Organic Chemistry has been described as a challenging and confusing course for undergraduate students. Novices in the field have been struggling to understand fundamental concepts relating to organic mechanisms and organize their knowledge around surface features such as functional groups rather than deep underlying features. At the University of Ottawa, a new “Mechanistic patterns and principles” curriculum was designed and implemented, organized by the underlying mechanistic patterns that govern reactions rather than the traditional surface features approach. The redesigned curriculum emphasizes principles of reactivity in organic chemistry and is organized in a gradient of difficulty. The three studies included within this work act as part of a larger evaluation of the redesigned curriculum, specifically investigating an instrument to assess the formation of expertise in organic chemistry and an instrument to capture self-efficacy beliefs in organic chemistry as students progress throughout the curriculum. In the first two studies, an open and closed online categorization task was delivered to Organic Chemistry II students at both the beginning and end of their course. The open sort provided insights regarding how participants choose to sort, while the closed sort measured participants' ability to categorize reactions according to their underlying mechanistic pattern. In the first study, we provide an in-depth analysis of the changes in expertise that occur with respect to the expertise of their choices and ability. Findings from this work demonstrated a positive shift from students attending to surface to process-oriented features in the open sort, as well as an increase in students’ ability in the closed sort. The following-up study investigates the relationship between the expertise demonstrated by participants in the open and closed sorts. Additionally, this work compares these measures of expertise against varies other metrics, including a high-stakes categorization task, and academic performance to increase the validity, and probes at the reliability of findings. Findings from this work demonstrate a strong relationship between the expertise demonstrate in the online task and academic performance, as well as describe an evolving relationship between the expertise demonstrated in students’ choice and ability as they progress throughout the course. While previous work in the evaluation of the curriculum demonstrated that students possess greater ability, it is unknown whether this also translates to an increase in their beliefs about their abilities. The last study included within this work moves beyond cognitive outcomes of the curriculum to investigating the role of self-efficacy beliefs in the curriculum. Self-efficacy beliefs are defined as an individual’s belief in their capability to perform a specific task or objective successfully. This work intends to construct and validate a task-specific, multi-dimensional self-efficacy beliefs instrument for undergraduate students in the domain of organic chemistry. Pre-administration validity evidence, including test content and response process validity, was collected. Data for internal structure validity evidence was collected from a single administration with Organic Chemistry I students (N=78) to 7-factor structure within the final 39 item instrument. Due to the small sample size, these results are interpreted with extreme caution. Future work with this instrument aims to improve the validity evidence collected by expanding the sample size and evaluate the influence curriculum on self-efficacy beliefs, and who, based on demographic variables, may be benefiting the most from the transformed curriculum.

Cette thèse s’intéresse aux effets des technologies d’assistance robotique sur l’expertise individuelle et collective des médecins dans un bloc opératoire de chirurgie gastrique. Notre recherche est fondée sur l’analyse de l’émergence des routines organisationnelles et de leur mise en évidence en mobilisant l’approche naturaliste de la décision. D’un point de vue managérial, nos résultats démontrent que la technologie introduite atténue l’expertise individuelle en dégradant respectivement la détection des signes cliniques et la coordination au sein de l’équipe. Nous établissons des recommandations concernant la mise en œuvre d’une technologie dans le cadre des équipes restreintes. Notre méthodologie consiste à fusionner des sources hétérogènes : entretiens, observation in situ, vidéos, débriefing, auto-confrontation... elle ouvre ainsi la voie à de nouvelles stratégies d’analyse de données jusqu’à lors essentiellement utilisées en psychologie. Enfin, nos contributions théoriques ont permis un enrichissement de l’approche naturaliste en lui adjoignant les rôles tenus par le leader et la mise en évidence du rôle de l’expertise individuelle dans la formation de nouvelles routines fonctionnelles. / The aim of this research is the understand the effect of a new technology, a robotic system, on the individual and collective expertise of practitioners in bariatric surgery. Our analysis is based on the emergence of organizational routines while taking into consideration naturalistic decision making approach. From the managerial perspective, our results demonstrate that the implementation of this technology decrease individual expertise. This is done through the degradation of individual situation awareness and coordination between team members. We established recommendations for an efficient technology implementation by restricted teams. Our methodology consists of mixing heterogenic sources: interviews, observations, videos, debriefing with auto-confrontation… this opens the door for new analysis strategies till now used mainly in psychology. Finally, our theoretical contributions reinforced the naturalistic approach while insisting on the important role of a team leader and the role of individual expertise in the development of new functional organizational routines.

For many years,scholars haveinvestigated instructional design expertise anddescribed the difficulty definingit. A lack of a clear definition, inclusive of primary components,poses a measurement problemfor those seeking to evaluate the development of expertise. An overarching aim of this study is to gather evidence to support a definition of instructional designexpertise(IDE)which includes knowledge, skills, and dispositions. Instructional design dispositions have not received muchattention, but dispositions (e.g., adaptability,flexibility)are often described as distinguishing traits of expertdesigners. ExistingID competency instrumentsevaluatethe perceived importance of knowledge and skills butare limited in trackingdevelopment past competency. They also do not adequately considerdispositions.The purpose of this research was to describe the development of the Instructional Design Dispositions and Expertise Index. Instrument development procedures includeditem generation,expert review, think-aloud sessions, and a small-scale item tryout. Over 200 designers agreedknowledge, skills, and dispositions are important components of expertise. Qualitative data corroboratedquantitativefindingsfurther illuminatinga relationship between these componentsand quality instructional design. Initial evidence of content and construct validity for the instrument isestablished. A validated expertise instrument wouldallow us to more fully understand and evaluate expertiseand its development, whichcould inspire innovation ininstructional design research, theory, and practice.<br>

In this thesis, I show how a community of professionals providing equine therapy to individuals with disabilities discursively make sense of their enterprise. A market metaphor illustrates how disability is constructed as the capital sustaining the livelihood of their industry. Disability is a problem-centered concept. It is generally conceptualized according to a medical model which locates disability within the individual, as opposed to understanding it in a sociological sense which accounts for structural, cultural, and communicative factors. Therapy, on the other hand, is problem-determined-it needs to explicitly determine a problem to be treated in order to sustain itself as an industry and to legitimate the services it provides. As practitioners of an "alternative" form of therapy outside of the dominant biomedical frame, members of this community work not only to validate the need for therapy in general, but also to identify and justify the "uniqueness" of the therapy practiced. In an effort to proprietize disability, these professionals are involved in a politics of representation wherein divergent modes of speaking about disability (i.e., speaking from lived experience, speaking from expertise) vie to represent-or own-disability. In accordance with a market model, members are invested, with stakes in the rights to represent disability. Discourses of development and progress, hallmarks of economic ideology, are applied to bodies by staff as a means to validate the need for their services. Continuing this notion of disability as currency, I will demonstrate how, through their talk, members of this community construct types of disability-mental and physical-as having higher and lesser exchange values with respect to their therapeutic endeavors. Power too is conceptualized by professionals as a commodity to be exchanged in transactions from therapy-provider to therapy-receiver.

VPN is primarily used to encrypt your network traffic and identity online securely from a private location. This can be used as a safety measure to prevent theft of personal data. It also allows its user to change the geolocation to wherever they want which unlocks the possibility to use another country's services. Related work has shown that there are also downsides to using VPN services. Some VPN solutions do have security problems that its user could be unaware of. This study explored the experience and beliefs surrounding the usage of VPN while browsing the internet from people with software expertise. Interviews were conducted with people in different areas surrounding usage of VPN services to get a deeper understanding of why VPN is used and to what extent they believe VPN is providing anonymity and security of their data. The findings from this study is that the main reason to use a VPN is to access unavailable services. These services can vary from content online that is not available in the region from where you access the internet to services that are work related and locked to specific networks. Another finding was also that among these people the belief that the use of a VPN was enough to make a user anonymous by itself is controversial.

Decision-based learning (DBL; Plummer, Swan, & Lush, 2017) addresses the difficulty that professors may have when teaching their expertise to their students. The purpose of this study was to understand the perspectives of professors and students implementing DBL in a Peruvian university. Professors at a Peruvian university implemented the DBL pedagogy in their classes. The research questions were (a) how effectively can professors in a Peruvian university implement DBL, (b) what benefits and challenges do professors perceive from implementing DBL, and (c) how did using DBL as a homework strategy affect student learning? We collected 74 implementation videos, 42 professor surveys, 5 professor interviews, 34 student surveys, 2 student interviews, and we performed an independent samples t test to explore if DBL influenced student academic achievement. Professors implemented the pedagogy at a 72% fidelity level. Professor benefited from the pedagogy for its practicality and struggled with the amount of preparation required. Students benefited from the ability to correct their mistakes and struggled with needing to put more effort into their DBL homework. The p value of the independent samples t test was 0.002. The students who used DBL outperformed the students who didn’t use DBL on the quiz. In conclusion, DBL seems beneficial but some aspects of the pedagogy should be adjusted to make it easier for professors to prepare and students to experience. Future research should include how DBL affects professors and students when implemented for longer periods of time.

Law enforcement officers can come into conflict with suspects when they need to act fast under time pressure. Improving such a decision¬-making skill is a challenge in a police academy. Academies can train future officers in correct psychomotor responses to attacks by a suspect. However, the ability to anticipate such attacks, and thereby make more appropriate defensive and control responses, is often assumed to come only with experience. The purpose of this study is to investigate the perceptual–cognitive sub-skill of attack recognition, which contributes to the anticipation that police officers should have in order to handle potentially violent situations appropriately, and thus take the situation under control without using extreme or lethal force. This study examines the feasibility of using the temporal video-occlusion method as a training tool to accelerate the law enforcement officer’s performance by de-coupling the perception–action link and concentrating on the perceptual–cognitive aspect of the full defensive and control performance. Once the video-occlusion task is calibrated and validated to differentiate expert from non-expert performers, then instructional designers and trainers can be confident is repurposing video-occlusion research method by employing instructional strategies such as deliberate practice and progressive difficulty to train law enforcement trainees and officers.

This article investigates the antecedents and consequences of source credibility within the context of the relatively new but growing phenomenon of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) endorsers. The study results indicate that source credibility is a central determinant of a CEO endorsers’ ability to effect desired outcome states. Results also indicate that the effect of message source credibility on purchase intentions, though strong, is not direct because beliefs about critical product attributes mediate the effect of a message source’s credibility on behavioural intentions. The results of the study also indicate that models of source credibility derived from the celebrity endorser literature do not generalize to the CEO endorser context. Specifically, the attractiveness and expertise of the message source had no significant impact on receivers’ perceptions of credibility.

More than 50% of small businesses fail by the 5th year of operation because of lack of economic sustainability. Organizations without a chief financial officer (CFO) with financial expertise may have suboptimal fiscal performance. The purpose of this correlational study was to examine whether there was a relationship between CFO licensure status, CFO age, and firm earnings per share. A sample of 403 small businesses in the United States, taken from the Russell 2000 Index, was used in the study. The theoretical framework for the study was Penrose's resource-based view of the firm. CFO names and firm earnings per share were taken from the 2015 SEC 10-K filings. CPAverify was used to determine specific CFO licensure status. LexisNexis was used to identify CFO age. Multiple linear regression was used to examine the relationship between CFO licensure status, CFO age, and firm earnings per share. A multiple regression model with F(2, 400) = 3.69, p = .03, R2 = .018 demonstrated a relationship between CFO licensure status, CFO age, and firm earnings per share ratio. Having a CPA license F(1, 154) = 8.59, p = .01, R2 = .053 revealed a slightly better correlation between licensure status and firm earnings per share. CFO age F(1, 401) = 3.10, p = .08, R2 = .005 revealed no relationship to firm earnings per share. Small business leaders could use this study's findings as the basis for hiring CFOs with financial expertise. Doing so may help increase the firm's profitability and mitigate the risks of business failure. Positive social change may ensue provided small businesses use this study's findings to improve job retention and the economic viability of a community.

Donald Trump’s tweets have become prevalent in today’s society. Because college students use social media so often, it would be incumbent for the researcher to examine the impact Donald Trump’s tweets might have on these young adults’, civic engagement and how the tweets may be affecting his perceived credibility and expertise. The researcher administered a questionnaire to 350 college students from a private medium sized west coast university using various modified scales examining credibility, expertise and civic engagement. Civic engagement was measured using an adapted version of several civic engagement instruments. The researcher used a correlation analysis to offer answers for the proposed research questions. It was found that Donald Trump’s tweets have a significant positive impact on the way college students perceive him to be credible while also effecting their perception of his level of expertise. The tweets did not indicate a correlation to civic engagement, but further research concluded that specific tweets have the ability to have a significant negative correlation on civic attitudes and behaviors. The correlation analysis also found that there was a significant negative correlation between which form of media students use the most and their civic engagement. A regression analysis was performed to see if the tweets had predicting power on college student perception of his credibility and expertise. The tweets demonstrated predicting power. A regression analysis was done to see if the tweets had predicting power on college student civic engagement; the regression results showed no significant predicting power between the two. These results suggest that tweets from a United States President have a significant influence on how he is perceived to be credible, the perception of his level of expertise and how his tweets may be affecting civic engagement on college campuses.