This study investigated the influence of computer-generated reminders on the rate in which distance learners submitted assignments and completed courses. The computer-generated reminders, sent via email, served as a time management support strategy. Participants were randomly divided into two groups: control and treatment. Both groups received a list of target due dates for course assignments. The control group did not receive reminders. The treatment group received reminders when they failed to submit an assignment by a target due date. The results indicated no significant difference between the control and treatment groups in terms of assignment submission rates and course completion rates. However, results of this study did reveal that the number of assignments in a distance course influences the timeliness of assignment completion and the likelihood of course completion. / Ph. D.

The majority of grandparents in the United States are married and do not reside with their grandchild(ren) (U.S. Census Bureau, 2014; Wu, 2018). The life stage of encore adulthood between 55 and 75 years old (Moen, 2016) often overlaps with grandparenthood. Time with grandchildren, and more broadly shared leisure time within couples during encore adulthood is minimally studied, this study provides insight to the process of family leisure among grandparent couples. Guided by life course and critical feminist perspectives, this qualitative inquiry examined the process of family leisure among grandparent couples during the life stage of encore adulthood (Daly, and Beaton, 2005; Moen, 2016). The results of this study, utilizing the method of constructivist grounded theory, present a theory grounded in lived experiences of 10 grandparent couples (Charmaz, 2014; Daly, 2007). The family leisure experiences with grandchildren model is presented with three components: life course dimensions, engaging in family leisure, and relationships within the couple and with grandchildren. / Doctor of Philosophy / The purpose of this study was to understand how grandparent couples between the ages of 55 and 75 years navigate family leisure experiences. Family leisure is defined as time spent together by grandparents and grandchildren in free time or recreational activities. Through in-person interviews, I interviewed each partner in 10 couples. Criteria to participate in the study included: (a) both members of the couple were able and willing to participate in interviews, (b) both members of the couple were in encore adulthood (between 55 and 75 years), (c) couples were in relationships with each other for at least five years, and (d) couples had grandchild(ren). Participants were asked to complete a demographic questionnaire, an in-person interview, and a reflective journal. All participants completed the demographic questionnaire and five individuals submitted a reflective journal. On average, interviews lasted 64 minutes. After interviews were transcribed, they were analyzed at the couple level. Grounded in the experiences of the 10 couples, the findings resulted in a model that illustrates how they performed family leisure with their grandchildren. Grandparent couples indicated that leisure with their grandchildren contributed to the way they thought about and talked about their family relationships. The grandparent couples described how instrumental their children were in allowing access to grandchildren for family leisure. Grandparent couples’ experiences illustrated that family leisure with grandchildren was more meaningful to their couple relationship than other shared recreational activities, yet family leisure required navigating family relationships such as with in-laws and children. Implications of research and future research are provided.

Community college transfer students may have to repeat one or more courses at the four-year institution or may have to take more than the required number of courses to obtain a baccalaureate degree. This uncertainty about the transfer of credits and the extra cost in higher education that goes along with it, has come about mainly due to the lack of a working definition for college-level course work. Community colleges need to insure that every course designated as a transfer course will be transferable to a receiving institution. Four-year colleges and universities should expect the courses they accept in transfer to meet the same standards required within their own curricula. The defining characteristics of "college-level" should be identified to facilitate equitable transfer of course credit and insure that transfer students are prepared academically to continue their baccalaureate studies. This study explored the defining characteristics of lower-level college course work in two North Carolina community college and universities, specifically in the areas of study in accounting and business management. Simultaneously, the characteristics of community college-level course work were compared with those of the university. The data gathering methodology utilized the qualitative research method of semi-structured elite-interviewing which allowed for in-dept exploration of the opinions of the knowledgeable individuals involved in the issue being studied. A set of broad, open-ended interview questions were designed to gather information from community college and university professors of accounting and business management. A total of 16 professors were interviewed. The analysis of the interviews included organizing the data into domains; generating categories, themes, and patterns; and comparing and contrasting the two-year analysis with the four-year analysis and the areas of study against each other. There are more similarities than differences in the comments among and between the groups, and the analysis resulted in the identification of ten categories of characteristics defining college-level course work. They include (a) Problem solving using higher level thinking skills, (b) Mastery of the subject matter, (c) Connections within and across disciplines, (d) Student maturity, (e) Essential knowledge base from high school, (f) Course content/professor expectations, (g) Pedagogical issues which include writing, reading, mathematics, student evaluation and textbook, (h) Rigor, (i) Application of the subject matter, and (j) Interpersonal skills. / Ph. D.

The department of computer science, across many schools in the US, have been seeing a constant increase in enrollments over the last decade. This particularly impacts class sizes of introductory courses, as they are usually listed as required prerequisites courses. The students in these courses typically have very little or zero prior experience with programming. In such course settings, it is not an exaggeration to state that most students in these courses spend more one-on-one time with the course teaching assistants than they do with their course instructors. This implies that the kind of individual attention provided by the TAs of such courses to their students has a very high impact on the students’ learning and the quality of the TAs would greatly impact the quality of the course and directly or indirectly also impact the student retention rate and their interest in computer science for their academic/industry careers. We wanted to take a closer look at what it is that these TAs do, and how they do it. We observed TAs from two introductory courses for almost about two semesters, and conducted a focus group meeting each with TAs and students enrolled in these course. We found that the TAs felt responsible for instilling an interest in computer science in the students, apart from helping them to learn by themselves. We also found that the students see teaching assistants as a very valuable resource, when it comes to actually applying the concepts that they learn in lecture. Our findings tells us that there is a gap between what the TAs think they need to give as help to the students and what the students tend to expect from their TAs. We also discuss the implications of our findings and possible future work. / Master of Science

Minimal research has focused on how lynching was not purely an individual-level event but, at times, was a family-level process. Prior research has focused on the economic forces, social factors, and individual level attributes that changed the probability of being lynched. Research studying these topics has identified that marginalization, status, distinctiveness, and the racial threat hypothesis contribute to lynching. However, this research has not studied child victims and how parental level attributes may intersect differently with these theoretical perspectives. Using machine-learning tools, I created census linked data which identifies the families of child lynch victims and other non-victim families in the surrounding neighborhood. With this data, I find that marginalization, status, distinctiveness, and the racial threat hypothesis may play a different role for child victims than previous studies that studied different populations. My findings demonstrate that child victims are a unique population that have different liabilities and protections that are tied to family-level attributes.

Thèse ou mémoire avec insertion d'articles. / Le sport adapté est en plein essor afin de contrer la sédentarité particulièrement présente chez les personnes vivant avec une incapacité physique. De ces sports, la course en fauteuil roulant est pilier à la culture parasportive québécoise et un des plus représentés lors des paralympiques. Il reste beaucoup de travail à faire pour diminuer les inégalités entre les ressources offertes aux athlètes avec et sans incapacités. Les athlètes de course en fauteuil ont notamment exprimé un besoin d innovation technologique pour les guider dans leur carrière athlétique. Considérant l importance de la vitesse selon les acteurs terrain et scientifiques, l analyse de celle-ci est considérée comme étant prioritaire. Les capteurs inertiels ont montré du potentiel pour répondre à ces besoins. Cependant, cette technologie est récente et leurs qualités psychométriques, jugées comme primordiales, sont quasi inexistantes dans la littérature. Le premier objectif de ce mémoire est de développer des indicateurs de la cinématique du fauteuil et de caractéristiques spatio-temporelles à base de capteurs inertiels. Le second objectif est d évaluer les qualités psychométriques (validité concurrente et fidélité test-retest) de tels indicateurs. Nous avons émis comme hypothèse que les indicateurs allaient posséder une bonne fidélité test-retest et une validité concurrente élevée avec un système optique. Après familiarisation, treize personnes sans incapacités ont effectué des accélérations maximales de 36 m sur un fauteuil roulant athlétique lors de deux visites. La cinématique a été estimée en utilisant un capteur inertiel (Physilog, Mindmaze) positionné sur le cadre et un système optique (SciencePerfo, Speedtracker). Des indicateurs ont été extraits de l accélération et de la vitesse des systèmes. La fidélité test-retest est ressortie comme modérée à bonne, tandis que 5 des 28 indicateurs ont montré une faible fidélité. Les corrélations entre les deux systèmes sont élevées à très élevées (0,78 - 0,99). Les résultats suggèrent que les indicateurs sont précis et soutiennent leur utilisation. / Adapted sports are increasing in popularity as a means of opposing the sedentary lifestyle that is particularly prevalent among people with physical disabilities. Of these sports, wheelchair racing is a pillar of Quebec's parasport culture and one of the most represented at the Paralympics. Much remains to be done to reduce the investment inequalities between athletes with and without disabilities. In particular, wheelchair racing athletes have expressed a need for technological innovation to guide them in their athletic careers. Considering the importance of speed according to athletes and researchers, its analysis is considered a priority. Inertial sensors have shown potential to fulfill these needs. However, this technology is recent and the psychometric properties of reported indicators, considered to be essentials, are virtually nonexistent in the scientific literature. The first objective of this master's thesis is to develop inertial sensor-based indicators of wheelchair kinematics and spatio-temporal characteristics. The second objective is to assess the psychometric qualities (concurrent validity and test-retest reliability) of such indicators. We hypothesized that the indicators would have good test-retest reliability and high concurrent validity with an optical system. After familiarization, thirteen people without disabilities performed maximum accelerations of 36m on a racing wheelchairduring two visits. The wheelchair kinematics were estimated using an IMU (Physilog, Mindmaze) positioned on the frame and an optical system (SciencePerfo, Speedtracker).Indicators were extracted from the systems' acceleration and velocity. Test-retest fidelity was found to be moderate to good, while 5 of the 28 indicators showed low fidelity. Correlations between the two systems were high to very high (0,78 - 0,99). The results suggest that theindicators developed are accurate and support their use to assess wheelchair kinematics over a short distance.

Virtual physical education (VPE) offerings have grown for over a decade in the United States, but there has been little empirical knowledge shared, specifically regarding the design of courses to support and validate these expanding programs (Buschner, 2006; Mohnsen, 2012a; b; Mosier, 2012; Mosier & Lynn, 2012). Most VPE research has been conducted at the Florida Vir- tual School (FLVS), but few studies have been completed regarding VPE in Georgia (Watson Pape, Murin, Gemin, & Vashaw, 2014). Due to the lack of research along with the growth in VPE (Daum, 2014; Mosier, 2012; Watson et al., 2014), the purpose of this study was to perform an initial, descriptive examination of a district virtual personal fitness course in Georgia and determine the degree to which its design aligns with the criteria established by the National Association of Sport and Physical Education (NASPE) Initial Guidelines for Online Physical Education (PE) (2007). This study aimed to answer the following overarching research question: To what degree does the design of the virtual personal fitness course align with the NASPE Initial Guide- lines for Online PE? A thorough document analysis of the course website and student activity tracking data along with semi-structured interviews and electronic virtual personal fitness student and teacher anonymous survey questionnaires provide a detailed description of the course and illustrate the degree to which its design aligns with the 10 guidelines. Triangulated results of this study indicate superficial strong alignment with eight of the 10 guidelines, and moderate alignment with two of the 10 guidelines, but more evidence is needed to confirm alignment in practice. The researcher concludes that revisions to the guidelines are necessary to better capture evidence of alignment to further promote quality, optimal student learning and best practice in single district virtual personal fitness environments. The results of this study contribute to the over- all knowledge base of single district virtual personal fitness programs and set the stage for future research endeavors to investigate this phenomena and add to the literature in this area.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a multifaceted social issue that affects the Christian faith community as it does the secular community. Though the literature reflects some understanding of general correlates and possible antecedents to IPV within the Christian community, the impact of religious and spiritual factors tends to be homogenized and is often misjudged. Allport's theory of intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientation provided a platform for investigating Christian male-perpetrated IPV. This quantitative study utilized survey design and measured the impact of 10 select religious and spiritual factors on the probability of physical or sexual IPV perpetration. Archival data from Wave III of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health were used and included male participants ages 18 to 26 who nominally classified themselves as Catholic, Protestant, or Christian. Data were analyzed using binary logistic regression and results indicated that IPV perpetration could not be predicted from the 10 religious or spiritual factors. Given the geographic breadth and the size of the sample utilized, not finding a predictive model suggests there may be a lack of consistency in religious and spiritual orientation in these young males and elucidated analysis problems resulting from multicollinearity and the use of ordinal data. Though a predictive model for Christian male-perpetrated IPV was not found, the results of this study can contribute to social change by challenging existing ecclesiastical paradigms regarding which religious or spiritual factors, if any, impact Christian male-perpetrated IPV and which religious and spiritual factors should be addressed in faith-based batterers' programs targeting young adult males.

Effective recognition and proper treatment of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) in Hispanic woman is a public health problem that needs further investigation. Guided by the stress and coping social support theory, the purpose of this cross-sectional survey study was to examine the relationship between attitudes, emotional support, and the perception of success in managing cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) in 335 Hispanic women living in Atlanta, Georgia. Correlations, independent-sample t tests, simple linear regression, and multiple linear regressions showed ethnicity as a moderating variable between the perception of success in handling CVD and emotional support, while emotional support was shown to be a significant predictor of perceived success for all participants. The relationship between the 2 variables was positive for Hispanic women and negative for non-Hispanics women. Diet and exercise also emerged as a significant direct predictor of perceived success in handling CVD when the variable of emotional support was controlled. Key findings also showed that, while Hispanic women had higher scores for perceived success in handling CVD, non-Hispanic women had higher emotional support scores. This study supports positive social change by highlighting the unique needs of Hispanic women to healthcare providers, relative to effective recognition and positive treatment regimens, if cardiovascular disease is suspected. Positive social change will be demonstrated with the recognition of better health outcomes for Hispanic women.

Online or web-based courses have become prolific in our educational environment over the past several years. The development of these courses can be guided by systematic design models to ensure quality instructional design. Transactional distance, the theory that claims the distance an online student feels is more of a pedagogical distance than a geographic one, consists of three factors: structure, dialogue, and learner autonomy. Accurate measurement of these three factors is needed in order to substantiate its claims and to best determine the delivery implications. This study produced an instrument that measures the structure component of the transactional distance theory as it pertains to the online environment. A total of 20 online courses were evaluated using the Structure Component Evaluation Tool (SCET). Experts in the field validated the instrument and reliability was determined by calculating Cronbachs alpha as well as examining inter-rater reliability. The SCET also excelled in a comparison to other instruments in the field in terms of its ability to produce rich, valid information about the structure of online courses.