Emerging Opportunities: Giving and Participation by Silicon Valley Asian American Communities

Based on interviews, examines experiences, motivations, priorities, and values with regard to philanthropy among Asian Americans in the Valley, including how the entrepreneurial culture shapes approaches to philanthropy, social change, and networking

Developing and Implementing Self-Direction Programs and Policies: A Handbook

Provides a guide to designing, implementing, and evaluating service delivery models that allow public program participants to manage their own care services and supports. Outlines elements of employer and budget authorities, enrollment, and counseling

A qualitative exploration of professional development for beginning principals in K-8 Catholic education in the San Francisco Bay Area

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THE ROLE OF SIMULATION IN SUPPORTING LONGER-TERM LEARNING AND MENTORING WITH TECHNOLOGY

Mentoring is an important part of professional development and longer-term learning. The nature of longer-term mentoring contexts means that designing, developing, and testing adaptive learning sys-tems for use in this kind of context would be very costly as it would require substantial amounts of fi-nancial, human, and time resources. Simulation is a cheaper and quicker approach for evaluating the impact of various design and development decisions. Within the Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED) research community, however, surprisingly little attention has been paid to how to design, de-velop, and use simulations in longer-term learning contexts. The central challenge is that adaptive learning system designers and educational practitioners have limited guidance on what steps to consider when designing simulations for supporting longer-term mentoring system design and development deci-sions. My research work takes as a starting point VanLehn et al.’s [1] introduction to applications of simulated students and Erickson et al.’s [2] suggested approach to creating simulated learning envi-ronments. My dissertation presents four research directions using a real-world longer-term mentoring context, a doctoral program, for illustrative purposes. The first direction outlines a framework for guid-ing system designers as to what factors to consider when building pedagogical simulations, fundamen-tally to answer the question: how can a system designer capture a representation of a target learning context in a pedagogical simulation model? To illustrate the feasibility of this framework, this disserta-tion describes how to build, the SimDoc model, a pedagogical model of a longer-term mentoring learn-ing environment – a doctoral program. The second direction builds on the first, and considers the issue of model fidelity, essentially to answer the question: how can a system designer determine a simulation model’s fidelity to the desired granularity level? This dissertation shows how data from a target learning environment, the research literature, and common sense are combined to achieve SimDoc’s medium fidelity model. The third research direction explores calibration and validation issues to answer the question: how many simulation runs does it take for a practitioner to have confidence in the simulation model’s output? This dissertation describes the steps taken to calibrate and validate the SimDoc model, so its output statistically matches data from the target doctoral program, the one at the university of Saskatchewan. The fourth direction is to demonstrate the applicability of the resulting pedagogical model. This dissertation presents two experiments using SimDoc to illustrate how to explore pedagogi-cal questions concerning personalization strategies and to determine the effectiveness of different men-toring strategies in a target learning context. Overall, this dissertation shows that simulation is an important tool in the AIED system design-ers’ toolkit as AIED moves towards designing, building, and evaluating AIED systems meant to support learners in longer-term learning and mentoring contexts. Simulation allows a system designer to exper-iment with various design and implementation decisions in a cost-effective and timely manner before committing to these decisions in the real world

Role & Constructivist Competencies Of An Online Instructor: Elements Of An Online Course

ABSTRACT ROLE AND CONSTRUCTIVIST COMPETENCIES FOR ONLINE INSTRUCTORS: ELEMENTS OF AN ONLINE COURSE by MARSHA L. PARKER May 2014 Advisor: Dr. Ingrid Guerra-Lopez Major: Instructional Technology Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Distance learning programs in higher education are evolving into the preferred model for how we educate learners in the 21st century. The traditional role of an instructor was focused on creating an effective learning environment based in a physical classroom setting. In this decade, institutions are educating and training online instructors to a virtual online asynchronous learning environment. Online programs based in higher education, specifically those focused on adult learners, are transforming how and why we educate our communities. This study will focus on online instructors who facilitate in an asynchronous learning environment populated by adult learners who attend higher-education institutions. Institutions are asking how we can transition instructors into the role of constructivist facilitators of knowledge while building their competencies as effective online instructors. This question is explored by defining the criteria for success based on core and functional (unique) competencies focused on creating a stimulating and engaging online learning environment. This research study will examine the role of an online instructor, explore current competency models, and define the unique (constructivist) competencies needed for success as an online instructor. Eventually, a certification program is needed that supports the competency development of an online instructor. This certification structure will also support how institutions (colleges as well as profit and nonprofit universities) hire, evaluate, and rank the performance of online instructors using the proposed constructivist competency model. As higher-education institutions focus on retention of the adult learner population, a shift must occur in the performance standards required of online instructors. These performance standards must be clearly defined and communicated by an institution if it is to remain competitive in the industry of delivering online courses. The proposed constructivist competency model in this study will establish the performance standards for measuring an effective online learning course. This constructivist competency model will also ensure that the next generation of online instructors has the tools and resources needed to create a vibrant and engaging online learning environment. As the online learning community expands to include profit institutions, business and industry, collaborative communities, online universities, local community colleges, local high schools, and government organizations, there is an increasing need to define how we create a quality online learning experience for our learners. The learner is demanding that we, as a learning community, provide them with the best tools, resources, and knowledge to prepare them for the real world. This learning community is challenged to inspire, develop, and cultivate the talents of our learners by ensuring they have the best online learning experience. Any shortcuts would hinder the development and ability of our future generation to compete within a global society. As (online) instructors, our purpose is to ensure that we prepare our learners with the opportunity to compete at the local, international, and global levels. Our desire should be to continue to improve our own skills through professional development opportunities, workshops, coaching, mentoring, and acknowledging the need for certification standards. These certification standards would give instructors the opportunity to invest in their own development by achieving recognized standards with financial incentives for creating a quality online learning experience. Accreditation in the field of online learning is needed to ensure that instructors are properly trained, are hired according to relevant standards and competencies, receive ongoing career development, practice consistent standards, and are held accountable for providing a quality online experience for learners. If we (i.e., organizations, institutions, universities) fail to implement a consistent set of standards, we provide a disservice to our learners by not ensuring that the same or higher standards required in a traditional classroom are applied in an online course. Keywords: constructivist, online learning, online instructor, competencie

Design Knowledge for Virtual Learning Companions from a Value-centered Perspective

The increasing popularity of conversational agents such as ChatGPT has sparked interest in their potential use in educational contexts but undermines the role of companionship in learning with these tools. Our study targets the design of virtual learning companions (VLCs), focusing on bonding relationships for collaborative learning while facilitating students’ time management and motivation. We draw upon design science research (DSR) to derive prescriptive design knowledge for VLCs as the core of our contribution. Through three DSR cycles, we conducted interviews with working students and experts, held interdisciplinary workshops with the target group, designed and evaluated two conceptual prototypes, and fully coded a VLC instantiation, which we tested with students in class. Our approach has yielded 9 design principles, 28 meta-requirements, and 33 design features centered around the value-in-interaction. These encompass Human-likeness and Dialogue Management, Proactive and Reactive Behavior, and Relationship Building on the Relationship Layer (DP1,3,4), Adaptation (DP2) on the Matching Layer, as well as Provision of Supportive Content, Fostering Learning Competencies, Motivational Environment, and Ethical Responsibility (DP5-8) on the Service Layer

The Three Essentials: Improving Schools Requires District Vision, District and State Support, and Principal Leadership

Identifies seven strategies and charts steps for schools, districts, and state government to help secondary school principals succeed, including investing in professional learning and ensuring the effective use of high-quality student achievement data

Enhancing entrepreneurial innovation through industry-led accelerators: corporate-new venture dynamics and organizational redesign in a port maritime ecosystem

This PhD dissertation studies the management and design of corporate accelerators, in particular, industry-led value chain corporate accelerators. I addressed a multi-faceted research question about the novelty, corporate impact, dynamics and design of industry-led accelerators. Using a longitudinal, inductive, multiple-case embedded research design that analyses the industrial accelerator interface, the relationships between incumbent firms and external new ventures and the R&D/innovation units of established firms in a port maritime complex, this dissertation addresses this multi-faceted research question and it makes five core contributions. First, it positions, for the first time, the corporate accelerator phenomena at the intersection of fundamental management research streams, including organizational design, dynamic capabilities and corporate entrepreneurship. Second, it conducts the first study of the promising model of industry-led accelerator by inductively generating a four-step framework of how these accelerators work: i) co-define a broad innovation remit, ii) generate an innovation funnel to attract start-ups and scale-ups, iii) mutual sensing via flexible matching iv) select for scale and investment. Third, it finds striking counter-intuitive evidence in that the industry-led accelerator not only accelerates external new ventures but rather the corporate partners themselves by triggering them to internalize the lean start-up method and redesign their R&D/innovation processes and routines. To explain this, I inductively developed a four-phases process model of corporate entrepreneurial capability-building, comprising: a) attracting, b) strategic fit sensing, c) shaping and d) internalizing. Fourth, this dissertation uncovers three novel tensions—internalization, implementation and role—at the incumbent - new venture interface and develops a new ecological and symbiotically-inspired framework for tension identification and mitigation in industrial acceleration contexts. Fifth, and finally, using the frameworks and process models developed, this dissertation proposes a new toolkit (industrial acceleration design canvas and workshops) to orient practitioners when strategizing, designing and sustaining corporate new venture ecosystem acceleration initiatives.Open Acces

An exploration of the pedagogies employed to integrate knowledge in work-integrated learning

This article describes a three‐sector, national research project that investigated the integration aspect of work‐integrated learning (WIL). The context for this study is three sectors of New Zealand higher education: business and management, sport, and science and engineering, and a cohort of higher educational institutions that offer WIL/cooperative education in variety of ways. The aims of this study were to investigate the pedagogical approaches in WIL programs that are currently used by WIL practitioners in terms of learning, and the integration of academic‐workplace learning. The research constituted a series of collective case studies, and there were two main data sources — interviews with three stakeholder groups (namely employers, students, and co‐op practitioners), and analyses of relevant documentation (e.g., course/paper outlines, assignments on reflective practice, portfolio of learning, etc.). The research findings suggest that there is no consistent mechanism by which placement coordinators, off‐campus supervisors, or mentors seek to employ or develop pedagogies to foster learning and the integration of knowledge. Learning, it seems, occurs by means of legitimate peripheral participation with off‐campus learning occurring as a result of students working alongside professionals in their area via an apprenticeship model of learning. There is no evidence of explicit attempts to integrate on‐ and off‐campus learning, although all parties felt this would and should occur. However, integration is implicitly or indirectly fostered by a variety of means such as the use of reflective journals

Professional development relationships for counselor educators: The relationship between ethnic identity, advocacy, empowerment, and cultural empathy on faculty mentoring alliances

Mentoring programs are viewed as effective recruiting and retention tools that orient faculty members into the professoriate and provide opportunities to integrate cultural diversity into university ideology. However, empirical research about faculty mentoring is sparse, and disparate findings exist regarding the benefits and barriers of cross-cultural and homogenous mentoring relationships. This study describes mentoring relationships among a national sample of 226 counselor education faculty. Multiple regression and multivariate analysis of variance were employed to examine the relationships between working alliance and ethnic identity, advocacy, empowerment, and cultural empathy among cross-cultural and homogenous mentoring relationships. Strong positive relationships were found between the predictor variables of advocacy, empowerment, and cultural empathy and the outcome variable of working alliance, accounting for over half of the variance. Ethnic identity predicted the working alliance accounting for an additional 1% of variance. Significant differences were found between cross-cultural and homogenous mentor types. Ethnic identity was significantly higher among cross-cultural mentor relationships than for homogenous mentor relationships; however, the variance accounted for was slight. This paper describes the background for the study, methodology, and results. Implications are discussed along with future research directions