To address the challenges that persist at many levels for tribal nations in pursuit of increasing accessibility to basic necessities and developing infrastructure for their citizenry, I have created this research. I show how key leaders in the Navajo Nation understand the importance of developing a sound infrastructure that would sustain our…

By law, colleges and universities must provide people with disabilities with access to their digital activities, services, and programs. The problem is that when software development teams build digital educational products and services that support higher education institutions inaccessibly, they may exclude students with certain types of…

Recruitment of Students of Color (African American and Latino) is a growing obligation of colleges and universities around the United States (Bauman et al., 2019). Personally, the culmination of my passion for diversity recruitment and my experiences with information technology has led me to study why Students of Color encounter barriers during…

This quantitative correlational study accessed publicly available Oklahoma archival data to analyze the strength of the relationship between one dependent variable, the 1:1 technology score of 203 school districts, and four independent variables (socioeconomic status, community type, school district size, and school district funding sources) and…

Digital accessibility practices are becoming standardized in higher education as institutions seek to meet compliance with federal and state equal access laws. Students with disabilities have equal rights to access university programs and services in digital format. The widespread use of assistive technology, artificial intelligence, and content…

As digital access and education have become increasingly widespread, rural Appalachia, a historically marginalized region of the eastern United States, remains heavily impacted by the digital divide, with lower levels of digital access and use than average rates throughout the US. The digital divide is well-established from a rural-urban…

The education of students on existing and emerging technologies in higher education environments requires access to complex software. The rise of the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) phenomenon in many postsecondary educational institutions, along with the increasing complexity of technological coursework, creates challenges for students needing…

This thesis explores the use of Augmented Reality (AR) in two challenging scenarios -- autism therapy, and network-constrained, remote collaboration. In the first half of this thesis, we highlight the design and implementation of CustomAR and Augmented Playgrounds -- two applications that leverage the visualization and contextual abilities of AR…

Effective policy development will be critical to address educational challenges within the Global South. To accelerate economic, political, and social goals, the Global South is under increasing pressure to mimic policy development from other countries. In 2016, the Liberian Ministry of Education leveraged policy transfer to address systemic…

This research was a mixed-methods study investigating how teachers in northeastern West Virginia use student data to drive their instructional decisions. This study also investigated teachers' perceptions of the data use on their instruction, their students, and themselves. Data collection for this research included both a cross-sectional survey…

Second-generation web technologies provide a platform to reach international audiences and support international students in their potential higher education experiences. Research is needed that examines the usage of Web 2.0 technologies by International Student Services (ISS) staff and international students. Utilizing Walther's (1992; 1996)…

The Digital Divide has emerged as an important research and policy issue during the past thirty years. The divide exists at different levels, such as global, regional and individual levels. While extensive research already exists on this subject, the complexity of the issue presents opportunities for further research. In particular, there is ample…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the new media ecologies of urban, low-income youth and youth of color, and how they develop literacies and competencies around technology in the particular spaces of Community Technology Centers (CTCs), while placing them within their broader technological experiences and raced, classed, and gendered…

This qualitative phenomenological research study was designed to explore and learn how six pre-service teachers, studying at one of the Jordanian universities in the capital of Amman, identify, experience, and negotiate the barriers to Information and Communication Technology (ICT) access in their schooling experiences. The process of collecting…

Several studies have shown that information and communications technology (ICT) is important in economic and business development. The advent and rapid development of ICT have not helped in bridging the technological gap between developing countries and advanced countries. In fact, there is an Internet access gap between developed and developing…