Types Of Social Support In Distance Education And Academic Performance At A Southwestern Historically Black College And University

As a result of rapid growth in distance education, increasingly more students are enrolling in online courses. Nearly 81% of all U.S. postsecondary institutions offered “at least one fully online or blended course” in 2003 (Jones & Davenport, 2018). Previous research has demonstrated African American students site “convenience” as an influence in enrolling in an online course (Kwun et al., 2012). While online learning offers benefits to both institutions and students (Anderson, 2008), research has also found students may exhibit stress and anxiety as a result of isolation and loneliness caused by distance learning (Duranton & Mason, 2012; Heinman, 2008; Kim, 2011; Muirhead & Blum, 2006). Additional research found online students at HBCUs preferred face-to-face, traditional courses over online delivery and hybrid modalities due to teaching quality and communication difficulty between the teacher and student (Kwun et al., 2012). These tensions are eased when instructors practice social support through the building of community. This explanation, referred to in the literature as Community of Inquiry, or CoI (Garrett et al., 2010), attributes online student success through Social Support Theory (Albrecht & Adelman, 1987). The theory is defined as the verbal and non-verbal communication between recipients and providers that reduces uncertainty about the situation, the self, the other, or the relationship, and functions to enhance a perception of personal control in one’s life experience (Albrecht & Adelman, 1987). There is a lack of research focused on instructor social support and its effect on online student academic success at HBCUs. The purpose of this quantitative non-experimental study is to ascertain if online instructor social support is significantly related to online student academic performance at a Southwestern HBCU. A construct of CoI and grounded in Social Support Theory was used to interpret the results. This study examined three instructor social support predictor variables of the dependent variable, student expected grade. Using a sample taken from the site location, frequency analyses, descriptive statistics, Pearson bivariate analysis, and multiple regression analysis, the research questions posited by this study were answered. Findings provide further evidence of the impact of instructor emotional and informational social support on online student perceived expected grade. Results also indicate instructor instrumental social support was not significant as a determinate of student academic performance. These findings have practical implications and recommendations for higher education distance learning policies and professional development strategies for HBCUs that offer online courses and degrees

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements

Correction to: Cluster identification, selection, and description in Cluster randomized crossover trials: the PREP-IT trials

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article