<p> While much has been written about student engagement and its linkage to positive student outcomes&mdash;such as higher-order thinking, improved grades, and increased retention and graduation rates in traditional settings&mdash;little, if any, research has been done to connect student engagement and online student success. Learning Management Systems (LMSs) have the ability to measure student engagement by tracking frequency of logins, frequency of page visits, and frequency of discussion forum views, posts, and replies. Equally important, students who are aware of their levels of engagement compared to those levels measured by an LMS can self-monitor their progress and prevent the likelihood of failing a course. This initial exploratory study sought to determine whether relationships exist between students&rsquo; perceived level of engagement and students&rsquo; actual level of engagement as measured by an LMS, students&rsquo; perceived level of engagement and student success, and students&rsquo; actual level of engagement as measured by an LMS and student success. Correlation and regression analyses were performed to determine type and strength of relationships. Non-probability purposive sampling was used to recruit 38 respondents. Data showed that meaningful findings, which yielded statistically significant, modest or moderate positive partial relationships, occurred in the discussion forums. There were moderate positive relationships between students&rsquo; perceived level of engagement and frequency of discussion forum posts and replies, students&rsquo; perceived level of total engagement and student success, and students&rsquo; frequency of discussion forum views, posts, and replies, and student success. This initial exploratory study is useful in helping to refine future studies and learning more about student engagement levels in an online course and its relationship to positive student outcomes. Results can potentially help administrators and educators in making data-based decisions, and help students self-monitor engagement levels to improve student learning. </p>

<p> The three primary objectives of this project were: (1) to identify and codify a framework for best practices in developing a simulation; (2) to construct a prototype or test simulation based on these best practices, and (3) to create a methodology to assess pedagogical efficacy and economic fidelity.</p><p> While the current body of knowledge is rich in describing the virtues and pitfalls of computer simulation technology that has existed for close to 60 years, the literature nonetheless lacks a codified set of best practices for developers and objective assessment methods to judge a simulation quality for both the pedagogical effectiveness and economic fidelity. This study addresses both issues and offers a solution that is unique and effective. A General Framework for Effective Simulation Development that is derivative, and an extension of existing research in the business simulation domain. A simulation prototype, SimWrite!, has been developed that is consistent with the 12 elements identified in this framework. Each stage of the development of this test simulation is explicitly tied to the best practices that emerged from the literature. A second assessment tool, The Economic Theory Input-Output Matrix, is presented to enable a user to measure the economic fidelity of a simulation. This tool is based on microeconomic theory that is taught at business schools throughout the globe. Both assessment tools will be applied to the test simulation in a manner that will enable the user to replicate this research with other simulations they are interested in. The products of this dissertation are intended to aid current and future developers make better simulations and faculty users of simulations to better select simulations that will help them to achieve the goal of all involved in teaching business: To produce greater learning for students.</p>

<p> The United States has a serious problem in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. The STEM disciplines are suffering from a `Quiet Crisis'[1]. The problem is that African Americans, Latino/a, Native American, and other ethnic minority students are choosing careers in the STEM disciplines at lower percentages than their white and Asian counterparts [2]. We refer to this disparity as underrepresentation. This work focuses on the use of the Culturally Situated Design Tools (CSDTs, <b>http://csdt.rpi.edu</b>) as a means to counter this underrepresentation. The programmable set of CSDTs represents the development of this software from being focused on ethnomathematics, to ethnocomputing. Ethnocomputing is the reproduction of cultural artifacts in simulation. The CSDTs are part of the constructionist genre of programmable software that seeks to teach computer science concepts to students as they construct these cultural artifacts. Development work on the programmable CSDT software has provided the opportunity to examine the challenges that occur in cross cultural software development using the Agile method. This work includes ethnographic user and developer stories that have informed the development of the pCSDT software. Among the challenges of developing this software has been negotiating the controversy of what we have come to term "The Content Agnostic Position". This is the notion that all software with objects in simulation, regardless of what those objects are, possesses equal value in teaching students. This position, however, often results in the commercial or violent colonization of user spaces by corporate produced media objects and simulated gun violence. It is our view that this colonization can be diminished through the use of cultural objects in simulation, such as those found in the CSDTs. Our work is intended to create a decolonized space for mathematics and computing education. This work also reports the findings of a quasi-experiment conducted with junior high school students in Kumasi, Ghana, West Africa during the summer of 2014.</p>

<p> Today's economy is driven by information technology (IT). Education and business should come to an agreement that functional technology skills should be integrated with core academic courses to create an educational system that truly prepares workers for the 21st Century. The business realm theoretical foundation for this study laid on the match/mismatch established between technology&mdash;math education and business' readiness&mdash;[math] skills. The level of education and skills of workers needed by business and industry has increased. Nonetheless, scholars underlined the belief that the skills workers possess are generally not sufficient for the demands of the more sophisticated jobs in today's economy. With this study this researcher pretended to fill the gap in the literature by examining the hypothesis that poor education results in low skills is hampering U.S. businesses and the disparity between what employers need and what workers offer is getting serious enough. Within this investigation the researcher tested for first time three theories: the AST/TML theory, the TAM theory, and the Constructivist theory, whereas having behind scenes K-12's mathematics arena. This study found that "there is no statistically significant relationship between the degree to which teachers accept new technologies and technology usage in mathematics instruction" and that "teachers' individual affective reactions to technology toward integrating computers and technology into math instruction are not related to readiness skills." However, a Post Hoc analysis demonstrated that at least for one of the individual predictors, problem solving construct scores, the null hypothesis was rejected. It means in a long path to academic success, small waves of effectiveness in education are penetrating the sandy beaches of skills. Additionally, this researcher confirmed some scholars' assertion about Confirmatory Factor Analysis, which described that sample sizes smaller than 100 as dangerous and recommended using sample sizes larger than 200 for safe conclusions. Finally, the researcher tested and validated the Technology-Mediated Learning (TML) theory while adding his research positive conclusion(s) to the body of knowledge.</p>

<p> The rapidity of technology innovations appearing in the educational context increased dramatically over the past decade, resulting in 1:1 technology initiatives materializing across the nation. School districts, attempting to keep pace in preparing students with 21st century skills, place technology into the hands of students and teachers to utilize as a teaching and learning tool within the classroom. This qualitative case study set out to explore the 1:1 tablet initiative in the Manhattan Beach Unified School District (MBUSD) and its commitment to 21st century education, which encourages teaching and learning to move from passive to engaged and active learning. </p><p> Grounded in Fullan's theoretical framework of educational change, this study explored both the innovative-focused approach and the capacity-building focus which function concurrently in an effort to inform education reform strategies. In light of new tablet technology, attempts at educational change resulted in success for some districts and failure for others attempting to adopt new innovation and implement change within their organization. Through the lens ofFullan's framework, this study tells the story of MBUSD's endeavor to build a sustainable program along with the capacity of its teachers, principals and district office administrators. </p><p> Participants consisted of three teacher focus groups and 10 site and district administrators who were interviewed for this study. These participants were part of the MBUSD iPad program during its first 2 years of implementation. Through the experiences of these MBUSD stakeholders, the findings identify essential factors districts must consider when contemplating the idea of adopting a 1:1 initiative. The findings highlighted the idea that too much planning can hinder the actual implementation of an adoption of new innovation. Implementing sooner rather than later can be a benefit in lessons learned and the opportunity to discover and adapt through the process. Recommendations for policy and practice relative to the California Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), Common Core State Standards (CCSS), Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) and institutions of higher education are addressed in this study</p>

This dissertation addresses issues related to teaching and learning middle-school mathematical graphing concepts and provides an in-depth analysis on the impact of introducing a new assistive technology in a visually impaired classroom. The motivation, design, implementation, and deployment of the Graph and Number line Input and Exploration (GNIE) software, an auditory graphing tool that enables students with visual impairment to navigate and interact with a coordinate plane or number line graph is presented. Results include a discussion about how a computer-based auditory graphing software can be a beneficial supplement to aiding teachers and students with vision impairment with middle-school based graphing principles. This work also demonstrates that auditory graphing software support collaboration between students of different levels of vision loss and that bone-conduction headphones can be used with software to perform concurrent think aloud protocols without degradation of qualitative data.

<p> In libraries around the world there are people asking librarians for research assistance. As technology has advanced and communication strategies have moved outside the physical library buildings, librarians now respond to reference queries online. This study analyzed two forms of virtual reference; instant messaging (IM) and log-in chat. The purpose of this study was to find out if there is any inherent difference between the way the patrons or the librarians used these two virtual services. </p><p> An exploratory research design focused on numerous aspects of virtual reference communication. During the spring terms of academic years 2011 and 2012 at a community college, 1,341 transcripts of IM and log-in chat sessions were recorded. Using a systematic sampling process, 320 transcripts were sampled and their content analyzed. </p><p> Findings indicate that a length of the transaction significantly affected the outcome of all transactions. Log-in chats were generally longer than IM chats and it was found that; they were more complicated, the librarians were more responsive and friendly, patrons were more satisfied and the librarian was generally able to conduct a reference interview more often. Additionally the findings indicated that both IM and log-in chat were very similar in three aspect; patron formality, completeness/accuracy of the librarians' answer and the reference interview adding/changing or clarifying the patrons question. </p><p> There were four major conclusions of this study: The log-in chat portal had longer online reference transactions and better overall outcomes; instant messaging portal queries, although similar in many aspects to log-in chat, were ultimately treated in a less formal manner by patrons; librarians gave reference interviews and complete/accurate answers equally in both platforms and there were similar overall success rates in both platforms. </p><p> Based on the findings in this study it is recommended that academic libraries serving a general population of students use both the IM and log-in chat portals on their library websites. Patrons appear to appears to be using each portal for different and equally important reasons. Further study of virtual communications practices is needed to enhance the findings of this study as more institutions expand their patron base beyond those who can physically meet with a reference librarian.</p>

<p> Students today are spending a significant amount of time engaged in media activity, yet even with an increase of e-reader compatible smart devices, reading has not increased in popularity among elementary school age children. It is critical that students spend time engaged in meaningful reading activities to become proficient readers. Thus, as educators of these 21^st century learners, we must find a way to increase reader motivation and bridge the gap between home leisure activities and school activities. The objective of this study was to determine the impact of reading enhanced e-books on the iPad vs. traditional storybooks with regard to motivation to read, reading comprehension and fluency. Qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection were used, over a period of four weeks with 22 first grade student participants. The results of this study suggested that e-books are more appealing than traditional print books and as equally appealing, if not more appealing to students than educational apps. By the end of the study, all students were fluently reading books at least one guided reading level higher. The results from this study showed that students benefited from the combination of e-books and traditional storybooks, with this method resulting in increased fluency and comprehension among readers.</p>

<p> Twenty five percent of individuals diagnosed with autism are nonverbal and need to learn to communicate using alternative means (National Research Council, 2001) in order to build functional spontaneous communication. Joint attention behaviors are critical for communication development (Mundy &amp; Newell, 2007). This study introduces a video calling intervention to target the joint attention behaviors, eye gaze, verbalization and gestures. The purpose of this study was to discover what relationship exists between video calling and joint attention in nonverbal children with autism and to explore the perspectives of parents and their communication interaction with the child. This case study of two children is a quantitative ABA withdrawal design and a qualitative narrative design. The ABA design uses seven-inch Prestige 7 Connect tablets and Skype, video calling software program to communicate during game, reading and discussion activities. Observing and recording procedures were used to collect the data and visual analysis was conducted using graphs, tables. The narrative design used parent interviews and questionnaires to build themes. The findings indicate that video calling had a positive impact on eye gaze and verbalization behaviors during discussion and game activities. From the narrative analysis emerged a theme of engagement and focus. The conclusions indicate that video calling has impact on some joint attention behaviors and increases engagement in nonverbal children with autism. Implications for this study include using video calling in the classroom for peer interactions and skill building. Further study is needed to increase the generalizability of these findings. </p><p> Keywords: joint attention, video calling, nonverbal, autism, engagement </p>

Individuals can expect continuous improvement in productivity as a consequence of (i) a growing stock of knowledge and experience gained by repeatedly doing the same task (first-order learning) or (ii) due to technological and training programs injected by the organization (second-order learning). Organizations have used this type of progress behavior in making managerial decisions regarding cost estimating and budgeting, production and labor scheduling, product pricing, etc. This progress was studied in productivity, product-quality and personal skills, in an experiment involving a sample of 12 subjects, who completed one project every week for ten weeks. Second-order training was provided to the subjects through the Personal Software Process, PSP, of Humphrey. A within-subject repeated measure time-series quasi-experimental design was used along with a modified G/Q/M method. It was found that on average, progress takes place at a rate of 20%, with the second-order training adding up to 13% more improvement in addition to the first-order learning. Detailed statistical methods were used to produce linear and log-linear models of high correlations, involving four variables: productivity, defect-rate, complexity and cumulative output. The motivation of the subjects did not change significantly during the experiment. It was also found that the McCabe's and Halstead's complexity metrics had a correlation of 0.80 amongst each other. However, no relationship could be found between the personal capabilities of the individuals and the progress rate.