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- All Subjects: Online
- All Subjects: Rice farmers--Indonesia--Java--Interviews.
- Creators: Goggin, Peter
- Creators: Barroso, Cristina
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
This dissertation is a detailed rhetorical analysis of interviews with rice farmers in central Java, Indonesia and documents published by the global NGOs United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and CGIAR. Using theories of materiality, literacies, and environmental rhetorics, I examine how seemingly distinct and disparate humans, organizations, and inanimates are actually entangled agents in a dynamic conversation. I have termed that conversation the discourse of rice farming. Studying local and global together challenges conventional dichotomous thinking about farming and food. Looking at this conversation as an entanglement reveals what Karen Barad has defined in Meeting the Universe Halfway as the intra-relatedness of all agents. I focus on rice farming because rice is a food staple around the world and a major component of global agriculture initiatives by FAO and CGIAR. I argue that farmers construct their jobs in terms of production, food sovereignty, and community. The NGOs construct agriculture in terms of consumption, food security, and poverty alleviation. In my project I emphasize the need for global agents to better account for how farmers construct agriculture. Accounting for how all agents impact the discourse of rice farming is the only way to come to an objective understanding rice farming's impact on local and global scales. My argument adds to the field of environmental rhetorics because most published case studies are about the United States and thus are limited in their applicability. And it enriches global conversations about food security and food justice because it shares accounts from actual farmers who are often conspicuously absent from literature on those topics.
ContributorsCooney, Emily (Author) / Goggin, Peter (Thesis advisor) / Hannah, Mark (Committee member) / Chhetri, Netra (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
There are multivariate factors that not only play a role in an individual's ability to lose weight, but may create barriers to his or her success. One such factor is internalized weight bias (IWB), which is inversely associated with weight loss outcomes and body satisfaction, and directly associated with psychosocial maladjustments such as depression and binge eating. This study examined the relationship between internalized weight bias and weight loss outcomes using a coding scheme developed for an online weight loss forum to see whether results would be consistent with self-administered surveys that measure IWB. The coding scheme was developed using an exploratory factor analysis of a survey composed of existing measures of IWB. Participants' posts within an online weight loss forum were coded and participants given a weekly IWB score that was compared to weekly weight loss using mixed model analysis. No significance was found between IWB and weight loss outcomes in this study, however, the coding scheme developed is a novel approach to measuring IWB, and the categories identified from latent constructs of IWB may be used in the future to determine the dimensions that exist within it. Ultimately, a better understanding of IWB could lead to the development of targeted weight loss interventions that address the beliefs and attitudes held by individuals who experience it.
ContributorsEscajeda, Janessa (Author) / Hekler, Eric (Thesis advisor) / Barroso, Cristina (Thesis advisor) / Dixon, Kathleen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015