<p> The aim of this multiple and independent quantitative and qualitative methods study was to investigate the relevance of Facebook groups for doctoral students during their dissertation process. A&nbsp;convenience sampling approach was used to survey quantitatively the Texas A&amp;M Ed.D. online doctoral students who met the inclusion criteria. The participants completed a valid, web-based survey using the Doctoral Student Connectedness Scale (DSCS, Terrell et al., 2009). Purposeful sampling was used to recruit a sub-sample of participants who subsequently responded to semi-structured interview questions via web conferencing. Quantitative data analysis involved descriptive statistics using SPSS for Mac. Content analysis of the qualitative data was performed using QSR NVivo 11 software. Ethnographic and Thematic analysis used Salda&ntilde;a&rsquo;s (2013) two-stage eclectic coding, where emergent themes helped explain the quantitative analysis results. These results revealed that student-to-student regular communications was the only DSCS indicator proven to be statistically/practically significant. While the quantitative results of this study were inconsistent with the results of previous studies, the qualitative data provided additional understanding of the indicators regarding the student-to-student connectedness factor and the CoP by offering their theoretical themes and their emerging themes described as alternate communications. These preferred forms of communication added perspective to low-quality relationships by further explaining that students abandoned the cohort Facebook group due to an institutional procedure designed to divide the cohort into smaller thematic groups. Because the success expressed by the doctoral student cohort group failed to be reproduced in the smaller thematic groups, it is recommended that newly structured thematic constructs incorporate the student input presented in this study.</p><p>

<p> The virtual 3D world of Second Life continues to grow as an educational platform for higher education. Instructional designers and faculty designers by assignment in this multi-case study described the constructivist instructional strategies, design models, and processes, utilized to create constructivist collaborative-learning environments in Second Life. A gap was identified in the literature surrounding the use of constructivist design and the effects on various alternative-learning environments, such as Second Life. Ten participants from higher education were purposively chosen to participate in the study. All of the 10 participants met the criteria that included five years experience in instructional design and two years experience designing in Second Life. Five participants were instructional designers and the other five were faculty designers by assignment. Data were collected from four sources that included in-depth semi-structured participant interviews, an observational protocol guide, and documents. The same observation protocol guide was used to examine Second Life sites while the participants were present. The study identified the instructional design models, processes, strategies, advantages, and challenges for instructional design in Second Life. Included in the findings is an instructional design model for use in virtual worlds such as Second Life. .</p>