<p> As higher education changes to reach larger numbers of students via online modalities, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels, the issue of student attrition and other measures of student success become increasingly important. While research has focused largely on undergraduate online students, less has been done in the area of online non-traditional doctoral student success, particularly from the student trait perspective. On the trait level, the concept of grit has been identified as an important element of the successful attainment of long-term goals. Earning a doctorate can be classified as a long-term goal; therefore the purpose of this study was to examine the influence of doctoral student grit scores on student success. Success was measured in three ways: (a) in terms of persistence as measured by longevity in the program (the number of courses a student had successfully completed), (b) by examining current student GPA, and (c) by studying whether or not students have reached the critical milestone of successfully defending their dissertation proposal. The results of the study found no significant differences in mean grit scores for first, second, or third year students, nor found differences in mean grit scores for students that had or had not successfully defended their dissertation proposals. However, significant relationships were found between grit and current student GPA, grit and the average number of hours students spent of their program of study weekly, and grit and age. The results of this research are important for informing how doctoral education is structured, which characteristics may help students succeed, as well as providing areas for future research. </p><p> <i>Keywords: Higher education, grit, doctoral education, non-traditional students, online education, academic success, attrition</i></p>

<p> Native American women's leadership, information communication technologies (ICTs), work-life balance (WLB) and human capacity building (HCB) are grounded in social justice issues due to their long history of overall cultural decimation, inequitable access to technology, monetary resources, and social power (agency), and influence. Currently, there is a lack of research regarding Native American women leaders' use of ICTs for WLB and HCB. Thus, the purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study is to explore ways in which ICTs can enrich Native American women's leadership aptitude, work-life balance, and overall capabilities. Grounded in Giele's (2008) life course research and President Obama's (U.S. White House, 2011) recently signed, "The Executive Order (13592) on Improving American Indian and Alaska Native Educational Opportunities and Strengthening Tribal Colleges and Universities". This order reasserts his <i>cradle to career</i> (Galbraith, 2012) commitment to all Native Americans and Alaskan Indians, this study seeks to answer the following research questions: How are Native American women leaders utilizing ICTs for WLB and capacity building. To answer these questions, narrative life-story framework (Giele 2008; Weber, 2010) based interviews were be conducted and coded for the following themes: Identity, adaptive style, and ICT use. The researcher's intent is to help bridge the existing literature gap and potentially inform culturally ICT use for Native American and global Indigenous women's WLB and capacity-building to empower their efforts for preserving and revitalizing their culture. </p><p> <i>Keywords</i>: Native American, global, Indigenous, women, leaders, information communication technology, education technologies, learning technologies, ICTs, work-life balance, WLB, capacity building, cultural preservation and revitalization</p>

<p> Recent trends toward on-line learning and open education suggest that the role of technology will only become more prominent in higher education. As a result, faculty members will increasingly be expected to infuse more technology in face-to-face courses, while teaching in multiple course delivery modalities. Senior administrators and technology leaders are faced with the dilemma of advancing technology enhanced teaching and learning practices for a faculty that isn't necessarily convinced change is necessary. The resulting tension between the administration and faculty will either limit actual change or prevent it completely. The following research examines those factors influencing the growth in technology-based teaching and learning at three very different institutions that have a focus on research and teaching. The study also examines those strategies or actions shown to be helpful in advancing new and innovative teaching practices. The research sites include Duke University, the University of Central Florida and the University of California, Berkeley. The findings suggest that there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution to advancing technology enhanced teaching and learning, and an institution's ability to successfully lead change requires a shared understanding of why change is necessary. Change efforts require more than just a few faculty members that are willing to explore new teaching practices, as well as sufficient resources to advance experimental teaching initiatives. Incentives aimed at advancing the innovative use of technology to support teaching and learning goals also play an important role in leading change. The research suggests that the factors influencing technology enhanced teaching and learning differ among institutions and are unique to the institution's mission, history, culture, and student population. Senior leaders all too often come into an institution and attempt to lead change based on their experience at a former place of employment. The findings suggest that leaders need to become familiar with the unique characteristics of an institution before making decisions about how best to advance technology enhanced teaching and learning, while partnering with the faculty in leading change.</p>

<p> Emergent popularity and student consumer/educational administrator demand for online technology in counselor education is also increasing the need to research its impact and potential effectiveness/ineffectiveness as a pedagogical tool. Research shows that the trend toward online coursework is likely to increase in the future and also that the new trend is moving away from asynchronous text-based delivery toward virtual environments using video and audio (Robey, 2009). </p><p> Counselor educator led preparation programs are experiencing more pressure to join the online bandwagon and yet lag behind other professions in utilizing technologies in education (Karper, Robinson, &amp; Casado-Kehoe, 2005). Although some studies have investigated the use of online technology in counselor education, very few studies have explored using virtual simulated clients in counselor education in order to develop counseling skills (Engen, Finken, Luschei, &amp; Kenney, 1994; Hayes, Taub, Robinson, &amp; Sivo, 2003; Karper et al., 2005). </p><p> Furthermore, self-efficacy is a critical component of counseling skill development for counselors-in-training (CITs; Levitt &amp; Jacques, 2005). Therefore, the purpose of this mixed-methods dissertation was to investigate whether online learning technology using synchronous, online, video-based, computer-guided, simulated-client microskills drills in real time influenced microskills development for counselors-in-training. </p><p> Further, I used <i>Counselingskills on Demand</i> (COD) online virtual client microskills drills within the framework of Bandura's (1977) social cognitive theory that performance is the best indicator of self-efficacy and explored how online microskills drills influence counseling student microskills performance and developmental process. </p><p> Qualitative data analysis suggested that participants were comfortable with online learning, found virtual client microskills drills most beneficial while developing a basic understanding of the difference between microskills and how to use them, and less useful once a basic understanding and ability to use the microskills was established. Overall, study results appeared to indicate that online learning technology using synchronous, online, video-based, computer-guided, simulated-client microskills drills in real time may be beneficial, may assist counseling students in the developmental process of increasing cognitive complexity and self-efficacy, could lead to decreased anxiety when doing counseling, and might help develop microskills understanding and basic proficiency.</p>

This study addresses the need for research which examines collaborative writing using computers. Its purpose was to identify, through observation and description, distinctive features of collaborative composing with a computer. The study examines how three writers collaborated in writing using a personal computer. The group's writing sessions were recorded on audio tapes that were then transcribed for analysis. The analysis consisted of examining the data for patterns that might account for certain aspects of collaborative composition including how the group made decisions and negotiated their individual writing styles and strategies, and how the computer affected their writing processes. The analysis of the data identified variables specific to collaborative writing at the computer. The addition of these variables created new relationships among factors already found in individual composition. Further research is needed to determine more precisely how these factors interact. Suggestions for such research are included.

This thesis describes Connexions, a powerful new architecture for managing web-based educational materials. Connexions, consisting of five components, enables course instructors to take advantage of the cross-linked nature of the Web and helps students visualize the relationships between concepts. The first component is a pool of interlinked content modules written in the Connexions Markup Language (CNXML), an XML-derived language for educational content. Each module covers a single concept and links to related concepts. The second component is a central repository to store and provide access to the modules. The third component consists of tools to assist module authors in creating content and interfacing to the repository. The fourth component is a course construction tool that allows instructors to author course materials by selecting and customizing a sequence of content modules. The fifth component is a navigational tool that shows students their location along the course-path.

<p> This qualitative study analyzed the meaning-making practices of urban adolescents participating in a college preparatory program featuring philosophical inquiry into cosmopolitanism and the creation of multimodal texts. In contrast to studies of composing that focus on individual outcomes, this dissertation traced group meaning making. The study was grounded in sociocultural perspectives that theorize literacy as diverse, socially constructed, meaning-making practices that emerge in particular cultural and social contexts, and include multiple modes of communication. Data included interviews, observations, and artifacts. To analyze the data, a music-inspired analytic system was devised to examine the collaborative nature of composing. </p><p> The study demonstrated, first, that composing in this setting was a collaborative process exceeding customary understandings of collaborative composing. Uncovered after examining complex patterns of interactions over varied timescales, collaboration at the group level occurred while community members created individual products. Second, the study revealed that improvisation was an important strategy for shaping the content of this collaborative process. During informal jam sessions, participants creatively explored options for representing content. They actively built upon ideas offered by other participants in the moment, in order to read, interpret, select, and design the content of their multimodal texts. Last, facilitated by the complex patterns of interaction and shaped by the improvised frames for representing content, this study revealed the ways in which participants constructed a shared meaning of the concept of cosmopolitanism at the group level. Utilizing an image-afforded exploration of juxtaposition, this shared understanding evolved from early conceptions of cosmopolitanism as represented in juxtaposed images to an understanding of cosmopolitanism as the act of creating and interpreting juxtaposition between varying perspectives. </p><p> This study contributes to growing empirical research on meaning making through multimodal text design. It extends socio-cultural explanations of what counts as `social' in educational contexts, illustrating that composing is not just influenced by social interaction but rather <i>is</i> social. Finally, in an age of standards, testing, and accountability that can narrow what constitutes valued literacy practices, this study provides an example of the varied interactional paths and diverse compositional strategies and products that can engage learners and expand opportunities for meaning making.</p>

<p> Technology continues to evolve and become accessible to students in higher education. Concurrently, teamwork has become an important skill in academia and the workplace and students have adopted established technologies to support their learning in both individual and team project work. </p><p> Given the emergence of social media technologies, I examined how these new technologies supported or interfered with group development processes underlying the development of team skills as students completed a group project. Using case studies, I examined 11 undergraduate students in an upper level blended class at a public university in the southeastern United States. Data were collected through a variety of sources including focus groups, individual interviews, reflection logs, and other group support tools provide by the instructor to see how students were using social media technologies to support their group project work. Data analysis resulted in six themes: 1) social media technology choices used to support group project work depended on individual team members' prior use and attitudes about technology; 2) social media technology is most useful for the "people" aspects of team projects; 3) certain technologies are more useful at different stages of the project; 4) lack of an explicit social media technology "contract" within a group leads to some unintended, negative consequences; 5) the immediacy associated with social media technology can blur the lines among specific team roles, ownership of tasks, and overall integrated project planning perspective; 6) social media technologies are used to produce a cooperative, not collaborative, deliverable. </p><p> For students to continue to make the best use of evolving technology, institutions may want to provide resources such as workshops and self-paced tutorials to students and instructors on how to use social media technologies to support learning outside the classroom. Instructors can enhance students' connections with their coursework by using social media technologies themselves and for class assignments. Researchers can extend this study by studying other student populations, such as adult learners and international students, as well as studying how social media is used in a variety of course delivery modalities, such as traditional classroom-based environments and distance learning.</p>

<p>Educational leadership appropriates significant amounts of money for technology in school budgets. Teachers must decide how to use technology to maximize student learning and make the most efficient use of instructional minutes. The purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to determine if a relationship existed between the amount of time students spent in a computer-assisted reading instruction program and the increase in reading skills as measured by an assessment of oral reading fluency. A Pearson Correlation analysis was used to determine the relationship between the amount of time 87 first-grade students spent in a computer-assisted reading instruction program and the increase in oral reading fluency test scores measured by the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills test (DIBELS). Numerical information for this study consisted of archived data from the 2010&ndash;2011 school year generated from the computer data bases of DIBELS and the Ticket to Read program. The Pearson Correlation analysis indicated a weak positive relationship between the variables. However, the weak coefficient of determination indicated that the correlation did not have any practical significance. This indication may imply that teachers should not allocate instructional minutes to computer-assisted instruction for the purpose of increasing oral reading fluency. Educational leaders may want to consider other technological interventions that may produce learning opportunities for young students to develop technological awareness and increase oral reading fluency at a reduced cost. Ninety-seven percent of the variance was unaccounted for indicating a need for further research with additional variables. </p>

The advent of the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) as a portable file format for describing three-dimensional (3-D) scenes has created the ability for researchers, educators and students to share anatomical models on the WWW. The implication for medical teaching is that students can interactively examine anatomical structures and their 3-D spatial relationships, using current personal computer (PC) technology. The work of this thesis creates, for the first time, a high-resolution middle-ear model that is accessible on the World Wide Web (WWW). The 3-D model is created by automated aligning of the source images (histological sections), interactive segmentation, and 3-D surface reconstruction. The resulting model is translated into VRML format. Images of the histological sections can be superimposed on the model, allowing students to view a section in its 3-D context. To enhance the viewing of these scenes, a VRML browser is modified to support transparent rendering of surfaces. Finally, a WWW interface is designed to allow users to selectively choose the model structures, section images and associated viewing parameters, in order to build their own 3-D scene.