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My dissertation examines the experiences of Teachers College faculty that transitioned to online teaching for the first time during the forced circumstances of COVID-19. More specifically, I explore: 1) the relationship between feeling prepared, supported, and connected with professional development; 2) the experiences of faculty making the transition to online teaching; and 3) how faculty described re-evaluating, as Boud describes it, their teaching experiences. To better understand this, I used the case-selection variant of the explanatory sequential, mixed-methods design (quan → QUAL). I surveyed 85 participants (Phase 1) that engaged in professional development opportunities provided by the institution to better understand their experiences preparing for this transition and then interviewed 10-participants (Phase 2) to better understand their unique experiences. I found that most participants that made this transition grew both in their ability to use technology and comfort with teaching online. Participants described the experience as a challenging transition, especially as there was little time to prepare; however, participants also learned (through consultations, intensive programs, colleagues, and students) from this experience. In Phase 2, 7 of 10 participants indicated that they will take their learnings from teaching online and integrate them into their face-to-face teaching.

My dissertation is a qualitative design-based research study that explores Singaporean elementary school students’ documentation and reflection practices in a maker learning environment. In this work, I build upon literature from Constructionism, Metacognition, and formative assessment methods. I investigate the following research questions regarding student-driven documentation of maker processes: 1. How might artifact documentation and organization, as a mode of formative assessment, provide new insights to students and teachers in complex making/construction processes? 2. How could artifact documentation embedded in a collaborative tool contribute to students' identification and reflection of new knowledge gained during their making process? Over the course of two and a half years, I developed prototypes of the CoCreator App, informed by constructionist pedagogy and metacognitive practices. Then, I implemented the CoCreator App prototypes in two schools and an afterschool makerspace in Singapore, where students and teachers used it as their technology-facilitated process for documentation. Through analysis of students’ and teachers’ interviews, observations and field notes of classroom sessions, I reveal opportunities for thoughtful design of documentation tools that advance and challenge the theoretical underpinnings of Constructionism and Metacognition, and cater to elementary school students’ learning and reflection. My design recommendations include: multimodal choices of documentation, integration with students’ routines and workflows, organization of artifacts to achieve a balance between multimodality and integration with routines. Finally, I end with a note about the essential role that teachers play in engaging with students’ artifacts and nurturing a culture of documentation in the classroom, to inch closer to helping students develop intrinsic motivation towards student-driven formative assessment.

Many systems in use today do not fulfill their expectations when operating, and are in a non-operating state much of the time due to maintenance. The accomplishment of maintenance often turns out to be costly and may significantly influence performance and the competitive position of a factory. In response to maintenance problems in the industrial environment, "Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)" is rapidly becoming the reliable, efficient, and cost-effective approach to maintaining the system to be operated at the full capacity with high productivity and low production cost. "Overall Equipment Effectiveness (DEE)" has been developed to measure the effectiveness of a given maintenance approach. It involves all of the operation and maintenance parameters required to measure the overall operating condition of the factory and its equipment. Measuring in terms of the DEE assists in identifying the production losses experienced in a factory, and aids in planning possible countermeasures to eliminate those losses. The concept of TPM and the steps involved in TPM implementation is introduced. A specific measure of TPM effectiveness, DEE, is defined, employed, and the results are analyzed. A computerized DEE model is developed to facilitate the measurement and evaluation process. The countermeasures necessary to eliminate the losses defined in TPM are also discussed. Application of GEE measurement and evaluation is illustrated through a case study assuming a hypothetical factory environment A cost-effectiveness analysis in terms of the total product cost and the resultant DEE value is also illustrated through the case study. The application of these methods for continuous factory improvement is the objective. / Ph. D.

In the face of environmental breakdown, this dissertation focuses on the emergent field of biomaking as a learning space to reflect on human-nature relationships. The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore what occurs in interspecies creative encounters (particularly between humans and fungi) and how ethical engagement can be supported through the design of biomaking experiences, techniques, and materials. Building on a constructionist tradition of maker education and drawing from embodied cognition, I propose a learning design framework to support learning through creative engagement with other beings. The Interspecies Creativity framework aims to (1) guide the design of constructionist experiences rooted in local ecologies and (2) foster mindful creative relations between learners and living systems. The design principles of the framework—grounding, listening, responding, and relating—invite learners to empathize with other living beings in their local landscapes to meet their needs while leveraging their behavior for collective creation. Using a design-based research approach, I developed a six-session biomaking workshop to test and refine the affordances of the framework. In this program, twelve middle school students built living art pieces at a lab and installed them at a nearby park, where they continued growing after the implementation. I gathered multimodal data—including interviews, questionnaires, videos, photographs, drawings, and artifacts—and analyzed the creative process from an embodied cognition lens. The study reveals that biomaking, intentionally framed as an interspecies creative practice, provides multiple entry points to deal with tensions and build relationships with living organisms and local ecosystems. I highlight critical events in the making process in which there was a shift in students' perception of the organism in their work. In these events, participants intentionally tested or where surprised by the organism's behavior, turning its agency apparent and decisive for the creative outcome. In closing, I offer practical and theoretical insights to guide the implementation of interspecies making and biomaking education to support learners in modulating creative interactions with their extended communities of life.

Chemistry is a difficult subject for many students and often deters them from pursuing related careers or other paths of study. An obstacle that causes students to stumble is the comprehension of chemistry’s myriad abstract concepts. Strong visuospatial skills and modelling are required to understand the nuances of topics such as atomic structures, molecular behaviors, and others. Teaching tools like “ball and stick” molecule kits or virtual demonstrations are useful but have their limitations. Especially when presenting the connections between the macroscopic world and their abstract, atomic-scale representations (i.e., the sub-micro world (Johnstone, 1982)), there are few tools that have proven effective. In this 2 x 2 between-subjects experimental study, a virtual reality (VR) laboratory simulation is utilized in conjunction with a sub-micro intervention. The timing of the sub-micro intervention (pre-lab vs. integrated into a specific point in the simulation) and the level of embodiment (physical manipulatives vs. VR) are the two independent variables. Eighty students (N = 80), ages 11-18 years old, from a local community center participated in this study, completing a pretest, the laboratory simulation, the sub-micro intervention, and a post-test. The pre- and post-test measures included multiple-choice, free-response, drawing questions, and an attitudinal survey. Key findings were that integrating the intervention, no matter which level of embodiment, led to significantly higher gains in learning. The combination of using physical manipulatives and integrating them within the lab exercise demonstrated the most gains, although the VR Integrated condition also showed improvement. The VR Integrated condition also showed significant improvement in three out of the four drawing categories (i.e., molecule shape, atom quantity, and relative sizes), more than any other condition. The VR conditions also showed significant growth in positive student attitudes towards science, technology, and potential future careers in these subjects. The implications are that while practically, VR may not provide enough advantage over physical manipulatives to replace them as classroom learning tools, VR is an effective tool to teach abstract chemistry concepts. It enabled students to perform better on visuospatial measures and proved to be highly motivating for furthering learning in science and technology.

The purpose of this study was to document the effects of applying the platform unity concept, a concept based on the principle of curriculum alignment. This principle states that the planned, the delivered, and the tested curricula are congruent. Specifically, platform unity aligns planned, domain-referenced content with appropriate test types. Mathematical formulae were created to determine numerically if planned and tested content were congruent. In addition, four other constructs were examined. They included overtesting and undertesting of course content and, effectiveness and efficiency of test item type selection. / Ph. D.

Data evolving from the research project: (1) established that engaging instructional design teams in staff development fabricates an energetic, resourceful, support network that facilitates diffusion of an innovation; (2) identified characteristics of instructional design teams likely to forge a viable diffusion network; (3) indicated that engaging instructional design teams in staff development creates a microcosm of the classroom that accelerates change; (4) demonstrated that instructional design teams, as organized in this study, foster modifications in instructional practices, learning processes and outcomes of students, and teacher beliefs; and (5) supported the premise that merging the expertise of two generations (i.e., teachers and students) expedites integration of technology into teaching and learning processes. Four implications flow from the findings of this study. Effective staff development requires (1) nurturing of relationships with potential adopters, (2) customizing the staff development for potential adopters, (3) associating curricular supervisors with families of schools (i.e., elementary, middle, high), and (4) considering a network of instructional design teams as the vehicle for diffusing other innovations. / Ed. D.

All individuals develop new skills over time and one important developmental stage is when individuals can learn in the absence of direct reinforcement. Behavior Analytic theories have stressed the importance of these emergent response repertoires and have consistently studied them across fields (i.e. Incidental Bidirectional Naming, Arbitrarily Applicable Relational Responding, Equivalence). Emergent responses are responses that are not explicitly taught during instruction. Recently, behavior analytic perspectives have studied their similarities across perspectives, one area of interest being Incidental Bidirectional Naming (Inc-BiN). Researchers have identified multiple types of Naming, including Pre-Unidirectional Naming (Pre-UniN), Incidental Unidirectional Naming (Inc-UniN), and Incidental Bidirectional Naming (Inc-BiN). Study 1 investigated the basic question about whether verbal development – in this case degree of Inc-BiN – is related to academic performance (mathematics and reading). The researcher correlated participants’ listener and speaker responses for two Brief Inc-BiN Probes with academic performance (iReady Diagnostic Mathematic and Reading scores) for 41 participants. Results demonstrated significant positive correlations between degree of Inc-BiN and reading and mathematics performance. Given this correlation, two experiments examined the relationship between verbal development and two specific instructional design tactics that focus on the emergence of novel behavior. Experiment 2 investigated the effectiveness and appropriateness of a relational training procedure (matrix instruction) on participants’ emergent intraverbal responses. The researcher used learn units to teach intraverbal atomic units and measured generalized operant responding. The researcher used a matrix with five prefixes and five root words, which combined to make 25-word combinations. The researcher taught five combinations (1 prefix plus 1 root) and tested the other 20-word combinations. The researcher implemented a multiple probe design and measured emergent intraverbals and degree of Inc-BiN prior to and following intervention. Results demonstrated that emergent intraverbal responses varied in accordance with participant degree of Inc-BiN. Experiment 3 investigated the effects of another relational training procedure (Equivalence-Based Instruction; EBI), across participants with ranging degrees of Inc-BiN. During teaching, the researcher taught two of six relations in a class to mastery using learn unit instruction across 13 participants. Results in Experiment 3 demonstrated that, after EBI, participants emitted a greater number of emergent intraverbals when they had higher degrees of Inc-BiN and lower emergent intraverbals when they had lower degrees of Inc-BiN. Experiment 2 and 3 demonstrate similar results that participants with Inc-UniN and Inc-BiN emitted a high percentage of emergent relations following learn unit instruction across the three studies. Data highlight the importance of Inc-BiN’s relation to academic performance in general (Experiment 1) and in predicting participants’ success with behavior analytic instructional design tactics (Experiment 2 and 3).

The project, presented in this paper, developed a web-based tool that provides training and technical support in the use of computers to employees at the San Bernardino Community College District. The purpose of this project was with the lack of one support system it has become necessary to create one place for support entities to share their expertise with one another and with the campus community. This project creates a web presence that all of these groups can contribute to. This system starts out small and creates a skeletal system that will allow for continued development after the project is over.