Technology has changed almost every aspect of our daily lives. It is not surprising then that technology has made its way into the classroom. More and more educators are utilizing technological resources in creative ways with the intent to enhance learning, including using virtual laboratories in the sciences in place of the “traditional” science laboratories. This has generated much discussion as to the influence on student achievement when online learning replaces the face-toace contact between instructor and student. The purpose of this study was to discern differences in achievement of two laboratory instruction types: virtual laboratory and a traditional laboratory. Results of this study indicate statistical significant differences in student achievement defined by averages on quiz scores in virtual labs compared with traditional face-toace laboratories and traditional laboratories result in greater student learning gains than virtual labs. Lecture exam averages were also greater for students enrolled in the traditional laboratories compared to students enrolled in the virtual laboratories. To account for possible differences in ability among students, a potential extraneous variable, GPA and ACT scores were used as covariates.

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The Internet—an electronic public sphere for millions of Americans—would seem to be an excellent means to bring people of diverse viewpoints together for discussions of public issues. But discussions on the Internet, whether limited to students in one class or to a larger network, frequently lead to miscommunication. My research focuses on the dynamics of online communication through a multi-year study of the Intercollegiate E-Democracy Project (IEDP), a collaborative network where each semester hundreds of college students from across the country engaged in Internet-based discussions about social and political issues. The goals for my research are to identify discursive moves that promote and block deliberative dialogue and the mindset of openness that such dialogue entails. Deliberative dialogue is discourse characterized by individuals' explicit engagement with multiple perspectives on an issue in a way that reflects consideration of and listening to others' views and that demonstrates receptiveness to movement in one's own thinking. I researched the IEDP for several semesters, conducting textual analyses of thousands of posted messages and interviewing 40 participants from 13 different institutions. From these extensive data, I focus on the exchanges and participants in threads on affirmative action, reparations for slavery, and homosexuality. Drawing from students' perspectives and from theories of deliberative democracy and rhetoric and composition, I identify discursive strategies for promoting exchanges where participants develop multi-perspective understandings of their own and others' views and where they show the possibility for movement in their own thinking rather than merely posting to defend their own views and to engage in what one student I interviewed called “battle competition.” I conclude my dissertation by proposing pedagogical approaches for integrating online discussions in composition curricula, including the integration of what I call textual listening into both online discussion forums and other web-based and paper-based writing. My research shows the need to reinvigorate listening as a textual act because listening does not occur only when reading others' texts, but also when writing one's own text, particularly when engaged in written dialogues with others where the only way to demonstrate that one has indeed listened is through text.

A central criticism of the assessment-based evaluation policies now in vogue in American public education is reduction of student learning time. Likewise, many see the current crop of year-end, summative assessments as only serving the data needs of politicians and higher-level school administrators. Stemming from these criticisms and a combination of technological and cognitive psychological curiosity, the computer-science community has offered a unique alternative the traditional assessment form. Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) offer the hope of just-in-time assessment with no time away from instruction. That is, ITS are purported to both test and teach at the same time. However, inherent to ITS are the inference of learning. While the inference of learning, and ITS's themselves, are placed within the context of education the analytic logic employed for justification are grounded in data mining and artificial intelligence traditions. This proposed dissertation seeks to bridge the analytic traditions of educational measurement and data mining. The proposed study, carried out in three steps, will apply measurement strategies to a form of Intelligent Tutoring to compare the determination of learning between the two different analytic traditions.

The problem with which this investigation is concerned is that of determining if recent studies showing no significant comprehension loss at compressed rates were valid for a learning situation.

The purpose of this dissertation was to explore the perceived and demonstrated technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) of practicing elementary teachers in an urban charter school setting. Contextual factors that influence teachers' abilities to apply technology integration knowledge were also identified. A qualitative research design with multiple case study strategy was used to study practicing teachers in a charter school setting in two phases. The first phase of the study included nine participants and used the Teachers' Knowledge of Teaching and Technology Survey to garner insight on teachers' perceived technological pedagogical content knowledge. Descriptive statistical procedures were used to calculate a mean score for each subscale of the TPACK components. Of the nine teachers, two teachers volunteered to participate in the second phase of the study in addition to two administrators. Data collection methods included document collection, observations, and interviews. Within-analysis procedures were used to specify each participant as an individual case. Interviews with school administrators provided insight into contextual factors at the school. Lastly, cross-case analysis procedures were used to construct the final narrative. The findings from Phase I indicated teacher scores related to statements concerning technology-related components: technology knowledge (Mean = 3.67, SD =.62), technological content knowledge (Mean = 3.67, SD=.45), technological pedagogical knowledge (Mean = 3.74, SD=.68), and technological pedagogical content knowledge (Mean = 3.6, SD=.94) were neutral. Findings from the within-analysis and cross-case analysis revealed that both teachers used all of the components in practice with limited to no use of technological content knowledge. The findings from the within-analysis and cross-case analysis revealed that teachers: (a) had a solid foundation of technology knowledge, (b) had limited knowledge of technological content knowledge, (c) supported pedagogical goals, and (d) addressed student learning needs. In addition, the findings revealed that contextual factors related to the teachers' use of technology integration knowledge were resource-related. The discussion and implications highlighted the need for professional development and up-to-date resources for teachers in urban charter schools.

The present work examines the use of background music (BM) to facilitate learning. This dissertation includes three independent, yet interrelated studies that synthesized scholarship to characterize the methods, and BM characteristics that have been manipulated in primary research, to identify trends, patterns and gaps. Then, it integrates findings of experimental studies that reported influences of music on cognitive performance to inform future research and theory. Lastly, this dissertation reports a design-based research study aimed at improving an online learning environment with the use of BM to enhance students' motivation, engagement and knowledge retention.

The purpose of this research study was to understand high school teachers' acceptance and use of Canvas Learning Management System (LMS) (Canvas, 2011) in a large public school district. Teachers are the keystone species within the educational environment, and as such, are critical for the successful integration of technology in the classroom (Davis, Eickelmann, & Zaka, 2013). Therefore, in order to facilitate teacher's acceptance and use of technology for instructional purposes, those factors that influence or prevent use need to be understood. This study used a revised Technology Acceptance Model (Fathema, Shannon, & Ross, 2015) to determine those factors that affect teachers' actual informational and communicational use of the Canvas LMS (Canvas, 2011). This mixed methods study used a survey and interview to answer three research questions concerning acceptance, use, and departmental influence on the use of Canvas LMS. The survey data were analyzed with Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) in order to produce two explanatory models to address the three research questions. The semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 teachers from one high school in a large public school district. The interview questions were transcribed, coded, and themed in order to answer research questions two and three. The analysis of the survey and interview data found that teachers were more likely to use informational rather than communicational features in Canvas. Communicational use differences were more evident than informational use among the four core subject areas, with mathematics using these features the least. For both models of survey data, the quality of the Canvas system was an influence on teacher use. The influence of teacher intent was contradictory between the two models. The findings from this study can be used to inform stakeholders of factors that influence high school teachers Canvas use, and recommendations to improve integration in the future.