Matching Items (33)
Description
This study analyzes syllabi for first-year college composition courses and interview responses to examine how the choices made by instructors affect online course design. Using the Syllabus Assessment Instrument designed by Madson, Melchert and Whipp (2004), this dissertation looks specifically at attendance and participation policies, course behavior policies, contact information, required material choices, course organization decisions and tool decisions to reveal how instructors do or do not accommodate online class pedagogies. This study finds that the choices instructors make in syllabus design provide significant information about the overall online course design itself. Using Selber's multiliteracies as a frame for understanding the choices made by instructors, this study finds that instructors focus primarily on functional literacies in their discourses and in the way they communicate their choices to students. Instructors vary in how they inform students of the mechanics of how to interact with tools, how often to interact with the online course, and how to use the tools within the online course. While these aspects of online courses are important, focusing on these aspects of the online course overshadows alternative perspectives on tool use that could encourage critical reflection by both instructors and students. To help instructors and departments design more effective syllabi and courses, this study raises questions and offers observations about how instructors communicate policies and how they understand these policies and pedagogies in online courses. In providing general guidelines for syllabus design and course design, this study will help writing instructors and composition programs better understand the significance of the choices they make in online course design.
ContributorsPfannenstiel, Amber Nicole (Author) / Goggin, Peter (Thesis advisor) / Daly Goggin, Maureen (Committee member) / Hayes, Elisabeth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The purpose of this study is to investigate the literacy practices of three members of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) and to explore how they use these practices to support and maintain their recovery in their lives. This study also aims to examine how each participant used specialist language, enacted certain identities and acquired the secondary Discourse in A.A. through literacy use. This dissertation study is the result of in-depth interviewing in which each participant was interviewed three times for 90-minutes. These interviews were then transcribed and analyzed using discourse analysis. Study results are presented in three chapters, each one designated to one of the participants. Within these chapters is a life history (chronology) of the participant leading up to the point in which they got sober. The chapters also include a thematic discourse analysis of the interview transcripts across themes of literacy practice and topics in A.A. A conclusion is then presented to investigate how literacy was used from a sociocultural perspective in the study. Due to the emotionally charged nature of this dissertation, it has been formatted to present the stories of the participants first, leaving the theoretical framework, literature review and research methods to be included as appendices to the main text.
ContributorsClausen, Jennifer Ann (Author) / Marsh, Josephine (Thesis advisor) / Hayes, Elisabeth (Committee member) / Serafini, Frank (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This research is focused on competitive female video gamers. This study focuses on a specific group of competitive female gamers who participate in an all female online community group or clan known as the PMSclan. The purpose of the study is to analyze the highly competitive female video gaming clan members of the PMSclan in order to understand how resistance is displayed in a female centered video gaming community and how that affects the identity of the individual gamers through Shaw's (2001) theory of resistance. This study employs qualitative research design and uses content analysis of publicly available clan doctrines and member blogs through the PMSclan website. Findings indicate that collective acts of resistance lead to individual acts of resistance which can be seen through self-expression, self-determination, and empowerment. These acts of resistance have a positive impact on female gamers with outcomes of strength and power which can be displayed in a typically masculine society.
ContributorsPeña, Siobhan Jennell (Author) / Rodriguez, Ariel (Thesis advisor) / Knopf, Richard (Committee member) / Hayes, Elisabeth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Small-group literacy instruction is frequently used in schools in order to engage students in discussions around texts. Instructional settings vary and produce a range of results. They are complex social spaces in which students position one another and themselves as they enact different identities. These identities are associated with sets of literacy practices. This paper describes the results of a study examining the ways in which 3rd and 4th grade students and their teachers positioned themselves and one another in three different small-group literacy settings and the literacy practices that they used as they performed their identities. Using a multimodal discourse analysis (Kress, 2012) and D/discourse analysis (Gee, 2005, 2011), the form and function of language and gestures were used to look at the kinds of identities that the participants enacted and the literacy practices that the students engaged in the different settings. The results of the analysis suggested that the identities that the participants performed were related to the context in which interactions around texts took place. The identities themselves were connected to the use certain literacy practices. The literacy practices used by the participants were also related to the classroom context. The findings suggest that it is important for teachers to consider the figured worlds active in small-group settings, the identities performed within those worlds, and the literacy practices in which students engage.
ContributorsKrauter, David (Author) / Marsh, Josephine P (Thesis advisor) / Gee, James P (Committee member) / Serafini, Frank (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
This research is a reversal of the traditional concept of the student-teaching research experiment. Instead of studying the clear and stated goal of an apprenticeship, that of a pupil learning from the tutelage of a master, the focus here is on what a mentor-teacher learns from a student-teacher. During the act of teaching a novice, what can a mentor-teacher learn about her own practice, while demonstrating it to a pre-service teacher? Using the conceptual framework of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards' Architecture of Accomplished Teaching, and using it within a framework centered around cognitive coaching and reciprocal mentoring, this action research study implemented an intervention that called for series of five cognitive coaching cycles between a mentor- and student-teacher designed to foster dialogue and reflection between them. The ultimate aim of this case study was to help determine what a mentor-teacher learned about her own practice as a result of mentoring a student-teacher. Qualitative data were collected over sixteen weeks in a charter high school. Five findings were identified created after the data were analyzed using a grounded theory approach, and four conclusions were drawn about the intervention's role in the mentor-teacher's reciprocal learning.
ContributorsMcCloy, Daniel (Author) / Beardsley, Audrey (Thesis advisor) / Serafini, Frank (Committee member) / Roen, Duane (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Drawing on a wide variety of literature from social constructionism, communities of practice and knowledge management this study brings to light the kind of support teachers will need in order to be able to use a knowledge construction model to develop a continual learning process for arts integration. Arts integration is a highly effective instructional strategy that brings active engagement, problem solving and higher levels of cognition to students. However arts integration is not easy work. It takes a great deal of planning and collaboration. In this action research study, I take the perspective of a social artist, a facilitator, who offers a framework for a group of teacher participants to dialogue, collaborate and share ideas and skills to develop arts integrated products to share with others. Utilizing a mixed methodology approach, the findings of this action research study revealed that the intervention had a positive impact on the participants. Though there were some set backs, participants reported more dialogue and shared experiences about arts integration on a daily basis, more dialogue about new arts integrate ideas, and an increased sense of collaboration in developing arts integrated products. Furthermore, the Knowledge Construction Model (KCM) concept had strength as a potential professional development model for teachers and schools interested in growing their arts integration practices.
ContributorsBenson, Robert Jason (Author) / Beardsley, Audrey (Thesis advisor) / Serafini, Frank (Committee member) / Santarelli, Denton (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
During the first half of the last decade, there was a heated debate regarding what type of critical approach best suits the study of video games. Those who argued for approaches traditionally associated with narrative studies were primarily interested in video games as a new frontier for storytelling. The opposition claimed that video games are not systems for storytelling, and that applying literature and film theories to video games dismisses the interactive nature of video games as games. The argument was bitter, but ended abruptly with no clear results or consensus. Yet are narratology and ludology, the two proposed critical theories, so disparate that the use of one means the exclusion of the other? This paper suggests the possibility that narratology and ludology share more in common than critics have thus far realized. Both games and story share themes of conflict, and in focalizing on the antagonist of single-player video games it becomes possible to trace the development of conflict and how it functions in the video game medium. In analyzing antagonists and the conflict they embody, it becomes apparent that narratology and ludology are not so incompatible in their methodologies and assumptions. Finally, because video games themselves are a multifaceted medium, it is only appropriate that critics use multiple theoretical approaches in their analysis to broaden critical knowledge of how the medium functions.
ContributorsNeel, James (Author) / Hayes, Elisabeth (Thesis advisor) / Gee, James P (Committee member) / Daer, Alice (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
The goal of this research was to understand the different kinds of learning that take place in Mod The Sims (MTS), an online Sims gaming community. The study aimed to explore users' experiences and to understand learning practices that are not commonly observed in formal educational settings. To achieve this goal, the researcher conducted a four-year virtual ethnographic study that followed guidelines set forth in Hine (2000). After Hine, the study focused on understanding the complexity of the relationships between technology and social interactions among people, with a particular emphasis on investigating how participants shaped both the culture and structure of the affinity space. The format for the dissertation consists of an introduction, three core chapters that present different sets of findings, and a concluding chapter. Each of the core chapters, which can stand alone as separate studies, applies different theoretical lenses and analytic methods and uses a separate data set. The data corpus includes hundreds of thread posts, member profiles, online interview data obtained through email and personal messaging (PM), numerous screenshots, field notes, and additional artifacts, such as college coursework shared by a participant. Chapter 2 examines thread posts to understand the social support system in MTS and the language learning practices of one member who was a non-English speaker. Chapter 3 analyzes thread posts from administrative staff and users in MTS to identify patterns of interactions, with the goal of ascertaining how users contribute to the ongoing design and redesign of the site. Chapter 4 investigates user-generated tutorials to understand the nature of these instructional texts and how they are adapted to an online context. The final chapter (Chapter 5) presents conclusions about how the analyses overall represent examples of participatory learning practices that expand our understanding of 21st century learning. Finally, the chapter offers theoretical and practical implications, reflections on lessons learned, and suggestions for future research.
ContributorsLee, Yoonhee Naseef (Author) / Hayes, Elisabeth (Thesis advisor) / Gee, James (Committee member) / Nelson, Brian (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This dissertation shares the results of a study of the community of the mobile augmented reality game Pokémon Go. It also serves to build on and expand the framework of Distributed Teaching and Learning (DTALS), which here is used as a framework through which to explore the game’s community (Gee & Gee, 2016; Holmes, Tran, & Gee, 2017). DTALS serves to expand on other models which examine learning in out-of-school contexts, and in particular on the connections between classroom and out-of-school learning, which numerous scholars argue is of critical importance (Sefton-Green, 2004; Vadeboncoeur, Kady-Rachid, & Moghtader, 2014). This framework serves to build bridges as well as fill gaps in some key literature on learning in out-of-school contexts, including connected learning (Ito et al., 2009), participatory culture (Jenkins, Purushotma, Weigel, Clinton, & Robison, 2009), learning ecologies (Barron, 2006), and affinity spaces (Gee, 2004; Gee & Hayes, 2012). The model also focuses on teaching in addition to learning in and across informal contexts.
While DTALS can be used to examine any number of phenomena, this dissertation focuses on the community around Pokémon Go. The game, with its emphasis on geography and community, presents unique opportunities for research. This research draws on existing video game research which focuses on not only games but their communities, and in particular the learning and literacy activities which occur in these communities (Gee & Hayes, 2012; Hayes & Duncan, 2012; Squire, 2006; Steinkuehler, 2006).
The results here are presented as three separate manuscripts. Chapter Two takes a broad view of a local community of players, and discusses different player types and how they teach and learn around the game. Chapter Three focuses on families who play the game together, and in particular three focal parents who share their perceptions of the game's merits, especially its potential to promote family bonding and learning. Chapter Four discusses teaching, in particular guides written about the game and the ways in which they are situated in particular Discourses (Gee, 2014). Finally, Chapter Five offers implications from these three chapters, including implications for designers and researchers as well as calls for future research.
While DTALS can be used to examine any number of phenomena, this dissertation focuses on the community around Pokémon Go. The game, with its emphasis on geography and community, presents unique opportunities for research. This research draws on existing video game research which focuses on not only games but their communities, and in particular the learning and literacy activities which occur in these communities (Gee & Hayes, 2012; Hayes & Duncan, 2012; Squire, 2006; Steinkuehler, 2006).
The results here are presented as three separate manuscripts. Chapter Two takes a broad view of a local community of players, and discusses different player types and how they teach and learn around the game. Chapter Three focuses on families who play the game together, and in particular three focal parents who share their perceptions of the game's merits, especially its potential to promote family bonding and learning. Chapter Four discusses teaching, in particular guides written about the game and the ways in which they are situated in particular Discourses (Gee, 2014). Finally, Chapter Five offers implications from these three chapters, including implications for designers and researchers as well as calls for future research.
ContributorsTran, Kelly Michaela (Author) / Gee, Elisabeth R (Thesis advisor) / Gee, James P (Committee member) / Serafini, Frank (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
This dissertation explored the literacy practices that developed around comics when two secondary teachers (one AP Science and one AP English) used comics in their classroom instruction for the first time. It also explored the ways the teachers and their students positioned comics within their specific classroom contexts. Historically, comics are a marginalized medium in educational circles—widely considered non-academic despite the recognition by scholars for their sophistication as a multimodal medium. Scholars, librarians, teachers, and comics authors have made the case for the inclusion of comics in educational contexts citing their ability to support the literacy development of struggling readers, engage reluctant readers, promote lifelong reading, and convey information visually. However, the roles comics can play in educational contexts are still under researched, and many gaps exist in the literature including a lack of real world contexts and clearly reported instructional strategies. This study aimed to fill these gaps by reporting the literacy practices that students and teachers develop around comics, as well as contextualizing these practices in the classroom contexts and students’ and teachers’ experiences. Drawing from a social semiotic view of multimodality and the view of literacy as a social practice, I conducted a qualitative case study using ethnographic methods for data collection which I analyzed using an interpretive framework for qualitative data analysis and constant comparative analysis. I found three literacy practices developed around comics in these contexts—Q&A, writing about comics, and drawing comics. I also found that teachers and students positioned comics in four primary ways within these contexts—as a tool, as entertainment, as a medium, and as a traditional form of literature. Based on my findings, I developed three assertions: 1) there is a disconnect between teachers’ goals for using comics in their instruction and the literacy practice that developed around the comics they selected; 2) there is a disconnect between the ways in which teachers position comics and the ways in which students position comics; and 3) traditional views of literature and literacy continue to dominate classrooms when multimodal texts are selected and utilized during instruction.
ContributorsKachorsky, Danielle Perrine (Author) / Serafini, Frank (Thesis advisor) / Gee, Elisabeth (Committee member) / Marsh, Josephine (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018