YouTube viewers watch over a billion hours of videos monthly and have multiple choices on professional development resources. User-generated content (UGC) on YouTube is created by individuals instead of brands and uses different typologies of video production styles. This study examined 80 YouTube microlearning videos that provided insight into…

The narrative of Christopher Columbus symbolizes core values that are a part of America's national identity. However, the brave adventurism of the Columbus tale only tells part of the story. Historians have brought to light records about Columbus that include violence and enslavement of the Taino people, the principal inhabitants of the Caribbean…

This study investigates Chinese audience perceptions and reactions to American advanced learners of Chinese delivering domain presentations. Drawing on video recordings of the Chinese Flagship students' Master's thesis defenses, the research focuses on the question-and-answer (Q&A) sessions, where Chinese audience members ask questions and…

Broadly, this dissertation is an investigation of writing center reporting practices. Using Rhetorical Genres Studies, I surveyed writing center administrators and examined twelve writing center reports to understand the reports' social action, or what reports accomplished for their users and audiences. My findings showed that reports primarily…

Lifelong science learning is important for making informed decisions on science topics, and there is a need to engage broader and more diverse audiences with science. One opportunity for engagement occurs when students share science topics with a public audience. Research indicates this interaction can have benefits for students, but little is…

Public universities who participate in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Football Bowl Subdivision produce and air university TV spots during televised college football games. The purpose of this research was to analyze TV spots of public universities who participate in the National Collegiate Athletic Association…

This dissertation investigates police report writing at the Jackson Police Department in Northwest Arkansas. It presents three primary research questions which are addressed through qualitative methods of interview, observation, and discourse analysis: (1) In what ways does police training address report writing?; (2) What audience awareness do…

This study examined the effects of four post-crisis responses on five different variables using a blog tool. The four post-crisis responses are information only, compensation, apology, and sympathy. The five dependent variables are reputation, anger (negative emotion), negative word-of-mouth, account acceptance and state of the publics based on…

Search engines have now become essential tools in all aspects of our life. Although a variety of information needs can be served very successfully, there are still a lot of queries that search engines can not answer very effectively and these queries always make users feel frustrated. Since it is quite often that users encounter such "difficult…

Elementary children's sense of audience related to their multimodal information writing was examined. Forty-six third graders' interviews about the books that they created at the end of a science unit were analyzed to understand children's conception of audience, the connection between their sense of audience and their composing process, and their…

This dissertation chronicles my search to engage high school English students in inquiry as part of a formal research process. The perspective of critical literacy theory is used to describe the four phases of the problem posing process in shaping student research and action. Grounded in Freire's approach and consistent with Dewey and others who…

The primary purpose of this study is to determine how students are impacted by the use of Classroom Response System (CRS) technology. This research explores the nature of the outcomes experienced by students and their perceptions on the leading pedagogy and practices for using CRS technology in the classroom. The research is both quantitative and…