Thesis (Ed. D.)--West Virginia University, 2010. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vi, 197 p. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 174-179).

Thesis (Ed. D.)--Illinois State University, 2003. / Title from title page screen, viewed November 15, 2005. Dissertation Committee: Dent M. Rhodes (chair), Temba C. Bassoppo-Moyo, Rodney Custer, Nancy Bragg. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 129-141) and abstract. Also available in print.

Thesis (D. Phil.(Communication Pathology))--University of Pretoria, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2006. / Advisor: Robert K. Branson, Florida State University, College of Education, Dept of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed June 14, 2006). Document formatted into pages; contains xi, 104 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Idaho, January 2006. / Major professor: Karen Wilson Scott. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 140-145). Also available online in PDF format.

As educators and instructional designers consider educational practices nationally and internationally, they find themselves questioning the traditional ways of teaching and learning which seems to be outdated in an era defined by the World Wide Web and globalisation. Instructional designers and educators worldwide recognise that there is a need for learning facilitation that builds upon the diverse needs and diverse experiences of learners and that is open to change. Instructional design can be regarded as one way of addressing the needs of learner groups with diverse needs as learners attach much value to the quality of their learning materials. In fact, many learners depend on the quality of their learning materials to complete their courses successfully and to enter the labour market as qualified people. Well-designed learning materials and environments, therefore, play an important role in contributing to improved student pass rates and, in the broader South African context, to the skills development and socio-economic development of our country. It is thus a huge challenge for instructional designers to ensure successful learning facilitation by means of the learning programmes and environments they design. The intellectual contribution of this dissertation lies within the area of instructional designers’ personal views on teaching and learning. More specifically, the focus of this research inquiry is on investigating the extent to which the personal teaching and learning philosophies of a group of instructional designers at a higher education institution influence their design decisions. A review of the literature reveals that instructional designers are dependent on learning theories that have been tested in order to make design decisions that would best suit the requirements of a particular teaching and learning situation. For this inquiry I contend that the personal teaching and learning philosophies of instructional designers are based on established theories of human learning, but that their personal teaching and learning philosophies change over time as they address the demands of changing socio-cultural contexts. Considering the focus of this study, it is thus important to establish what a grounded instructional design approach entails as well as what views socio-cultural theory and activity theory hold on humanlearning and how these relate to the personal teaching and learning philosophies of the research participants. A grounded approach uses theories of human learning as a foundation for making decisions on the design of learning experiences and environments that would result in effective learning. According to activity theory, if human behaviour is to be understood, a study of surrounding social practices should be part and parcel of the inquiry. In this regard the decision-making process of instructional designers can be seen as an activity system. Within this system the design activities of instructional designers are mediated by tools aiming at effective learning programmes and environments. Tools, activity theory states, are created and transformed during the development of the activity itself. As such the personal teaching and learning philosophies of the designers are viewed as design tools that are continuously shaped and modified during the design process. This inquiry is concerned with the emergence of the everyday knowledge and actions of a group of identified instructional designers. Therefore a qualitative, ethnomethodological strategy is followed allowing me to examine the nature of the personal teaching and learning philosophies of the designers and how these philosophies are shaped and used to make instructional design decisions in their place of work. Activity theory is used as both the theoretical framework and data analysis tool for this inquiry. The findings of the study make it clear that instructional designers regard personal teaching and learning philosophies as essential tools in their daily design activities. The findings also demonstrate that personal teaching and learning philosophies are individual user tools, and as such the unique qualities of the tools remain with the individual instructional designer. / Dr. G. V. Lautenbach

C³TO (Chatter Call Centre/Tutoring Online) is a scalable architecture to support mobile online tutoring using chat protocols over cell phones. It is the scalability of this architecture which is the primary focus of this dissertation. Much has been written lamenting the state of mathematics education in South Africa. It is not a pretty story. In order to help solve this mathematical crisis, the “Dr Math” research project was started in January, 2007. “Dr Math” strove to assist school pupils with their mathematics homework by providing access to tutors from a nearby university to help them. The school pupils used MXit on their cell phones and the tutors used normal computer workstations. The original “Dr Math” research project expected no more than twenty to thirty school pupils to participate. Unexpectedly thousands of school pupils started asking “Dr Math” to assist them with their mathematics homework. The original software could not scale. The original software could not cater for the thousands of pupils needing help. The scalability problems which existed in the original “Dr Math” project included: hardware scalability issues, software scalability problems, lack of physical office space for tutors, and tutor time being wasted by trivial questions. C³TO tackled these scalability concerns using an innovative three level approach by implementing a technological feature level, a tactical feature level, and a strategic feature level in the C³TO architecture. The technological level included specific components, utilities, and platforms which promoted scalability. The technological level provided the basic building blocks with which to construct a scalable architecture. The tactical level arranged the basic building blocks of the technological level into a scalable architecture. The tactical level provided short term solutions to scalability concerns by providing easy configurability and decision making. The strategic level attempted to answer the pupils questions before they actually arrived at the tutor thereby reducing the load on the human tutors. C³TO was extensively tested and evaluated. C³TO supported thousands of school pupils with their mathematics homework over a period of ten months. C³TO was used to support a small conference. C³TO was used to encourage people to volunteer their time in participation of Mandela Day. C³TO was used to support “Winter School” during the winter school holiday. In all these cases, C³TO proved itself to be scalable.

The study was conducted to investigate the design, and implementation of an interprofessional continuing education (IPE) course in biomedical ethics to healthcare providers; and to evaluate this course. The impact of the course on teamwork and perception among participants was also examined. The course was designed using a problem-based learning (PBL) approach using the We Learn framework (Macdonald, Stodel, Thompson, & Casimiro, 2009). The study was conducted in the Ministry of Health in Oman. The participants of the study included the instructional designer (who was also the researcher), the course instructor, five group instructors, and 28 learners. The learners were different healthcare professionals who work in the four tertiary hospitals in the capital city. The study employed design and development research (Richey & Klein, 2007) and focused on examining the process of product development and evaluation. A case study method was applied for data collection. Data were collected from all of the participants using surveys, interviews, and logs. The study findings indicated there was a decrease in learners' perceptions that may be due to unrealistic entry level. However, they expressed that working in IPE was enjoyable. They had consensus that PBL was appropriate and promoted interactions between learners. Overall, the course was implemented as designed. The course is to be revised and include cases with local context. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2015. / April 27, 2015. / Design and Development, Health Professional Education, Instructional Design, Interdisciplinary Education, Interprofessional Education, Problem Based Learning / Includes bibliographical references. / James Klein, Professor Directing Dissertation; James Whyte, IV, University Representative; Vanessa Dennen, Committee Member; Fengfeng Ke, Committee Member.

As distance learning becomes increasingly prevalent in higher education in the 21st century, students and educators alike face new challenges to achieving key learning objectives, such as the attainment of critical thinking skills. Asynchronous threaded discussions in online classrooms provide a context where learners can develop and demonstrate their critical thinking skills. However, in an asynchronous threaded discussion, the learner is burdened with the need to retain the context and progression of multiple and concurrent ideas being developed and refined across a series of posts organized in different threads. Extraneous cognitive load caused by poorly organized discussions creates a potential barrier to critical thinking. It is anticipated that learners could benefit from a requirement to include descriptive titles on all posts to create a discussion forum index which would act as an advance organizer to help them form a mental representation of the overall structure of the discussion prior to reading each post. The purpose of this study is to determine the effect that requiring students to customize posts with descriptive titles, as a form of advance organizer, has on cognitive load and level of critical thinking exhibited in students' posts in asynchronous threaded discussions. This study is grounded in dialogic theory, cognitive load theory, and assimilation theory, which together provide a basis for the following research questions: What effect do descriptive post titles have on critical thinking in a debate on an asynchronous threaded discussion board? What effect do descriptive post titles have on cognitive load in a debate on an asynchronous threaded discussion board? This study used a mixed methods design consisting of both a quasi-experiment yielding quantitative data, and also a qualitative review of transcript data using a grounded theory approach. The quasi-experimental portion of the design consisted of collecting discussion board posts from a control group and an experimental group. Response patterns in the collected discussion board data were sequentially analyzed to identify the effects of descriptive post titles on response patterns that might demonstrate higher levels of critical thinking. A significantly higher number of challenges to arguments and explanations to arguments was found in the experimental group. A content analysis of the posts was conducted and a significantly higher number of indicators of critical thinking were found in the experimental group, while a significantly higher number of indicators of a lack of critical thinking were found in the control group. A composite cognitive load score was computed for each participant, based on measures from their average surface electromyography, average galvanic skin response, and average heat flux. Self-rated mental effort scores were also collected from each participant. The mean composite cognitive load scores were significantly higher in the control group than the experimental group, indicating that the physiological measures were effective in predicting cognitive load levels, whereas the self-rated mental effort scores were not effective in distinguishing cognitive load. A composite critical thinking score was developed for each individual and a correlation was confirmed between individual level of cognitive load and individual attainment of critical thinking in the discussion. Recommendations are made for how to incorporate these findings into learning management system software, as well as best practices for designing and facilitating discussion boards. The benefit to society of this study is that increasing the critical thinking skills of college students will better prepare graduates to meet the complex demands of the modern workforce and to be responsible members of society. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2015. / April 10, 2015. / advance organizers, biometrics, cognitive load, critical thinking, distance learning, instructional design / Includes bibliographical references. / Allan C. Jeong, Professor Directing Dissertation; John K. Mayo, University Representative; Vanessa P. Dennen, Committee Member; Valerie J. Shute, Committee Member.

Three studies were conducted to better inform how instructional design of educational programming for children impacts learning. In these studies, we focused on how unplugged debugging activities, which require correction of coding errors, affect skills related to computational thinking and personal attributes of children. Study 1 observed debugging performance across varying degrees of embodiment (full and low) with a control group. To identify and rectify coding errors, children in the full embodiment group walked on a floor maze whereas low embodiment group manipulated a paper character using their fingers. Study 2 examined the effects of different degrees of embodiment when combined with either coding or narrative based language on computational thinking and self-efficacy. Children fixed coding errors on a worksheet using coding language or narratives, then performed their revised code using full or low embodiment. Study 3 explored whether congruent or incongruent hand gestures incorporated with either direct or surrogate embodiment enhanced children’s graphic and text programming, self-efficacy, and persistence. In the congruent gesture group, participants placed coding blocks in the same direction that the programming character moves whereas incongruent gesture placed coding blocks in a linear fashion. Direct embodiment is where the participant uses their finger to move a character whereas surrogate embodiment is where the researcher is controlled by the participant through verbal commands. The results on computational thinking skills were: 1) Children performed better in debugging and problem solving using low embodiment; 2) Programming efficiency increased with the use of coding language; 3) Higher performance on graphic programming was found with incongruent gesture while transfer from graphic to text programming improved with surrogate embodiment. In personal attributes: 1) Significant interaction effect was found between hand gesture and embodiment on self-efficacy; 2) Higher persistence was exhibited from direct embodiment. These findings between embodiment and development of computational thinking skills and personal attributes may be utilized in the unplugged learning environment. This is particularly relevant in supporting students to acquire basic computational thinking skills where relevant technology resources are not available.