PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2011, Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services: Educational Studies

Educational paradigm shifts call for 21st century learners to possess the knowledge, skills, abilities, values, and experiences associated with multiple forms of literacy in a participatory learning culture. Contemporary educational systems are slow to adapt. Outside of school, people have to be self-motivated and have access to resources in order to gain media production experiences. Community-based media centers join arts and culture with technology and computing while addressing issues of social justice, access equity, and public policy. These agencies function as community technology centers and can be complex organizations, existing in many forms, each with unique characteristics as well as fundamental commonalities. The goal of this study was to learn if and how community technology centers foster learning in multiple forms of literacy. Three forms of literacy were identified: technological, media, and critical. To move beyond the phenomenological approach to understanding teaching and learning practices, the objective was to develop an evaluation protocol that would capture the rich ecological context of the organization with qualitative indicators of the unique aspects of each center, as well as objective, measurable factors aspects common to all. This study was conducted in two phases. Phase One was the creation of the protocol including indicators of multiple literacies, a site selection matrix, and a data collection guide. Phase Two was piloting of the evaluation protocol to develop a foundational case to be used for future comparisons. In Phase One, indicators of multiple literacy learning were devised relevant for 21st century learners. These indicators were aligned specifically with organizational, programmatic, and production activities within a community media arts center. The site selection instrument was developed as a means to pre-screen sites for the likelihood of multiple literacy learning experiences. The data collection guide was aligned with (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Lanthan Camblin PhD (Committee Chair); Catherine V. Maltbie EdD (Committee Member); Roger Collins PhD (Committee Member); Karen Davis PhD (Committee Member); Wayne Edward Hall PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Educational Evaluation

PHD, Kent State University, 2018, College of Communication and Information

The new Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (ACRL, 2016) highlights the ability to synthesize ideas from multiple sources of information as one of the key knowledge practices as students navigate an increasingly complex information landscape. With the introduction of this new document, there is a strong need for evidence-based guidance for information literacy instruction in academic libraries. There is little generalizable empirical research based on cognitive science principles to guide information literacy instruction practice. The present study examined the effectiveness of elaborative interrogation instructional strategy on integration and transformation of ideas from multiple sources of information. 86 participants took part in the study via Amazon Mechanical Turk platform. The experiment involved reading five texts on the topic of climate change and responding to embedded elaborative interrogation prompts (treatment groups only), and writing a synthesis paragraph on the topic. Contrary to the research hypothesis, the results of descriptive analysis showed that participants in the control group achieved a slightly better performance in transformation measure, as compared to participants in treatment groups. However, two one-way ANCOVAs were employed to test the hypotheses which indicated that elaborative interrogation prompts did not significantly improve performance on transformation and integration measures. This study contributes to the growing body of literature addressing information literacy instruction based on the new Framework and provides a promising long-term cross-disciplinary research partnership in terms of linking evidence-based guidance for instruction based on cognitive science principles to information literacy knowledge practices in the new Framework.

Committee: Miriam Matteson PhD (Committee Chair); Bradley Morris PhD (Committee Co-Chair); Danielle Coombs PhD (Committee Member); John Dunlosky PhD (Committee Member); Meghan Harper PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Educational Psychology; Experiments; Information Science; Library Science