Education Commons^™

Evaluation Of The Availability And Use Of Information Resources And Services By Sandwich Students: A Case Study Of Lead City University, Ibadan, Oyo State., Albert O. Adetunji, Taofeek Abiodun Oladokun

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Abstract

Part-time and Distance education is fast gaining global acceptance with millions of enrolments annually. Stakeholders have argued that, just like regular students, those who chose this mode of study deserve the highest quality services available. As a result, Library and Information service providers are seeking to understand this group of users in order to properly meet their information needs and design services that best fit their unique characteristics. The study thus examined the availability and use of Library and Information Services by Part-time, Students at Lead City University, Ibadan, Nigeria. A self administered questionnaire was used to gather data. …

Military Veterans And Their Motivation To Persist In Distance Education Doctoral Programs, Paula Ann Ross

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This transcendental phenomenological study examined military veterans’ motivational experiences who persisted to complete distance education (DE) doctoral programs in the United States. The theory guiding the research was self-determination theory (SDT), a theory of human motivation, development, and wellness that frames how motivation influences behavior, in this case, persistence. Various data sources (demographics questionnaire, timeline, advice letter, and semi-structured interview) triangulated a snowball sample of nine participants’ (six males and three females) motivational experiences. The SDT framework guided the answer to and informed the analysis of the central research question providing three theoretical constructs: (a) autonomy, (b) competence, and c) …

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 …

Radiography Faculty Perceptions Of The Effectiveness Of Asynchronous Online Courses, Shirley J. Cherry

Shirley J. Cherry

The purpose of this study was to assess radiography faculty perceptions of the effectiveness of asynchronous online courses. Learning effectiveness in a web-based virtual learning environment (VLE) was the conceptual framework for this project (Piccoli, Ahmad, & Ives, 2001). For the purposes of this study, learning effectiveness was defined as the quality of learning being comparable between online and traditional courses (Moore, 2011).

Ten research questions were used to guide this study, and statistical tests were conducted to evaluate 17 null hypotheses. The statistical tests included use of one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), Pearson correlations, and single-sample t-tests. Ten of …

Comparing Active Duty And Transitional Military Veteran Students' Evaluation Of Online Distance Higher Education Learning Environments, Sherry Crissman

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Active duty service members’ participation in non-traditional higher education designed for veterans and other non-traditional adults can be uniquely impacted by their unpredictable military schedules, geographic instability, and frequently limited access to technology needed to complete course requirements while in remote areas. The purpose of this study was to examine whether active duty undergraduates differed significantly regarding their attitudes toward distance learning and their perceptions of the distance learning environment compared to veterans and non-traditional adults. This causal comparative study examined adult students’ perceptions after participating in 200-level undergraduate education delivered online at a private four-year institution based on their …

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 …

Student And Faculty Perceptions Of Live Synchronous Distance Education For Allied Health Students Following Program Expansion To A Rural Campus, Betsy J. Becker, Kelsey Rutt, Allyson Huntley, Harlan Sayles, Kim Michael

Internet Journal of Allied Health Sciences and Practice

Background & Purpose: Distance education (DE) is a means to meet allied health workforce needs in rural locations where healthcare worker shortages are apparent. Five allied health programs were expanded to a rural campus teaching synchronously using distance education technology. The purpose of this convergent parallel mixed methods study was to explore perceptions of allied health students and faculty at two campus locations.

Methods: Quantitative and qualitative information were collected through a survey of students and faculty (physical therapy, physician assistant, and medical imaging [diagnostic medical sonography, radiography, magnetic resonance imaging] programs). Both campuses served as live and distance sites …

A Comparison Of Online And Traditional Chemistry Lecture And Lab, E. K. Faulconer, J. C. Griffith, Beverly L. Wood, S. Acharyya, D. L. Roberts

Publications

While the equivalence between online and traditional classrooms has been well researched, very little effort has been expended to do such comparisons for college level introductory chemistry. The existing literature has only one study that investigated chemistry lectures at an entire course level as opposed to particular course components such as individual topics or exams. Regarding lab courses, only one study is available and it involves moderating variables that are largely uncontrolled. In this work, we compared the student pass rates, withdrawal rates, and grade distributions between asynchronous online and traditional formats of an introductory chemistry lecture as well as …

Community College Second Language Students’ Perspectives Of Online Learning: A Phenomenological Case Study, Li-Lee Tunceren

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this phenomenological case study, I elicited the perspectives of first-year community college second language (L2) students enrolled in an online general education course, Studies in Applied Ethics. Four L2 participants narrated their lived experiences and impressions of distance learning via Skype interviews at early, mid, and end-of-semester junctures. The Distance Education instructional model Community of Inquiry (COI) served as the theoretical framework for the inquiry. The multilingual participants suggested the COI components Teaching Presence (design and facilitation of the course) and Learning Presence (self-regulated learning behaviors) led to Cognitive Presence (the understanding of and ability to demonstrate content …

Elements Of A Successful Distance Education Program: One Example, Kevin S. Collins

ASA Multidisciplinary Research Symposium

The purpose of this presentation is to list the technology requirements of a successful distance education program. Benefits of offering a distance education program will also be shared.

Using World Of Warcraft To Teach Research Methods In Online Doctoral Education: A Student-Instructor Duoethnography, Chareen Snelson, Christopher I. Wertz, Kimberly Onstott, Jason Bader

The Qualitative Report

The educational potential of games has captured the ongoing interest of scholars and educators who have sought to understand when, how, and under what conditions games support the teaching and learning process. General knowledge of how games support literacy, scientific thinking, or social learning has been theorized and researched, but some applications of game-based learning remain unexplored. One area where much remains to be learned is within online doctoral education and particularly in the poorly understood area of research methods education. In this study, three doctoral students and an instructor collaboratively field-tested a set of instructional activities within World of …

Teacher Working Conditions: Perceptions Of Novice And Experienced K-12 Virtual School Teachers, Tiffany Francis

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this study was to examine if there is a difference between novice and experienced teachers’ perceptions of the working conditions at the K-12 virtual school. This study examined the teachers’ total years employed at the school to determine if a difference exists in the groups’ perceptions of the teacher working conditions. Teacher working conditions were measured by the North Carolina Teacher Working Conditions (NC TWC) survey that was administered to North Carolina teachers. A causal-comparative research design was used to conduct the study. A convenience sample of (N = 318) licensed K-12 virtual school instructors participated in …

The Effect Of Haptic Interaction And Learner Control On Student Performance In An Online Distance Education Course, Marty J. Park

Theses and Dissertations--Curriculum and Instruction

Today’s learners are taking advantage of a whole new world of multimedia and hypermedia experiences to gain understanding and construct knowledge. While at the same time, teachers and instructional designers are producing these experiences at rapid paces. Many angles of interactivity with digital content continue to be researched, as is the case with this study.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether there is a significant difference in the performance of distance education students who exercise learner control interactivity effectively through a traditional input device versus students who exercise learner control interactivity through haptic input methods. This study …

A Professional Development Certification Program For Instructors Teaching In The Online Environment And Student Completion And Success Rates At A Midwestern Community College: An Ex Post Facto Study, Marie L. Gardner

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The increased demand for online courses in higher education, particularly at community colleges, highlights two concerns: 1) online courses have high drop-out rates and 2) the prevalence of part-time instructors teaching online courses. As demand for online increases, administrators are challenged to hire faculty who are knowledgeable about their content and also qualified to teach in the online environment. Since the quality of online programs depends upon the performance of faculty, community colleges that offer online programs should provide training and on-going support for their instructors. The literature indicates that a best practice in online education to facilitate student learning …

Ramp Up For Research Days : On-Campus + Online = Success, Meaghan Corbett, Brian Mcdonald, Velda Jones, Alexis Ankersen, Gisela Butera

Himmelfarb Library Faculty Posters and Presentations

During fall 2015, Himmelfarb Library and The George Washington University Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) collaborated to increase health sciences student participation in GW’s annual Research Days event. The library launched two new initiatives designed to target both on-campus students and Distance Education (DE) students: six “Ramp Up to Research Days” workshops with both in-class and WebEx components, and a customized Research Days portal within the Health Sciences Research Commons (HSRC) digital repository.

Best Practices In Online Pedagogy: A Pearson Correlation Analysis Between Teaching Evaluation Scores And Transactional Distance Scores In Online Graduate Courses, William Angrove

All Theses And Dissertations

The purpose of this quantitative study was to discover how four universally recognized best practices in online pedagogy affected teaching evaluation scores in online graduate courses. The four best practices in online pedagogy are: Course Organization and Presentation, Learning Objectives and Assessments, Instructor-Student Interpersonal Interaction, and the Appropriate Use of Video or Multimedia. The researcher modified these best practices from the Jaggars and Xu (2016) Online Course Quality Rubric. The study utilized Dr. Michael G. Moore’s (1973) theory of transactional distance to understand the relationship between teaching evaluation scores and transactional distance. University instructional designers assessed and …

Teaching Distance Education In Library Science: A Comparative Study Of Faculty Satisfaction, Teaching Effectiveness, And Support Services, David S. Adams

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine whether distance education technologies, institutional support services and/or faculty demographics have a relationship to the job satisfaction of faculty teaching in American Library Association (ALA) accredited master of library and information science programs (MLS) delivered through online distance education. A better understanding of faculty satisfaction in these areas will allow universities to more effectively select technologies and design/maintain support services that can contribute to faculty morale, teaching effectiveness, and program quality in distance education.

The researcher studied faculty in MLS programs because the discipline of library science interconnects academe, information collection and …

Student Attitudes About Distance Education: Focusing On Context And Effective Practices, Esther Smidt, Jennifer Bunk, Bridget Mcgrory, Rui Li, Tanya Gatenby

Esther Smidt

There has been an unquestionable upsurge in distance education in recent years. Given this, it is extremely important to understand the experience of online courses from students’ perspectives. The purpose of the current qualitative study is to understand student attitudes about distance education in a specific context, namely that of a Mid-Atlantic mid-sized state university. We then translate our findings into practical recommendations for instructors. Data sources consist of journal entries written by 36 teacher candidates taking the course, Teaching English Language Learners PreK-12. Findings are categorized according to Course Characteristics, e.g. students have definite opinions about the use of …

Faculty Attitudes About Distance Education, Esther Smidt, Brian Mcdyre, Jennifer Bunk, Rui Li, Tanya Gatenby

Esther Smidt

In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in distance learning in higher education. Given this, it is extremely important to understand faculty attitudes about distance education, not only because they can vary widely, but also because it is the faculty, through their design and implementation of online courses, that will shape the future of distance education. The purpose of the present study is to uncover faculty attitudes about distance education in a specific context, namely that of a mid-sized mid-Atlantic state university. Data sources consist of posts from two of six discussion boards written by 21 faculty participants …

Qualitative Case Study On The Perspective Of Pennsylvania Superintendents On Distance Education In K-12 Public School Districts, Stephanie Pennucci

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Distance education is rapidly changing the way K-12 students learn. School districts use it for course recovery, to supplement the curriculum with additional courses, and to offer alternative educational opportunities. Pennsylvania’s 500 public school superintendents face a unique challenge in an economic recession, severe cuts in state funding, and competition from cyber charter schools. The purpose of this qualitative intrinsic case study is to understand the impact of distance education on the experiences of Pennsylvania public school superintendents as they deal with the influence of distance education in their programs, particularly the implementation of cyber charter schools. As the educational …

Effective Collaborations In Multi-Campus And Online Environments Using Libguides, Rebecca Rose, Mary Ann Cullen, Sofia A. Slutskaya

Georgia Library Quarterly

The paper presents a series of case studies that describe and demonstrate successful collaborations created via partnerships with instructors, departments, and other groups in both multi-campus and online environments at Georgia Perimeter College (GPC) where all three authors worked together as librarians for five years. The case studies illustrate the use of LibGuides in building librarian-librarian and librarian-­faculty partnerships to support teaching and other campus activities. This discussion includes successful strategies for establishing connections and adopting LibGuides as communication tool for collaborative projects.

Preparing E-Learning Designers Using Kolb's Model Of Experiential Learning, Joanna Dunlap, J. Dobrovolny, David Young

Joanna Dunlap

In this article, Joanna Dunlap, Jackie Dobrovolny, and David Young describe their approach to the design of a real-world learning experience that prepares online graduate students to work as e-learning designers and specialists. Using Kolb's model of experiential learning to support their instructional design decisions, Dunlap, Dobrovolny, and Young have created a series of online instructional-design courses in which students use a variety of e-learning technologies and tools to discuss instructional strategies and to provide support and feedback to each other on the e-learning products they design individually. This approach allows school and the real world to be integrated in …

From Pixel On A Screen To Real Person In Your Students' Lives: Establishing Social Presence Using Digital Storytelling, Patrick Lowenthal, Joanna Dunlap

Joanna Dunlap

The Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework is a comprehensive guide to the research "and" practice of online learning. One of the most challenging aspects of establishing a CoI in online courses is finding the best way to attend to each element of the CoI framework in a primarily text-based environment. In our online courses, we have examined the use of digital storytelling as a way to break down the barriers that can get in the way of achieving a healthy and productive CoI. In this paper, we describe how we use digital storytelling to establish our social presence as instructors.

Distance Education More Expensive Than Thought., Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

Cost is one of the big issues facing higher education.

Diminishing government funding has spiraled

the expense of attending public colleges and

universities, which, in turn, has increased the debt

burden on students to more than a trillion dollars.

Facing this issue has become a national concern

for many politicians. State legislators and governors,

as well as executives of some for-profit

education companies, have been pushing distance

education (mostly in the form of on-line courses)

as the solution.

Documenting Student Connectivity And Use Of Digital Annotation Devices In Virginia Commonwealth University Connected Courses: An Assessment Toolkit For Digital Pedagogies In Higher Education, Laura Gogia

Theses and Dissertations

Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) is implementing a large scale exploration of digital pedagogies, including connected learning and open education, in an effort to promote digital fluency and integrative thinking among students. The purpose of this study was to develop a classroom assessment toolkit for faculty who wish to document student connectivity in course-related blogging and microblogging (“tweeting”) activities. Student use of digital annotation devices, including hyperlinks, embedded images, mentions, and hashtags, were studied in four university courses as potential indicators of student connectivity, defined as the ability to connect current thoughts and experience with other concepts and people across space …

Radiography Faculty Perceptions Of The Effectiveness Of Asynchronous Online Courses, Shirley J. Cherry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to assess radiography faculty perceptions of the effectiveness of asynchronous online courses. Learning effectiveness in a web-based virtual learning environment (VLE) was the conceptual framework for this project (Piccoli, Ahmad, & Ives, 2001). For the purposes of this study, learning effectiveness was defined as the quality of learning being comparable between online and traditional courses (Moore, 2011).

Ten research questions were used to guide this study, and statistical tests were conducted to evaluate 17 null hypotheses. The statistical tests included use of one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), Pearson correlations, and single-sample t-tests. Ten of …

Delivering The Parent-Implemented Communication Strategies ( Pics ) Intervention Using Distance Training And Coaching With A Father And His Child Who Is Hard Of Hearing, Marc Daczewitz

Theses and Dissertations

Many children with disabilities (i.e., deaf/hard of hearing; DHH) experience language delays (Sarant, Holt, Dowell, Rickards, & Blamey, 2009). Parents of children who are DHH can mediate their children's language delays with responsive communication (Guralnick, 2011; Pressman, Pipp-Siegel, & Yoshinaga-Itano, 1999; Warren & Brady, 2007). This study is a partial replication of the Parent-Implemented Communication Strategies (PiCS) Project (Meadan, Angell, Stoner, & Daczewitz, 2014). The PiCS project was implemented with 11 parents and their children with various disabilities (e.g., Down syndrome, Autism Spectrum Disorder). These parents were trained and coached to use naturalistic teaching strategies (i.e., environmental arrangement, modeling, mand-model, …

Exploring The Phenomenon Of Presence In An Online Educational Environment Through The Lived Experiences Of Graduate Nursing Faculty, John G. Rosselli

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, the phenomenon of presence in an online educational environment is explored through the lived experiences of graduate nursing faculty who teach online.

Greater understanding of the phenomenon of presence in online educational environments may lead to better learner-instructor relationships, higher levels of inquiry and critical thinking on the part of faculty and students, and ultimately better student outcomes. Utilizing principles of Hermeneutic Phenomenology and deductive inquiry, and based on the learner-centric Being There for the Online Learner Model, the author conducted in-depth interviews with a purposive sample of 13 graduate nursing faculty members who teach online at …

Faculty Attitudes About Distance Education, Esther Smidt, Brian Mcdyre, Jennifer Bunk, Rui Li, Tanya Gatenby

Languages & Cultures Faculty Publications

In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in distance learning in higher education. Given this, it is extremely important to understand faculty attitudes about distance education, not only because they can vary widely, but also because it is the faculty, through their design and implementation of online courses, that will shape the future of distance education. The purpose of the present study is to uncover faculty attitudes about distance education in a specific context, namely that of a mid-sized mid-Atlantic state university. Data sources consist of posts from two of six discussion boards written by 21 faculty participants …