Biases in online platforms pose a threat to social inclusion. I examine the influence of social biases on online platforms. In my dissertation, I conduct empirical studies on online crowdfunding platforms (prosocial lending and educational crowdfunding) to investigate the influence of funders' or recipients' social backgrounds on the funding…

The purpose of this quantitative descriptive study was to evaluate community college faculty use of technology modalities (face-to-face interaction, on-line interaction, e-learning, and social networking technologies) as measured by the CCFSSE 2015 cohort survey. Archival data collected by the Community College Faculty Survey of Student Engagement…

Chapter 1: School Cellphone Bans and Student Substance Abuse: Evidence From California Public High Schools: Following high profile school shootings and the September 11th terrorist attacks, public concern over school emergency preparedness prompted the California State Legislature in 2003 to overturn a statewide ban against student possession of…

The study examined students' perceptions of Facebook, Twitter and blogs as tools for learning in a classroom environment. The population of the research was of 109 students from a four-year college located in the southern region of the US. The results showed that most of the students were undecided in their perception of Facebook, Twitter and…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the preferred method of learning about heart disease by adult learners. This research study also investigated if there was a statistically significant difference between race/ethnicity, age, and gender of adult learners and their preferred method of learning preventative heart disease care. This…

Technology is changing how we educate our society, communicate with one another, integrate into medical procedures, collect donations for disaster relief efforts, and even how we chose the leader of the "free world" in 2008. However, not all of the changes are positive. One unfortunate reality is that college students can utilize…

This study explored learning and teaching of online classes. Examining the relationship between undergraduate students' participation and their final grades in five selected courses in an online learning environment and exploring differences between the demographics characteristics of age, race, and gender to students' participation (total number…

This study focused on the perceived ethics of the decisions superintendents make in response to a situation with a teacher that was value-laden, potentially volatile, and potentially affected by the teachers' gender or ethnicity. Superintendents (N = 123) each read one of 12 versions of a vignette depicting a sexting incident between a…

Site level administrators make decisions during the course of a day that have ethical dimensions that challenge their personal values and ethics. This study examined the extent to which particular factors would affect principals' and vice principals' judgments of the ethicality of sanctions given a teacher who had been sending sexually…

This mixed-methods study was designed to determine how principals perceived the ethicality of sanctions for students engaged in sexting behavior relative to the race/ethnicity and gender of the student. Personality traits of the principals were surveyed to determine if Openness and/or Conscientiousness would predict principal response. Sexting is…

Using two waves of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), I investigated the relationships among bullying behaviors, internet use, and academic achievement for Black, Hispanic, and White boys and girls. I assessed three measures of academic achievement, including scores on mathematics, reading comprehension, and vocabulary.…

The purpose of this study was to find out if students were utilizing Web 2.0 applications. Since the applications in question are often employed by the media industry, the study aspired to find out if students majoring in mass communication and journalism utilized the applications more often than other students. The "digital divide" is a term used…