Online and Distance Education Commons^™

Soft Skills In Mississippi Community Colleges' Online Career And Technical Programs, Joanna Sue Alston

Dissertations

Soft skills are an essential piece in the employment puzzle, and most students’ behavioral characteristics require development, if not complete transformation, before learning can subsequently be transferred to the workplace. To that end, this facet of occupational education in community colleges’ online courses was in need of exploration to determine whether instructors were having success in implementing instructional and assessment methods for both teaching and grading students’ soft skills behaviors. This mixed methods study narrowed the focus of an extremely broad topic to four skills, specifically communication, critical thinking, teamwork, and work ethic. A look at how those skills related …

Effectiveness Of Technology In An English Grammar And Punctuation Course, Deborah Brandon

Dissertations

As enrollment in online courses continues to climb, technology also continues to advance to provide students with course designs that promote optimal learning environments. New communication tools continually evolve that help improve learning outcomes in online course designs. The lack of physical class meetings in online classes necessitates a comprehensive focus on course design to optimize learning, including a focus on communication and collaboration opportunities.

Much of the available current research regarding the outcomes of increased online learning investigates the effectiveness of this learning format primarily in the fields of healthcare, foreign language, and the study of English grammar as …