Matching Items (20)
Description
It is commonly accepted that undergraduate degree attainment rates must improve if postsecondary educational institutions are to meet macroeconomic demands. Involvement in co-curricular activities, such as student clubs and organizations, has been shown to increase students' satisfaction with their college experience and the rates by which they might persist. Yet, strategies that college administrators, faculties, and peer leaders may employ to effectively promote co-curricular engagement opportunities to students are not well developed. In turn, I created the Sky Leaders program, a retention-focused intervention designed to promote commuter student involvement in academically-purposeful activities via faculty- and peer-lead mentoring experiences. Working from an interpretivist research paradigm, this quasi-experimental mixed methods action research study was intended to measure the intervention's impact on participants' re-enrollment and reported engagement rates, as well as the effectiveness of its conceptual and logistical aspects. I used enrollment, survey, interview, observation, and focus group data collection instruments to accommodate an integrated data procurement process, which allowed for the consideration of several perspectives related to the same research questions. I analyzed all of the quantitative data captured from the enrollment and survey instruments using descriptive and inferential statistics to explore statistically and practically significant differences between participant groups. As a result, I identified one significant finding that had a perceived positive effect. Expressly, I found the difference between treatment and control participants' reported levels of engagement within co-curricular activities to be statistically and practically significant. Additionally, consistent with Glaser and Strauss' grounded theory approach, I employed open, axial, and selective coding procedures to analyze all of the qualitative data obtained via open-ended survey items, as well as interview, observation, and focus group instruments. After I reviewed and examined the qualitative data corpus, I constructed six themes reflective of the participants' programmatic experiences as well as conceptual and logistical features of the intervention. In doing so, I found that faculty, staff, and peer leaders may efficaciously serve in specific mentoring roles to promote co-curricular engagement opportunities and advance students' institutional academic and social integration, thereby effectively curbing their potential college departure decisions, which often arise out of mal-integrative experiences.
ContributorsSebold, Brent (Author) / Beardsley, Audrey (Thesis advisor) / Serafini, Frank (Committee member) / Wharton, Christopher (Christopher Mack), 1977- (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Inclusive educational spaces are necessary for all post-secondary students to thrive and enjoy their college experience. Faculty and staff may unintentionally create non-inclusive educational spaces, however, with behaviors relative to race/racism and microaggressions driven by racial implicit bias. Via this mixed-methods action research study I examined ASU faculty and staff attitudes relative to (1) race/racism, (2) implicit bias, and (3) microaggressions, all of which influence perceptions of and intentions toward (4) creating inclusive educational spaces. Specifically, five ASU faculty and staff completed a Canvas based online training that I developed (i.e., BIAS training) during which they were provided information in separate modules about systemic and color-blind racism, implicit bias, microaggressions, and two components of inclusive educational spaces, culturally sustaining pedagogical and race-conscious educational practices. Prior to and at the completion of the training, participants completed a survey instrument that I designed to measure participant attitudes relative to these four concepts. At the completion of each BIAS module with which they engaged, they responded to reflective questions which essentially prompted participants to think about what they learned per module and how it applied to their educational practices. After completion of the BIAS training and an identical post-survey that I used to measure participant’s changes in attitudes and perceptions over time, I invited participants to also share their thoughts in an interview. Both quantitative and qualitative data suggested that participant’s attitudes positively shifted relative to each of the abovementioned four concepts; knowledge acquisition occurred as intended. In addition, faculty and staff identified specific practices they could, or intended to incorporate to facilitate more inclusive educational spaces within their spheres of influence. Overall, my BIAS training seemed to have had a positive impact on the ASU faculty and staff who participated in this study. A few participants even discussed practices they were able to implement immediately, as well as positive student reactions, while anecdotal, that they received in response. Future iterations of my BIAS training will include additional information that will help to further clarify the four concepts of primary interest herein, particularly in support of creating more inclusive practices inspired by culturally sustaining pedagogy and race-conscious educational practices. Additionally, I will add a mindfulness component as another opportunity to increase awareness of faculty and staff attitudes and behaviors that may also impact their ability to create more inclusive educational spaces.
ContributorsCorte, Corinne (Author) / Beardsley, Audrey (Thesis advisor) / McGuire, Keon (Committee member) / Ross, Lydia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
In this mixed-methods action research study, I guided a small cohort of university faculty members through a semester-long professional development program to learn strategies for creating more inclusive environments for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students. During the program, and guided by my original, reconceptualized framework of Cultural Intelligence (CI), faculty sought to implement culturally responsive behaviors to demonstrate inclusion in teaching, classroom environments, or materials. To understand these behaviors in detail, faculty used an Innovation Configuration (IC) Map I developed over several research cycles. During this final cycle, I ascertained how well the IC Map helped faculty participants demonstrate CI via the three Cultural Capabilities of Cultural Openness, Cultural Awareness, and Cultural Responsiveness, to promote the outcomes of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Using document analyses, surveys, observations, and focus group discussions, I determined that faculty benefited from the program in building community and understanding better how to practically apply CI for CLD student inclusion, particularly as it related to demonstrating Cultural Responsiveness in teaching and classroom environments. Faculty reported a nearly unanimous need for greater Cultural Awareness in creating more responsive materials for not just CLD, but all, student success. Faculty consistently agreed on the relevancy of such professional development initiatives in helping them achieve DEI-related outcomes.
ContributorsBhatti-Klug, Renee Ronika (Author) / Beardsley, Audrey (Thesis advisor) / Graves Wolf, Leigh (Committee member) / McGee, Jeff (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the role a peer-driven technology acceptance model (PDTAM) in the form of a Community of Practice (CoP) played in assisting users in the acceptance of Trellis technologies at the University of Arizona. Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) technologies are becoming more common in higher education, helping to track interactions, streamline processes, and support customized experiences for students. Unfortunately, not all users are receptive to new technologies, and subsequent adoption can be slow. While the study of technology adoption literature provides insight into what motivates individuals to accept or reject new technologies, used herein was the most prevalent technology adoption theory – the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM; Davis, 1986). I used TAM to explore technology acceptance more spec user’s Perceived Ease of Use (PEU) and Perceived Usefulness (PU). In this MMAR study, I used TAM (Davis, 1986) as well as Everett Roger’s (1983) Diffusion Innovation Theory (DOI) to evaluate the impact of the CoP mentioned above on user adoption. Additionally, I added Perceived Value (PV) as a third construct to the TAM. Using pre-and post-intervention surveys, observation, and interviews, to both collect and analyze data on the impacts of my CoP intervention, I determined that the CoPs did assist in more thoroughly diffusing knowledge share, which reportedly led to improved PEU, PU, and PV in the treatment group. Specifically, the peer-to-peer mentoring that occurred in the CoPs helped users feel empowered to use the capabilities. Additionally, while the CoPs reportedly improved PEU, PU, and PV, the peer-to-peer model and the Trellis technologies still have not matured enough to realize their total value to campus.
ContributorsHodge, Nikolas (Author) / Beardsley, Audrey (Thesis advisor) / Neumann, William (Committee member) / Wolf, Leigh (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
The physician assistant (PA) profession is lacking in diversity, both in practicing PAs and the PA student population. PA organizations, including the PA Education Association and the Accreditation Review Commission on Education for the PA, have been advocating for action to address this lack of diversity, and many educational institutions have responded by innovating their recruitment and admissions strategies. Another appropriate response to address the lack of diversity in PA education would be to critically evaluate the curriculum, specifically professionalism curriculum, for inclusiveness. Professional identity formation (PIF) provides a framework for teaching professionalism that focuses on the evolving identities of medical learners (Irby & Hamstra, 2016) as influenced by their individual, relational, and collective identities (Cruess et al., 2015). However, PIF has been critiqued for lacking inclusion of sociocultural contexts (Wyatt et al., 2020). Through this mixed methods action research study, I utilized community of inquiry (CoI; Garrison et al., 1999) as a theoretical framework for creation and facilitation of a professional development workshop for PA educators aimed at evaluating academic medical journal articles focused on the topics of professionalism in medical education, PIF, and PIF experiences in underrepresented in medicine students. My goal was to increase awareness of PIF as a pedagogical framework which has the potential to alter the learning environment toward one of inclusion and belonging. Additionally, through my CoI, I further aimed to expand upon the PIF conceptual framework to include elements of intersectionality by focusing on how sociocultural factors influence student perspectives on professionalism and their PIF process. I used Ajzen’s (1991) theory of planned behavior to evaluate participants’ intention to incorporate PIF into their professionalism curricula and to prioritize sociocultural factors in their professionalism pedagogies. Using pre- and post-intervention surveys, participant interviews, and workshop session exit questions, I determined that my professional development workshop contributed to an increased likelihood of PA educators to integrate PIF and prioritize sociocultural factors into their professionalism curricula, and further, changed perspectives regarding the definition of professionalism in PA education to include an understanding and appreciation for how professionalism is influenced by a student’s sociocultural factors.
ContributorsFeirstein, Jennifer (Author) / Beardsley, Audrey (Thesis advisor) / Smith, Stephanie (Committee member) / Piemonte, Nicole (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024
Description
For more than 30 years, social science researchers have studied how students in online learning environments interact with each other. This has led to the development of a construct called social presence. Studies have shown that high social presence can lead to improved student retention, engagement, and satisfaction. The literature explores how social presence has been measured by faculty or researchers, but lacks insight on how other university staff can affect social presence in online graduate students. This is an action research mixed-methods study conducted by an academic advisor and attempts to measure social presence through a webpage intervention for an online graduate business program. A pre-and-posttest were conducted in a five month span, as well as semi-structured interviews with students of the program. Results suggest that overall, the intervention did not increase social presence in the program. It also suggests that social presence is developed between students in a variety of ways, and can even be developed between their academic advisor and themselves. Overall, this study acknowledges how academic advisors can explore social presence to improve academic advising techniques and interventions for their programs, while also adding to the literature a different perspective through the eyes of a university staff member.
ContributorsDelgado, Gina Michelle (Author) / Chen, Ying-Chih (Thesis advisor) / Beardsley, Audrey (Committee member) / Tu, Chih-Hsiung (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
In the grand scheme of things, the time that I spent in Tanzania was insignificant. I have lived through two hundred and fifty two months in my life. And of those, only two of them were spent in Africa. I have experienced many things in my short life as a twenty one year old, however, the experiences that I went through in Tanzania are the ones that I seem to think about the most. This time in my life, these experiences, have almost seemed to overwrite many of my old memories. They are all that I can think about. They are all that I can write about. They are all that I can dream about.
For this creative project, I have decided to highlight two memories from my time in Tanzania. I have titled it Empty but Full: Experiences While Teaching In Eastern Africa. These memories are the ones that I think about the most. They are the ones that I think about unconsciously. Everything that I do reminds me of them. I often attempt to repress these memories. I try to think of the happier times while I was over there. However, no matter what I do, what I try to distract myself with, they always seem to bubble to the surface. These are not happy memories. They do not make me smile and they often make me cry to to think about. Even though I had a tough time writing these, I feel that these are moments that people should know about. Moments that people can learn from. This is why I have decided to write about these memories. These stories are raw and they do not pull any punches. They are exactly what I witnessed and exactly what I was feeling those dark moments. When I close my eyes at night, my mind often goes back to that vibrant green jungle where I became a changed man.
For this creative project, I have decided to highlight two memories from my time in Tanzania. I have titled it Empty but Full: Experiences While Teaching In Eastern Africa. These memories are the ones that I think about the most. They are the ones that I think about unconsciously. Everything that I do reminds me of them. I often attempt to repress these memories. I try to think of the happier times while I was over there. However, no matter what I do, what I try to distract myself with, they always seem to bubble to the surface. These are not happy memories. They do not make me smile and they often make me cry to to think about. Even though I had a tough time writing these, I feel that these are moments that people should know about. Moments that people can learn from. This is why I have decided to write about these memories. These stories are raw and they do not pull any punches. They are exactly what I witnessed and exactly what I was feeling those dark moments. When I close my eyes at night, my mind often goes back to that vibrant green jungle where I became a changed man.
ContributorsFretto, Jacob Todd (Author) / Sklar, David (Thesis director) / Beardsley, Audrey (Committee member) / Department of Military Science (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution & Social Change (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
Data use in higher education continues to increase as college and university leaders aim to meet accreditor and governmental expectations to use data to improve student outcomes. However, the steady increase in data use over the past decades has not been accompanied by an increase in employee data literacy in order for employees to use the data effectively. Further, inequitable student outcomes continue to persist in higher education, and more specifically at two-year community colleges, as potentially exacerbated by a lack of employee equity-mindedness. These concurrent problems—inadequate employee data literacy and persistent inequitable student outcomes—provide an opportunity to address both with one intervention. In this critical race, mixed-methods, action research study, I piloted an online professional development course, aimed at community college employees with the purpose to build data literacy and equity-mindedness. I used Bandura’s (1989) Social Cognitive Theory as a guiding theoretical framework paired with a quasi-experimental, delayed-start research design to study the effectiveness of the course in building employee data literacy and equity-mindedness, in addition to better understanding the impacts of environmental factors (i.e., organizational culture) on the implementation of the course. Using pre- and post-intervention surveys, pre- and post-intervention knowledge assessments, and post-intervention participant interviews, I determined that the professional development course contributed to improvements in employee data literacy and equity-mindedness. In particular, the course helped increase employee self-efficacy for data use, increased employee knowledge of data use and equity-mindedness, and increased employee intent to use data in the future. I also found that the organization’s culture related to data and equity to be complex and evolving, both hindering and facilitating data use, in general, and data use specifically, to address inequitable student outcomes.
ContributorsMitchell, Dennis Shane (Author) / Beardsley, Audrey (Thesis advisor) / Ott, Molly (Committee member) / Jacobsen, Craig (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
With increasing costs of higher education, community college pathways to baccalaureate transfer degrees are attractive student alternatives to starting at a traditional four-year institution. However, disparate student outcomes, particularly for underserved student populations, continue to be a concern when considering equitable four-year degree completion rates. Previous literature demonstrates that student satisfaction and student informational capital play key roles in the success of community college transfer students to persist to four-year institutions and attain their educational and career goals. The role of academic advising in the transfer context provides a uniquely collaborative opportunity to address factors of success and student outcomes. Via this mixed methods action research study, I utilized archival student enrollment data, a student survey, and student and advisor interviews to examine an academic advising model that I created in partnership between Cochise Community College and the University of Arizona (i.e., the Colaborativo Advising for Transfer Success Model, or CATS Advising Model), whereby I assigned a singular academic advisor (i.e., a CATS advisor) a student caseload across the two institutions in a deliberate effort to facilitate successful transfer. I used a combined framework of the Model of Student Departure, Transfer Student Capital, and Appreciative Inquiry to inform the advising intervention. I found that students who received the advising intervention were significantly more likely to a) be satisfied with their transfer advising experience, b) perceive increased transfer knowledge (capital), and c) retain through transfer and university enrollment, in comparison to their peers who received advising via a more traditional transfer advising model. Importantly, the students experiencing the advising intervention were also able to articulate their appreciation and recognition of the impact of their relationship with the CATS advisors on their transfer success.
ContributorsWieland, Sarah (Author) / Beardsley, Audrey (Thesis advisor) / Smith, Stephanie (Committee member) / Urquídez, Kasandra (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
The researcher explored the impact of a student voice initiative (SVI), the Student Ambassador Council (SAC), on the social-emotional competencies (SECs) of middle school, 5th- 8th grades students. Drawing upon the principles of youth empowerment, more specifically Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR), and social-emotional learning (SEL), the SAC provided a platform for students to actively participate in decision-making processes within their school community. The researcher employed action research using a mixed methodologies approach, combining surveys, interviews, and participant observations to gather data on students' experiences and perceptions of the SAC. Quantitative analysis of pre- and post-surveys did not reveal significant improvements in students' SECs following their participation in the SAC. However, qualitative data from open-ended questions on the post-survey, interviews and observation provided further clarity demonstrating the initiative fosters growth in students’ perceptions of Student Voice, Social Awareness and Self-Efficacy in addition to student development in confidence, self-directed learning and civic engagement. Moreover, the study also suggested broader implications of the SAC on school climate and administrative practices. Findings suggested that SVIs like the SAC contributed to a more positive and inclusive school environment, promoting greater collaboration between students and school staff.
ContributorsEllis, Stacy E (Author) / Beardsley, Audrey (Thesis advisor) / Bowers, Nicole (Committee member) / Stafford, Neil (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024