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Thesis advisor: Heather Rowan-Kenyon / Academic advising can teach students how to engage with postsecondary curricula and connect curricular engagement to career exploration and lifelong learning. However, academic advising is both a one-on-one activity and a systemic enterprise, and institutions should thoroughly communicate the benefits and functions of advising on official platforms such as institutional websites. This study analyzes institutional websites and creates a thematic inventory of their content containing the purpose, strategies, and desired outcomes of undergraduate academic advising at 20 highly selective, four-year liberal arts colleges and universities that are members of the Consortium on Financing Higher Education (COFHE). Additionally, this study explores website content about specific methods and resources for how academic advising supports institutional diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) goals. The major themes emerging from this study include the promise of the continuity of advising, the possibility of advising relationships akin to mentoring experiences with faculty and peers, and holistic advising support provided by several people and aspects of the school’s advising system. However, the promise of advising relationships also hinges on students’ willingness and ability to be self-directed, self-reflective, and advocates for themselves. On these websites, advising was aligned with academic “success” and the journey of liberal learning. The author posits that equitable access to liberal learning for flourishing in college requires aligning academic advising pedagogies and practices with learning processes, equity-minded qualitative assessments, and iterative design practices. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2024. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

Newspapers have been shown to have positive correlations with their readers, sense of community, political participation, and civic engagement. Using McMillan and Chavis, Sense of Community Theory and its accompanying SCI-2 as well as questions on demographics and media use, political participation, and civic engagement, this thesis conducts a survey study of two community newspaper readerships in differing locations within the continental United States. This study aims to discover and develop further understanding of the social, political, and community-building effects of community dailies and their mirrored-content news websites. First, it examines media consumption preferences and measure the sense of community (SOC) felt by readers of print-edition newspapers and their mirrored-content websites. Second, it examines the differences in SOC felt by print and website readers. Third, it examines the influence of SOC and print-news website-reading on political participation, and fourth, it examines the influence of SOC and print newspaper-website reading on civic engagement, both with the intent of discovering how SOC might mediate this relationship. This thesis will provide contextual information and build a case for the relevance of community dailies in an ever-increasingly fast-paced, technocentric society. Findings include a significant relationship between SOC and both print and online readers, and the question of whether readers of both print and online community news feel a stronger SOC than either on its own is answered. Further findings include newspaper website-reading shares a significant relationship with both political participation and civic engagement, and print does not. Implications and limitations are discussed. / Master of Arts

Many academic institutions are tasked with trying to improve the usability of their online educational support technologies such as ePortfolios, intelligent websites, and other interface technology to make them as efficient as possible to meet the requirements of their end users. This is particularly important for the academic institutions during times and situations when they may not have a live human presence available to respond to various inquiries from their end users about the technology. The challenges of an academic institution in making its ePortfolios viable can cost itself, its end users, as well as its other stakeholders, money, time, and confidence in the technology. This study is about usability testing for improving the user-interface for ePortfolios. This is a qualitative study using the think-aloud protocol (TAP) for data collection and failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) for data analysis.

Definição de critérios de análise de sites e avaliação da disponibilidade de conhecimento de acesso livre como ferramenta de apoio à inovação e ao desenvolvimento de produto. O conhecimento encontra-se, entre outras formas, disponível em páginas web. Para a criação compartilhada de conhecimento de qualidade e de acesso livre, que atendam aos interesses específicos de pessoas e organizações, assim como sua recuperação, são fundamentais os recursos de Internet. Esse contexto justifica a definição de critérios de análise de sites para identificação da disponibilidade desses recursos. O objetivo desse trabalho é a identificacão e avaliação de sites na Internet, com características de compartilhamento, divulgação e produção de conhecimento de acesso livre, para apoiar a inovação e desenvolvimento de produto. Para atingir o objetivo, inicialmente sistematiza o conhecimento por meio de pesquisa exploratória e procedimentos de pesquisa bibliográfica e documental. Fundamentando-se nas pesquisas, lista portais que possam contemplar o objetivo. Define critérios para análise desses sites com base nas dimensões conteúdo, usabilidade e funcionalidade. Analisa, então, cada uma das dimensões por meio de características e atributos que geram indicadores parciais e um indicador geral por site e permite a análise comparativa entre eles. Dos vinte portais analisados; nenhum contempla todos os atributos; a dimensão conteúdo recebe a melhor pontuação enquanto a dimensão funcionalidade apresenta o desempenho mais negativo; os atributos menos contemplados são acessibilidade, criptografia e controle de versões. Com base nos resultados obtidos, conclui que existe uma disponibilidade limitada de conhecimento de acesso livre sobre inovação e desenvolvimento de produto; aponta a existência de comunidades de prática que propiciam o compartilhamento de conhecimento; e evidencia as razões pelas quais existem falhas na recuperação do conhecimento disponível on-line. Tais razões podem fornecer orientação aos interessados no assunto sobre onde é possível, necessário ou recomendável consultar. Também fornece subsídos para orientação aos provedores interessados na melhoria dos portais existentes ou na criação de novos. / Definition of criteria for site analysis and evaluation of the availability of knowledge of free access as a support tool to innovation and product development. The knowledge is found, among another feature, available in web pages. For the shared creation of good quality and free access knowledge, that will supply specific interests of people and organizations, as its recovering, the websites are fundamental resources. This context justifies the definition of the analysis requirements of web sites for the identification of availability of these resources. The purpose of this researche is the identification and evaluation of websites which presents characteristics such as sharing, spreading and producing free knowledge access, to support the innovation and development of the product. To reach the goal, it initially organizes the knowledge through the explorative research and bibliographic and documental research procedures. Based on the researches, it catalogues websites that contemplate the area innovation and product development with the mentioned characteristics. It defines the analysis requirements of these websites based on the content, usability and functionality dimensions. Then it analyzes each one of the dimensions through characteristics and attributes that produce partial indicators and a general indicator per website, and makes possible the comparative analysis among them. From the twenty websites that were analyzed, none contemplates every attribute; the content dimension receives the best punctuation while the functionality dimension shows the worst performance; the less contemplated attributes are accessibility, cryptography and version control. Based on the gotten results, concludes that there is a limited availability of free access knowledge about innovation and product development; points the existence of practice communities that propitiate in the best way the sharing of knowledge; and evidences the reasons why there are imperfections in the recovering of the knowledge available on line. These reasons could provide help to orientate the suppliers to improve the existent websites and the creation of new ones.

A globalização das economias, aliada ao avanço das comunicações e à chegada da Internet, está tornando a integração virtual cada vez mais viável. O comércio eletrônico com as empresas, a web social e a inclusão das pessoas deverão se beneficiar dos serviços que estão sendo disponibilizados na web reforça a necessidade de uso das páginas. Com isto, surge a necessidade de tornar as páginas da Internet cada vez mais agradáveis, fáceis de serem utilizadas e eficientes em seus objetivos e, desta maneira, facilitando a todos. Nesse novo cenário, portanto, é primordial torná-las cada vez mais práticas de serem utilizadas, ou seja, o estudo da usabilidade se tornou uma necessidade para os projetistas das páginas de Internet para que a qualidade da Interação Humano-Computador(IHC) seja cada vez melhor. Deve-se pensar também em como verificar/avaliar se essas páginas foram construídas de forma satisfatória a atender aos interesses dos usuários. Neste contexto, foi interessante desenvolver algo que fizesse uma coleta automatizada dos elementos de interação dos websites para servir de suporte e apoio no processo de avaliação de usabilidade, tornando-os, desta maneira, mais claros e com maior possibilidade de a interação com o usuário ser realizada de forma mais eficaz e eficiente. No desenvolvimento das atividades relacionadas a esta proposta de trabalho foi criado um protótipo de uma ferramenta que informasse quais elementos de interação estavam contidos em cada uma das páginas dos websites avaliados. Tal coleta visava auxiliar o desenvolvimento de ferramentas que apoiassem a avaliação da usabilidade, tanto de forma automatizada como, por exemplo, por meio da apresentação de questionários confeccionados por essas ferramentas de forma prática, pois apresentariam apenas perguntas específicas aos elementos de interação que realmente estivessem contidos nos websites. Este protótipo também torna a avaliação da usabilidade mais eficiente e rápida, pois apresenta um levantamento prévio dos elementos de interação da página web uma vez que identifica os elementos da página com as suas características e disponibiliza para o avaliador todas essas informações em formulários web. / The globalization of economies, coupled with the advancement of communications and the arrival of the Internet, is becoming increasingly feasible virtual integration. Electronic commerce with businesses, web and social inclusion of people will benefit from the services that are available on the web reinforces the need to use the pages. With this, comes the need to make Web pages more and more enjoyable, easy to use and efficient in their goals and in this way facilitating all. In this new scenario, therefore, it is essential to make them ever more practical to be used, ie, the study of usability has become a necessity for designers of web pages so that the quality of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is better. One should also think about how to verify/evaluate whether these pages were designed to satisfactorily serve the interests of users. In this context, it was interesting to develop something that would make an automated collection of interaction elements of the websites to provide support and assistance in the usability evaluation process, making them, in this way, clearer and with greater possibility of interaction with the user be performed more effectively and efficiently. In developing this proposal related to work activities a prototype of a tool to inform interaction elements which were contained in each of pages of reviews websites was created. This collection was intended to assist the development of tools that would support the assessment of usability , both automated way, eg, through the presentation of questionnaires made by these tools in a practical way, it would show only specific questions to the elements of interaction that were actually contained in websites. This prototype also makes the assessment more efficient and faster usability, it presents a preliminary survey of interaction elements of the web page as it identifies the elements of the page with its features and available to the assessor all this information into web forms.