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- Member of: Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
- Member of: Theses and Dissertations
- Resource Type: Text
The research begins with the history of standards, starting with traditional outcome-based standards. It then delves into the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21), which highlights the type of skills 21st century students are expected to develop and master by the time they enter college and careers. Next, it explores the hot topic of Education to this date: Common Core State Standards. In the midst of educational reform, these standards seek to add consistency across the nation in regards to what students should know at each grade level and also encourage teaching of the 21st century skills. This section briefly details the content of Common Core English Language Arts and Mathematics standards.
After summarizing P21 and Common Core, this report shifts into its focused 21st century skill: collaboration. As one of the 4 C’s that P21 and Common Core emphasize in their standards, it is imperative to research critical elements of collaboration as they relate to groups and teams of all ages. Even more specifically, collaboration is a practice that is becoming more and more standard in business across all industries, so it is a skill that is highly in demand for students to acquire. In regards to collaboration, Executive Vice President of Verizon, Bob Mudge, states, “companies are able to innovate much more quickly and even create solutions to problems that may not be prevalent issues yet” (Mudge 1). The standards expect that students will be prepared to collaborate in college and careers, so key elements of collaboration in those settings—in-person or virtual—need apply or be simplified to K-6 collaborative environments. This section also analyzes a case study experiment on young children about how technology functionality and design enables, encourages, or enforces collaboration.
Next, this thesis reviews three case studies that represent evolution in our understanding of technology’s role as a support system in teaching and learning collaboration. The first case study shows how simple handheld devices assisted in correcting weaknesses in a variety of collaborative and organizational skills. The second study utilizes interactive tabletop technology to realize the idea of tracking collaborative ability in real time through synchronized audio and touch recording. Finally, researchers assess the effectiveness of one student to one device (1:1) initiatives by gathering student-reported data before and after the program’s implementation, which largely speak to the direction of many schools’ technology strategies.
To supplement all of the secondary research above, the researcher of this thesis conducted interviews with nine K-6 teachers to gather their insights on collaboration and how they facilitate it. They explain how they use technology in their classroom to enhance the learning environment. Additionally, they give opinions on what could be done to make collaboration more easily taught and facilitated, as well as what would better develop their students’ collaborative skills.
The compilation of this information then leads to implications of what needs to be present, from a technology standpoint, to more effectively teach collaborative skills to our schoolchildren. This includes a brief industry analysis of a program that already exists, as well as recommendations for new technology that considers the research conducted throughout the paper. Another implication addressed centers on the instruction and facilitation of technology and the digital divide that can result from varying competency among teachers, which brings to light the need for proper technology development programs for educators.
The insurance industry consists of financial advisors planning for individual’s financial future through defensive investments that will payout in case of something happening to a person’s greatest asset—themselves. Each financial advisor is mandated to pass a professional exam to receive their license in order to take in clients in each state. There is a process in which clients are serviced and sold on different products of insurance. Advisors need to consider client needs and service them with products are in their best interest and within financial reason. <br/> To sell a product you must have clients, and the way that financial advisor receive clients are generally through two ways: company provided or their own connections. At the end of the day, the goal is to get in front of more people and expand you circle. In that sense, there are two common way people address this expansion of circles and that is build relationships versus networking. The goal of this paper is to dive deep in the insurance industry and analyze the sales process when comparing the difference in selling through building relationships versus selling through networking.<br/> The research plan I have in mind start from researching background and history, to current practices environment, to method process solutions. In the initial stages of my research, I will focus on background and history of the financial services industry in terms of sales and insurance. This will address insurance sales processes in the financial services industry and its features as well as benefits. After explaining the step by step process and potential results of the sales process in the insurance industry, I will start researching current environments of the industry. This will explain the history, key theoretical elements, and significant events of the industry. <br/> The history of the background will set stage for me to address situational challenges in the business based on my own experience to which I will do research to find plausible sales process solutions when comparing relationship sales to networking sales. This research will then be synthesized with my own experimental solutions as I work in the industry, which will help me complete chapter 4 and 5 of my theses – Methods and Execution of Results.