Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Educational Leadership / Sarah Fishback / This exploratory study analyzed changes in self-directed learning of Army officers attending the Army’s Command and General Staff Officers Course, CGSOC, by applying a quasi-experimental, pretest posttest, comparative approach based on the attribute independent variables gender, race/ethnicity, level of education, and branch of Army. It also sought to inform implementation and assessment strategies in both the private and broader public sectors, specifically companies and organizations seeking to develop lifelong learners in the furtherance of creating or sustaining a learning organization. The study began with the administration of the Personal Responsibility Orientation to Self-directed Learning Scale (PRO-SDLS) during the first week of a ten-month resident course and concluded with a second administration of the PRO-SDLS at the end of the course. In addition to a total score, the PRO-SDLS provided results for four dependent variables: learner initiative, learner self-efficacy, learner control, and learner motivation. Though effect size varied, this study found a statistically significant difference in pretest to posttest scores differences between white and non-white in both total score and in the subcomponent of learner motivation. Additionally, the change in scores for learner motivation from pretest to posttest for whites was statically significant. Finally, the change in scores for the subcomponent of learner control between students with a bachelor’s degree and those with a master’s degree was also significant. The broader implication of these findings is the caution by Brockett and Hiemsta (1991) that adult educators should consider the individual characteristics of the learner when developing and delivering curriculum. In this case it would appear that either the curriculum or the delivery of the curriculum or a combination of the two may have been experienced differently by white and non-white Army officers; specifically regarding the development of learner motivation.

For Maldives, an island nation consisting of over 1190 islands, eLearning is the ideal form of delivery for higher education students on the 200 inhabited islands. This study explores Maldivian college students’ and their institutes’ eLearning readiness. Mixed methods research has been conducted using two questionnaires (one for the students and one for the lecturers) and semi-structured interviews. One hundred and eleven students from two private higher education institutes completed the questionnaires, 10 students were selected for interviews out of which 9 completed the interview. Students’ technological skills, access to technology and learning abilities, as well as their level of eLearning efficacy, are measured and further explored through interviews. Their lifestyle and family and workplace environments’ conduciveness for eLearning is explored. Similarly, 45 lecturers completed the questionnaire to obtain lecturers’ and institutes’ readiness for online teaching. The responses from the questionnaires allow exploration of Maldivian higher education students and institutes’ readiness for eLearning. Lecturers’ readiness is assessed by their skills and abilities to support eLearning students. Readiness of institutes are explored using semi-structured interviews with 2 senior staff from each college. The role of the three elements of the Community of Inquiry Framework: Cognitive Presence, Teaching Presence and Social Presence, in eLearning, is also explored through questionnaires and interviews. The research study’s findings are significant as it is the first research in the Maldives to provide such a case in support of eLearning readiness in higher education. The research study supports the transferability of the findings to comparable colleges and student populations in the Maldives.

There has been little or no research on the use of a Learning Object in the field of religious studies. The purpose of this research study was to assess undergraduate student knowledge gain outcomes between instructor-provided and learner-directed methods, which is the independent variable, using asynchronous, online, narrated PowerPoint presentations compared to undergraduate student knowledge gain using an online learning-objects unit, in a college-level world religions survey course at St. Petersburg College. This study assessed undergraduate student knowledge gain outcomes between instructor-provided and learner-directed methods among 90 college undergraduate students and determined whether there was a significant difference in the knowledge gain of students, a difference by gender, age, and major, in studying a unit of Jainism online in a world religions survey course using either a narrated PowerPoint presentation or using an Independent Learning Object, as well as their perception of the two methods. Students were divided randomly into two groups with each accessing one of the two learning methods. The results were the Learning Objects students’ knowledge gain was higher than the PowerPoint students, while females scored higher using the PowerPoint and males scored higher using the Learning Object. The implications of this study are that instructors in any discipline could better serve their students if they investigate using Learning Objects in their online learning rather than the use of PowerPoint. The majority of students who used the Learning Object online performed better than students who listened to the PowerPoint, supporting the contention that student-accessed learning leads to greater cognition. The implications of this study are that instructors in many disciplines could better serve their students if they implemented the use of Learning Objects in their online learning rather than the use of PowerPoint presentations.

Magister Curationis - MCur / Self-directed learning (SDL) has become a focus in the past years due to the increase in the complexity and changes in the nursing profession development. Employing SDL methodologies has been advantageous to the learner nurses, since these methodologies are associated with moderate improvement in the knowledge and effective improvement in the affective and psychomotor domains. Despite the efforts to expose students to SDL, the challenge remains the lack of students‘ commitment to SDL during clinical activities in the skills laboratory. This lack of commitment may result from students‘ perceptions of SDL. Therefore, this study seeks to explore and describe the perceptions of first year learner nurses about self-directed learning activities in a skills laboratory at a school of nursing in the Western Cape. An exploratory descriptive quantitative design was used to answer the research question. All the first year learner nurses (N=336) pursuing a 4-year Bachelor Nursing Degree served as the target population and a sample of 168 respondents was selected by simple random sampling. A self-administered 5-point Likert scale questionnaire with an additional four open-ended questions was used to collect data for the study. Data was analysed by using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 21 software. Descriptive statistics were used to present frequencies, mean values, standard deviations, and the results were illustrated by means of tables. The Spearman correlation coefficient indicated the correlations between the 4 The findings revealed that most of the respondents positively perceived self-directed learning in the skills laboratory. However, it was also found that learners had challenges in relation to time management during the implementation of self-directed learning.

Houle conducted one of the first studies about adult learner participation. In 1961, Houle wrote The Inquiring Mind, which describes three distinct learning types: goal-oriented, activity-oriented, and learning-oriented learning. For more than fifty years, The Inquiring Mind has been read, referenced, and reviewed. Several scholars during the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s have added dimensions to Houle’s typology including: Sheffield (1964); Burgess (1971); Boshier (1971); Houle (1983); Gordon (1993); and Brockett and Donaghy (2011). What is missing in the current research is that no one has synthesized all of the literature and directly asked learners of today if the typology is still relevant, or if additional dimensions are needed for relevancy. Houle’s typology has been widely applied to various adult learners and not just non-credit adult learners. This study was conducted to explore if Houle’s typology could be applied to credit seeking adult learners in contemporary doctoral programs. The participants were doctoral students in the College of Education at a large urban research university. Results of this study concluded that participants were representative of Houle’s three learner types (goal-oriented learner, activity-oriented learner, and learner-oriented learner). However, these doctoral students did not seem to require as many social interactions as Houle’s non-degree students. Additional findings indicated that participants were role models, had a desire to contribute to society, gained self-confidence, sought self-fulfillment, and used acting as a role model to their children as a motivator. Seven themes found through this research were goal-oriented learning, activity-oriented learning, learner-oriented learning, role modeling, contributing to society, self-confidence, and self-fulfillment. All the themes seemed to be very prevalent among participants except for activity-oriented learning. One implication of this research is the importance of incorporating motivations into program planning to help adult participation in both credit and non-credit programs. Further research might be conducted with multiple universities and with participants seeking advanced degrees in varied disciplines.

Aim: This paper is a report on a study that explored the professional development of intensive care unit nurses in journal clubs. Background: Evidence-based practice is important in nursing care (Krom, Batten, & Bautista, 2010). However few nurses feel comfortable using evidence to guide their practice (Pravikoff, Tanner, & Pierce, 2005). Journal clubs are a way to establish science as conversation (Wright, 2004) and foster knowledge translation for evidence-based nursing practice (Goodfellow, 2004). Methods: Monthly journal club meetings were held with the participation of a total of 71 healthcare professionals (65 nurses, 2 physicians, 2 pharmacists, 1 physiotherapist, and 1 respiratory therapist), who worked in two intensive care units of an Ontario hospital. After six months of meetings, 21 individual interviews were conducted with nurses, physicians, pharmacists, and nurse educators. Additional data collection included two focus groups, surveys, a review of staff meeting minutes, and researcher field notes. Findings: Journal clubs provided nurses with incentive to read research articles, improved nurses’ confidence in reading research, created a community of peers who worked collaboratively to improve clinical practice, provided a structure for nurses to reflect-on-practice, and led to reported changes in clinical practice. However, the data suggests that any gains in competence of nurses with the critical appraisal of research articles were probably modest. Barriers to participating in journal clubs and evidence-based practice are also identified. Conclusion: Journal clubs can foster knowledge translation and evidence-based practice through creating a community of practice and by providing nurses with motivation, structure, and confidence to read research articles. However, nurses reported a lack of critical appraisal skills and uncertainty about how to implement evidence into practice. Journal clubs may have a greater impact when implemented alongside other knowledge translation strategies such as working with clinical nurse specialists in order to enhance evidence-based practice.

Dans un contexte professionnel en perpétuelle mutation, les salariés ont la nécessité de se former régulièrement, et ce quel que soit leur niveau de formation initial. Nous avons coutume de lire et d’entendre que le taux d’abandon et le taux d’échec des apprenants dans un dispositif de FOAD est supérieur à celui observé dans la formation présentielle. Ces défections ou revers peuvent être la résultante de divers facteurs dont: l'isolement de l'apprenant, un défaut d'ergonomie de l'environnement d’apprentissage (pédagogique, technologique) ou bien le manque d'autonomie de l'apprenant. Pour passer d’un système fondé sur la transmission du savoir (présentiel) à un système fondé sur l’appropriation et la création de connaissances (FOAD), il faut consentir des efforts particuliers, aussi, notre objectif est de découvrir : comment s’y prennent ceux qui vont jusqu’au bout et réussissent leur formation ? Pour répondre à cette question, nous allons investiguer les styles d’apprentissage des apprenants, qui induisent les méthodologies et stratégies d’apprentissage, ainsi que leur dimension auto-formative qui est une composante importante de la FOAD, due à l’éclatement des unités de temps, de lieu, d’action. Ainsi, nous souhaitons découvrir quels sont les styles d’apprentissage des participants d’une part, en essayant de voir quels sont ceux qui éventuellement dominent, et d’autre part, définir quelle est la capacité d’auto-apprentissage des participants dans le processus de formation ouverte et à distance. La FOAD suppose un ancrage fort dans l’humain, notamment les dimensions psycho-affectives et cognitives. Tous les participants ayant réussi leur formation, nous espérons découvrir chez eux des traits individuels, des dominantes ou constantes comportementales qui pourraient peut-être l’expliquer. / In a constantly changing professional environment, employees need to train regularly, regardless of their level of initial training. We usually read and hear that the dropout and failure rate of learners in an open distance learning device is higher than that observed in the classroom training face to face. These defections or setbacks may be the result of various factors including: the isolation of the learner, poor ergonomics of learning environments (educational technology) or the lack of learner autonomy. To move from a system based on knowledge transfer (face to face) to a system based on ownership and knowledge creation (Open Distance Learning), we must make special efforts, however, our goal is to discover how they managed to complete their education and succeed? To answer this question, we will investigate the learning styles of learners, which induce the methodologies and learning strategies and their self-formative dimension that is an important component of distance learning, due to the breakdown of unit’s time, place, and action. Thus, we would discover what are the learning styles of participants on the one hand, trying to see which ones may dominate the other hand, define what is the capacity for self-learning participants in the process of open and distance learning.ODL requires a strong anchoring in the human, including dimensions psycho-emotional and cognitive. All participants who successfully completed their training, we hope to discover in their individual traits, the dominant behavioral or constants that could possibly explain.

Information and communication technology has for long been integrated into learning and teachers utilize all forms of digital technology for communication as well as to simplify learning. To adapt, teachers need to personally or through informal learning process, learn about new technologies and how to utilize them to improve learning. To personally educate themselves, the teachers need to dedicate time and resources to identify ICT competence areas where is needed and sort for resources to solve it. This thesis investigates the process of self-directed learning with a group of teachers in a planned competence development program within a local municipality’s educational department, on the use of digital technology to integrate into classrooms. With action research that integrates instructional learning from the organizations perspective and inquiry learning from teacher’s perspective, self-directed learning process was tested as a simple and structured process for self/collaborative learning, for participants. The result was a series of events that summarized why teachers could not follow the learning process, with a conclusion that in order for teachers to be self-directed in learning new ICT, the organizational need to allocate time not only for instructional learning, but also for inquiry learning.

The objective of this correlation study was to describe the association between the self-directed learning readiness (SDLR) and academic achievement among community college students enrolled in student success courses. Data were collected from a convenience sample of 35 community college students enrolled in student success seminar courses in central New Jersey. Total scores obtained from the administration of the Self-Directed Learning Readiness Scale (SDLRS) were used to measure participants’ degree of SDLR. Participants’ GPA and final student success course grade was used as metrics of academic achievement. Additional analyses were conducted to determine if participants’ age and gender changed the association between SDLRS score and academic achievement. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2020. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Technology is changing the face of both the sales and service domains. Honebein and Cammarano (2006) note that properly implemented self-service technologies serve dual purposes of decreasing firm overhead costs, while simultaneously engaging the customer in a way encourages the co-create of value for both parties. To get these benefits stakeholders must be willing to adopt and use the technologies that are available. Traditionally, this has lead to the research question "How do firms do this?" However, according to a recent article by Woodall, Colby and Parasuraman (2007), consumers are now demanding more technology-based options and becoming more technologically savvy. This changes the research focus to answering the question "How can firms be seen as able to deliver technology-based options effectively, efficiently and securely to meet the demands of this new "e-service" model?" The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the role of stakeholder perceptions of firm attitudes toward technology in answering this question. Perceived corporate affinity for technology (Fleming and Artis forthcoming) is a measure stakeholder perception of a firm's general positive affect toward technology, and was developed and validated in sales and services contexts using samples of both employees and customers. The studies of this dissertation test potential antecedents, consequence and boundary conditions of stakeholder perceptions of corporate affinity for technology in three key groups, namely managers, employees and customers. To accomplish this purpose, the following research questions, one for each key group of stakeholders, were proposed for this study: 1) Do manager perceptions of corporate affinity for technology influence employee perceptions of corporate affinity for technology?; 2) Do employee perceptions of corporate affinity for technology influence employee learning behavior?; 3) Do customer perceptions of corporate affinity for technology influence how they perceive the quality of the service delivery and their rating of other key customer service outcomes? Separate conceptual models were developed and tested to answer these questions.