Thesis (D. Min.)--Covenant Theological Seminary, 2001. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 126-131).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Language Education, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Feb 4, 2010). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-04, Section: A, page: 1205. Adviser: Faridah Pawan.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 161-178). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2003. / Title from title page screen (viewed Sept. 24, 2003). Thesis advisor: Dr. Edward L. Counts, Jr. Document formatted into pages (xii, 206 p. : ill.(some col.)). Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 71-76).

<p> The virtual 3D world of Second Life continues to grow as an educational platform for higher education. Instructional designers and faculty designers by assignment in this multi-case study described the constructivist instructional strategies, design models, and processes, utilized to create constructivist collaborative-learning environments in Second Life. A gap was identified in the literature surrounding the use of constructivist design and the effects on various alternative-learning environments, such as Second Life. Ten participants from higher education were purposively chosen to participate in the study. All of the 10 participants met the criteria that included five years experience in instructional design and two years experience designing in Second Life. Five participants were instructional designers and the other five were faculty designers by assignment. Data were collected from four sources that included in-depth semi-structured participant interviews, an observational protocol guide, and documents. The same observation protocol guide was used to examine Second Life sites while the participants were present. The study identified the instructional design models, processes, strategies, advantages, and challenges for instructional design in Second Life. Included in the findings is an instructional design model for use in virtual worlds such as Second Life. .</p>

<p> With the increase in demand for higher education, colleges and universities across the country are adapting and providing alternative ways for students to receive a college degree. This includes providing sections of classes purely online as well as in-seat. The purpose of this thesis was to investigate knowledge, motivational and behavioral changes among students enrolled in an in-seat, face-to-face introductory nutrition course compared to students enrolled in an online version of the same course. A pre- and post-semester survey were distributed and results showed that overall there were no significant differences in knowledge, motivation and behavior between the in-seat and online students during the pre- and post-surveys (<i>p</i> > 0.05). Both groups showed improvement overall in nutrition knowledge learned and nutrition related behaviors and slight decreases in overall motivation a result of being enrolled.</p>

<p> Law schools are criticized for graduating students who lack the skills necessary to practice law. Legal research is a foundational ability necessary to support lawyering competency. The American Bar Association (ABA) establishes standards for legal education that include a requirement that each law student receive substantial instruction in legal skills, including legal research. Despite the recognized importance of legal research in legal education, there is no consensus of what to teach as part of a legal research course or even how to teach such a course. </p><p> Legal educators struggle to address these issues. The practicing bar and judiciary have expressed concerns about law school graduates ability to conduct legal research. Studies have been conducted detailing the poor research ability of law students and their lack of skills. Although deficiencies in law student research skills have been identified, there is no agreement as to how to remediate these deficiencies. This dissertation suggests the legal research resources that should be taught in law schools by identifying the research resources used by practicing attorneys and comparing them to those resources currently included in legal research instruction at the 202 ABA-accredited law schools. </p><p> Multiple data sources were used in this study. Practitioner resource information was based on data provided by practicing attorneys responding to the 2013 ABA Legal Technology Survey. Resources taught in ABA-accredited law schools were identified through three sources: a 2014 law school legal research survey sent to the 202 ABA-accredited law schools, a review of law school syllabi from ABA-accredited law school legal research and legal research and writing courses, and the Association of Legal Writing Directors 2013 annual survey of legal research and writing faculty. The combined data from these three sources were compared to the resources used by practicing lawyers identified in the annual national 2013 ABA Legal Technology Survey. This comparison of what is taught with what is used in practice identifies a deficiency in law school instruction in the research resources used by practicing attorneys. These survey results detail distinct areas of inadequate instruction in legal research resources and provide legal educators with detailed information necessary to develop a curriculum that will result in graduating students with practice-ready competencies.</p>

<p> As higher education changes to reach larger numbers of students via online modalities, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels, the issue of student attrition and other measures of student success become increasingly important. While research has focused largely on undergraduate online students, less has been done in the area of online non-traditional doctoral student success, particularly from the student trait perspective. On the trait level, the concept of grit has been identified as an important element of the successful attainment of long-term goals. Earning a doctorate can be classified as a long-term goal; therefore the purpose of this study was to examine the influence of doctoral student grit scores on student success. Success was measured in three ways: (a) in terms of persistence as measured by longevity in the program (the number of courses a student had successfully completed), (b) by examining current student GPA, and (c) by studying whether or not students have reached the critical milestone of successfully defending their dissertation proposal. The results of the study found no significant differences in mean grit scores for first, second, or third year students, nor found differences in mean grit scores for students that had or had not successfully defended their dissertation proposals. However, significant relationships were found between grit and current student GPA, grit and the average number of hours students spent of their program of study weekly, and grit and age. The results of this research are important for informing how doctoral education is structured, which characteristics may help students succeed, as well as providing areas for future research. </p><p> <i>Keywords: Higher education, grit, doctoral education, non-traditional students, online education, academic success, attrition</i></p>

<p> This qualitative study analyzed the meaning-making practices of urban adolescents participating in a college preparatory program featuring philosophical inquiry into cosmopolitanism and the creation of multimodal texts. In contrast to studies of composing that focus on individual outcomes, this dissertation traced group meaning making. The study was grounded in sociocultural perspectives that theorize literacy as diverse, socially constructed, meaning-making practices that emerge in particular cultural and social contexts, and include multiple modes of communication. Data included interviews, observations, and artifacts. To analyze the data, a music-inspired analytic system was devised to examine the collaborative nature of composing. </p><p> The study demonstrated, first, that composing in this setting was a collaborative process exceeding customary understandings of collaborative composing. Uncovered after examining complex patterns of interactions over varied timescales, collaboration at the group level occurred while community members created individual products. Second, the study revealed that improvisation was an important strategy for shaping the content of this collaborative process. During informal jam sessions, participants creatively explored options for representing content. They actively built upon ideas offered by other participants in the moment, in order to read, interpret, select, and design the content of their multimodal texts. Last, facilitated by the complex patterns of interaction and shaped by the improvised frames for representing content, this study revealed the ways in which participants constructed a shared meaning of the concept of cosmopolitanism at the group level. Utilizing an image-afforded exploration of juxtaposition, this shared understanding evolved from early conceptions of cosmopolitanism as represented in juxtaposed images to an understanding of cosmopolitanism as the act of creating and interpreting juxtaposition between varying perspectives. </p><p> This study contributes to growing empirical research on meaning making through multimodal text design. It extends socio-cultural explanations of what counts as `social' in educational contexts, illustrating that composing is not just influenced by social interaction but rather <i>is</i> social. Finally, in an age of standards, testing, and accountability that can narrow what constitutes valued literacy practices, this study provides an example of the varied interactional paths and diverse compositional strategies and products that can engage learners and expand opportunities for meaning making.</p>

<p> Technology continues to evolve and become accessible to students in higher education. Concurrently, teamwork has become an important skill in academia and the workplace and students have adopted established technologies to support their learning in both individual and team project work. </p><p> Given the emergence of social media technologies, I examined how these new technologies supported or interfered with group development processes underlying the development of team skills as students completed a group project. Using case studies, I examined 11 undergraduate students in an upper level blended class at a public university in the southeastern United States. Data were collected through a variety of sources including focus groups, individual interviews, reflection logs, and other group support tools provide by the instructor to see how students were using social media technologies to support their group project work. Data analysis resulted in six themes: 1) social media technology choices used to support group project work depended on individual team members' prior use and attitudes about technology; 2) social media technology is most useful for the "people" aspects of team projects; 3) certain technologies are more useful at different stages of the project; 4) lack of an explicit social media technology "contract" within a group leads to some unintended, negative consequences; 5) the immediacy associated with social media technology can blur the lines among specific team roles, ownership of tasks, and overall integrated project planning perspective; 6) social media technologies are used to produce a cooperative, not collaborative, deliverable. </p><p> For students to continue to make the best use of evolving technology, institutions may want to provide resources such as workshops and self-paced tutorials to students and instructors on how to use social media technologies to support learning outside the classroom. Instructors can enhance students' connections with their coursework by using social media technologies themselves and for class assignments. Researchers can extend this study by studying other student populations, such as adult learners and international students, as well as studying how social media is used in a variety of course delivery modalities, such as traditional classroom-based environments and distance learning.</p>