Online education’s potential to “scale-up” the traditional lecture-based, face-to-face course while maintaining or improving the quality of instruction attracts the attention of university administrators, faculty, and policymakers interested in opening access to higher education and expanding access to faculty experts. However, previous research has focused on distance education and not online education offered through campus-based institutions. As such, this dissertation used a qualitative, phenomenological approach to examine the lived experiences of students enrolled in online courses offered through a major research university (MRU). This study employed student engagement and developmental ecology theories to present the perspectives of 11 students through the analysis of student interviews, journals, and questionnaires; course syllabi; and faculty interviews. The significance of this study lies in its capacity to capture student perceptions and behaviors to better understand how online courses, and specific components of such courses, promote or discourage undergraduate student engagement in the modern research university. The interview and journal data indicated that online courses have the capacity to promote active and collaborative learning, academically challenge students, and contribute to a supportive campus environment at an MRU. Students related an enhanced sense of being independent and responsible for their own learning to online courses’ physical and transactional distance. Further, they considered anonymity as crucial to honest interactions with peers and teaching assistants and strengthened their commitment to one another. With regard to student-faculty interactions, students in the synchronous courses tended to form meaningful connections with faculty through intimate, face-to-face interactions rather than through online activities. The study also found that the perception held by some students that online courses equate to an “easy ‘A’” and mandated course enrollment negatively influenced participants’ investment of time and effort in their online courses. Given these findings, this dissertation calls for instructors and policymakers at major research universities to integrate key online and face-to-face components into online course designs and dedicate the necessary resources to engage students across the physical and transactional gap. For their part, students may consider how settings beget certain behaviors in their selection of physical workspaces and strategically utilize in- and out-of-class activities as active and collaborative learners. / text

In my dissertation, I argue that the neoliberalization of higher education results in the university becoming less and less a place of wonder, self-cultivation and thinking and instead more and more a place to specialize, strategize and produce. This is a result of the volatile infusion and mixing of the logic of calculative rationality at work in consumer capitalism with the logic of scientific instrumental rationality already hegemonic in academia. This adds to the demands of the academic world of production the demands of the world of consumption. Now the academic (and also the student) is interpellated not only as a producer of knowledge but also as an object of consumption (to be consumed by others). These new pressures, previously kept at a distance from academia, explosively accelerate the already rapid process of rationalization of which science is already a key part and increasingly structure higher education as a field of strategic action in which students no longer have the time to think and to develop good judgment. I worry this undermines the opportunity for students to develop into good citizens that can truly think critically and judge carefully. Thinking and judgment are, according to Arendt, the only things that can save us if the powerful machines of science or capitalism begin to work in ways they should not. Arendt saw Nazi Germany use the newest science and the best economic management to systematically kill six million Jews. She saw the disturbing inability of the populace and the intellectuals to capably resist the Nazi machine once it got rolling. I argue than unless checked, neoliberalization threatens to turn the university into a place that discourages thinking and the development of judgment in favor of hyperspecialization and strategic action.

This thesis is about the effects of online game addiction on both Swedish and Chinese undergraduate students at University of Gävle, Sweden. It aims at investigating the impact that online games have on undergraduate students at University of Gävle, Sweden. As most of the previous researchers in this area conducted a quantitative research, we decided to do a qualitative research which can help us to get a deeper and better understanding of online game addiction.

This thesis explores the question of history’s future as a research discipline in the academy and the question of the discipline’s function in ‘pure’ inquiry. Central to the notion of research is the notion of discovery of new knowledge, but what constitutes new historical knowledge rather than simply more historical information is not clear. As the idea of research (which is understood to mean the discovery and creation of new knowledge) is central to the idea of the modern university, the future of history as a research discipline in the research university would seem to depend on the discipline being clear on its research function. Further complicating resolution of this question is the fact that the funding of research is informed by science and technology paradigms where research is defined as ‘pure basic research’, ‘strategic basic research’, ‘applied research’, and ‘experimental development’. / Curiously, what these classifications mean for the humanities generally and history in particular, remains unexamined—despite the fact that professional survival depends on the academic convincing sceptical funders of the relevance of humanist research. Do historians do basic research? If basic research is inquiry at the edge of understanding, how, and by whom, is the edge defined? In the first decades of the University of Berlin—the institution that formed the model for the modern research-university—the edge was defined through philosophy and history. Hegelian systematic philosophy, Fichtean philosophy of the subject, and the philosophical historicism of such thinkers as Ranke, Niebuhr, Ast and Boeckh was concerned with the subject’s knowledge of knowledge: there lay the edge. By the end of the nineteenth century no discipline was foundational. Epistemological ‘advance’ had resulted in not only the split of knowledge into that derived from humanities or ‘spirit’ studies (Geisteswissenschaften) and that from science studies (Naturwissenschaften), but also the proliferation of disciplinary specialization that further entrenched the dichotomy. / In the twenty-first century, inquiry’s edge has moved on. Climate change, environmental degradation and biological and genetic engineering have posed wholly new existential questions. The Archimedean point from where the edge is viewed is no longer anthropocentric. Society and nature are inextricably connected. The physical and the spiritual can no longer be considered separately. When ‘we’ can either be manufactured or artificially enhanced the notion of autonomy and self-fashioning takes on a different hue in postmodernity than in modernity. There is now an increasing but unsatisfied need for more interdisciplinary and holistic knowledge. Unfortunately, no effective models or processes exist to enable this need to be met. This thesis explores ways in which the deficiencies might be overcome and explores academic history’s possible location within a future integrated-knowledge schema.

The public's demand for accountability will have a significant impact on research universities' revenue resources in the future. Driving the demand is a perceived lack of institutional productivity. Undergraduate students' graduation rates represent one product of public research universities. States have already latched onto these rates as a measure of institutional performance; and as a result, states have provided a basis for public research universities to use the relationship between dollars invested in the institution and undergraduate students' graduation rates to respond to accountability issues. Current research provides little insight into this relationship. Research in this study uses concepts from the higher education production function, the resource dependency theory, and the Principal-Agent Model to investigate undergraduate students' four-year and six-year graduation rates as an institutional product. The research provides a greater degree of transparency into the relationship between dollars invested in public research universities and undergraduate students' graduation rates than has previously been shown. As a result of this relationship analysis, the research enables the development of a model for predicting undergraduate student graduation rates relative to dollars invested in the institution from different sources.

Dieser Beitrag skizziert eine Positionsbestimmung von Design innerhalb der Forschung an einer deutschen Volluniversität. Diese Positionsbestimmung startet aus zwei unterschiedlichen Richtungen: einerseits einer methodischen und werkzeugorientierten sowie andererseits aus einer inhaltlichen Perspektive. Die eine greift die vielfältige Diskussion zu research through design (zusammengefasst bei Jonas 2004) und design thinking (Plattner et al. 2009) auf (die jedoch bei selbstkritischer Betrachtung über das Design hinaus noch immer vergleichsweise wenig Wahrnehmung erfährt) die andere orientiert sich am Erleben (Uhlmann 1986, 2005, in diesem Band) oder Experience (Hassenzahl 2010, Schifferstein & Hekkert 2008 u. a.) als Kernbegriff. Dieser ist gleichzeitig grundlegendes Ziel und Ausgangspunkt jeden Designhandelns. Den Kontext der Betrachtung liefern aktuelle Forschungsprozesse vorrangig im akademischen Bereich, wobei diese sowohl fachspezifisch als auch interdisziplinär, grundlagenorientiert sowie angewandt sein können. Im Beitrag wird ausgehend von einer kurzen allgemeinen u. a. geschichtlichen Betrachtung anhand einiger eigener Projekte sowie Spezifika der Dresdner Forschungslandschaft ein Ansatz entwickelt um mittels Design die Erlebbarkeit von Forschungsprozessensowie die Erlebensorientierung von Forschungsinhalten zu verstärken. In der Folge wird Design so zum selbstverständlichen Forschungspartner. Einer der nächsten Schritte muss es sein diese Positionsbestimmung im Rahmen verschiedener Forschungsprojekte zu verifizieren und zu elaborieren. [... aus der Einleitung]

The purpose of Non-credit community arts programs: A comparative case study of three programs within research universities is to examine the perceptions of the various stakeholders of non-credit community arts programs to determine the perceived benefits received by all stakeholders from the non-credit program, the university, and its surrounding community, the variables of a successful program, and the sustainability of these programs within their parent institution. The research methods used included a preliminary 41-question survey distributed to 76 non-credit community arts programs embedded within colleges or universities to determine the specific programs within research universities. These 76 collegiate divisional community schools of the arts belong to the 400 members of community arts schools in the National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts. The results of the survey were used to determine the three non-credit community arts programs that were selected for the case study. The case study of each of the three non-credit community arts programs was used to learn the perceptions of the various stakeholders of each of the programs and their respective parent institution. The stakeholders included research university administrators, the non-credit program's executive administrators, the program's faculty, staff, students, and parents of students that participate in the non-credit community arts programs. Site visits, interviews, either in person or via phone conversation, and review of printed materials were employed to obtain from the various stakeholders the perceived benefits of these non-credit community arts programs, the variables that contribute to a successful program and their sustainability within the research university. The diversity of the stakeholders interviewed provided a thorough observation of these programs from varying perspectives to discover their impact on the individual students as well as the university, its internal community and the community-at-large. / Educational Administration

"Multiple Case Study of (Re)-Design and Restructuring of Studio Arts Schools and Departments in the Research University Environment" investigates the effect of a changing academic value system, as it is manifest through activities of studio arts program redesign and restructuring within the specific context of large, public research universities in the United States of America. A multiple case study (of three distinct American studio arts units) of the academic restructuring phenomenon within this specific locus, examining the interplay of studio arts culture with the larger institutional mandates in the restructuring process, this work approaches restructuring as a series of cultural and survivalist responses to a complex and changing environment.

Budgetary control has been used and researched for years by both Western academics and practitioners. In China, it is re-emerging as a tool to implement management control, but might be used in different ways both in terms of understanding and operation. The research objective of this thesis is to examine the applicability of Western theories of change in management accounting in the context of budgeting in Chinese corporations. Challenges can exist because of the differences between Western assumptions and Chinese reality. The current thesis focuses on difficulties Chinese companies encounter in practical and deeper ideological ways: firstly, Western market-based ideology conflicts with an ideology which has been shaped by central-planning for decades; secondly, difficulties stem from the different cultural context of China which emphasizes hierarchical politeness, kinship ties, trust based on personal relationships, collectivism and social harmony, diligence and individual modesty, and less developed modern legal regulatory systems – these all contribute to China’s own way of doing things. This thesis also focuses on the transition process in China. Based on the assumption that budgetary changes do not happen in isolation from other management accounting changes, this thesis discusses these changes which synchronically took place while the case-study companies were implementing budgetary systems. This thesis adopts a longitudinal and in-depth qualitative case study research design, after adjustments made during the learning experience of the pilot study. It takes an interpretive and constructive philosophical underpinning, which allows the researcher to observe and understand the process of change, as well as the differences between Chinese practices and Western theories. Findings show that certain Western management accounting theories of change and Western theories of budgeting work in the case study Chinese corporations. Management accounting theories using an interpretive approach (for example, Berry et al., 1985; Scapens and Roberts, 1993; Ahrens and Chapman, 2002) lead the researcher to interpret management accounting practices from the practitioner’s points of view, and they have provided a range of terms to explain success or failure of management accounting changes. This approach together with Scapens et al.’s Institutional theory approach in management accounting have been found especially useful, in explaining the differences between Chinese vs. Western context. Furthermore, the contingency theory approach in management accounting gives a ‘platform’ which allows the researcher to assess a wide range of possible factors and their relationships with budgetary systems in studied companies. This approach is found useful in this thesis to present changes in other management accounting perspectives. Last but not least, this thesis finds existing Western literature in technical perspective of budgetary objectives, budgetary evaluation and participation, and budgetary effectiveness useful in a different context of China. By describing the change management process, an aspect which is not addressed frequently in the research literature, this thesis argues that to sufficiently understand Chinese companies’ budgetary changes, one also needs to understand unique cultural, social-economical and religious circumstances, and to adjust literature and methodology to adapt to these circumstances. This thesis provides an empirical experience concerning these issues. This thesis contributes to the understanding of management accounting change in China, and the tension which exists when Chinese companies are moving into Western management accounting practices.

The general purpose of this thesis is to contribute to further understanding of the academic appointment process explored and defined as participation in a collegial educational process. The appointment process for academic positions has historically been regulated by state authorities ever since the first university was established in Sweden and has continuously been questioned for necessity, procedure etc. The object of study is the appointment process focusing the consideration of teaching skill in appointing academic teachers. A theoretical construction is used as a method in order to grasp what the experts and applicants consider. The thesis draws theoretical inspiration from the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu especially his work on social practice and his explanations within praxeological knowledge. In this thesis cultural capital, habitus and doxa are used as concepts for constructing a social practice. Inspired by Bourdieu’s concepts, the appointment process is made visible grounded on documentation: judgments of qualifications written by external experts and the applicants’ documentation in their applications. The empirical material on merits is analyzed according to Bourdieu’s indicators on symbolic capacities. The disposition of habitus (as an inner organizing principle) is limited to cultural capital and background demographic data. The indicators on scientific skill are also transmitted into symbolic capacities on teaching skill. Three appointments as assistant professors are analyzed, framed by information on advertisement, description of documentation, time lapse and final decision in appointment committees. The main conclusions are that the experts select whom to appoint using their practical sense unaware of the driving forces, explained as social practice. The experts act in line with the purpose of the assignment and they follow all the rules and instructions. Teaching skill is focused by the applicants and experts as practical mastery in the subject field (pedagogical authority). Selection is explained by the concept of habitus. Another conclusion is the tendency to “nuanced” co-optation similar to when appointments were made by self selection and teaching ability was important in early 19th century. A final conclusion is that in positioning of arguments in shared beliefs (doxa) in questioning the appointment process, researchers in the early years of this century represent heterodox opinions.