MFA, Kent State University, 2017, College of Communication and Information / School of Visual Communication Design

The rise of responsive design as an approach to web design in the last decade has shaped the ways that designers consider the web as a medium. As this approach has developed, its practitioners have begun forming patterns and templates which might limit alternative modes of thinking in the field. Criticism of this approach is still in its early stages, leaving open an opportunity for reflection, expansion, and the exploration of alternative modes of thinking and making for considering the medium. The web browser has properties which are inherently flexible, fluid, and adaptive—begging for a parallel exploration of flexible, fluid, adaptive systems as external inspiration for web design. Nature has been considered as a form of inspiration throughout the history of the arts and design, providing analogical and metaphorical modes of thinking that expand upon traditional approaches. Biomimicry is an emerging practice within industrial design, architecture, and engineering—yet little has been discussed within the field of visual communication design, especially within responsive web design.¿ In this thesis, relationships shared by design and the natural world are investigated through secondary research, and critical making is used as primary research to examine the organic properties of the web browser. Three prototypes were designed to explore, expand, and reflect upon these organic properties within responsive design. Each prototype was subsequently reviewed by design educators and professionals. This thesis proposes that looking to nature's principles and forms can inform design for the web as a medium, providing an approach which builds upon and extends the capacities of responsive web design.

Committee: Jessica Barness MFA (Advisor); Ken Visocky O'Grady MFA (Committee Member); Aoife Mooney MA (Committee Member) Subjects: Design

MDES, University of Cincinnati, 2013, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Design

Given the emergence of mobile technology, the difference of devices and their adjunct operating systems have been progressively enlarged. On devices with varying screen sizes, user interaction and user experience become different. This makes web application design a more complicated task than before in order to meet various compatibility and user experience requirements. To fix this issue, web application design approaches have evolved into two categories: repurposing approach and optimized approach. In this study, I design and develop a cross–device web application by using these two approaches respectively. Usability testing is performed to collect data and user experience comments from respondents. Then analysis of the data shows which approach is more superior in specific situations.

Committee: Benjamin Meyer M.F.A. (Committee Chair); Heekyoung Jung Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Design

MFA, Kent State University, 2024, College of Communication and Information / School of Visual Communication Design

Education has always required the use of tools and resources to effectively impact learners. The creation of these tools, or modalities, requires advanced knowledge of design and an understanding of the needs of the users. Designers can use contemporary research on technology, inclusivity, and accessibility to develop impactful learning modalities. Written, visual, and multimodal content are explored in this research. Four digital web-responsive educational modalities (essay, quick text, infographic, and interactive) were created all providing the same information about tectonic plates. Users were randomly assigned a modality and then given as much time as needed to view or interact with it. When finished, they filled out a survey about their demographics, their comprehension of the information from the modality, and information about their educational experiences. While modality type did not impact users' comprehension scores, it was found that demographic information could play a role in users' abilities to understand scientific content. Adults with STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) careers and children with an adult in the household with a STEM career performed better on the comprehension section than those not frequently exposed to STEM topics. Additional demographic information was analyzed, and standard deviations show that the additional information did not impact scores. By understanding what demographic details impact user education, better educational resources can be designed to accommodate user needs.

Committee: Kenneth O’Grady (Committee Member); Jessica Barness (Advisor); Gretchen Rinnert (Committee Member) Subjects: Web Studies

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2024, Design

It can be mind-boggling to understand how one can end up being absorbed in anti-science conspiracy theories, especially those that contradict the core facts of our world that we have known since we were young. These conspiracy theorists, especially flat earthers, are often labeled as “insane” or “crazy” due to their beliefs. This thesis dives into the mindset of anti-science conspiracy theorists and flat earthers to understand the headspace they are in that drives them into these communities. The Minds of Conspiracy is a website designed and developed by synthesizing the research done by psychologists, sociologists, historians, and communication scholars. It is an exploration into providing a holistic and empathetic introduction to the complex topic of conspiracy theory with flat earthers as the case study through the use of visuals and concise language. With individuals who are non-experts in these fields as the target audience, the website is designed to effectively deliver the research findings in an easily digestible format through the principles of information design. Readers can educate themselves about the flat earth community, its impact, methods of disseminating the theory, current and potential interventions, and the importance of collaboration between relevant stakeholders to bring change for our future.

Committee: Paul Nini (Advisor); David Staley (Committee Member); Yvette Shen (Committee Member) Subjects: Design

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2022, Design

This is a scholarly personal narrative about the author's three-year journey leading to the development of the Recycling Distraction, a website designed to raise awareness of the shortcomings of municipal recycling. Based on research by environmental historians, sociologists, and economists, the Recycling Distraction presents a critical perspective on America's reliance on municipal recycling for managing post-consumer waste. Through the website, the author challenges the longstanding corporate practice of individualizing environmental responsibility to avoid anti-litter regulations, and argues that companies should be held responsible for their proportionate share of environmental damage caused by single-use disposable products. This paper documents the author's experience learning the fundamentals of user-experience (UX) research as an MFA candidate in the Department of Design. During the journey, the author navigates the landscape of sustainability programs at The Ohio State University, and searchers for opportunities to conduct UX research to support the development of circular-economy initiatives at the institution. Following a series of exploratory design activities, including: (1) conducting user-experience inquiries into recycling-related problems; (2) designing digital solutions aimed at improving recycling participation; (3) reviewing recycling and circular-economy literature; and (4) reflecting upon on his experiences, the author redirects his efforts toward raising awareness of recycling's failure to reduce waste and prevent pollution, which culminates with the development of the Recycling Distraction project.

Committee: Yvette Shen (Advisor); Bartow J. Elmore (Committee Member); Paul J. Nini (Committee Member) Subjects: Design

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Toledo, 2022, Curriculum and Instruction: Educational Technology

With the growth of online learning, as well as the use of technology to supplement in-person learning, technology has enabled many opportunities for creating highly interactive and highly accessible learning environments. However, it is important to design learning environments to be accessible to diverse learners and learners with disabilities. Educational institutions must comply with legislation such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, as well as moral and ethical concerns related to inclusive institutional cultures. As a result, educational institutions should provide professional development and the resources necessary to help faculty members develop accessible course content. Furthermore, the theory of Universal Design for Learning provides a framework for ensuring access to learning opportunities as a part of the course design process. UDL helped to ensure all learners can benefit from accessible learning experiences. This research study explored the use of online professional development and its role in creating accessible online learning environments. A questionnaire was distributed to faculty members to determine if the participation in professional development resulted in positive beliefs towards accessibility. In addition, faculty skills for creating accessible content were evaluated. Courses taught by participating faculty members were evaluated for accessibility using Blackboard Ally, and faculty members were asked about their familiarity with UDL. The research study determined that there was not a significant difference between faculty members who took online professional development compared to those who did not take professional development in relation to attitudes towards accessibility, as well as faculty skills in creating accessible content. The research study identified a significant difference in accessibility of online content, using Blackboard Ally accessibility scores, between faculty members who participated in professional develo (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Berhane Teclehaimanot (Committee Chair); Mingli Xiao (Committee Member); Greg Stone (Committee Member); Judy Lambert (Committee Member) Subjects: Educational Technology

Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA), Ohio University, 2019, Studio Art

This thesis is the written component of a larger project which includes the website: womensworkdesign.com. This project applies the research methodologies of feminist art historians to a study of graphic design history, then uses the tools of digital communication for public dissemination. This paper seeks not only to resurrect female graphic designers excluded from the historical canon but to question the nature of their exclusion. Through an applied analysis of the current model of graphic design history this paper explores three case studies to conceptualize and demonstrate a more inclusive historical approach. This approach explores themes that each of these female graphic designers were engaging with through their lives and work and introduces that information to the digital space using womensworkdesign.com.

Committee: Dori Griffin (Advisor) Subjects: Communication; Design; Fine Arts; Gender Studies

MCP, University of Cincinnati, 2006, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning : Community Planning

Visualization and public involvement are increasingly important areas of the planning profession. Research has shown that three-dimensional design is infrequently utilized in planning—a fact that is alarming when one considers the potential power of this visualization tool. This document examines whether combining interactive three-dimensional visualization and visual preference studies is an effective avenue for public involvement.

Committee: Dr. Carla Chifos (Advisor) Subjects:

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2012, Industrial, Interior Visual Communication Design

Design education is in an interesting place. Design as a discipline is currently and continually in a state of transformation due to ever changing societal contexts. How we go about educating and preparing the designers of the future needs to be constantly evaluated and collaboratively explored to continue to be relevant and increasingly nimble in our methods. Add to this the fact that design educators are now welcoming to their classrooms a new type of student without existing precedent. The “Net Gen” students are simultaneously highly digitally connected yet still interested in the physicality of the traditional design spaces. To address the changing needs of the design discipline, design educators (and educators in general) need tools that will facilitate the sharing of ideas and methods across disciplines and reframe the ways we understand the learning needs of our students. This thesis proposes two such tools. The first tool, Meta-Keyword Phrases, seeks to be a relatively simple idea to implement that is made possible by digital search tools and the increasingly connected nature of web-based information. The Meta-Keyword Phrases have the potential to increase the opportunities for serendipitous discovery of teaching and learning resources by flipping the orientation of traditional keyword searching. The Meta-Keyword Phrases are based on a holistic framing of the types of learning which every student must achieve throughout their education; Learning to Know, Learning to Do, Learning to Work Together, and Learning to Be. The second tool, the Learning Map Framework, is a scalable way to understand and visualize the relationships between the above-mentioned types of learning as they apply to any particular learning activity or series of activities. This thesis first uses a series of Web 2.0-based learning activities as a toolbox to demonstrate how the Learning Map Framework can be used to understand, evolve, and reinterpret learning activities across various academ (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Elizabeth B.-N. Sanders Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Paul Nini (Committee Member); Clayton Funk Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Art Education; Curriculum Development; Design; Education; Educational Technology; Higher Education; Interior Design; Teaching

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2010, ED Policy and Leadership

Higher education in the U.S. is experiencing a wave of distance education activity, with nearly twenty percent of all U.S. higher education students taking at least one online course in the fall of 2007 (Allen & Seaman, 2008). Accompanying this activity is a renewed concern on the part of distance learning administrators, faculty, and professional associations about the overall quality of these efforts. Governments and institutions use a variety of approaches to measuring quality—internal and external committee reviews, formal assessments using standards and benchmarks created by government or professional bodies, and reviews of inputs and outputs akin to the quality assurance approaches of business and industry. This interpretive study explored the interaction between quality standards, faculty, staff, and managers by conducting an instrumental case study of one institution's efforts to implement quality at the level of course creation and design. Big Town Community College's Department of Distance Education and Instructional Support currently uses a widely available set of course design standards to assess and improve quality in its offerings of online courses. The course design standards, in the form of a rubric, are made available by an organization called Quality Matters (MarylandOnline, 2006). The study uses activity theory to analyze data and theorize about the case (Engestrom, 2008). The primary finding of this study is that the Quality Matters rubric supported the design work of faculty and staff in significant ways—especially by helping to create a shared object for their course design activity. However, it also led to contradictions in the activity—both between staff and faculty and the design standards themselves, and also between staff and faculty and the division of labor used at the college for designing a Web-supported course. Other findings revolved around the question of how the project management model in use at Big Town supports and hinders t (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Richard Voithofer PhD (Committee Chair); Anika Ball Anthony PhD (Committee Member); David Stein PhD (Committee Member); Zhenchao Qian PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Educational Theory; Higher Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2004, Art Education

With the current development of philosophical and educational theories, the computer technology makes it possible to realize new forms of education for the postmodern world, which are characterized as: connection, heterogeneity, flexibility and morphogenesis. However, the Web and other multimedia technologies are merely information resources and tools, unless we provide meaningful learning content and context. The idea of intertextualizing new design learning with the Internet in this study, therefore, is important to connect and integrate useful knowledge in ways that are suited to the design learning and its activities. The purposes of this study were to reconstruct design education with a new epistemological approach, and to develop a constructivist learning theory for Web-based Design Learning (WBDL). The research processes of this study were: (1) to identify constructivist epistemology, and to investigate cognitive and social constructivist learning theories through literature review; (2) to build a conceptual framework for constructivist design learning; (3) to develop Web-Based Design Learning (WBDL) models as knowledge construction tool, and to apply them in design education; (4) to analyze the effectiveness of WBDL with a case study; and (5) to present guidelines for applying the constructivist learning theory and the WBDL to design education for the future study. The WBDL program was developed and analyzed on three factors of constructivist design learning: cognitive and meta-cognitive, social and collaborative, and technical factors. From the case analysis, the effectiveness of WBDL as a design learning tool was highly evaluated by its visualized learning pattern in cognitive and social learning contexts. Comprehension of the qualitative information such as the level of design process and time gives the rationale to study constructivist design learning for improving the quality of design education. Furthermore, the effectiveness of WBDL is not confined to (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Terry Barrett (Advisor) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2003, Art Education

This dissertation is a descriptive and qualitative case study of the design development process of a Web-based online course. The main goal concerns the What Is and What Was for the design development process of a select art education online course teaching art criticism at a major university in the United States. First, this study examines the development effort and design focus from the perspectives of the faculty and graduate research associates. The findings focus on the design problems and solutions occurring throughout this course development process, one of the first developed in an art education department. A literature review of distance education, Web-design, instructional design, information design, and visual design provides information for consideration of the topic. Second, this study formulates a Web-based online course design development process framework based on the findings from: the case study of the development of the art criticism course; development of other online courses in the same art education department; interviews of developers from other colleges in the university; and adaptations of design processes from my review of pertinent literature. The overall process includes five key phases: DISCOVER, DEFINE, DESIGN, DEVELOP, and DELIVER. Third, this study identifies design development issues of concern to the art criticism course developers and other course developers in the department under consideration in the case study. This document also discusses team collaborations, online course interactions, and development approaches. Fourth, this study presents a pattern approach based on the pattern language of Christopher Alexander et al. (1977). This approach provides a shared vocabulary for design team members and offers a way of capturing and transmitting Web-based online course design development processes. Finally, the study proposes a pattern Web site to provide a platform in the department of art education for capturing collective experie (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Terry Barrett (Advisor) Subjects: Education, Art

MDES, University of Cincinnati, 2022, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Design

Unions have existed in the United States since it was founded in 1776. Unions, often referred to as labor unions, have existed in a variety of ways and scales of membership. Despite, or perhaps because of, unions' well-documented capacity to improve the wages, benefits, and working conditions of their members, they have been consistently and systematically resisted by the holders of capital since the very beginning. Largely as a result of this ongoing conflict, unions in recent years in the United States have been marred by historically low union density and a declining unionization rate. Despite evidence that an increasing number of people would join a union if offered and an even larger number of Americans who generally support the labor movement, the situation has not improved overall. This paper provides further context for the decline in unionization, the issues surrounding them today, their benefits and shortcomings, as well as alternative forms of organizing being practiced to address the absence of unions. This context ultimately serves as the justification for my design, which is a digital platform that functions as a centralized hub for information on organized labor and as a platform to discuss organized labor. It would serve the purpose of addressing the lack of resources available to workers today and provide a space for people to engage in discussion on related topics. The first iteration of this is a website, but it would ultimately become part of a greater ecosystem of products, software, tools, and resources, as features are added on. The educational portion of the website would display information to learn about unions, alternative forms of organized labor and collective action, shortcomings of the modern unionization system, as well as a broad overview of the labor movement and its role in modern society. An online forum or discussion board would provide a centralized channel where people can go to discuss the information on the homepage o (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Stirling Shelton M.F.A. (Committee Member); Craig Vogel M.I.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Design

PHD, Kent State University, 2021, College of Communication and Information

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has revealed challenges and opportunities for data analytics, semantic interoperability, and decision making. The sharing of COVID-19 data has become crucial for leveraging research, testing drug effectiveness and therapeutic strategies, and developing policies for control, intervention, and potential eradication of this disease. Translating healthcare data between various clinical coding schemes is critical to their functioning, and semantic mappings must be established to ensure interoperability. Using design science research methodology as a guide, this work explains 1) how an ETL (Extract Transform Load) workflow tool could support the task of clinical coding scheme mapping, 2) how the mapping output from such a tool could support or affect annotation of clinical trials, particularly those used in COVID-19 research and 3) whether aspects of the socio-technical model could be leveraged to explain and assess mapping to achieve semantic interoperability in clinical coding schemes. Research outcomes include a reproducible and shareable artifact, that can be utilized beyond the domain of biomedicine in addition to observations and recommendations from the knowledge gained during the design and evaluation process of the artifact development.

Committee: Marcia Zeng (Advisor); Athena Salaba (Committee Member); Mary Anthony (Committee Member); Yi Hong (Committee Member); Rebecca Meehan (Committee Member) Subjects: Bioinformatics; Information Science

Master of Science, Miami University, 2021, Computer Science and Software Engineering

Domain-specific modeling languages abstractly represent domain knowledge in a way such that non-technical users can understand the information presented in the model. These languages can be created for any domain, provided the necessary knowledge is available. This thesis uses the domain of educational game design as a demonstration of the ability of domain-specific modeling. Games are useful tools in supplementing the traditional education of students. While games are an effective learning aid, educators often do not possess the design or technical skills to develop a game for their own use. MOLEGA (the Modeling Language for Educational Games) is a domain-specific modeling language that enables guided model design and code generation. Using MOLEGA, users can create abstract models inspired by UML class diagrams to represent card games of two selected variants. User models are then used to generate executable source code for a mobile compatible, browser-based game that can be deployed on a server by following provided instructions. MOLEGA is evaluated for validity and correctness using a suite of example models.

Committee: Eric J. Rapos PhD (Advisor); Matthew Stephan PhD (Committee Member); Karen C. Davis PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science

MS, University of Cincinnati, 2019, Engineering and Applied Science: Computer Science

Technological advances have led to the development of affordable hardware that supports sensing, computation and communication. This hardware is deployed across the globe to record and accumulate an abundance of real-time environmental data by several agencies. In order to summarize vital information and data to avoid overwhelming the end user, these agencies create a dashboard with visually-enhanced features to convey the knowledge. From a developer perspective, presenting the data effectively and concisely is the first crucial step in implementing effective monitoring systems. A graphical user interface should be designed to be self-descriptive and intuitive to the point that you need no insight about the underlying functionality. Patterns, trends, and alerts might go undetected in textual format, but huge amount of information can be accessible and understandable with visualization. Although, there are abundant tools and techniques to boost visualization, choosing the right fit can be challenging. This thesis work is focused on developing a dashboard application for weather monitoring at the Port Mann Bridge, Canada where ice and snow pose serious hazards to motorists and cause frequent traffic disruptions. The dashboard is designed, to help the bridge maintenance and operation personnel, in a way to provide all necessary information in one place and in the least amount of time which will be invaluable. In addition, based on the previous studies and consultation with weather experts, an algorithm is developed which can notify the qualified personnel and experts in cases where critical conditions are probable. The dashboard is developed using JavaScript with NodeJS/Express framework on the back-end and Twitter Bootstrap framework on front-end with state-of-the-art visualization techniques powered by HighCharts, a JavaScript library. Graphical User Interface is designed using conservative methodologies and using interface metaphors to offer a good way of in (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Arthur Helmicki Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Chia Han Ph.D. (Committee Member); Victor Hunt Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science

Master of Sciences, Case Western Reserve University, 2017, EECS - Computer and Information Sciences

In this thesis, we introduce a new model for content delivery, where the content provider recruits Internet users directly to help deliver the provider's content. User resources are then utilized to deliver the content to those requesting it. Presumably the content provider would compensate the users for delivering its content, but the costs would likely be lower as no costly middleware infrastructure is needed and no middleman operator is involved. Our approach resembles existing peer-to-peer CDN approaches, but these approaches usually augment the CDN while we eliminate it. In the thesis we identify and address practical challenges in implementing our approach, mainly how to ensure content integrity, despite content being delivered by untrusted users, and billing integrity, despite the incentive for users involved in content delivery to inflate the amount of content they deliver. We further build a proof-of-concept prototype and conduct preliminary performance evaluation of our approach.

Committee: Michael Rabinovich (Committee Chair); Vincenzo Liberatore (Committee Member); Xusheng Xiao (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Wright State University, 2015, Computer Science and Engineering PhD

Data integration is concerned with providing a unified access to data residing at multiple sources. Such a unified access is realized by having a global schema and a set of mappings between the global schema and the local schemas of each data source, which specify how user queries at the global schema can be translated into queries at the local schemas. Data sources are typically developed and maintained independently, and thus, highly heterogeneous. This causes difficulties in integration because of the lack of interoperability in the aspect of architecture, data format, as well as syntax and semantics of the data. This dissertation represents a study on how small, self-contained ontologies, called ontology design patterns, can be employed to provide semantic interoperability in a cross-repository data integration system. The idea of this so-called ontology pattern- based data integration is that a collection of ontology design patterns can act as the global schema that still contains sufficient semantics, but is also flexible and simple enough to be used by linked data providers. On the one side, this differs from existing ontology-based solutions, which are based on large, monolithic ontologies that provide very rich semantics, but enforce too restrictive ontological choices, hence are shunned by many data providers. On the other side, this also differs from the purely linked data based solutions, which do offer simplicity and flexibility in data publishing, but too little in terms of semantic interoperability. We demonstrate the feasibility of this idea through the actual development of a large scale data integration project involving seven ocean science data repositories from five institutions in the U.S. In addition, we make two contributions as part of this dissertation work, which also play crucial roles in the aforementioned data integration project. First, we develop a collection of more than a dozen ontology design patterns that capture the key noti (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Pascal Hitzler Ph.D. (Advisor); Krzysztof Janowicz Ph.D. (Committee Member); Khrisnaprasad Thirunarayan Ph.D. (Committee Member); Michelle Cheatham Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science; Information Systems; Information Technology; Logic

Master of Sciences, Case Western Reserve University, 2015, EECS - Computer and Information Sciences

Many clinical ontology search interfaces have been developed to provide access to ontological information. However, existing search interfaces are insufficient for ontology quality assurance work. My master thesis focuses on developing a Conjunctive Ontology Browser and Explorer (COBE) for searching and exploring SNOMED CT concepts and visualizing SNOMED CT non-lattice fragments. COBE combines navigational exploration (NE) with direct lookup (DL) as two complementary search modes. The NE mode provides a conjunctive mechanism for users to quickly find the most frequent concepts related to SNOMED CT non-lattice fragments. Users can interactively and incrementally narrow down (hence conjunctive) the search space by adding precomputed word stems provided by COBE, one at a time. Such word stems serve as attribute constraints, or “attributes” in Formal Concept Analysis, which al- lows users to navigate to specific SNOMED CT concept clusters. The DL mode represents the common search mechanism by using a collection of key words given by users, as well as concept identifiers. The other defined feature of COBE is the visualization of fragments, which facilitating the further investigation and curation of such structures. With respect to the NE mode, COBE leverages 28,371 of total 302,902 concepts occurring in the fragments of interest to construct the stem cloud. With merely 9.37% of the total SNOMED CT concepts, the exploratory navigation mode reaches 98.97% coverage of the entire concept collection. With respect to the DL mode, evaluation against manually created reference standard shows that COBE attains an example-based precision of 0.958, recall of 0.917, and F1-measure of 0.875.

Committee: Guo-qiang Zhang (Advisor); Licong Cui (Committee Member); Rong Xu (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science

PHD, Kent State University, 2015, College of Education, Health and Human Services / School of Foundations, Leadership and Administration

Faculty satisfaction with designing online courses matters a great deal, for a number of reasons. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether applying the Quality MattersTM Rubric [QMR] as a foundation for online course design increases faculty's self-reported levels of satisfaction with online courses designed using the QMR, in comparison to faculty's self-reported levels of satisfaction with online courses that were not designed using the QMR. The local and national importance of this study is fully underscored by an increased emphasis from government, employers, and other stakeholders, on the rigor and role faculty play in creating efficacy through the medium of instruction, particularly online instruction. This study explored and answered the question: Does the design mode make a difference to faculty's self-reported levels of satisfaction in terms of online course design? The Online Faculty Satisfaction Survey [OFSS], originally developed by Bolliger & Wasilik (2009), was augmented as the Online Faculty Satisfaction Survey-Revised [OFSS-R], and was distributed throughout private higher education institutions in the state of Ohio. There is a clear link between an increased level of faculty satisfaction and an increased level of student satisfaction in their experiences throughout online course. Therefore, it was important for this researcher to establish whether the QMR provided different levels of satisfaction when compared to other instructional design models, and the hypotheses were established to test these differences. However, analysis found no significant difference in faculty self-reported satisfaction levels between the QMR and other instructional design methods in terms of designing online courses. For this researcher, this shall be a matter of future study.

Committee: Mark, A Kretovics PHD (Committee Chair); Susan, V. Iverson PHD (Committee Member); Victor, L. Berardi PHD (Committee Member) Subjects: Educational Technology; Instructional Design