The purpose of this mixed methods study was to explore the relationship between autonomy, student-instructor dialogue, and student satisfaction within a web-based distance Russian language course. Forty six (46) students from two US higher education institutions participated in this study. Using an Exploratory Model with the elements of an Explanatory Model (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2007), the qualitative and quantitative data were collected at the middle and at the end of the course to provide thorough investigation of the three variables, to reveal their interactions with each other, and to discover whether these variables and their relationship change over time. Qualitative data were used to explore the aforementioned constructs, and to enhance the instrument tested in the subsequent quantitative phase. An additional quantitative phase at the end of the course, and follow-up qualitative interviews were provided to discover the changes that occurred in the main variables and in their relationships throughout the course. Content analysis was utilized for the interviews, while reliability (Cronbach alpha) analysis, correlational analysis, t-test, and non-parametric Wilcoxon and sign test were used for the data analysis of the surveys. Findings revealed that autonomy, dialogue, and satisfaction have significant correlation at the beginning and the middle point of the course. All three variables grew throughout the course, however the relationships among them significantly decreased towards the end of the course. The conclusions include suggestions and implications for teachers, students, and course developers.

This multiple case study provides a description and explanation of what, why and how instructional strategies have the potential to promote learning-centered synchronous dialogue online, specifically in the synchronous web-based course system (SWBCS), Elluminate Live! This research was guided by the theory of transactional distance, specifically the dialogue component. Qualitative data collection techniques were employed, including, interviews, observations, researcher's reflective journal, surveys and Delphi. Three cases were examined, consisting of the instructor, their students and the synchronous sessions during the course. Data were analyzed iteratively to garner themes. Member checks were conducted to maintain an active corroboration on the interpretation of data between the researcher and those who provided the data. This study suggests that instructors can promote learning-centered dialogue in the SWBCS by: (a) building social presence, (b) facilitating discussions, (c) providing feedback, (d) assigning group work, (e) respecting diverse talents and perspectives, and (f) emphasizing time on task. The main tools used to implement these strategies in the SWBCS were the duplex audio (VOIP), direct messaging (text chat) and whiteboard. Unique aspects of promoting dialogue in the SWBCS are that it can allow for: (a) relief of communicative anxiety, (b) convenient, inexpensive invitation of guest speakers, (c) facilitation of multiple threads of discussion and (d) extended opportunities to offer office hours. The main tools used to implement these strategies in the SWBCS were the duplex audio (VOIP), direct messaging (text chat) and whiteboard. Two of the three instructors and a majority of the students whom were interviewed perceived the SWBCS effective for implementing instructional strategies that promote dialogue. Further research may examine a greater variety of content areas, more in depth questions of why particular instructional strategies are implemented using the SWBCS or the relationship between dialogue, structure and learner autonomy in the SWBCS.

To satisfy demand for online learning opportunities at the high school level, 3 school districts in the northeast United States established a consortium to share resources to develop and deliver online courses. High school teachers who volunteered to develop courses for the consortium attempted the task without previous training in online course design and facilitation. High school students enrolled in the courses often did not successfully complete them, which obstructed the mission of the consortium. The purpose of this qualitative single critical case study was to explore teachers' experiences with and perceptions of designing and developing online courses without accompanying professional development. The iNACOL National Standards for Quality Online Courses (v2) and technological, pedagogical, content knowledge (TPACK) served as the conceptual frameworks for the study. Five teachers who developed and facilitated an online course for the consortium, without companion professional development, volunteered to be interviewed. Data were reduced using NVivo software and analyzed using a priori codes based on NACOL standards then open-coded for emerging themes. Results indicated that other than content expertise, teachers did not believe they had sufficient competencies in any of the areas identified in the iNACOL standards. Based on these results, an online professional development course for teachers was designed to provide introductory training and to model elements of quality online course design using the Moodle learning management system. Positive social change may be achieved if teachers have the knowledge and skills required to develop high-caliber, innovative, and convenient education opportunities that encourage students' course completion which leads to learning and academic success.

This paper reviews the status of natural resources distance learning program in the United States and China and discusses the feasibility of educational cooperation between the two countries. By identifying and comparing computer-based learning programs offered at 300 American and 7 Chinese institutions of higher education, I found that only a small number of schools in both countries currently provide natural resources courses via distance learning. Although great opportunities exist for cooperation between the two countries, challenges must be overcome. Some of these challenges include expanding the existing distance learning curriculum to offer more natural resources courses, providing greater flexibility for faculty members who must adjust to a new teaching role, and improving the English proficiency of Chinese students for more effective international distance learning. / Master of Natural Resources

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between students' motivational orientations and their perceptions of an electronic distance education (EDE) environment. Subjects were 156 participants (81 women, 75 men; 83 undergraduates, 73 graduate students) enrolled in Utah State University's electronic distance education system, Com-Net. A comparison group was also utilized, that consisted of 85 participants (64 females, 21 males; 34 undergraduates, 51 graduates) from rural Utah enrolled in Utah State University extension programs. These students were from seven classes which were taught by the traditional method with an instructor physically present. Correlation coefficients were computed to test the hypotheses of this study. The independent variables (motivational orientations), as measured by Boshier's Education Participation Scale, were correlated with the dependent variables (satisfaction, material environment, involvement, and extension) as measured by the Learning Environment Inventory and the College and University Classroom Environment Inventory. One-way analyses of variance were computed to explore possible relationships with independent variables not included in the original hypotheses. Multiple regression analysis was used with satisfaction as the independent variable to look for possible explanations of student satisfaction. The participants in this study differ significantly from the norms in their motivational orientations in the areas of professional advancement and cognitive interest. Although the null hypotheses were rejected the relationships were weak, and there appears to be little practical relationship between motivational orientations and participants' satisfaction. These results suggest that participant satisfaction is largely independent of initial motives that impel individuals to participate. Motivational orientations' minimal impact on participant satisfaction suggest that the sources of variation in satisfaction lie elsewhere. There may be other internal variables that affect satisfaction, but more probably there are external variables that greatly influence satisfaction.

The purpose of this study is to explore the viability of an international distance English-language program in the development of language and cultural proficiency. Students participated in tests at the beginning and at the end of the course to determine how well they developed both language and cultural proficiencies. The measures included (a) the computer-administered Oral Proficiency Interview (OPIc) from theAmerican Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), (b) ACTFL-aligned assessments of reading, listening, grammar, and vocabulary skills, and (c) the Cultural Intelligence Scale (CQS). In addition, course activities surveys provided additional information about student perceptions of course activities. Participants in this study came from various countries as they prepared to attend a U.S. university in Hawaii.The distance learning program fostered language proficiency through various learning activities, with an emphasis on synchronous dialogue over video chat technologies. In addition to English-language proficiency, the program sought to help students learn to effectively communicate with students from other cultures. Cross-cultural proficiency was fostered through cross-cultural dialogue with tutors, teachers, and other students. Students showed improvement in speaking, listening, vocabulary, and grammar. However, on average, students did not show an improvement in reading proficiency. Students reported that dialogue with tutors and teachers was among the most helpful activities in learning English. Students showed some improvement in cultural proficiency. However, this improvement was not universal across all measures of cultural proficiency. Students reported that certain activities—particularly dialogue with tutors and other students—as helpful in developing cross-cultural proficiencies.This study also investigated the relationship between language proficiency and cultural proficiency. Results were mixed. With a few exceptions, cultural proficiency did not predict a student’s language proficiency at the beginning of the course, during the course, or at the end of the course.

Online or web-based courses have become prolific in our educational environment over the past several years. The development of these courses can be guided by systematic design models to ensure quality instructional design. Transactional distance, the theory that claims the distance an online student feels is more of a pedagogical distance than a geographic one, consists of three factors: structure, dialogue, and learner autonomy. Accurate measurement of these three factors is needed in order to substantiate its claims and to best determine the delivery implications. This study produced an instrument that measures the structure component of the transactional distance theory as it pertains to the online environment. A total of 20 online courses were evaluated using the Structure Component Evaluation Tool (SCET). Experts in the field validated the instrument and reliability was determined by calculating Cronbachs alpha as well as examining inter-rater reliability. The SCET also excelled in a comparison to other instruments in the field in terms of its ability to produce rich, valid information about the structure of online courses.

Designing generalized data-driven distance measures for both ordered and unordered set data is the core focus of the proposed work. An ordered set is a set where time-linear property is maintained when distance between pair of temporal segments. One application in the ordered set is the human gesture analysis from RGBD data. Human gestures are fast becoming the natural form of human computer interaction. This serves as a motivation to modeling, analyzing, and recognition of gestures. The large number of gesture categories such as sign language, traffic signals, everyday actions and also subtle cultural variations in gesture classes makes gesture recognition a challenging problem. As part of generalization, an algorithm is proposed as part of an overlap speech detection application for unordered set. Any gesture recognition task involves comparing an incoming or a query gesture against a training set of gestures. Having one or few samples deters any class statistic learning approaches to classification, as the full range of variation is not covered. Due to the large variability in gesture classes, temporally segmenting individual gestures also becomes hard. A matching algorithm in such scenarios needs to be able to handle single sample classes and have the ability to label multiple gestures without temporal segmentation. Each gesture sequence is considered as a class and each class is a data point on an input space. A pair-wise distances pattern between to gesture frame sequences conditioned on a third (anchor) sequence is considered and is referred to as warp vectors. Such a process is defined as conditional distances. At the algorithmic core we have two dynamic time warping processes, one to compute the warp vectors with the anchor sequences and the other to compare these warp vectors. We show that having class dependent distance function can disambiguate classification process where the samples of classes are close to each other. Given a situation where the model base is large (number of classes is also large); the disadvantage of such a distance would be the computational cost. A distributed version combined with sub-sampling anchor gestures is proposed as speedup strategy. In order to label multiple connected gestures in query we use a simultaneous segmentation and recognition matching algorithm called level building algorithm. We use the dynamic programming implementation of the level building algorithm. The core of this algorithm depends on a distance function that compares two gesture sequences. We propose that, we replace this distance function, with the proposed distances. Hence, this version of level building is called as conditional level building (clb). We present results on a large dataset of 8000 RGBD sequences spanning over 200 gesture classes, extracted from the ChaLearn Gesture Challenge dataset. The result is that there is significant improvement over the underlying distance used to compute conditional distance when compared to conditional distance. As an application of unordered set and non-visual data, overlap speech segment detection algorithm is proposed. Speech recognition systems have a vast variety of application, but fail when there is overlap speech involved. This is especially true in a meeting-room setting. The ability to recognize speaker and localize him/her in the room is an important step towards a higher-level representation of the meeting dynamics. Similar to gesture recognition, a new distance function is defined and it serves as the core of the algorithm to distinguish between individual speech and overlap speech temporal segments. The overlap speech detection problem is framed as outlier detection problem. An incoming audio is broken into temporal segments based on Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC). Each of these segments is considered as node and conditional distance between the nodes are determined. The underlying distances for triples used in conditional distances is the symmetric KL distance. As each node is modeled as a Gaussian, the distance between the two segments or nodes is given by Monte-Carlo estimation of the KL distance. An MDS based global embedding is created based on the pairwise distance between the nodes and RANSAC is applied to compute the outliers. NIST meeting room data set is used to perform experiments on the overlap speech detection. An improvement of more than 20% is achieved with conditional distance based approach when compared to a KL distance based approach.

The environment is made up of composition of small particles. Hence, particle simulation is an important tool in many scientific and engineering research fields to simulate the real life processes of the environment. Because of the enormous amount of data in such simulations, data management, storage and processing are very challenging tasks. Spatial Distance Histogram (SDH) is one of the most popular queries being used in this field. In this thesis, we are interested in investigating the performance of improvement of an existing algorithm for computing SDH. The algorithm already being used is using a conceptual data structure called density map which is implemented via a quad tree index. An algorithm having density maps implemented via binary tree is proposed in this thesis. After carrying out many experiments and analysis of the data, we figure out that although the binary tree approach seems efficient in earlier stage, it is same as the quad tree approach in terms of time complexity. However, it provides an improvement in computing time by a constant factor for some data inputs. The second part of this thesis is dedicated to an approach that can potentially reduce the computational time to a great extent by taking advantage of regions where data points are uniformly distributed.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Virginia Commonwealth University, 2006. / Prepared for: School of Education. Bibliography: leaves 165-172. Also available online.