A content analysis of developmental education in the community college from the Chronicle of Higher Education (2010 - 2015).

The purpose of this qualitative content analysis was to examine how developmental education in community colleges has been reported in one of the most prominent newspapers in higher education, The Chronicle of Higher Education. Using Framing Media Theory (de Vreese, 2005; Entman, 1993; Scheufele, 2000; Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000), 31 articles published from 2010 to 2015 were analyzed to explore the scope of attention given to developmental education, the frame devices used to describe the topic, and how the dominant frames changed from 2010 to 2015. The final results of this study indicated that the dominant frames associated with developmental education were human interest, economic consequences, and conflict. Among those dominant frames, three themes were identified based on their saliency— external influencers, expert authorities, and the college completion agenda. The majority of the articles focused on what external influencers were proposing or doing to change developmental education through the economic consequences frame to increase the college completion rate. Expert authorities focused on refuting much of the external influencers\u27 claims through the human interest frame by presenting success stories with inconclusive data to support their claims. The researcher viewed the exchange between external influencers and expert authorities as a battlefield, defined by the conflict frame, between two forces over developmental education and the college completion agenda

Representations of immigration and the border fence: an evaluation of media frames in two U.S. newspapers

Department Head: Sue Pendell.2010 Summer.Includes bibliographical references (pages 103-109).On October 26, 2006, President George W. Bush enacted the Secure Fence Act in response to what many congressional members and U.S. citizens deemed a growing immigration problem. In the months immediately preceding and following the authorization of the bill, various discourses arose across the nation to engage in a growing debate on ways to solve the perceived dilemmas caused by immigration. This study evaluated and compared the dialogues engaged within two U.S. newspapers to determine how the news outlets described and discussed immigration. More specifically, this study first explored news reports found in the Washington Post, since this newspaper serves as the leading periodical in the Washington D.C. area, where the Secure Fence Act was debated amongst journalists, politicians, and lobbyists. Next, this project investigated newspaper articles found in the Brownsville Herald, which serves a targeted audience living along the U.S.-Mexico border. The goal of this investigation was to compare the two divergent discourses in order to identify the common themes and frames employed by media outlets to describe immigrants and immigration. This study incorporated theories of frame and metaphorical analysis to determine the common themes utilized by journalists, politicians, and lobbyists in their descriptions of immigrants and immigration. Additionally, this project surveyed articles that included the key terms "immigration" and "border fence" in order to narrow the sample on dialogues centered around the passage of the Secure Fence Act. Lastly, this examination explored articles published in the three months prior to and three months following the enactment of the Secure Fence Act to best gauge suggestions, responses, and reactions to the U.S. governments' response to the perceived immigration problem. The findings indicated that the two periodicals discussed immigration and offered representations of immigrants utilizing very different themes and metaphors, which raised concerns about whether the 109th Congress appropriately and effectively responded to the perceived immigration problem. The author suggests that frame and metaphorical analysis can be incorporated into future studies focused on understanding how a particular issue is represented within a variety of media outlets. The author's hope is that understanding the various sides and concerns of any particular issue can lead to a more productive dialogue on how to most effectively resolve the problems identified by various communities

From metaphors to mantras - Principals making sense of and integrating accountability expectations: A grounded theoretical model

There is increasing pressure on principals in Australia in general, and in New South Wales (NSW) in particular, to report and justify the results of their students on externally mandated assessment programs such as the Higher School Certificate (HSC) examinations and the National Numeracy and Literacy Assessment Program (NAPLAN). However, our understanding of the way these principals interpret and respond to accountability demands is limited. Research on the way principals understand, prioritise and comply with system accountability requirements regarding student learning is scarce. This study addresses this gap in the literature. It adopts a case study approach to investigate this phenomenon. Two cohorts, comprising 13 secondary school principals from two Catholic School systems in NSW, consented to participate in the study. The researcher interviewed each principal individually during the first phase of data collection. The interviews were semi-structured and were held in agreed sites. They lasted between 60 and 80 minutes. Interview transcripts were sent to the interviewees for member-checks. Upon completing the first phase of the study, the researcher met with four principals from the first group and five principals from the second group, in two separate focus groups. The focus group interviews were designed to represent the principals’ collective consensus with the derived themes from the first phase. Collected data were analysed using the Grounded Theory analytical framework, favouring the Straussian techniques. The study found that the principals did not simply implement policy expectations as policy makers intended. These principals rejected the idea of reducing their accountability reports on student achievement to a single grade or band. They were adamant that learning is broader and more complex than the limited aspects of achievement measured through external assessment programs, though they are governed by sophisticated technologies. These principals’ conceptualisations of learning were more comprehensive than the domain of any external assessment program. They reported that they tended to realign their actions as leaders xxii of learning to be consistent with the priorities of their schools. Their actions indicated strong confidence in the teaching and learning that took place in their schools in response to the identified needs. The principals managed to absorb the tensions associated with the accountability demands through a process of sensemaking that was consistent with Weick’s (1995) Sensemaking Framework and Ajzen’s (1991, 2012) Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). This study has generated a theoretical model that is based on the collected evidence and explains the effective sensemaking processes that principals may use to accommodate misaligned priorities. It proposes that principals’ sensemaking processes are indicative of their ways of leading learning. This model may be a useful self-reflection tool for educational leaders in their continuing endeavours to make sense of and integrate policy expectations

Development of a Personal Visioning Guidance System

The primary intent of this project was to formulate a novel guidance system to help individuals gain clarity and understanding of their inner vision of a desired future state. My secondary goal was to enrich the palette of resources and tools available for coaching individuals in their discovery and crafting of personal and/or professional visions. Initially, I conducted an extensive literature review that inspired my approach. Then, I followed a process for assessing existing visioning tools and then imagining new opportunities to create, conceptualize, and craft at least five novel visioning tools. The project outcome includes a Personal Visioning Guidance Model to navigate through the visioning process. In it, I described the key five stages and the Torrance Incubation Model (TIM) as micro-stage in each main stage. I ideated a palette of approaches to offer a broad spectrum of possibilities for visioning tools, and I conducted front-end development of seven of them. I also presented specific learning about every stage of the model as well as those from trialing five visioning tools with two subjects. Finally, I analyzed how this project adds value and a number of actions to progress further

AI and Medicine

Which part of medicine, if any, can and should be entrusted to AI, now or at some moment in the future? That both medicine and AI will continue to change goes without saying.Comment: 53 pages, 4 figure

Facilitating heuristic evaluation for novice evaluators

Heuristic evaluation (HE) is one of the most widely used usability evaluation methods. The reason for its popularity is that it is a discount method, meaning that it does not require substantial time or resources, and it is simple, as evaluators can evaluate a system guided by a set of usability heuristics. Despite its simplicity, a major problem with HE is that there is a significant gap in the quality of results produced by expert and novice evaluators. This gap has made some scholars question the usefulness of the method as they claim that the evaluation results are a product of the evaluator’s experience rather than the method itself. In response, the goal of this thesis is to bridge the gap between expert and novice evaluators. Based on interviews with 15 usability experts, which focused on their experience with the method, the difficulties they faced when they were novices, and how they overcame such difficulties, it presents a comprehensive protocol called Coherent Heuristic Evaluation (CoHE). This step-by-step protocol guides novice evaluators from the moment they decide to conduct an evaluation until the submission of their evaluation report. This protocol was verified by conducting an experiment to observe the difference between novices using the CoHE protocol and novices using Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics without the guidance. The experiment involved 20 novices performing two sessions; the first was an understanding session where the novices read and understood the heuristics and the second was an inspecting session where they inspected a system. The findings show that, while evaluators take more time to read and evaluate a system using CoHE, they tend to identify more problems. The experiment also demonstrated that CoHE can improve the thoroughness, effectiveness, and f-measure of evaluation. However, the validity of CoHE was comparable to that of HE

Law Informs Code: A Legal Informatics Approach to Aligning Artificial Intelligence with Humans

We are currently unable to specify human goals and societal values in a way that reliably directs AI behavior. Law-making and legal interpretation form a computational engine that converts opaque human values into legible directives. "Law Informs Code" is the research agenda embedding legal knowledge and reasoning in AI. Similar to how parties to a legal contract cannot foresee every potential contingency of their future relationship, and legislators cannot predict all the circumstances under which their proposed bills will be applied, we cannot ex ante specify rules that provably direct good AI behavior. Legal theory and practice have developed arrays of tools to address these specification problems. For instance, legal standards allow humans to develop shared understandings and adapt them to novel situations. In contrast to more prosaic uses of the law (e.g., as a deterrent of bad behavior through the threat of sanction), leveraged as an expression of how humans communicate their goals, and what society values, Law Informs Code. We describe how data generated by legal processes (methods of law-making, statutory interpretation, contract drafting, applications of legal standards, legal reasoning, etc.) can facilitate the robust specification of inherently vague human goals. This increases human-AI alignment and the local usefulness of AI. Toward society-AI alignment, we present a framework for understanding law as the applied philosophy of multi-agent alignment. Although law is partly a reflection of historically contingent political power - and thus not a perfect aggregation of citizen preferences - if properly parsed, its distillation offers the most legitimate computational comprehension of societal values available. If law eventually informs powerful AI, engaging in the deliberative political process to improve law takes on even more meaning.Comment: Forthcoming in Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property, Volume 2

Organizational Development Consulting: A Study of Expert Consultants\u27 Key Strategies

The present study was conducted to capture the collective voice of expert organizational development consultants. Until now, very few studies have been conducted that take into account the collective voices of organizational development consultants. More specifically, the purpose of the present study is to explore and gain a deeper understanding of the approaches expert organizational development consultants use throughout their engagement with their clients in an attempt to add value to and enhance organizational capacity. To understand the process used by this distinct group of leaders, phenomenological qualitative inquiry was the methodology used to conduct this study. Data were collected through in-depth, face-to-face interviews with seven practicing expert consultants in the Jacksonville, Florida area. Seven themes emerged through careful analysis of the data, supported with relevant concepts from the professional literature. The study has meaningful implications for the study of organization development consulting. It concludes with recommendations for consultants and researchers in the field of organizational development and change