Societal shifts increasingly demand that people work across social and geographic borders, often virtually, to solve complex problems in the areas of education, environment, healthcare, poverty, technology innovation and ethics, and more. This collaboration requires critical and emancipatory dialogue and problem-solving. This qualitative multiple…

This applied dissertation was designed to determine if cooperative learning strategies increased student engagement in a virtual elementary classroom. The purposes of this study were (a) to determine whether the implementation of cooperative learning strategies increased student engagement and (b) to explore student perceptions of engagement. In…

Deep learning techniques are being unified for decision support in various applications. However, it remains challenging to train robust deep learning models, due to the inherent insufficient labeled data that is usually time-consuming and labor-intensive. Self-supervised learning is a feature representation learning paradigm to learn robust…

Project based learning (PBL), a well-known pedagogical approach, is becoming more widely recognized for creating and sustaining student engagement and motivation in 21st-century learning while improving academic achievement. Teachers support this hands-on, collaborative approach and see it as beneficial for students of all learning modalities, but…

This study examined the early implementation stages of the Modeling Method of Instruction (MMI) in the science classroom to find the most valuable strategies for effective implementation. In this qualitative study, eleven teachers were interviewed to uncover effective implementation strategies. Interview data were analyzed using the constant…

The meteoric rise in software and technology has altered the paradigm of information security and privacy. Classified information, stored earlier behind locked doors, is now stored on the internet on servers that can be accessed from anywhere on the globe. As a result of these advancements, we are now vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Cyber-attacks are…

The problem addressed in this study was that social and emotional strategies are not provided at the school level, which affects teachers' mental well-being, causing them to feel occupational burnout. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, educators have been compelled to adapt to new teaching modalities, contributing to heightened stress…

This qualitative study will explore how MSW faculty describe a community in online courses and what strategies they use in fostering a sense of community within courses from an online Master of Social Work program at the University of South Florida. There is an imperative need to ensure online courses provide a sense of community to support…

The purpose of this qualitative, descriptive study was to explore how college English as a second language educators described how English as a second language learners used direct and indirect Language Learning Strategies in facilitating their learning at a higher education institution in the Southwest region of the United States. The research is…

A quantitative predictive correlational study was conducted to find to what extent, if any, gender and adult student status, individually or in combination, moderates the predictive relationships between resilience and self-regulated strategies of Goal Setting (GS), Environment Structuring (ES), Task Strategies (TS), Time Management (TM), Help…

This three-article dissertation explores Learning by Evaluating (LbE), an educational approach that enhances student learning through the process of assessing and providing feedback on peer work. Leveraging principles of comparative judgement, students evaluate pairs of exemplars side-by-side to determine which is better and provide a rational for…

Instructors are steadily incorporating collaborative learning technology into their online classes to help promote effective learning strategies. A learning management system (LMS), such as Blackboard, offers their own collaborative technologies, but some instructors are turning to free and open source system (FOSS) to conduct these collaborative…

The Internet is poised to open access to higher education for students no matter where they live. However, many students still live in places where barriers keep them from getting and staying connected to online coursework. These barriers include power outages, high internet data costs, and lack of computers or smartphones. BYU-Pathway Worldwide's…

The purpose of this quantitative, non-experimental, correlational study was to determine if there was a correlation between first-time pass rates on the USMLE Step 1 and the use of active learning strategies in medical school classrooms. For the utility of this study, active learning strategies were defined as any activity in which medical…

The online learning environment demands the ability to self-regulate, set up learning goals, monitor progress, and self-reflect on the learning process. Self-regulated learning (SRL) is an approach to learning where students actively have control over their behaviors. This student-centered, iterative process demands learners exhibit certain…