A mainstream course has several components that deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students must reconcile. In class, components can include the instructor, projection display, whiteboard, interpreting, and real-time captioning. Outside the classroom, components can include materials from the instructor, notes generated by a note-taker, and a lecture…

While cyberbullying is prevalent among adolescents, attempts by researchers to evaluate mechanisms for its prevention and mitigation have been largely non-existent. In this dissertation, I argue that the complex nature of cyberbullying, made more challenging by the affordances of diverse social media, cannot be solved through strictly algorithmic…

Most research on Cognitive Load Theory (Sweller, 1988) has uncovered many instructional design considerations for learning complex tasks. Additionally, the Community of Inquiry (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000) framework describes many of the learning experiences in online education. A gap existed in the literature for investigating…

This research study examines the dynamics of student-to-student interpersonal mediated communication motives within asynchronous discussion forums. The objective is to determine the interpersonal mediated communication motives and communicator style of students enrolled in fully asynchronous community college courses with the intention to…

The purpose of this action research study was to examine the effects of implementing an online professional learning community (PLC) designed explicitly for teachers of gifted and talented (GT) English language arts (ELA) courses. The present action research (AR) is a limited mixed design study, including quantitative and qualitative elements, to…

Interaction has been shown to be a key component to the success of online and blended learning, so it is crucial to understand how teachers and students perceive the interaction taking place in online and blended K-12 courses. The following study is part of a larger study of the effectiveness and evaluation of the New York State Virtual AP…

This dissertation is comprised of three linked studies investigating integrating online feedback practices into traditional classrooms. It focuses on one innovative practice, that of online peer-to-peer feedback, and highlights aspects of the process of developing this practice in each article. Each article relies on separate but connected…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of the first year of a multi-year, district-wide professional development program for teachers that accompanied a one-to-one Apple device rollout for all students. A mixed-method research design was used to perform a logic model of program evaluation. Teacher self-reported proficiency in basic…

Research about online learning suggests that instructor feedback is essential for student learning, especially when the feedback is personalized, specific, and timely. Feedback enhances instructor presence in online learning and has been shown to positively affect student outcomes. However, even with the technical ability to receive feedback at…

Advancements in technology have greatly influenced how students write, the ways they interact with readers, and the genres they create. In order to reflect real-world writing behaviors in the assessment setting and to be able to generalize test-takers' performance from the assessment to their true writing ability, the current study investigated…

This phenomenological, mixed-method study compared and contrasted virtual K-12 school leadership with traditional face-to-face leadership. All 106 participants served for a minimum of two years in each setting. The study was conducted in two phases in order to reveal consensus and dissensus points of view. Conceptually, a postmodern framework was…

Research has established the central role of high quality discussion in the developing understandings of readers and writers (e.g., Applebee, 1994; Freedman & Delp, 2007; Nystrand, 1997). Studies particularly have focused on the promise of dialogic teaching, or instruction that provides students with ongoing opportunities to engage in…

The purpose of this study was to determine if a Structured Online Intercultural Learning (SOIL) experience represented a viable form of global experiential learning (GEL) that can yield beneficial effects in student transformation of the kind that are reported to result from "traditional" GEL (involving mobility). Specifically, this…

The purpose of this study was to determine strategies that could be implemented into an online course in order to create and maintain a sense of social presence between students and their professor and students and each other. A mixed methods study utilizing interviews, document analysis, and a survey was used to conduct the research. The study…

Protecting children online from sexual predators has been a focus of research in psychiatry, sociology, computer science, and information systems (IS) for many years. However, the anonymity afforded by social media has made finding a solution to the problem of child protection difficult. Pedophiles manipulate conversation (discourse) with children…