This study examined whether art lessons, provided using an Interactive Whiteboard (IWB), were effective in transferring learning to a diverse student population. The descriptive investigation focused on three main areas; the impact of the IWB on student learning, the time invested in integrating the IWB, and the compatibility of the IWB with my teaching style. The research took place over fourteen weeks starting in late August, 2006, and continued in my art room during the first quarter of the school year. Data were collected through daily journal entries, video taped lessons and interviews. Although long hours were required for training and creating IWB lessons, student participation increased by 60% and the active learning produced deeper understanding and retention of the lessons. Utilization of the SMART Board (TM) facilitated whole group learning by accommodating diverse learning styles and student needs.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture / Katie Kingery-Page / Encouraging creativity is an important part of a child’s education and often not adequately supported by outdoor school environments. Contemporary playgrounds are designed in response to perceptions of liability and a limited interpretation of child development. Prefabricated plastic constructions and expanses of asphalt are poor initiators of creative expression. This project proposes a more stimulating, artistically crafted alternative to the typical playground. Beginning with documented research of play, the project layers psychology, education and humanities to form an understanding of how formal space affects human experience. More specifically, poetry, land art, sculpture, narrative and character studies inform the design solution for a 6.4 acre site at Northview Elementary School in Manhattan, Kansas. Integrated design provides children a meaningful experience of space and direct contact with nature. This design encourages imaginative and creative play, expanding the experiential quality of a contemporary playground.

Alors que le paradigme de la société de la connaissance tend à investir de plus en plus les champs politiques, économiques et sociaux, appréhender le phénomène du volontariat solidaire international sous ce prisme permet de mettre en avant les relations entre employabilité, citoyenneté et identité cognitive. En effet, le volontariat s’inscrit dans une tension entre une vision utilitariste à travers l’acquisition de compétences, une vision collective à travers sa contribution à l’intérêt général, et une conception individuelle liée à la construction identitaire. Etudier le volontariat solidaire à l’international sous l’angle de sa dimension formative et de ses potentielles répercussions dans la suite des parcours professionnels de jeunes adultes participe donc, à notre sens, d’une réflexion plus globale sur les fins et les moyens des apprentissages dans notre société. C’est à partir des parcours professionnels d’anciens volontaires que nous nous sommes intéressées aux répercussions de ce type d’expériences : qu’apprend-on au cours d’expériences de volontariat solidaire à l’international ? Comment ces apprentissages influent-ils dans la suite des parcours professionnels ? Dans quelle mesure les expériences de volontariat jouent-elles un rôle dans le rapport au travail de celles et ceux qui les vivent ? / The paradigm of knowledge society is increasing significantly in political, economic, and social fields. Understanding international volunteering through this lens enables to highlight the links between employability, citizenship and cognitive identity. Indeed, volunteering lies within a tension between a utilitarian vision through skill acquisition, a collective vision by contributing to common interest, and an individual conception linked to identity building. Studying international volunteering for solidarity from the point of view of its formative dimension and its potential impacts on young adults' career paths, contributes to a global reflection on the ends and means of learning in society. Based on career paths of former volunteers, this thesis looks at these experiences' repercussions: what does one learn during an international volunteering experience? What impact does this learning have on career paths' developments? How far are volunteering experiences instrumental in participants' relation to work?

Among researchers within the design area, role play is often spoken about in a positive manner. This study aims to discover the limitations with role play as a tool for experiential learning. This is done by evaluating a prototype of an early-stage concept of a role play-tool. The tool is aimed for Swedish SMEs to raise awareness and create curiosity of guanxi, which is a vital part of Chinese business culture. The tool is compared to another experiential-based tool, Experience Map, with the same purpose but based on real scenarios rather than simulated scenarios. Prototype testing with intended users identified the difficulty of giving instructions on cultural behaviour as one limitation. This limitation is especially difficult in settings where the participants have no previous knowledge within the area, which is the case for this study. Another limitation is the challenge of giving enough instructions for the players to act on, without interrupting the exploration aspect of the tool. Besides, the target group seem to prefer more hands-on tools that are more relevant for their specific business and less time-consuming. The main difference between the tools is that the experience map which is based on real scenarios, creates a greater interest among participants and a higher level of the participants’ willingness to use it.

China’s economy is growing. It has been said that “the question like ‘how to do business with Chinese people’ have occupied the minds of international business people who are planning to enter China.” (Fan & Zigang, 2004). Sweden as a country which listed China as its largest trading partner in Asia and a priority country in Sweden's export strategy, has a need to gain understanding about guanxi –an important concept in Chinese business culture. In this thesis, the author will present the development of three exercises inspired by design methods (role play, visualization and customer journey map) which aim to help Swedish business managers to learn guanxi in an experiential way. It includes the challenges the design team went through, how did they solve it and what are the latest version of the exercises looks like. The main challenges presented in this thesis are: how to embed specific knowledge smoothly into exercise; how to set up the role of facilitator(s); and how to increase the level of satisfaction for the users. Those challenges are not only specific to our project, but also could be inspirational for other people (e.g. designers, business culture scholars and so on) who want to create similar exercises or looking for new ways to deliver the knowledge about cross-cultural business communication.

Thesis advisor: Sharlene Hesse-Biber / Service-learning is an experiential form of education that moves students outside of the walls of academe to meet community-identified needs through the application and renegotiation of a set of theoretical and methodological skills. It is simultaneously a teaching strategy, an epistemological framework, and an educational reform movement. This research takes the form of multi-methodological case studies of service-learning classrooms and service-learning partnerships, examining the translation of feminist pedagogy to the service-learning experience. The voices of students, faculty, pioneers, administrators, and community partners articulate the common and uncommon struggles of teaching a new generation of students to learn and serve in agencies while simultaneously recognizing their own capacity for agency. This work provides evidence that applying feminist pedagogical principles to service-learning initiatives creates more meaningful transformations for our students, faculty, and communities. The interdependent Feminist Service-Learning Process posited here is an innovative framework for moving our students across the civic borders necessary for community engagement. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

Thesis advisor: Dennis Shirley / Schools and classrooms in the United States are increasingly religiously diverse, and religion remains a deeply influential social force, locally, nationally, and globally. However, decades of misunderstanding about the constitutionally appropriate relationship between religion and public education have created a cycle of silence about religion in K-12 schools and in teacher education. As a result, public school educators are not prepared to teach about religion in the curriculum. Nor do they have the skills to respond to common challenges that arise in religiously diverse school communities. This dissertation examines four professional development courses about religious diversity to understand the motivations and experiences of the educators who participated and to explore the impacts these courses had on the educators’ teaching practices. The 145 participants in the professional development courses learned about several religious traditions through a combination of visits to religious communities, guest speakers, and classroom discussion. The mixed methods study surveyed the participants three times, once before the courses, and twice afterwards. Follow-up interviews with 13 educators were conducted approximately one year after they completed the courses. The findings reveal that educators working at all grade levels and in all content areas found valuable benefits from increasing their understanding of religion, including a greater appreciation for the religious identities of their students and increased comfort with religion when it appeared in a range of school settings. Based on my analysis, I propose a framework of Pedagogical Content Knowledge about Religion to describe five domains of knowledge and skills that are necessary for educators to be able to competently respond to religion in public schools. This framework and the findings of this study have valuable implications for the development of future professional development courses and in charting a trajectory for further research on religion in U.S. public schools. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

My research measured completion and retention of procedural learning tasks, and declarative and procedural components of engagement in indoor and outdoor settings. Instructor-assisted Self-Directed Learning and Non-instructor-assisted Self-Directed Learning were implemented in the context of an Experiential Learning approach. Experimental covariates included student-specific variables such as background and experience, and environment-specific variables such as temperature, and humidity. AIC model averaging was used to identify the best-fitting mixed GLM models. Neither location, nor pedagogic method, proved to be a significant predictor of the probability that a student would complete the most complex of the procedural learning tasks, and the percent of students completing this task was not significantly higher in outdoor groups than in indoor groups. Neither location nor pedagogic method was a significant predictor of retention of procedural knowledge or engagement with learning materials. The level of voluntary collaboration was higher in outdoor groups than in indoor groups. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2014. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

The purpose of this study was to investigate the self-directed learning (SDL) readiness of third-year medical students in comparison to previously reported scores for the general population; the relationship between SDL readiness and knowledge-based and performance-based measures of success in a medical school using an integrated medical curriculum; and to determine if knowledge-based and performance-based measures of success are significant in predicting Self-Directed Learning Readiness Survey/Learner Preference Assessment (SDLRS/LPA) and National Board of Medical Examiners Family Medicine Shelf Examination (NBME-FM) scores. This study analyzed SDLRS/LPA scores, knowledge-based scores (NBME-FM), performance-based scores (Objective Structured Clinical Examination [OSCE] and preceptor rating), and a combination of knowledge-based and performance-based scores (final grade). Analyses of 873 students resulted in mean scores of 229.06 + 23.19 for the SDLRS/LPA. Correlations were significant (p < .05) for SDLRS/LPA scores to NBME-FM scores (r = .073, p < .05). OSCE scores (r = .133, p < .01), and final grade (r = .138, p < .01). Regression analysis revealed that the total model of NBME-FM, OSC AVG, and preceptor rating predicted 2.1% of the variation in SDLRS/LPA, which was significant (p < .01). Regression analysis revealed that SDLRS/LPA, OSC AVG and preceptor ratings predicted 9.7% of the variance in NBME-FM, which was significant (p < .001). The results support previous findings that medical students' levels of SDL readiness are higher than the general population mean of 214.0 + 23.49. / While the SDLRS/LPA scores of medical students with knowledge-based and performance-based examinations were modest, they mirror the relationships that have appeared consistently across a number of studies and indicate a tendency for students with higher levels of SDL to perform better in medical preparation programs.The SDLRS/LPA adds an important dimension to the assessment of medical students, addressing the emphasis on ensuring that physician preparation programs produce practitioners who are likely to be continuing, lifelong learners. This investigation of SDL in medical education was unique in that it may be the first to look at the relationships of SDLRS/LPA scores with both knowledge-based and performance-based measures as well as with a combination of knowledge-based and performance-based measures. / by Brian W. FIndley. / Vita. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2009. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2009. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between experiential learning and self-directed learning readiness of bachelor's and master's level social work students. A quantitative design was utilized. The study consisted of 115 senior social work students and 70 master's level social work students (separated into three student groups) from a state university. Students participated in a one-semester field education component as part of their social work degree program. The research instrument utilized was the Self-Directed Learning Readiness Scale (SDLRS) constructed by Guglielmino (1978). The SDLRS is a self-report questionnaire with 58 Likert scale items designed to measure the attitudes, values and abilities of learners relating to their readiness to engage in self-directed learning. A pretest, treatment, posttest design was utilized. Demographic data were collected with the pretest administration and level of satisfaction information was collected with the posttest administration. The bachelor's level social work students demonstrated statistically significant differences in the pre and posttest SDLRS scores while the master's level social work students' changes in readiness for self-directed learning were not significant. It is important to note that the master's level social work students spent only half the amount of hours in the field education as the bachelor's level students at the time of the posttest. Correlations between change score from pretest to posttest SDLRS with students' previous exposure to the field of social work, prior experiential learning in a social work program, their satisfaction with the experiential learning component, and demographic factors of gender, age, ethnicity, marital status, number of children, and number of years pursuing degree were not significant. / The initial SDLRS scores of the bachelor's level students were found to be consistent with those of nursing students previously scored on the SDLRS. In the ANOVA of all groups, significant differences were not found with the four groups of social work students in their change scores of pretest and posttest SDLRS or their overall level of satisfaction with the field experience and overall level of satisfaction with the quality of the supervisor in the field experience. The internship did not demonstrate particular merit for improving readiness for self-directed learning except for the bachelor's level students. However, students were satisfied with the experience and felt it changed their perceptions of self and others. / Beth E. Amey. / Vita. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2008. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, FL : 2008 Mode of access: World Wide Web.