The purpose of this phenomenological study is to explore the experiences of Black graduates of historically Black colleges and universities who attend graduate school at predominately White institutions as they adjust academically and socially at these institutions. In-depth interviews provide knowledge as to what this special population of students' experience. Recommendations for faculty and administrators to assist with the recruitment and retention of these graduate students is also provided.

Although one-to-one technology programs are rapidly expanding in secondary schools, the literature about how to effectively leverage these programs to improve teaching and learning is relatively small. Little guidance is available for school leaders attempting to improve teachers' willingness and ability to incorporate technology effectively into their instruction. The purpose of this mixed-methods case study was to discovery what supports school leaders provide to promote high levels of computer self-efficacy and transformational digital pedagogies in one-to-one learning environments. Data were collected from English language arts, Social Studies, and science teachers in three high schools in a suburban school district in northeast Texas using an online survey, eight virtual semi-structured interviews, and two virtual focus group interviews. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and deductive and inductive analysis. The findings of the study reveal most teachers perceived their ability to effectively deliver digital instruction as strong, and most were able to incorporate technology into their lessons at transformational levels. The following themes emerged from data regarding teachers' perceptions of support: shared vision, realistic and supportive climate, collaboration, encouragement, job-embedded professional learning, continuous improvement, equity, and safe, legal, and ethical use. The findings of this study serve as a foundation for understanding …

This study investigates the effects of sketchnoting, a visualized approach of notetaking, on learning strategies. The main questions asked were: What are the effects of sketchnoting on learners' learning strategies, including cognitive strategies (rehearsal, elaboration, organizational) and metacognitive strategies? Forty-eight undergraduate participants were divided into two groups, an experimental group, and a control group. Findings demonstrated a significant increase in cognitive learning strategies and metacognitive strategies in the experimental group. Other findings revealed that the aesthetic appeal of sketchnoting is the major reason motivating participants' sketchnoting behavior and the corresponding connection between design strategies and the learning strategies is the key of positive impacts of sketchnoting on learning strategies. Additional insights and implications are discussed.

Secondary students with specific learning disabilities often have challenges with academic engagement and performance within the general education setting. Opportunity to respond strategies, such as student response systems, have shown promise in supporting academic engagement for students without disabilities. However, there are few studies examining the relationship between student response systems and academic engagement for older students with specific learning disabilities. The purpose of this study was to pilot the use of Google classroom as a student response system on academic participation and disruptive behavior for high school students with specific learning disability. While the study began as a multiple baseline across participants single-subject research design, the design was changed due to school closures as a result of COVID-19. A high-school student with specific learning disability participated in a study using an AB non-experimental design. The student response system resulted in an abrupt change in academic participation for the participant. The student and teacher perceived the intervention to be effective and appropriate for increasing participation and decreasing disruptive behavior. This study contributes to a limited body of research on student response systems for secondary students with specific learning disabilities.

This research seeks to explore how the metal arts are taught to women in Kuwait in an undergraduate setting, making the call for the use of feminist pedagogy when teaching the metal arts to women in Kuwait. This research is achieved using the qualitative methodology of analytic autoethnography. The theoretical framework is a feminist lens bridging the social construction of gender with the gendering of objects and feminist standpoint theory. The data comes from the experiences of creating three of my own pieces of artwork as well as the pieces themselves in tandem with historical, political, and cultural contexts. The analysis from this research is then bridged with feminist pedagogy in order to begin to develop an inclusive metal arts curriculum for women in Kuwait.

This dissertation aimed to explore the S2 region with an attempt to modulate its elasticity in order to tune the contraction output. Two peptides, the stabilizer and destabilizer, showed high potential in modifying the S2 region at the cellular level, thus they were prepared for animal model testing. In this research, (i) S2 elasticity was studied, and the stabilizer and destabilizer peptides were built to tune contraction output through modulating S2 flexibility; (ii) the peptides were attached to heart homing adducts and the bond between them was confirmed; and (iii) it was shown that minor changes were imposed on the modulating peptides' functionality upon attaching to the heart homing adducts. S2 flexibility was confirmed through comparing it to other parts of myosin using simulated force spectroscopy. Modulatory peptides were built and computationally tested for their efficacy through interaction energy measurement, simulated force spectroscopy and molecular dynamics; these were attached to heart homing adducts for heart delivery. Interaction energy tests determined that tannic acid (TA) served well for this purpose. The stoichiometry of the bond between the TA and the modulating peptides was confirmed using mass spectroscopy. The functionality of the modulating peptides was shown to be unaltered through expansion microscopy …

Research in scholarly communication is usually limited to the use and dissemination of scientific material by scholars. This excludes the transfer of knowledge from research producers to service providers. Some may argue the primary function of science is to investigate the conditions in the lab so everyday interactions with the environment are more effective and efficient. This is the underlying philosophy of the science of behavior analysis. Comprised of a basic science, an applied science and a philosophy the field of behavior analysis relies on research developments to inform effective practice. Guided by dissemination processes studied in information science, this investigation revealed the content layer in behavior analysis is primarily comprised of journal articles. Ninety four percent of the research artifacts cited in the current content layer are from journal articles. Other dissemination channels used to develop the behavior analytic content layer included scientific magazine articles, oral reports, dissertations and theses, and unpublished manuscripts. The information use environment for professionals in this field is very different than that of the scholars; most professionals do not have access to a university library. Therefore, the research producers are disseminating developments via communication channels some service providers cannot access. This investigation reveals the …

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to examine the impact of a long-term, 5E inquiry-based professional development on content and pedagogical knowledge in eighth-grade science teachers in Texas. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected via university designed reflective prompts, science content pretests and post-tests, and a classroom observation instrument. Results showed the professional development had a statistically significant impact on teachers' content knowledge in earth science, less significant impact in content knowledge in physical science and that teachers' levels of inquiry-based practice were in the early stages. The teachers' reflections of the professional development's impact indicated self-identified growth in their content knowledge and an impact on their understanding of inquiry-based classroom instructional practice. The findings suggest inquiry-based professional development has an impact on teachers' content and pedagogical knowledge, specifically regarding conveying content effectively, concept interconnection, lesson design, and teachers' opportunities to experience inquiry-based learning themselves before implementing it in their classrooms. The study's implications for further research include examinations of professional learning opportunities at local district and campus levels to identify and incorporate science teachers' existing levels of content and inquiry-based pedagogical knowledge and provide opportunities for practice to incorporate the pedagogy in classrooms.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), patients and providers do not understand the Health Information Privacy and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Non-compliance with HIPAA is primarily due to confusion, along with insufficient understanding. HSS has taken measures to simplify the language they use to communicate HIPAA, however, they have not taken steps that consider if one's culture, religious and social perspectives, institutional training, credentials, and comprehension of legal terminology affects medical providers and non-clinical administrative personnel's abilities to understand HIPAA. This research uses bibliometrics to examine the literature from January 2010 – September 2020 that addresses HIPAA's use of legal terminology, literacy level, and institutional training, along with religious and social perspectives, and credentials of medical providers and non-clinical administrative personnel. A total of 107 articles were examined, 42 were assigned article influence scores with values that were less than 1.00, which is a below-average influence score for the article. There were 29 articles with values equal to or above 1.00, which translates to an equal or above-average influence score. The remaining 36 articles did not have article influence scores and were assigned values as not available. Results of the review of the literature indicate that …

With the advent of autonomous systems and deep learning systems, safety pertaining to these systems has become a major concern. The existing failure analysis techniques are not enough to thoroughly analyze the safety in these systems. Moreover, because these systems are created to operate in various conditions, they are susceptible to unknown safety issues. Hence, we need mechanisms which can take into account the complexity of operational design domains, identify safety issues other than failures, and expose unknown safety issues. Moreover, existing safety analysis approaches require a lot of effort and time for analysis and do not consider machine learning (ML) safety. To address these limitations, in this dissertation, we discuss an artificial-intelligence driven model-based methodology that aids in identifying unknown safety issues and analyzing ML safety. Our methodology consists of 4 major tasks: 1) automated model generation, 2) automated analysis of component state transition model specification, 3) undesired states analysis, and 4) causal factor analysis. In our methodology we identify unknown safety issues by finding undesired combinations of components' states and environmental entities' states as well as causes resulting in these undesired combinations. In our methodology, we refer to the behaviors that occur because of undesired combinations as off-nominal …