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The purpose of this dissertation in practice is to address the problem of online credit recovery. Although online enrollments have skyrocketed in recent years and all preliminary research indicates a large percentage of those enrollments are from students seeking credit recovery, much of the curriculum currently being offered is not research-based. Following a literature review focused on the history of credit recovery as well as successful current methods, we designed CRIT (Credit Recovery Instructional Treatment), a research-based approach to curriculum design for credit recovery. CRIT is a standards based curriculum relying on criterion based assessments. This approach was then applied in the creation of specific curriculum for English 4 credit recovery and as a general approach for all subjects. A step by step evaluation plan for current and proposed approaches for credit recovery was then defined. Additionally, we provide a detailed implementation strategy specific to our organization but easily retrofitted for other organizations. We focus on the organization of Florida Virtual School (FLVS), a state run K-12 virtual school run as a special school district in Florida because it is a familiar organization; however, the model and results may be generalizable for online or traditional education.

This dissertation focuses on the role that College Composition courses can and should play in addressing the digital divide and the literacy divide. For this project, digital divide refers to the space between those students who have opportunity to participate in online discourse communities and to contribute to the collective intelligence described by Henry Jenkins and those who have not had this opportunity even though they do have access to current technology. The literacy divide discussed is created when literacy is defined simply as the ability to read and write. Students need to be visually, digitally, and technologically literate. In response to these gaps, I propose reimagining the first-year writing course as a course in storytelling across disciplines and media. Story, oral storytelling, digital narrative, and transmedia narrative are explained. An analysis of several stories including a canonical comic book, a commercial, and a long-term narrative television show are analyzed using Aristotle, Propp, Saussure, Jenkins, Birkerts, and other theorists important to work in Texts and Technology. The guiding question for this project is How can a focus on storytelling using new and digital media in the first-year English composition course create an authentic and relevant learning experience for contemporary students while bridging the digital divide created by the lack of opportunity to participate in the collective intelligence of the convergence culture? Finally, the dissertation includes a research protocol which describes and justifies future research to test the claims made in this dissertation.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of three deadline conditions (i.e., frequent-instructor-set-deadline condition, flexible-instructor-set-deadline condition, and self-imposed-deadline condition) on students of different academic procrastination levels (high, medium, and low) in terms of their perceived learning, academic performance, and course satisfaction in an online course. A 3 x 3 factorial quasi-experimental design was adopted for this study. One hundred and seventy three students from three classes of different majors voluntarily participated in the study with 50 students majoring in Agriculture, 61 in International Trading, and 62 in Food Manufacturing. The three classes were randomly assigned to three deadline conditions. Data were collected through an online survey and a final exam. This study found that there were significant differences in perceived learning and course satisfaction among high, medium, and low procrastinators, but there was no significant difference in academic performance among students at different procrastination levels. Low and medium procrastinators had significantly higher perceived learning and were significantly more satisfied with the course than high procrastinators. Among the three deadline condition groups, there were no significant differences in perceived learning and course satisfaction, however, the difference in academic performance was significant. The flexible deadline group achieved the best academic performance followed by the frequent and the self-imposed deadline groups. There was no interaction effect between procrastination and deadline conditions on any of the dependent variables. Limitations of the present study, recommendations for future research, and implications for practice are discussed.