In citizen science, project leaders rely on volunteer contributors to collect, classify, and analyze data in both natural and digital environments. To be successful, volunteers are often provided with specialized training that supports the learning goals of the project. Yet, little is understood regarding the contextual influences of both the…

Investigations on the efficacy of online education have been both broad and ambiguous. On one side of the coin, research studies argue that there is no analytical or rational distinctness between the academic outcomes of online and face-to-face courses. The problem is that students will experience poor academic achievement when switching to online…

This study examines the student experience in the online classroom at a small, Northern California college during the COVID-19 pandemic, using a survey administered online and in person to students enrolled in targeted sections of general education courses at the college. By exploring student responses to specific instructional and support…

Building community is essential to achieving optimal learning conditions. Failure to build community in online courses is linked to higher drop-out rates, feelings of isolation, and lower academic success rate (Adams & Wilson, 2020). Although there is research on building a sense of community in online course settings, much of this work has…

K-12 students with disabilities in the United States are increasingly enrolling in online schools and educational programs. Therefore, K-12 online public and charter school special education (SpecEd) teachers must be prepared to develop and implement individualized educational plans (IEPs) that meet the procedural and substantive requirements of…

Community college students with disabilities (SWD) find disability-related challenges in online learning. Online learning is plagued with high withdrawal rates that impede educational goal completion. Prior to this study, the reasons for asynchronous online course withdrawal of community college SWD were not known. The purpose of this qualitative…

In the context of a first-year composition course at an HBCU, I explored the potential of Open Educational Resources (OER) and OER-Enabled Pedagogy (OEP) to better understand how the resources and the pedagogical practices surrounding their use might innovate teaching and learning. In this study conducted with 14 participants from online, hybrid,…

Emergency online learning policies were created and implemented at higher education institutions across the United States as the COVID-19 pandemic prompted a transition to fully online learning modalities to mitigate the dangers of the virus late in 2019. A new paradigm of education emerged as emergency online learning became the standard method…

This research endeavors to investigate the factors that influence satisfaction with online learning among secondary students in hybrid or blended environments in the United States. With a focus on social-emotional learning and digital citizenship, the study begins the exploration and the impact of teacher interactions, teaching presence,…

On September 10, 2020 after two days of synchronously teaching Zoom classes, I posted the following message on my personal Facebook page: "I've learned that I am more excited to 'see' students than any sane person should be, somehow I now wave all the time, and students showing off their pet pig is a thing in my classes now." This…

The COVID-19 pandemic paralyzed school operations worldwide; therefore, educators adopted online pedagogy to ensure learners continued their learning activities. However, the academic achievement of K-12 children in New York City was negatively impacted after adopting virtual learning, evidenced by reduced academic performances. The problem…

This dissertation sought to determine the impact of online dual enrollment (DE) coursework on first-generation students' college GPAs and persistence/graduation outcomes. Further, this dissertation intended to discover whether increased dosages of online DE coursework result in increased persistence/graduation rates of first-generation students.…

This study sought to understand how history teachers engage digitally native high school students in the history curriculum. There have been significant changes in the teaching of history over the past two decades, yet there is a lack of consensus as to what the purpose of history education is. Using qualitative research design and action research…

Despite the growing popularity of online education, online schools have lower retention rates than their brick-and-mortar counterparts. Student retention is affected by multiple factors including the characteristics of the students, the characteristics of the educators, and the characteristics of the schools. However, there is a lack of…

School counselors are challenged to identify, address, and eliminate unwanted behaviors to ensure a safe environment for students to learn and grow. Cyberbullying is an unwanted behavior that is considered a growing phenomenon among middle school students causing negative outcomes on youths' mental health, academic performance, and…