs in higher education requires continued focus on designing instructional environments that improve students’ learning. We examine students’ perceptions of sense of community and learning, as well as academic achievement, using grades obtained from a final project and participation in asynchronous discussion forums. Findings indicate a significant correlation between perceived learning and the sense of community connectedness subscale. Although sense of community is closely associated with interactions, the results did not show a significant relationship between the sense of community and the discussions achievement variable. Implications and challenges in implementing activities to foster sense of community …

How To Double Or Triple Student Participation/Engagement In Threaded Class Discussions Without Being Coercive Or Punitive, Robert W. Hill

Faculty Presentations

In this highly-interactive session, industry best practices will be shared along with an exclusive look at the instructor’s own current semester class discussion boards to demonstrate specific strategies/techniques he employs to maximize students’ engagement and to foster a safe online learning community. Audience members will immediately be able to apply some of these pedagogical methods to their own current classes that very day.

Hostos Online Learning Assessment: A Survey Of Student Perceptions, Kate Wolfe, Sarah Hoiland, Kate Lyons, Carlos Guevara, Kristopher B. Burrell, Jacki Disanto, Sandy Figueroa, Aaron Davis, Iber Poma, Wilfredo Rodriguez, Linda L. Ridley

Publications and Research

The Office of Education Technology (EdTech) at Hostos Community College and faculty members from various departments created the Hostos Online Learning Assessment (HOLA) Task Force to design a survey for gathering and assessing data about students’ perceptions of their online learning experiences. The task force wanted to utilize the survey results to identify strengths and weaknesses in online instruction and student preparedness for the online learning environment. Student perceptions of online learning are integral to building upon current best practices and also gauging the preparedness of the students for the online learning environment, particularly in an urban, Hispanic-serving community college. …

Crowdsourcing The Curriculum: Redefining E-Learning Practices Through Peer-Generated Approaches, Drew Paulin, Caroline Haythornthwaite

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Inclusion of open resources that employ a peer-generated approach is changing who learns what, from whom, and via what means. With these changes, there is a shift in responsibilities from the course designer to motivated and self-directed learner-participants. While much research on e-learning has addressed challenges of creating and sustaining participatory environments, the development of massive open online courses calls for new approaches that go beyond the existing research on participatory environments in institutionally defined classes. We decenter institutionally defined classes and broaden the discussion to the literature on the creation of open virtual communities and the operation of open …

Employing Subgoals In Computer Programming Education, Lauren Margulieux, Richard Catrambone, Mark Guzdial

Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

The rapid integration of technology into our professional and personal lives has left many education systems ill-equipped to deal with the influx of people seeking computing education. To improve computing education, we are applying techniques that have been developed for other procedural fields. The present study applied such a technique, subgoal labeled worked examples, to explore whether it would improve programming instruction. The first two experiments, conducted in a laboratory, suggest that the intervention improves undergraduate learners’ problem solving performance and affects how learners approach problem solving. A third experiment demonstrates that the intervention has similar, and perhaps stronger, effects …

Pedagogical Considerations For Effectively Teaching Qualitative Research To Students In An Online Environment, Sara Bender, Karlie Hill

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

Qualitative research aims to understand both individual meaning as well as complex systemic interactions as they apply to social problems or individual experiences. This method of research is both inductive and flexible, allowing for a holistic approach that facilitates a rich understanding of the content examined. Past research identifies a number of challenges associated with teaching qualitative methodology to undergraduate students, including: the research skills and values maintained by the instructor, the prestige associated with qualitative research in particular, as well as a number of other interpersonal and environmental factors. These challenges are further complicated, it seems, when extended into …

Analyzing Social Construction Of Knowledge Online By Employing Interaction Analysis, Learning Analytics, And Social Network Analysis, Charlotte Nirmalani Gunawardena, Nick V. Flor, David Gomez, Damien Sanchez

University Libraries & Learning Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

This article examines research methods for analyzing social construction of knowledge in online discussion forums. We begin with an examination of the Interaction Analysis Model (Gunawardena, Lowe, & Anderson, 1997) and its applicability to analyzing social construction of knowledge. Next, employing a dataset from an online discussion, we demonstrate how interaction analysis can be supplemented by employing other research techniques such as learning analytics and Social Network Analysis that shed light on the social dynamics that support knowledge construction. Learning analytics is the application of quantitative techniques for analyzing large volumes of distributed data ("big data") in order to discover …

The Relationship Between Successful Completion And Sequential Movement In Self-Paced Distance Courses, Janine Lim

School of Distance Education Faculty Publications

A course design question for self-paced courses includes whether or not technological measures should be used in course design to force students to follow the sequence intended by the course author. This study examined learner behavior to understand whether the sequence of student assignment submissions in a self-paced distance course is related to successful completion of the course. The study included 543 students in 89 different general education courses at a private university in the United States during a two year period. Results indicate that students who completed at least one assignment or exam out of the intended sequence of …

Core Competencies For Undergraduate Community-Engaged Researchers, Grant Wolfe

Community-Engaged Research Resources

Undergraduate community-engaged research (UCEnR) is a growing trend which VCU has proactively pursued by providing grants for UCEnR projects and assimilating UCEnR into interdisciplinary curricula. However, a definitive sense of core competencies for undergraduate community-engaged researchers has not yet been established. To that end, this literature review answers the question, "What skills should UCEnR students have?"

But Is It Transformative? Quality Assurance As Co-Learning In Graduate Education, Lorayne Robertson, Wendy Barber

Outcomes in Higher Education

This research explores quality in two online graduate courses by examining data sets gathered separately from the same cohort of students. Data include an institutional survey and student work outputs such as assignments and learning logs. Quality in higher education is critically important, but the means to establish it has reportedly been somewhat illusive in academia (Anderson, G., 2006). There are tensions evident in processes such as program review because it encourages faculty to reflect on their practice but is generally not course-specific. Program reviews also rely on external experts to match the evidence to standards. Barrow (1999) employs the …

Finding A Balance: Using Qualitative Data To Identify Student Learning Barriers And Alleviate Instructor Burnout In An Online Information Literacy Course, Natalie Bishop, Holly Mabry

Dover Library Faculty Professional Development Activities

For-credit information literacy instruction is starting to gain momentum is in academic libraries. In this session, presenters will provide an overview of their library’s for-credit online research skills course for non-traditional students. They will identify student learning barriers, describe qualitative measures used to improve the course over time, and discuss long-range tools and objectives.

Shooting Down The Gold Star: Using The Power Of Feedback And Assessment To Draw Students Through The Threshold, Natalie Bishop, Holly Mabry

Dover Library Faculty Professional Development Activities

The ACRL Framework presents librarians with the opportunity to develop a deeper, more effective learning environment that encourages students to go beyond simply achieving the gold star. Measuring students’ mastery of threshold concepts for information literacy instruction presents a challenge to our assessment and accreditation-driven culture. Learn how librarians can use targeted student learning outcomes to develop innovative assessment initiatives to overcome the “making the grade” mindset, which can be an obstacle for both one-shot and for-credit information literacy instruction.

In this workshop, presenters will provide a brief overview of their institution’s for-credit research skills course, identify some of the …

A Taxonomy To Define Courses That Mix Face-To-Face And Online Learning, Lauren Margulieux, W. Michael Mccracken, Richard Catrambone

Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

The efficacy of courses that mix face-to-face and online instruction, such as blended, hybrid, flipped, and inverted courses, is contested in the literature. Some studies find that they improved learning outcomes and some do not. We argue that these unreliable results are due to inconsistent definitions of these courses. To address this problem, we propose the Mixed Instructional eXperience (MIX) taxonomy to define hybrid, blended, flipped, and inverted based on two dimensions. To test the usefulness of the taxonomy to organize the literature, we reclassified research using the taxonomy. The analysis of the literature after reclassification revealed themes that illuminate …

Developing Distance Education Content Using The Tappa Process, Robert L. Moore

STEMPS Faculty Publications

The proliferation of distance education has occurred alongside the emerging technologies of the Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 environments, changing the way instructors approach, design, and deliver their instructional materials. In the past, instructional design (ID) practitioners relied on instruction system design (ISD) models that focused primarily on macroinstruction. It is now important for these practitioners to use microinstruction strategies to keep pace with the technology evolution. This case study describes the TAPPA (Target, Accomplishment, Past, Prototype, Artifact) Process which was created using the Generic Model for Design Research (GMDR) proposed by McKenney and Reeves (2012) and uses selected ID …

Examining Student Ict Ownership, Use And Preferences Towards Electronically Delivered Learning Resources In Nakhon Phanom University And Sakon Nakhon Rajabhat University, Yuwanuch Gulatee, Vijittra Vonganusith, Jeremy E. Pagram, Martin G. Cooper

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

The objectives of this research were 1) to find students’ ownership of technology devices, ownership, soft-ware facility, and preferences, 2) to find out what devices instructors use in the classroom, 3) to find out how the students use the online learning that the university provided for them, and 4) to examine students’ software skills. The questionnaire and the interview instruments were designed to clarify participants’ attitudes, and used a Likert scale. Surveys and qualitative research design were developed using Qualtrics software, which is an online research survey tool that can be used for a whole range of data gathering purposes …

Faculty Online Questionnaire Protocol, Undergraduate Scholarly Habits Ethnography Project, Maura A. Smale, Mariana Regalado, Jean Amaral

Publications and Research

This research protocol describes a questionnaire used for data collection in the Undergraduate Scholarly Habits Ethnography Project to explore the lived experiences of faculty use of technology in the hybrid and online courses they teach.

Examining New Vistas In Leadership Learning With Technology, Lorayne Robertson, Jill Harvey, Janani Srikantha, Damali Thomas, Kavita Anand

Internationalization, Globalization and Exchange in Higher Education

Technology-enabled learning can open new vistas in higher education. Moving a course online, however, does not guarantee that students will be more engaged, nor that they will think more critically, or understand more deeply. Online learning does create new digital learning spaces where students can make connections without the constraints of physical co-location. This case study outlines the experiences of a small group of students in the same graduate course who chose an opportunity to work in an authentic, cross-continental context within a global, professional learning community. The students were able to “see” leadership theory in practice through the investigation …

Connect, Change, And Conserve: Building A Virtual Center For Teaching Excellence, Anne M. Schoening, Sarah Oliver

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

In an era of limited fiscal and human resources, educational developers are seeking innovative ways to connect with their constituents. Developing a “virtual” center for teaching and learning (CTL) is one approach to consolidating development resources and reaching busy full time and adjunct faculty. This article will describe the process used to create and sustain a Virtual Center for Teaching Excellence (vCTE) at a diverse, mid sized university campus. This process required connection between departmental faculty developers and stakeholders, change of the campus mindset, and conservation of resources through shared efforts. Challenges faced and recommendations to overcome those challenges will …