While gender-based achievement gaps have been widely explored in academic motivation research, gender-related variables such as sexual orientation and other-gender similarity radically shift understandings of these disparities. Recent research has shown that gay men have a notable bachelor's degree attainment advantage over heterosexual men while…

The development of students' engineering identity revolves around cultivating their technical skills (Chachra et al., 2008; Meyers et al., 2012), and they rely on feedback to provide competence information with respect to engineering work (Godwin, 2014). This study explores the relationship between achievement goal orientations and…

Every year, 600,000 formerly incarcerated people return to society, and over forty-four percent will be incarcerated again within a year. As advocates work to improve the conditions of reentry, recent efforts have focused on higher education as the ticket to long-term freedom for formerly incarcerated people. Any success of these efforts hinges on…

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) pose few barriers to enrollment and are typically free of charge to those that take them. Unlike enrollment in traditional, for-credit learning experiences, learners may persist or drop out of MOOCs at will with few consequences. This dissertation is an exploratory study meant to identify factors associated with…

The likelihood of having a professional athletic career is lowest in National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) revenue-generating sports (i.e., football, men's basketball, women's basketball) and these sports often have the lowest rates of academic progress, eligibility, and retention. Although academic motivation is a strong indicator of…

The purpose of this quantitative comparative study is to analyze the demographic and program choice data of students who completed a study abroad program in the United States over a 10+-year period and to determine the impacts of those factors. The literature is well saturated with the benefits of students engaging in any type of study abroad…

Problem: The demand to recruit highly skilled managers and laborers in Vietnam has encouraged educational institutions to upgrade the quality of their higher education programs and to evaluate their effectiveness. Andrew University's MBA program did not have an assessment developed to evaluate the program's effectiveness in Vietnam. It required an…

Undocumented children immigrants in the United States experience significant hurdles pursuing higher education due to their illegal status, resulting in lower rates of college attendance for children arriving before the age of 14 than U.S. born children. The 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program aims, in part, to remove these…

The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenological study is to highlight the extent of missing student motivation guiding principles by describing the lived experiences of teachers in their efforts to bolster student motivation in United States secondary schools. The presence of disengaged and demotivated students in United States secondary school…

School climate is one of the most important school level factors shaping children's developmental outcomes. More specifically, school climate has been found to contribute to school practices that promote or hinder students' academic achievement, academic engagement, and academic motivation with more positive reports of school climate improving…

This research study used quantitative data analysis techniques to examine if participation in a live, virtual arts experience increased student interest in the arts. The study explored three key research questions: What is the impact of a live interactive virtual arts experience on student interest in the arts? Does participating in an interactive…

Motivation in general is one of the most important components of the process of learning and teaching in any educational environment, and it can explain the success or failure of student. In online learning, learners tend to study on their own and intrinsic motivation is particularly the main source that triggers and sustains learning process…

Graduate students are often overlooked as a critical audience when universities strategically communicate scientific research, and few resources are traditionally dedicated to graduate student recruitment. Graduate students additionally possess a myriad of characteristics -- including cultural -- that contribute to their decision to enroll in a…

Although Hawai'i suffers from a chronic teacher shortage similar to the rest of the country, there are variables that make Hawai'i's dilemma unique. Between 2015-2020, there were over 1,000 teaching positions unfilled, with more than a third of positions being specific to special education (HIDOE Employment Reports, 2015-2020). In 2019, the…

This quantitative research study explores student-athletes' involvement in educationally purposeful activities offered at higher education institutions competing in a Midwest athletic conference within the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA). While there is some research regarding involvement in educationally purposeful…