Online and Distance Education Commons^™

Beyond Behavior, Craig C. Laupheimer

Scholarship and Engagement in Education

Teaching to engage students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) can inspire the whole classroom and make teaching and learning engaging and exciting. Although teachers and students alike face a challenging educational landscape, much can be done to empower students with special needs. Teaching with the whole classroom in mind with an emphasis on hands on, explorative and inspirational learning experiences to accommodate for these students strengthens and causes student engagement and agency. This article highlights the challenges and potential breakthroughs possible for classroom instruction specifically where the ADHD student is concerned and looks towards teaching mindfulness and empowerment as …

Integrating Twitter Into The Classroom, Toria Felton

Master of Education in Instructional Design and Technology Plan II Graduate Projects

The purpose of this project was to research, create, and implement lesson plans that utilized Twitter in the classroom. This project was also used to gauge how students felt about using social media in the classroom. It showed professors how to effectively and easily use the app in the classroom, which helped them to connect with more students and work on a platform that was of interest to many of the students.

Collaborative Online Instruction: A Care Ethics Perspective, Colette Rabin, Grinell Smith

Faculty Publications

Isolation is often a problem in online courses. In this qualitative study, we used care ethics perspectives to design the social organization of an online course to foster the development of robust collaborative professional relationships. Redesign focused on two areas. First, we centered all assignments on complex real-world problems. Second, we used dialogic instructor-assisted self-assessment. We found that students built professional relationships through dialogue, and simultaneously produced high-quality work. The significance of this work lies in its potential to help other instructors address the challenge of helping teachers adopt collaboration as a professional disposition.

2016 Ijbe Front Matter, Tamra Connor

International Journal for Business Education

1. Editorial Board
2. President's Letter
3. SIEC-ISBE International

Pre-College Deaf Students’ Understanding Of Fractional Concepts: What We Know And What We Do Not Know, Keith Mousley, Christopher Kurz

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

Mathematical knowledge and skills are crucial to success in academics and the workplace. The Common Core State Standards emphasizes fraction teaching and learning in elementary school. This mixed-method study explores fraction concept understanding among 14 deaf and hard of hearing participants between the ages of 8 and 16, as quantitatively measured by their ability to describe the properties of fractional numbers, convert between fractional numbers and their visual representations, and determine the order and equivalence of fractional numbers. Furthermore, the qualitative study was supplemented by interviews with the deaf participants and surveys with their parents and teachers to examine use …

Realizing The Dream: African American Males’ Narratives That Encouraged The Pursuit Of Doctoral Education, Ted N. Ingram

Journal of Research Initiatives

This article used personal narratives to discover factors affecting the decision of African American males to consider doctoral education. This study was based on qualitative interviews with 18 African American male doctoral students enrolled at predominantly white institutions as they reflected on their reasons for pursuing an advanced degree. The following were found to influence their decision: (a) need for faculty encouragement, (b) motivation to pursue a doctorate, and (c) their personal motivations. Recommendations are offered for increasing the numbers of African American male doctoral students.

Fostering An Inclusive Stem Workforce, Cary A. Supalo Dr.

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

The following keynote address was delivered by Dr. Cary A. Supalo at the 2015 Training Workforce and Development and diversity conference which is one of the divisions that is part of NIH’s general medical sciences. This conference was attended by over 500 program directors from all of the T32 sponsored projects in 2015. This presentation discussed the importance of a full inclusive STEM workforce that includes persons with disabilities

The Design Of E-Learning Resources For Part-Time Distance Education Students, Rowena Hennigan

Teaching Fellowships

This research assessed the current e-learning provision for Ibec postgraduate students at DIT. The current e-learning resources are delivered using Webcourses (Blackboard), which is the Institute’s Learning Management System (LMS).1 The first stage of the research involved an audit of the existing e-learning resources on Webcourses, discussions with colleagues and a review of the e-learning literature. This research indicated that there were five key elements required in the programme’s e-learning design, namely: user experience, assessment, module content, interactivity of content and the updating of module content. A number of amendments were made in order to provide standardisation and to enhance …

A Big Idea: The Rollout Of Open Suny, Karen E. Case

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Leveraging technology may be a viable solution in the higher education industry as enrollments decline and institutions have a hard time meeting their projected budgets. One innovative approach to mitigating this problem was approved in March of 2013 by the Board of Trustees of the State University of New York (SUNY). It is called Open SUNY. Open SUNY consists of nine components: the creation and expansion of online programs to meet workforce development needs, the development of online credit-bearing experiential learning experiences, support for training of faculty who opt to use emerging technologies, support for student access to online courses, …

Community College Faculty Dispositions Towards Blended Learning, Robin A. Hill

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Community colleges are being encouraged to find and provide access to higher education by offering more flexible course delivery methods to meet the needs of their diverse student body. At the same time, these institutions must retain their quality of instruction, accountability for learning outcomes, and institutional obligations. Blended learning, where students attend class both on campus and online, is promoted as one solution for attaining such goals. Among the four-year undergraduate population, blended learning has been shown to support student success, meet diverse learning styles, and meet institutional obligations; however, research within the community college population is limited. In …

Effective Teaching Practices In Online Higher Education, Kim Mcmurtry

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

In the context of continuing growth in online higher education in the United States, students are struggling to succeed, as evidenced by lower course outcomes and lower retention rates in online courses in comparison with face-to-face courses. The problem identified for investigation is how university instructors can ensure that effective teaching and learning is happening in their online courses. The research questions were:

1. What are the best practices of effective online teaching in higher education according to current research?
2. How do exemplary online instructors enact teaching presence in higher education?
3. What are the best practices of effective online teaching in …

Practising Teaching Using Virtual Classroom Role Plays, Barney Dalgarno, Sue Gregory, Vicki Knox, Torsten Reiners

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Practice in the role of the teacher is an essential part of teacher education, however professional experience placements are becoming increasingly difficult to find. Consequently, additional university-based teaching practice, such as classroom role play with student teacher peers is important. Classroom role plays can be effective but there are limits to the realism of the experience and such strategies are not feasible for students studying at a distance. This article reports on a study in which a classroom in the virtual world of Second Life was used to house role plays of student teachers in preparation for their first professional …

Active Learning Online, Natalie Bishop, Emily Robertson

Instructional Modules for Professional learning Responding to Opportunities and Valuing Educators (IMPROVE)

This module is designed to support instructors in engaging students by incorporating active learning strategies in the online learning environment.

Instructors will be presented with a series of online activities ranging from beginner to advanced in their implementation. Aligned with course content, each learning activity provides students an opportunity to apply higher order thinking and 21st century skills.

Visit professional learning module.

Blended Learning For Faculty Professional Development Incorporating Knowledge Management Principles, Julie E. Hewitt

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Adjunct faculty comprise a large percentage of part-time faculty for many colleges and universities today. Adjunct faculty are hired because they are experts in their content areas; however, this does not guarantee that they are skilled in effective classroom management. These instructors can become bewildered and frustrated because they lack the knowledge and skills that are needed to run an effective classroom.

While educational organizations have adopted blended learning environments as an effective delivery method for their students, this method has not gained much traction as a way to deliver instruction to their own employees. Thus, there are opportunities to …

Visualizing Revision: Leveraging Student-Generated Between-Draft Diagramming Data In Support Of Academic Writing Development, Justin Olmanson, Katrina Kennett, Alecia Magnifico, Sarah Mccarthey, Bill Cope, Duane Searsmith, Mary Kalantzis

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Once writers complete a first draft, they are often encouraged to evaluate their writing and prioritize what to revise. Yet, this process can be both daunting and difficult. This study looks at how students used a semantic concept mapping tool to re-present the content and organization of their initial draft of an informational text. We examine the processes of students at two different schools as they remediated their own texts and how those processes impacted the development of their rhetorical, conceptual, and communicative capacities. Our analysis suggests that students creating visualizations of their completed first drafts scaffolded self-evaluation. The mapping …

Teaching Presence And Intellectual Climate In A Structured Online Learning Environment, Janice Marie Orcutt

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Teaching presence and its implications for the intellectual climate of an online classroom cannot be fully understood unless explored from the perspective of the instructors who experience it. Framed in the theoretical perspective of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model, this collective case study investigated the actions, intentions and perceptions of instructors with the intent of developing an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon of teaching presence as it was established in a structured online learning environment.

The experiences of selected successful instructors in this specific online context were explored to gain insight on how pedagogical choices influenced the establishment of …

What Does Motivated Mean? Re-Presenting Learning, Technology, And Motivation In Middle Schools Via New Ethnographic Writing, Justin Olmanson

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This article offers a critique of the way middle schoolers are often positioned as generalizable objects that can be acted upon to produce measurable increases in motivation and learning. The critique invites a reconsideration and cultural analysis of some of the dominant discourses and perceptions of technology, young adolescence, and the study of motivation. The use of New Ethnographic Writing—a method that performs a cultural critique via extended scenes—connects to the roles and status of motivation, technology, and educational research methods deployed within public schools. Coupled with weak theory, this approach offers a way to understand young adolescents as navigating …

Exploring Quality Teaching In The Online Environment Using An Evidence-Based Approach, Elena Prieto-Rodriguez, Jennifer Gore, Kathryn Holmes

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Online learning is increasingly ubiquitous in higher education. However, research regarding online teaching often focuses on the affordances of the online environment rather than on the quality of pedagogy. In this paper we consider how online learning could be enhanced using rich pedagogical models that are consistent with a wealth of existing knowledge on pedagogy for face-to-face settings. To do so, we apply an established framework, the Quality Teaching model, to explore pedagogy in the online environment and illustrate its potential benefits using a case study of 60 students in a tertiary mathematics teacher education program. We conclude that the …

Comparison Of Beginning Teachers' And Experienced Teachers' Readiness To Integratetechnology As Measured By Tpack Scores, Heather S. Fontanilla

Dissertations

Despite a growing awareness of the importance of technology in education, increased investment and attention to preparing teachers to integrate technology into the classroom, research shows that technology continues to fail to live up to its potential for transforming education. As schools move from standards based testing to implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), an expectation exists that teachers will be using technology to transform their teaching practices. There is also an expectation that schools are providing students with 21st century skills, including the use of technology. In exploring the reasons teachers are not using technology effectively, much …

Motivating Factors And Barriers To The Online Faculty Professional Development, Kathryn L. Miller

Morehead State Theses and Dissertations

A capstone submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education in the College of Education at Morehead State University by Kathryn L. Miller on April 16, 2015.

Building A Community Of Practice For English-As-A-Foreign Language Tutors During Private Tutoring, Doaa S. Mahrous

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The creation of a community of practice of tutors--a shared practice among a group of people who share the same domain--enables second-language learners to facilitate their acquisition of English by embracing new learning strategies while they learn the target language. The community of tutors’ perspective allows for the incorporation of the individual’s particular second-language-acquisition needs and goals. This presentation presents a proposed study that took place at the Yasuda Center at California State University, San Bernardino in the summer of 2015. Students in the English Language Program housed in the College of Extended Learning were asked to participate in tutoring …

Deaf Children’S Science Content Learning In Direct Instruction Versus Interpreted Instruction, Kim B. Kurz, Brenda Schick, Peter C. Hauser

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

This research study compared learning of 6-9th grade deaf students under two modes of educational delivery – interpreted vs. direct instruction using science lessons. Nineteen deaf students participated in the study in which they were taught six science lessons in American Sign Language. In one condition, the lessons were taught by a hearing teacher in English and were translated in ASL via a professional and certified interpreter. In the second condition, the lessons were taught to the students in ASL by a deaf teacher. All students saw three lessons delivered via an interpreter and three different lessons in direct ASL; …

What I Taught My Stem Instructor About Teaching: What A Deaf Student Hears That Others Cannot, Annemarie Ross, Randy K. Yerrick

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

Overall, science teaching at the university level has remained in a relatively static state. There is much research and debate among university faculty regarding the most effective methods of teaching science. But it remains largely rhetoric. The traditional lecture model in STEM higher education is limping along in its march toward inclusion and equity. The NGSS and Common Core reform efforts do little to help university science teachers to change their orientation from largely lecture-driven practice with laboratory supplements. While it is impossible to address all diverse student groups, the need for accommodations tend to be overlooked. As a Deaf …

The Effects Of Professional Development On Online Adjunct Faculty Job Satisfaction In A Community College Setting, Marie Ferguson

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This quantitative causal comparative research study, guided by Herzberg’s (1964) Two Factor Theory of Motivation, and conducted with 106 online adjunct faculty members teaching at a community college in a Southeastern state, examined the effects of four types of professional development (PD) training for online instruction (i.e., fully online, fully face-to-face, blended [online and face-to-face], and none) on online adjunct faculty members’ levels of motivation and hygiene job satisfaction. Data were analyzed using two one-way MANCOVAs. The first one-way MANCOVA addressed the first research question, which inquired if there were significant differences across online instruction PD training groups on the …

A Needs Analysis For Social Media At A Southern Postsecondary Campus, Sheri Burnett

Morehead State Theses and Dissertations

A capstone submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education in the College of Education At Morehead State University by Sheri Burnett on October 26, 2015.

Ambiguity In Speaking Chemistry And Other Stem Content: Educational Implications, Mick D. Isaacson, Michelle Michaels

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

Ambiguity in speech is a possible barrier to the acquisition of knowledge for students who have print disabilities (such as blindness, visual impairments, and some specific learning disabilities) and rely on auditory input for learning. Chemistry appears to have considerable potential for being spoken ambiguously and may be a barrier to accessing knowledge and to learning. Educators in chemistry may be unaware of, or have limited awareness of, potential ambiguity in speaking chemistry and may speak chemistry ambiguously to their students. One purpose of this paper is to increase awareness of potential ambiguity in speaking chemistry and other STEM fields …

A Study Of Online Professional Development For Principals As The Course For Statewide Change, Casimer F. Badynee

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

In America, local, state, and federal interventions have played a critical role in public education reform since the late 18th century. The reform efforts of the late 20th century and early 21st century have involved legislative acts to improve accountability for student performance. Illinois state law mandated a teacher observation and evaluation protocol for public school administrators. Principals participated in a rigorous, online, professional development training program. The focus of the training program was to build principal self-efficacy and to indirectly impact the learning environment. This study assesses the effectiveness of the online training program as a professional development vehicle …

Faculty Expectations Toward Their Online Courses: Are They On The Same Screen With Their Students?, John A. Huss, Shannon Eastep

Journal of Inquiry and Action in Education

This action research study explored attitudes and expectations of faculty at a Midwestern university who taught at least one fully online course during 2014. The study focused on instructor perceptions toward and experiences with web-based instruction, particularly in the critical areas of assessment and feedback; course organization; interaction with students; course flexibility; and overall communication. Findings were then compared to student responses from the authors’ previous study. A mixed-methods electronic survey blended a quantitative component in the form of 21 fixed response items with a qualitative element accomplished through two narrative response questions where content analysis was used to compress …

Remind Them In Their World, Brent Zweifel

SIDLIT Conference

This session will be about how the presenter used the service of Remind in his online class. The presenter will show participants how to setup a Remind class, how to get students to sign up to receive messages from Remind, and show some of the other features of Remind.

Cultural Learning Processes Through Local Wisdom: A Case Study On Adult And Lifelong Learning In Thailand, John A. Henschke Edd

Adult Education Faculty Works

This article provides the background and concept of Thailand Lifelong Learning [LLL], even attempting a definition. The Thai LLL vision encompasses strategies for developing human qualities such as integrity, self-reliance, adaptability, resilience, and spirituality, to name a few. In some regards LLL seeks to recapture a more fully-developed perspective, on what in earlier times and places [1238 AD in Thailand], was called 'indigenous education', as it now pursues the benefits of a vibrant Learning Society. Progress of LLL in Thailand at times seems to be very slow and methodological rather than dynamic. It stems from developing a policy of learning …