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- All Subjects: College Athletics
- Creators: Department of Marketing
- Member of: Theses and Dissertations
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.
Keywords: supply chain management (SCM), Science Technology Engineering Math (STEM)
The academic environment has historically been somewhat slow to implement and adopt new technologies. However, developments in video games have created an opportunity for students to learn new skills and topics through nontraditional mediums of education. The disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic further highlighted the need for flexible learning opportunities. Joystick Education is our approach to addressing this need. Through online, game-based tutoring and a database of video games with high educational value, Joystick Education creates a learning environment that is effective, fun, and engaging for students. We analyzed popular, mainstream video games for educational content and selected nine games that teach concepts like history, biology, or physics while playing the game. Through promotion on social media, we generated buzz around our website which led to 103 unique visitors over our first month online and two customers requesting to book our tutoring service. We are confident that given more time to grow, Joystick Education can generate profit and become a successful business.
The NCAA’s legalization of athletes to profit off of their own name, image, and likeness (NIL) was met with mixed response from fans of collegiate sports. A popular talking point among people against NIL was that its legalization would cause talented athletes to “follow the money” and increase the recruiting quality at schools where NIL opportunities were plentiful. In essence, a theoretical “talent gap” would form due to this movement of athlete talent. The goal of this paper is to determine the talent gap’s existence or lack thereof while also setting stakeholders directly involved with NIL deals (colleges, businesses, companies) up for success in the age of NIL. This was executed first through the issuance of a survey that collected five categories of data: fandom and interest in college sports, industry sector interest, NIL preferences (structure, money, form), NIL recruiting preferences, and demographics. Following this collection of survey data, recruiting and transfer data for the years 2011-2023 was obtained and analyzed to determine the influence of specific variables in the recruiting process. The survey used in this paper was sent out to over 300 Arizona State University students from Dr. Eaton’s fall semester marketing class, with 158 participants filtered out in order to exclusively measure the responses of students with a similar perspective to athletes. The recruiting and transfer data was derived from the recruiting websites 247 Sports, Rivals, and On3 sports, with On3 Sports additionally providing NIL valuation estimates. Findings from the survey and recruiting data analysis could neither prove or disprove the existence of the theorized athletic talent gap. Results suggest that football or basketball program prestige is the true primary driver of talent movement, not NIL. Businesses looking to issue NIL deals should focus on the marketing obligations and payment structure of the deal rather than payment value, as money does not significantly influence the decision to take an NIL deal offer.
This paper analyzes different issues within collegiate athletics. Further, it provides a roadmap for how leaders in collegiate athletics can better make decisions involving conference membership and media rights decisions that directly serve the interests of student-athletes, the athletic department, and the entire university community. Relevant literature is addressed in the literature review section regarding the financial components of college athletics and how conference realignment impacts different financial elements of the athletic department and university. Also, the literature review section focuses on how conference realignment decisions impact rivalries. The last part of the literature review focuses on a more contemporary analysis involving conference realignment and how changing some of the financial structures within college athletics would result in a more equitable and fair landscape regarding gender equity. Using data from the Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database, financial data related to Texas A&M University, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and the University of Maryland-College Park were analyzed to determine how these three institutions were affected by their decisions to change conferences within the Power V. Each of these institutions athletic departments finances, including specific revenue and expense categories, were affected differently by their decision to change conferences, but this data can serve as an important indicator for how universities that are currently choosing to change conferences will be affected. Then the next portion of this paper involved primary data collection, where the sample consisted of Arizona State University Introduction to Marketing students. This survey focused on measuring the opinions of college sports fans regarding various issues and topics related to college athletics, including the role of college athletics within the university, conference realignment, the importance of rivalries, and media rights. Lastly, this paper includes an analysis and comparison of survey data from the University of California Office of the President, where UCLA student-athletes comprised the survey population. This survey focused on UCLA student-athletes’ opinions regarding UCLA’s decision to join the Big Ten conference.