Digital divide scholars suggest that the speed and scope of the digital precipitates unique catalysts of societal inequity, which public schools have long sought to mitigate by democratizing access to education. This study investigates a one-to-one digital device program in one of the largest public school districts in the United States, and its impact on literacy achievement in varying socioeconomic climates and the attitudes and beliefs of marginalized parent populations. Previous studies on one-to-one programs are largely qualitative, and existing quantitative studies suffer too many variables for reliable conclusions. Through a mixed methods design, this study centers on a highly-standardized implementation across 200,000 students, controlling for variables plaguing existing work, and offering a breadth of comparable data previously unavailable. The quantitative phase analyzed standardized test scores over seven years surrounding the implementation, and the qualitative phase analyzed survey data gathered from parents in varying socioeconomic climates. These analyses found no statistically significant change in the literacy achievement gap between low and high-income communities, and no concerns unique to any particular parent demographic, negating concerns of some scholars that one-to-one programs might exacerbate the digital divide. This study also found that parents—regardless of language, income, or educational background—generally believe this program eased the transition to remote learning when schools closed due to Covid-19 in 2020, and will better prepare students for a digitized workplace. Recommendations are made for existing and future digital learning and one-to-one laptop programs, and suggestions are offered for future research in or tangential to the fields of digital learning and digital inequity.

The core curriculum of interdisciplinary studies undergraduate programs represents interdisciplinarity as a consciously applied process, whether individually or collaboratively, of drawing and integrating insights from various disciplinary perspectives toward complex problem-solving and innovation. At the front-end of these programs students are often introduced to interdisciplinarity through terminology, metaphors, concepts, and context that are intended to familiarize them with the process. This initiation usually precedes what will ultimately entail a limited number of upper-division courses within the several disciplines or areas that will encompass a unique plan of study characterized by its breadth. The philosophy underlying current pedagogy in interdisciplinary studies appears in many ways to mirror the cognitive habitudes and socio-cultural zeitgeist that have emerged with our increasing connectedness with and reliance on digital technology. This dissertation proposes that through a revised front-end core curriculum revisiting both classical and Ramist pedagogy, and perhaps reframing how we think about interdisciplinarity itself, we need not sacrifice depth for breadth. Rather, we may be able to encourage a broadly applicable self-directed goal-centered mindset in our students that places equal emphasis on both breadth and depth in terms of deliberate knowledge acquisition. Through adapting the initial phases of a cognitivist instructional design model provisional week-by-week, curricular content is presented to illustrate how this endeavor might be realized within the context of interdisciplinary studies or like programs. This core curricular model is intended as an alternative well-suited to both the fully online and mixed mode format as well as the diversity of students within the typical undergraduate interdisciplinary studies program.

The purpose of this evaluative study was to review the implementation of a Webcam Test-Proctoring Program (WTPP) implemented in a Kindergarten through 12th grade public virtual school. Results of the evaluative study will be used to determine if the secure Webcam proctoring method would be a viable solution to a problem of practice—requiring full-time virtual school students to participate in the multitude of required state and Florida school district assessments. At the core of virtual education lies the appeal of flexibility in each student's individual learning path. The rigid nature of secure assessments conflict with the intentions of a K-12 virtual school. Natale and Cook (2012) identified this as a problem of practice as well, stating, "Digital learning de-standardizes and decentralizes educational delivery, so it presents challenges in applying quality control systems and metrics that were developed for more traditional school structures" (p. 541). A formal evaluation included an electronic survey and one-on-one phone interviews. The sample population for this study included 6th-12th grade students (n = 27) who were enrolled in Hurricane County Virtual School during the 2014-2015 school year. The HCVS population was 165 at the beginning of the 2014-2015 school year, therefore the population for this study was N=165. The WTPP evaluated for this study took place over two test sessions, the first in October of 2014 and the second in January 2015. Students were asked to complete the electronic survey and to volunteer to complete phone interviews to provide feedback about their experience completing their benchmark assessments. In this mixed-methods study, an electronic survey created by the evaluator and research chair gathered quantitative data that were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. In order to determine if there was any relationship between specific demographic sub-groups and their experiences and preferences regarding Webcam proctoring, the researcher used the Kruskal-Walis and Mann-Whitney inferential statistics. Additionally, qualitative data were collected through one-on-one phone interviews with six students who participated in the WTPP. Data from these interviews yielded supporting statements for the quantitative data analyzed. Results yielded from this study indicated that the majority of students who participated in the WTPP were satisfied or very satisfied with this method of proctoring for secure testing overall. Future studies should further evaluate the effectiveness of Webcam proctoring for secure testing and determine the impact of allowing students more flexibility (which Webcam proctoring inherently does) while testing has on their test scores.

COVID-19 forced all education online during Spring 2020 requiring face-to-face higher education faculty to immediately redesign their courses for an online modality. This dissertation studied faculty who used Canvas as their Learning Management System to investigate how faculty leveraged affordances and navigated constraints of the platform, specifically in Pages and Assignments, when they designed and redesigned their courses; how their pedagogical and Canvas training affected their choices; and the ways in which their experiences affected their workload and stress levels. This study employed a three-phase methodology: a) a Qualtrics survey with open and closed-ended questions; b) 11 faculty were interviewed; and, c) Canvas course sandboxes of the interviewees were observed via Zoom. The results indicate that although the majority of faculty had some kind of pedagogical or Canvas training prior to the pandemic, they felt extreme stress and higher workload during spring, but lower stress and workload during summer as they prepared for fall since they had more time to work. The majority of faculty worked nonstop throughout 2020, even during their Spring Breaks and summer vacations; they did so without additional pay while writing, designing, and redesigning courses, and only a few faculty were paid for additional summer training. The research was analyzed through a convergent framework of Critical Digital Pedagogy, Interface, and Affordance theories, which formed the Pandemic Teaching Cycle and development of a new educational affordance taxonomy.

The present study sought to examine the teacher-efficacy for literacy instruction (TELI) of instructors who teach in an online environment. The phenomenological methodology sought to answer the following research questions: (1) What pedagogical practices do instructors use to provide literacy instruction in an online environment? (2) How do instructors perceive their TELI in an online environment? and (3) What impact, if any, will a Professional Learning Community (PLC) focused on Rosenblatt's Transactional Theory have on TELI in an online environment? The study consisted of a group of seven online instructors. The researcher the acting as facilitator administered the initial interviews and exit interviews and adapted an Action Research PLC with activities modeled after those that influence self-efficacy. In initial interviews, the participants described their literacy practices as mostly dialogic conversations with students in which they provide examples and non-examples for students. They used some aesthetic strategies, but their practices were mainly efferent and low taxonomically. The initial interviews also revealed that instructors felt that they did not know their students well and that their literacy instructional practices were mostly silenced by the dominant role of the standardized curriculum. It was observed that teachers sourced their confidence in TELI in an online environment not from the practices they used in an online environment, but in the practices they once used in the traditional classroom which are now silenced in an online environment. During the Action Research PLC, the researcher and participants collaborated in creating questions and instructional resources that helped students take a more aesthetic stance while still meeting the standards of the curriculum through the use of aesthetic questions and discussions, semantic association, and narrative-centered learning. The PLC structure also incorporated the four influential experiences on self-efficacy. The results of the exit interviews revealed that the teachers either remained confident or increased in confidence in their TELI in an online environment. In addition, viewing TELI through Rosenblatt's Transactional Theory aided in closing the gap in transactional distance observed by the participants because they were able to engage in more positive dialogues with their students. The PLC provided a creative space for teachers to work and deliver their personalized instruction enabling them to voice their once silenced literacy instructional practices. It can be determined that the transactions that teachers have with students mediated in an online environment have a far greater impact on TELI. Viewing literacy instruction through Rosenblatt's Transactional Theory provides a reflective experience where teachers revisit whether or not an instructional practice can improve their teaching through more aesthetic dialogue thus improving their TELI.

The admission process at higher education institutions has not adapted for online distance education classes taken in high schools, such as those offered by the Florida Virtual School. The purpose of this study was to determine whether online distance education courses taken in high school can serve as an indicator of student success in post-secondary education. An honors program at a large public research university provided the data examined. This honors program stored online distance education information in a database, which allowed for analysis. Presently, the institution's primary undergraduate admission office does not collect or store this type of information. I used SPSS Statistics to calculate logistical regression on this data. My goal was to discover what effect the high school online distance education variables had on the outcome of graduating in four or six years. Graduation rate is a key metric for colleges and universities as an indicator of success. For this reason, I wanted to determine through this study whether high school online distance education assisted in predicting which students will graduate. At least two stakeholders will find this information useful. Admission officers and, more specifically, honors admission officers will gain more insight into the student selection process as this study examines students in the top 10% of the incoming class. The other group, future researchers, will learn from this study and other new studies for even more understanding on this topic. Although the results indicated that high-achieving Florida Virtual School students do not graduate at higher rate than students who have not completed distance education classes, more research is required to understand how the other 90% of student applicants are affected by distance education courses completed in high school.

This study examined the impact of video feedback (VF) as a teaching tool for responding to writing activities and assignments across disciplines and whether or not VF can help instructors facilitate dialogic exchanges between students and teachers. I conducted three case studies with three different instructors from three different disciplines: psychology, history, and nanoscience. To determine the potential of video feedback to facilitate dialogic pedagogies, this dissertation examined the presence of transformational leadership theory (Parkin, 2017), the voices of teaching and learning (Collison et al., 2001), and gesture theory (Bavelas et al., 2014; Peräkylä & Ruusuvuori, 2008) for the paralinguistic activity in the VF content to determine if the presence of these theories position students as what Buber (1965) referred to as a "Thou" and dismantle the authoritative discourses (Bakhtin, 1994) in higher education that hinder learning. This dissertation found that teachers experienced meta-reflection and self-dialogue from making videos, which is dialogic. This study also found that instructors can facilitate dialogic exchanges that undermine authoritative discourses if they can utilize their paralinguistic activity that video affords them. This study also revealed that using VF requires overcoming a significant learning curve, and that Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) can help teachers improve how they negotiate feedback variables like the assignment, discipline, pedagogy, and learning outcome that can lead to dialogic feedback.

The purpose of this study was two-fold, to understand student perception of the supplemental online courses and improve the online learning program at ABC Online Learning School. The study focused on students in Grades 6 -12 who belonged to the ABC School District and enrolled ABC Online Learning School high school credit courses to supplement their education. Student participants were asked to complete the Student Survey of Online Course Design. The data retrieved from the survey was analyzed using the Spearman correlation to establish the strength of the relationship between student perception of quality online course design and the importance of specific components of the online course. The results indicated that as student perception of quality increased, their perception of the importance of the component increased as well. Additionally, a logistic regression formula was used to test the ability to predict successful online course completions based on the developer of the online course (instructor-developed or vendor-developed) and the type of credit the student would earn based on completion (original credit or credit retrieval/recovery). The results of the analysis of the logistic regression showed that developer of the online course and type of credit earned did not have a significant influence on successful course completions. The study is significant because, in Florida, K-12 online courses are funded based on successful course completion and students are required to successful complete an online course to earn a high school diploma.

With the increased number of English learners in the United States, teacher candidates need to be prepared to address their needs in their future classrooms. Teacher preparation programs around the nation are continuously exploring solutions to better develop teacher candidates' skills. Simultaneously, the rise in popularity of online education has pushed universities to identify and integrate technology tools which best promote students' learning. This study, connecting both challenges, aims to identify which type of interactivity promoted by technology, in an undergraduate online teaching English for speakers of other languages (TESOL) course, most benefits pre-service teachers in their ability to apply newly gained knowledge in practical situations. The types of interactivity studied were traditional, suggesting limited opportunities provided by the traditional setup of an online course; written, through Canvas discussion activities; and audiovisual, through Flipgrid activities. The participants, divided among three groups, were 103 undergraduate teacher-candidates enrolled in a TESOL online course. A repeated measures ANOVA was run to identify the differences of the over-time changes in teacher-candidates' application of EL instructional support practices between the three groups. A repeated measures ANCOVA was run to investigate potential differences of the over-time changes in teacher-candidates' application of EL instructional support practices between the groups exposed to written and audiovisual, after controlling for their activity scores. While the three groups have seen an improvement in scores, as the audiovisual group outperformed the traditional group, which outperformed the written group; treatment did not have any statistically significant effect. Sample size and mitigating factors (e.g., age, gender, prior experience with technology, motivation, persistence, courseload.) might have led to this result. This study provides more insights on the ability for technology to promote various types of interactivity and how beneficial they can be in teacher-candidates online courses or programs.

This study was designed to address the issue of low retention in online K–12 courses. The goal of this research was to explore educator and student perceptions of factors impacting retention. This qualitative exploratory case study design collected and analyzed data at Southeastern Virtual School (SVS/pseudonym), a state-wide online public high school in the southeastern United States. The phenomenon analyzed for this study was factors impacting retention in English 1 at SVS. Data collection tools included a focus group interview (n=7) and student surveys (n=774). Thematic analysis was conducted on both data sets. The research results of this study provided Southeastern Virtual School with recommendations that the organization could implement to increase student retention and offer early intervention for those the study found to be most at risk for withdrawal. The study demonstrated that major factors impacting retention in K–12 online courses included the following: (a) student-teacher interactions, (b) student support, (c) instructional design, (d) course policies, (e) parental involvement, (f) external complications, (g) previous academic performance, and (h) student age. Implications for practice and future research were discussed. Recommendations for improvement of student retention determined by the study findings included: (a) teacher professional development, (b) continued support for online students, (c) professional learning communities focused on student retention, and (d) continued opportunities for student surveys. The study's findings offered implications for teachers and educational leadership to inform their pedogeological and organizational practices and policies on retention. The findings of this study also provided strategies for K–12 leaders and policy makers to address retention.