Human Trafficking is the modern-day equivalent of slavery. Those who perpetuate it do so because it is lucrative to invest in a product that can be resold multiple times (Ellis, 2017). The recent advancement of technology has tremendously helped traffickers thrive in the illicit business of Human Trafficking. Social media websites, online classifieds, and mobile applications are quickly becoming some of the major mediums perpetrators utilize to traffick their victims (Latonero, 2012). The purpose of this study was to examine social service workers’ knowledge on the use of technology for Human Trafficking. Face-to-face interviews were conducted and the participants were asked a series of open-ended questions. Participants in this study were recruited from a social service agency in San Bernardino County that frequently serves survivors of Human Trafficking. The study found that all of the participants felt confident in their ability to serve survivors of Human Trafficking. The study also found that most participants had little to no training in regards to the topic, and did not have any knowledge of the kind of language used by perpetrators for Human Trafficking. In order to address the different components of the issue, social service workers should advocate for trainings in order to stay competent in regards to the issue. Social service agencies who serve the community must offer appropriate interventions and services for Human Trafficking survivors. Finally, social service workers should continue to advocate for legislature and policy that will help survivors recover versus legislation and policy that is punitive.

The pervasiveness of sexual violence on college campuses poses a significant problem for students and administrations that seek to promote healthy, safe, and equitable access to higher education. Although federal legislation under Title IX prohibits sexual violence as a form of gender discrimination, cultural climates that promote sexual violence—or rape cultures - continue to inform student experiences on college campuses. This thesis roots the discourse on campus sexual violence in the specific localized context at Scripps College. As a women’s college situated in a small, interconnected consortium of co-ed liberal arts colleges, the case of Scripps College raises critical questions about the ways in which gender and sexism play out on women’s bodies, and influence students’ experiences with embodiment on campus. In this thesis, I present a feminist analysis of the current institutional policies that address sexual violence on campus, in addition to the perspectives of eight student activists currently involved in gender justice work at Scripps College. Due to the fact that each of the Claremont Colleges, including Scripps, is currently in the process of re-evaluating their policies and grievance procedures that address sexual violence on campus, now is a key time to reflect on the past, present, and future of the Claremont Colleges and the role that these institutions play in either deconstructing or reinforcing patriarchal structures of power.

In this thesis, I explore Latino masculinities and contest their uniformity through transforming an oral history conducted with my father into a collection of short stories. Following storytelling traditions of Latino/Mexican culture, I converted an oral history interviews with my dad into a collection of short stories. From these short stories I extracted themes relating to the micro and macro manifestations of gender policing. Drawing from Judith Butler's Theory of performativity and Gloria Anzaldua's theory of Borderland identities, I rethink masculinity and offer Jose Esteban Munoz's theory of disidentification. With these theories in conversation, I analyze the themes of the short stories I present. In Chapter One, I investigate the potential of verguenza and respeto, or shame and respect, to complicate masculinity. In Chapter Two, I critically analyze my father's interaction with INS officials during his interview to become a U.S. resident. In these two sets of stories, I use disidentification to uncover the third space relationship with masculinity. I see this relationship at the intersections of race, class, gender and ability, the identities which come together to leave my father in the borderlands. Ultimately, I complicate masculinity through these analyses, offering a space for a nonoppressive masculinity.

Over the decades, research on heritage language learners has been quite popular, but most studies concern Russian, Spanish and other languages rather than Chinese. The Chinese heritage language learner’s studies focus mainly on K-12 students and their learning motivations, writing characteristics, and identification recognition and those concerned with language acquisition address their vocabulary and verbal Chinese development. There have been very few studies about learning grammar. This study emphasizes on the acquisition of the aspect marker LE among advanced learners. To investigate the acquisition characteristics of advanced CHL learners, this study adopted the advanced CHL learners as the research group and the advanced CFL learners and native speakers as the control groups. A questionnaire survey was designed to investigate the participants' acquisition abilities. The survey utilized "similar semantics, different contexts, and English similarities" related to the aspect marker LE as the interference factors to investigate comprehension abilities and presented five different situations of using LE to investigate production abilities. There were 198 participants in the survey, and 183 effective questionnaires were collected. Analysis of the data showed the following results: all three groups of subjects are equally affected by "similar semantics" and "different contexts" in comprehending the meaning of LE. But CHL and CFL learners are more affected by English interference than NS. In the production survey, CHL learners did better than CFL, but not as well as NS. In terms of comprehension on the aspect marker LE, CHL learners did better than CFL, but not as well as NS. The understanding and production abilities of CHL learners in the United States are better than those of CHL learners in China, and the influence of English on both CHL groups is quite similar. The most important findings of this research are as follows: (1) Even when CHL learners reach the advanced level, they behave nearly native-like at language level, but cannot reach to the level of a native speaker. (2) Advanced CHL learners share similarities with CFL learners in production abilities. (3) The target Chinese language environment has no obvious influence on advanced CHL learners. The results of this study have the following teaching implications: 1) Students are more likely to acquire LE in context; 2) Students are more likely to understand LE after they have clearly understood the semantic meaning of LE; 3) It would benefit advanced Chinese learners in acquiring LE if their study program could tailor classes for them; 4) If the teachers are explicit in explaining the meaning of LE, students will be more likely to understand the semantic meaning of LE and utilized it correctly.

This teaching practice report looks ahead to the learning experiences of students relating to the use of digital media and their collaborative knowledge work within a service-learning project. This project takes into account the increasing digitalisation in higher education, in particular, its didactic-methodical, technological, and organisational implementation, as well as their integration into appropriate learning management systems. Undergraduate students initiated a crowdfunding campaign for young people aged between 12 and 18 in a rural town under the authors’ direction in the bachelor’s degree program “Social Pedagogics and Management” at a University of Applied Science in the Free State of Saxony, Germany. The two-semester course included a flipped classroom concept linked to a community-based learning approach that not only allowed for development of students’ digital literacy skills and a deepening of their theoretical knowledge in the field of alternative financing possibilities in human service organisations but also helped to enhance students’ social engagement. In this context, the learning management system ILIAS provided not only an appropriate digital knowledge architecture for the service-learning project but also offered a wide range of eLearning opportunities, a platform for multi-local project work, and the documentation of ePortfolios. This practice report aims at a short description of the teaching project itself, its implementation, and the results of the mentioned learning scenario and will conclude by summarising how the quality of technology-enhanced higher education pedagogy could be improved in future.

This paper addresses a new conceptual framework for a communitybased project management learning model that aims to support learning within a project and enhance the distribution of knowledge within a particular virtual community. This model also aims to develop a virtual community of doctoral students, who can manage their own projects online with other community members who have the same interest. In order to develop that model, a checklist of community-based project management process has been developed in the light of the literature review and the needs of stakeholders (doctoral students and researchers). Within this model, community-based project management includes three main elements: community, project and management. In relation to project, there are two main sub elements. First is projectbased learning (PBL), which is based on constructivist perspective of learning that make students construct their knowledge when they work together to accomplish specific goals. Second is the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK), which is a project management guide, and an internationally recognized standard [PMBOK Guide, 2004], that provides the fundamentals of project management as they apply to a wide range of projects, including construction, software, engineering, automotive, so the study deploy this approach to scaffold based project management learning model. In the terms of the community element, this study adopted the community of inquiry model, which defines a good e-learning environment through three major aspects: cognitive presence, social presence and teaching presence. The last element which is addressed in this study called knowledge management. After identifying these elements, this study investigates a range of tools in the light of this model. The study analyses six different learning and content management systems (OPAL, Moodle, Joomla, e107, ZMS and TUDWCMS) in order to find out tool(s) that is/are sufficient for implementing the suggested study model.

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This qualitative case study was designed to investigate mentors and mentees and their relationships in a formal group-mentoring program. Results and findings were expected to contribute to the literature on how to best support future new faculty and senior faculty careers by providing data on the opinions of those who participated in the mentoring program. The study may also add to the limited literature on the successes and challenges of using a group mentoring model. The researcher interviewed 20 faculty members who participated in a formal mentoring program. The interviews examined how and in what ways faculty mentors and mentees describe what they understand, integrate, and implement in their relationship after going through this program; the mentors’ and mentees’ perceptions of the materials and activities in the program in supporting their efforts in developing a mentoring relationship; and after completing the mentorship program, the success and challenges in sustaining an effective mentoring relationship. In addition to interviews, a focus group was conducted and archival documentation was reviewed. The study site was a private 4-year college in the eastern region of the United States. Data collection included interviews, a focus group, and documents. Interpretation analysis was used to identify themes. An analysis of the data revealed the importance that experiences, resources, knowledge, trust, support, and feelings of connection to the institution have on an a successful mentoring relationship in a group mentoring model.

Sustainability has emerged in mainstream higher education over the last few years, and the fields of community-based learning and sustainability education are closely linked through their emphases on active, experiential learning in place-based contexts. In order to create ecologically literate citizens to more adequately address environmental problems, there is a logical connection between teaching about sustainability and engaging students in the community, which can serve as a relevant forum to address sustainability issues. However, there is a problem in that educational programs and courses dealing directly with sustainability topics across the higher education landscape often do not emphasize or include experiential, community-based elements. Understanding this relationship is crucial to advance the field of sustainability with meaningful community engagement. This research investigated the pedagogical strategies and frameworks that are foundational in undergraduate capstone courses that include sustainability education and community-based learning. A sample of five community-based, interdisciplinary senior capstone courses at Portland State University was examined through semi-structured interviews with course instructors and syllabi review. Three broad themes emerged as common values among the instructors: connectedness and relationships, community and place, and diversity and inclusiveness. Reflection was a tool utilized universally by instructors to personalize the learning process, cultivate understanding of connectedness and relationships, and incorporate feelings into the learning process. Competencies and skills related to sustainability and those related to civic engagement were very similar; engagement in community is a sustainable practice. This study provides cogent support for the notion that achieving meaningful, transformative sustainability learning requires community-based learning.

Existing literature indicates that although both academics and practitioners recognize knowledge management (KM) as a source of competitive advantage, users are not always willing to use a knowledge management system (KMS). Because of the social nature of knowledge transfer, a KMS can be considered a socio-technical system. Many explanations have been presented for this failure to utilize the KMS. These explanations include a number of the socio-technical factors relating to people, processes, and technologies. While these factors may have significant explanatory power when examined independently, existing studies have not sufficiently addressed the interactions among all three socio-technical factors or their impacts on KMS usage. The goal of this study was to develop a comprehensive understanding of socio-technical factors that impact KMS usage within decision support systems (DSS). A comprehensive framework was presented that will be helpful in developing and improving KMS initiatives and thus improving KM across the organization. This study identified factors of people (self-efficacy, social ties, and ease of use), processes (leadership, culture/climate, and governance), and technologies (system & information quality, and technology fit) and their influence on KMS system usage. Analysis for this problem required a causal, non-contrived field study employing structural equation modeling. Founded on socio-technical systems theory, nine hypotheses were proposed. Data was collected using a 36 item survey distributed to KMS users from a variety of industries in the United States. Confirmatory factor analysis and an eight-stage structural equation modeling procedure were used to analyze 97 usable responses. The results confirmed that technology-oriented factors predicted knowledge seeking and contributing in DSS. Furthermore, significant positive relationships were confirmed between certain sociotechnical factors including: (1) people and process, (2) people and technology, (3) processes and technology, (4) processes and people, (5) technology and people, and (6) technology and processes. These findings extend the relevance and statistical power of existing studies on KMS usage. This study indicated that the most important concerns for increasing KMS usage were system quality, information quality, and technology fit. Results also confirmed that in the context of this study, people-oriented factors (self-efficacy, social ties, and ease of use/usefulness) and organizational process factors (leadership, organizational culture/climate, and governance) were not critical factors directly responsible for increasing KMS usage. However, the relationships among socio-technical factors all had positive significant relationships. Therefore, investments in people and process-oriented factors will create a more favorable perspective on technology-oriented factors, which in turn can increase KMS usage. On a practical front, this study provided indicators to managers regarding a number of desirable and undesirable conditions that should be taken into consideration when developing or implementing knowledge management initiatives and the systems to support them. This study offered an original contribution to the existing bodies of knowledge on socio-technical factors and KMS usage behavior. The constructs presented in this study highlighted the significance of social and technical relationships in understanding knowledge seeking and contribution in a decision-driven organization.