A shortage of professional mariners to work onboard commercial vessels exists in the United States and in the world commercial fleets. State maritime academies graduate third mates and third assistant engineers ready to take up these positions, yet even after their training, not all choose to do so. The purpose of this study was to understand how…

In the Ecuadorian Constitution, universities, as part of the Science, Technology, Innovation, and Ancestral Knowledge System, must develop technologies and innovations that promote national production, increase efficiency and productivity, and improve quality of life. However, in their role as promoters of development through the generation and…

This dissertation studies the advancement of consensus-aware technologies in the context of collective decision-making, focusing on the integration of these technologies into information systems to effectively represent, detect, and characterize consensus among people and other agents. Despite the proven value of collective intelligence in…

While research on career paths has been studied for years, the impacts of identity rarely make it into the discussion. Leung et al. (1994) looked specifically at the factors that influence career aspirations in Asian Americans, but no South Asians were included in this work. To fill this gap, this research focused on the experience of South Asian…

This study aimed to explore the intricate relationship between burnout, moral distress, and self-care practices among school psychologists, marking the first attempt to examine these constructs within this professional domain. A total of 192 school psychologists were recruited at the NJASP Spring Conference in May 2023 and online through social…

The purpose of this study was to explore factors and personnel involved in the decision-making process used to determine electronic heath record (EHR) training methods employed by healthcare organizations in 2023. Additionally, the purpose was to learn more about EHR training leaders' perspectives of various training methods, and to determine how…

This dissertation proposes a strategy, or set of decision-making principles, for the education of adults. It explores two related questions: What is the purpose of andragogy and why does this work matter? This philosophical inquiry is situated within a broader context of the automation of knowledge work. As advances in information and…

The purpose of this research was to investigate the needs of parents and guardians who enroll their children in Out of School Time (OST) Programs in Philadelphia. It provides further guidance toward formalizing how OST programs recruit students and their families, and assessing parental engagement activities from a consumer's perspective. Applying…

The public education system is shaped through policy at the federal, state, and local levels with the expectation of implementation at the building level by educational leaders. Education is a right of all individuals and cannot be taken away due to a person's exceptionalities. This right is protected by federal law and enforced by district…

Student retention is a fundamental issue in higher education, with student decision-making and withdrawal at the forefront of examining that issue. Previous research has shown that personal factors are not easily addressed, but institutional factors, such as the course scheduling process, can be modified. This research study examined how the…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive research was to explore how special education teachers choose curriculum to maximize learning within the special education classroom based on the external factors within the United States. The research questions as follows were answered through 12 interviews and a focus group of six participants from…

To develop as writers, students require regular practice writing and examples of quality texts that can serve as guides for their own writing. Reading like a writer (RLW) is a specific way of reading that can benefit student writers. The purpose of this basic interpretive qualitative study was to examine the writing decisions of 19 eighth grade…

Public K-12 education is a one-size-fits-all system that cannot meet the diverse needs of students. When parents choose a school, they look at several criteria unique to their situation and make trade-offs between their preferences based on their needs. The purpose of this study was to explore the factors influencing parents to enroll their…

Instructional designers make numerous decisions daily to perform their job, for example, what authoring tool to use, what model or strategy to use, and what design process to use to develop learning solutions. Decision-making is important in the field of instructional design. The literature revealed many factors or variables instructional…

Counterfactual conditional sentences (e.g., "If giraffes had fins, they would swim") involve an antecedent (e.g., "If giraffes had fins") which is false in the actual world. They also involve a consequent (e.g., "they would swim"), expressing a possibility given the antecedent. Reasoning about counterfactual…