Growing interest of educational institutions in desktop 3D graphic virtual environments for hybrid and distance education prompts questions on the efficacy of such tools. Virtual worlds, such as Second Life[R], enable computer-mediated immersion and interactions encompassing multimodal communication channels including audio, video, and text-.…

The purpose of this action research project was to investigate the effects of family involvement training on the success of ELL students, as demonstrated by their reading scores, attendance, and behavior. Additionally, the effects of family involvement training on parents' feelings of self-efficacy were measured. Volunteering families of…

Research suggests that gambling is similar to addictive behaviors such as substance use. In the current study, gambling was investigated from a behavioral economics perspective. The Multiple Choice Procedure (MCP) with gambling as the target behavior was used to assess for relative reinforcing value, the effect of alternative reinforcers, and…

This study investigated the attitudes of administrators about differences and similarities between middle and high school teachers. The research question that guided the study was, "Do attitudes about what makes an effective educator differ between building administrators at the middle and high school levels?" A formal, sequential, mixed-methods…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of selected factors on professors' responses to relational aggression in college students. Specifically, this study explored the relationships between professors' gender, class size, level of empathy, ratings of seriousness of a relationally aggressive scenario, the gender of the perpetrator…

This study investigated the extent to which there were statistically significant relationships between school administrators' systemic implementation of student voice work and student perceptions (i.e. achievement, motivation, attachment and school climate) and PLAN performance. Student voice was defined as students being equal partners in school…

Increased access to the Internet and online technologies has allowed a growing number of students to take part in college courses online. Participants in these courses tend not to be as motivated to engage in learning with the same thoroughness as they do in a classroom-based course. This study investigates strategies that are perceived as…

Joint attention has long been considered absent or deviant in children with autism. Although this deficit is seen, there is variability in joint attention within the population and some children with autism employ it. Little is known about the profile of joint attention skills of these children or how joint attention use affects concurrent…

The dissertation evaluated the ability of adult literacy learners with dyslexia to assess their cognitive abilities in two separate domains: reading and memory. This study also evaluated the effect that one-on-one tutoring had on the learner's ability to accurately self-assess these cognitive abilities. Twenty adult literacy learners (n = 20) with…

Purpose, scope, and method of study: Although computer technology has been a part of the educational community for many years, it is still not used at its optimal capacity (Gosmire & Grady, 2007b; Trotter, 2007). While teachers were identified early as playing important roles in the success of technology implementation, principals were often…

Metacognition is widely studied for its influence on the effectiveness of learning. With Exploratory Computer-Based Learning Environments (ECBLE), metacognition is found to be especially important because these environments require adaptive metacognitive control by the learners due to their open-ended structure that allows for multiple learning…

The literature identifies methods that teachers can use to uncover student interests, and describes ways of responding that allow students to become involved in authentic science experiences. Missing from the literature are studies that examine teachers' thinking about student ideas, and the decision-making process they go through to weave student…

The teacher is considered the most important factor in student success. With increased emphasis on research-based information through federal legislation, teachers struggle selecting credible methods and procedures among available reading instruction sources confounding the possibility of student achievement. Teacher self-knowledge, peer teachers,…

\The purpose of this study was to investigate population invariance of the true-score linking functions with respect to the ability subgroups (i.e., average-achieving students, low-achieving students, and students with learning disabilities). The mean/mean linking functions for five alternate forms of a curriculum-based math problem solving…

Scope and Method of Study: The study investigated the relationship between performance on the Oklahoma State Testing Program (OSTP) for grades 3-7 and the EXPLORE in math and reading for 586 students. The EXPLORE test, a part of the ACT, is given in the eighth grade and provides college readiness benchmarks and a national percentile ranking (NPR)…