For large organizations, updating instructional programs presents a challenge to keep abreast of constantly changing business processes and policies. Each time a process or policy changes, significant resources are required to locate and modify the training materials that convey the new content. Moreover, without the ability to track learning objects to processes and policies, training managers cannot conduct an effective training gap analysis in these areas. As a result, the corporate training picture is unclear and instructional needs cannot be accurately determined. The research addressed these problems by recognizing the need for linkages between an organization's business processes, its policies, and the learning objects that package the corresponding training content and deliver it to the workforce. The overall investigation was completed in three parts. In the first study, a thorough examination of the literature was conducted to determine the extent of the research problem and to provide a theoretical foundation for a solution. In the second study an expert panel was used to elicit user needs for a knowledge management system that addresses training management shortcomings in a large law enforcement agency. Another expert panel from that agency validated and prioritized the user needs during the third study. Through a combination of research-based elicitation and validation techniques, an accurate list of natural language software requirements emerged to represent the collective needs of the law enforcement training experts. The software requirements may now serve to analyze the capabilities of existing information technology systems or to form the basis for a request for proposal (RFP) to build the envisioned knowledge management system.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Education / Master / Master of Science in Information Technology in Education

<p>Web technologies have necessitated a transformation culture in higher education<br /> institutions. Many of these institutions are employing web technologies whose<br /> development, for varying reasons, is not supported by research in their field and<br /> domain of use. One such field is instructional design for the web learning.<br /> Although there is a lot of research on the most effective instructional design<br /> strategies, the use of research for web-based learning applications has been<br /> limited. <br /> <br /> This thesis reports on a study aimed at transforming the research on instructional<br /> design into practice by designing an instructional design system and providing an<br /> argument for its implementation. The argument is intended to facilitate the design<br /> and development of an instructional design subsystem of the web, that would in<br /> turn offer effective and efficient ways for creating web-based learning materials<br /> to instructors.<br /> <br /> The study started by examining the various paradigms, theories and practices of<br /> instructional design with the intent of using them to enrich and improve the<br /> practice of instructional design in web learning. It undertook a thorough and<br /> systematic review of the literature on instructional design in order to come up<br /> with an instructional design system. The design approach used successful design<br /> patterns that have been used elsewhere, e.g. in software design, to create common<br /> responses or solutions to recurrent problems and circumstances. Instructional<br /> design patterns were identified in this study as the recurrent problems or processes<br /> instructional designers go through while creating instructional materials, whose<br /> solutions can be reused over and over again.<br /> <br /> This study used an iterative developmental research process of finding and<br /> modelling an instructional design process as the research methodology. This<br /> process follows and builds on existing research on instructional models, theories<br /> and strategies, and ensures that the same methodology can be used to test the<br /> theories in the design, thus improving both the research and the design.</p>

The purpose of this mixed methods study was twofold. First, the study assessed whether Davis’ (1989) Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was useful in predicting instructional usage of the interactive whiteboard (IWB), as reported by K-8 teachers. Second, the study set out to understand what motivated those teachers to use the IWB for classroom instruction, and to further describe the ways in which they used them. Through surveying 155 teachers and 40 administrators of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS) schools, the researcher used multiple regression and moderator analyses to examine whether the TAM model helped explain teachers’ reported teacher-centered and student-centered instructional IWB usage. The researcher followed this by oneon- one interviews with 5 of the teachers surveyed. With the data gathered from the interviews and open-ended items from the original surveys, an analysis using qualitative methods was performed. The results from the qualitative analysis were then used to help refine and explain the quantitative findings. The results of the study’s quantitative phase indicated two variables adapted from the TAM, teachers’ perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of the IWB, contributed to the prediction of teacher-centered instructional usage of the device. Further it was found that the perceived usefulness variable contributed to the prediction of student-centered instructional usage. Moderator analysis indicated the variable for teachers’ IWB technological pedagogical content knowledge, adapted from Mishra and Koehler’s (2006) technological pedagogical content knowledge framework, moderated the relationships between the variable perceived ease of use of the IWB and teacher and student-centered instructional usage respectively, as well as between the variable perceived usefulness of the IWB and teacher-centered instructional usage. The qualitative phase results revealed those teachers surveyed used their IWBs in a variety of ways for both teacher-centered and student-centered instruction. Teachers frequently reported they were motivated to use the device by its overall user-friendliness and its utility as an instructional tool. Central to the teachers’ discussion of its utility were ways in which the tool positively impacted the students during instruction. Specifically how it engaged students by attracting their attention, keeping them focused, and offering them a better way to learn. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2014. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Drawing upon qualitative methods of semi-structured interviews and observational talk-through interviews, this qualitative dissertation investigates the ways in which graduate students in an online course context experience online instructional videos. A conceptual framework of user experience and multimodality, as well as the framework of sense-making developed by McCarthy and Wright (2004) guided this study and data analysis. The findings of this dissertation have implications for how students are participating in, interacting with, and making sense of online learning environments. Some of the findings of this research include: (a) students do not necessarily experience course videos as discrete elements (or differentiate them with other aspects of the course); (b) the times and contexts in which students view instructional videos shifts (e.g., between home and commuting); (c) student motivations and expectations shape how they approach and orient themselves towards watching online course videos; and (d) multimodal design elements influence students’ meaning-making of online instructional videos. These data findings are all in support of the overarching conclusion of this dissertation, which is that students have significant agency in these online environments, and their meaning-making of online videos may not align with designers’ intentions. This conclusion argues against deterministic views of design. The emerging findings have design implications related to the creation of learning environments in online spaces, such as: (a) fully integrating videos within the broader instructional design of a course; (b) foregrounding the embedded context of instructional videos; and (c) accounting for the shifting times, places, and contexts in which viewers watch instructional videos. This dissertation is situated in the growing field of online education, in particular higher education, where significant money and resources are increasingly dedicated towards the development of online spaces while still much is unknown in relation to the design, experiences, and impact of these online learning environments.

Many scientific domains deal with abstract and multidimensional phenomena, and students often struggle to comprehend theoretical and complex abstractions and apply scientific concepts to real life contexts (Anderson & Barnett, 2013). One of these scientific domains that impose theoretical and complex abstractions is physics. The way that physics has traditionally been taught in school is through learning mathematical formulas and equations (Price, 2008). Many researchers proposed several ways to teach physics effectively. There are several virtual reality applications and computer games that were designed and utilized in the area of science education. In the case of physics education, many studies yielded positive results when using computer games to teach abstract concepts to students (Maxmen, 2010; Price, 2008; Squire et al., 2004). Furthermore, both physical and virtual manipulative tools were shown to be effective and essential in physics learning. This study examined the effects of manipulation of virtual objects in a game-like environment when supplemented with a descriptive or a narrative lesson in the context of physics concepts related to force, distance, and conservation of energy. In particular, the study examined learners’ performance on a test of physics knowledge related to the study when encountered with two factors that influence learning: lesson type and type of manipulation. The study drew on the research done on using virtual manipulatives in education and theoretical support from constructivist theories of learning implying that learners form their own knowledge through meaningful interactions with the world, and that prior knowledge greatly influences the construction of new knowledge in individual learners (Barbour et al., 2009; Bruner, 1966). From the study’s results, it seems that providing a textual pre-lesson is important for low-prior knowledge learners when it comes to learning physics concepts. Moreover, having engaged in a manipulation task also contributed to participants’ learning gain (in both low-prior knowledge and high-prior knowledge groups) as measured by the post-assessments used in this study. Moreover, the results from this study help inform educational game designers who incorporate manipulatives about the role of providing pre-lessons that tie to concepts targeted by the manipulation activity, and how different kinds of manipulation in a game-like environment affect learning outcomes. The findings suggest that the role of these two factors combined requires further research.

Learning through examples is a central and widely used instructional device for teaching mathematically-based subjects such as statistical probability. However, the applications of the superficial variability of examples remain controversial. This dissertation investigates how the superficial variability of multiple examples influences students' learning and transfer of probability problem-solving. Moreover, the author discovers whether content difficulty affects the influence of examples' superficial variability. Three conditions were developed and compared: consistent-surface condition (CS), varied-surface-within-rule condition (VSWR), and varied-surface-between-rule condition (VSBR). For the purpose of exploration and methodology improvement for the dissertation study, two pilot studies were conducted. However, conflicting results were shown in those two studies. In the first pilot study, students in CS condition performed the worst. In the second pilot study, students in VSBR condition performed the worst. These conflicting results encouraged the author, even more, to conduct the dissertation study with a larger sample size and improved methodology. In this dissertation study, the author found that students' performance on the posttests in VSBR was significantly worse than in the other two conditions, which was consistent with the second pilot study, and that their performance in CS and VSWR condition was not different. Contrary to expectation, the strength of the pattern of the effect of the superficial variability of examples did not vary between the easy and difficult types of problems. Moreover, the pattern was the same when the difficulty variable was not included. These results suggested that examples' superficial consistency between different problem types promotes more effective learning than superficial variation between different problem types. The consistency can be one single cover story used multiple times for each type of problem or the same battery of varied cover stories used repeatedly for different types of problem. Moreover, the pattern of the influence of superficial variability of examples is robust among types of the problem at varying difficulty levels.

Self-direction is the process by which individuals collaborate in the construction of meaningful learning objectives and use internal and external controls to meet those objectives. In professional contexts, self-direction is seen as an increasingly important skill for engagement in complex organizations and industries. Modern innovations in program development for adult learners, therefore, should address learners’ needs for self-motivation, self-monitoring, and self-management. Social learning contexts—such as online class discussion forums—have emerged as potentially democratic spaces in online learning. Yet evaluation methods for assessing online discussion have not considered the ways in which student-introduced goals influence how quality is operationalized and studied. This research attempted to understand if, when, and how adult learners leverage online course discussions as a space to introduce and moderate their own learning and professional goals. The study used activity systems analysis as a framework for assessing self-direction within a complex social learning environment. A sample drawn from three sections of an online Research Design course was observed, surveyed, and interviewed to develop a visual map and narrative description of their perceptions of a discussion activity system. A cross-case analysis of these maps was used to define five systemic tensions that prevented students from aligning their goals with the instructor-designed activities. When faced with these tensions, students either subjugated their own goals to an instructor’s explicit goals, or else introduced one of eight mediating behaviors associated with self-directed learning. The study yielded five emergent hypotheses that require further investigation: (1) that self-directed learning is not inherent, even among Millennial learners, (2) that self-directed learning is collaborative, (3) that goals for interaction in social learning environments are not universal, (4) that goals must be negotiated, explicit, and activity bound, and (5) that self-directed learning may be not be an observable phenomenon.

Learning from worked examples typically involves study activities, involving reading such materials carefully and attempting to understand the information presented. Considerable evidence has amassed regarding the benefits for novices of studying appropriately constructed worked examples paired with practice questions. However, prior research from the cognitive and sports psychology literatures suggests mental practice of worked examples may be an effective adjunct to studying such materials. Meta-analyses of these literatures suggest the utility of mental practice depends upon the degree of cognitive elements contained within a task, and also suggest that some prior knowledge of a task is necessary for mental practice to be effective. The present series of studies aimed to identify conditions under which mental practice is effective in educationally realistic, highly cognitive domains. Based on the above meta-analytic results, mental practice was hypothesised to enhance learning over further study in highly cognitive domains, but only when students either had sufficient prior knowledge, or were able to develop such knowledge over the course of an instructional intervention. Study activities were primarily expected to support knowledge acquisition, while imagining-based activities (mental practice) were expected to support knowledge automation. The experiments herein thus investigated interactions between levels of prior knowledge, complexity of instructional material, and levels of learning from imagination versus conventional study strategies. In Experiment 1, under conditions of low prior knowledge and complex material (HTML), students who studied worked examples outperformed those who imagined. Experiment 2, using simplified but still complex materials and a similar participant pool, found no differences between conditions, but Experiment 3, using stricter experimental design, found a study effect. In Experiment 4, an imagination effect was found under high prior knowledge. Experiment 5, using less experienced learners, suggested those who studied outperformed those whom imagined on acquisition questions. Experiment 6 found a sequence of study then imagination is more effective than imagination then study. The results have broad application for effective sequencing of these instructional strategies, but development of an accurate metric for imagination "readiness" is required to advance theory and practice, and more evidence is needed for a schema automation explanation of mental practice effects.

The overarching goal of this dissertation was to evaluate the contextual components of instructional strategies for the acquisition of complex programming concepts. A meta-knowledge processing model is proposed, on the basis of the research findings, thereby facilitating the selection of media treatment for electronic courseware. When implemented, this model extends the work of Smith (1998), as a front-end methodology, for his glass-box interpreter called Bradman, for teaching novice programmers. Technology now provides the means to produce individualized instructional packages with relative ease. Multimedia and Web courseware development accentuate a highly graphical (or visual) approach to instructional formats. Typically, little consideration is given to the effectiveness of screen-based visual stimuli, and curiously, students are expected to be visually literate, despite the complexity of human-computer interaction. Visual literacy is much harder for some people to acquire than for others! (see Chapter Four: Conditions-of-the-Learner) An innovative research programme was devised to investigate the interactive effect of instructional strategies, enhanced with text-plus-textual metaphors or text-plus-graphical metaphors, and cognitive style, on the acquisition of a special category of abstract (process) programming concept. This type of concept was chosen to focus on the role of analogic knowledge involved in computer programming. The results are discussed within the context of the internal/external exchange process, drawing on Ritchey's (1980) concepts of within-item and between-item encoding elaborations. The methodology developed for the doctoral project integrates earlier research knowledge in a novel, interdisciplinary, conceptual framework, including: from instructional science in the USA, for the concept learning models; British cognitive psychology and human memory research, for defining the cognitive style construct; and Australian educational research, to provide the measurement tools for instructional outcomes. The experimental design consisted of a screening test to determine cognitive style, a pretest to determine prior domain knowledge in abstract programming knowledge elements, the instruction period, and a post-test to measure improved performance. This research design provides a three-level discovery process to articulate: 1) the fusion of strategic knowledge required by the novice learner for dealing with contexts within instructional strategies 2) acquisition of knowledge using measurable instructional outcome and learner characteristics 3) knowledge of the innate environmental factors which influence the instructional outcomes This research has successfully identified the interactive effect of instructional strategy, within an individual's cognitive style construct, in their acquisition of complex programming concepts. However, the significance of the three-level discovery process lies in the scope of the methodology to inform the design of a meta-knowledge processing model for instructional science. Firstly, the British cognitive style testing procedure, is a low cost, user friendly, computer application that effectively measures an individual's position on the two cognitive style continua (Riding & Cheema,1991). Secondly, the QUEST Interactive Test Analysis System (Izard,1995), allows for a probabilistic determination of an individual's knowledge level, relative to other participants, and relative to test-item difficulties. Test-items can be related to skill levels, and consequently, can be used by instructional scientists to measure knowledge acquisition. Finally, an Effect Size Analysis (Cohen,1977) allows for a direct comparison between treatment groups, giving a statistical measurement of how large an effect the independent variables have on the dependent outcomes. Combined with QUEST's hierarchical positioning of participants, this tool can assist in identifying preferred learning conditions for the evaluation of treatment groups. By combining these three assessment analysis tools into instructional research, a computerized learning shell, customised for individuals' cognitive constructs can be created (McKay & Garner,1999). While this approach has widespread application, individual researchers/trainers would nonetheless, need to validate with an extensive pilot study programme (McKay,1999a; McKay,1999b), the interactive effects within their specific learning domain. Furthermore, the instructional material does not need to be limited to a textual/graphical comparison, but could be applied to any two or more instructional treatments of any kind. For instance: a structured versus exploratory strategy. The possibilities and combinations are believed to be endless, provided the focus is maintained on linking of the front-end identification of cognitive style with an improved performance outcome. My in-depth analysis provides a better understanding of the interactive effects of the cognitive style construct and instructional format on the acquisition of abstract concepts, involving spatial relations and logical reasoning. In providing the basis for a meta-knowledge processing model, this research is expected to be of interest to educators, cognitive psychologists, communications engineers and computer scientists specialising in computer-human interactions.