Investigating and Understanding Student Learning Outcomes in an Online and Face-to-Face Graduate Level Legal Administration Course: An Embedded Mixed Methods Design

Online education is a new teaching and learning medium with few current guidelines for faculty, administrators or students. Its rapid growth over the last decade has challenged academic institutions to keep up with the demand, while also providing a quality education. Our understanding of the factors that determine quality and effective online learning experiences that lead to student learning outcomes is still evolving. There is a lack of consensus on the effectiveness of online versus face-to-face education in the current research. The U.S. Department of Education conducted a meta-analysis in 2009 and concluded that student-learning outcomes in online courses were equal to and, often times, better than face-to-face traditional courses. Subsequent research has found contradictory findings, and further inquiry is necessary. The purpose of this embedded mixed methods design research study is to further our understanding of the factors that create quality and successful educational outcomes in an online course. To achieve this, the first phase of this study measured and compared learning outcomes in an online and in class graduate-level legal administration course. The second phase of the study entailed interviews with those students in both the online and face-to-face sections to understand their perspectives on the factors contributing to learning outcomes. Six themes emerged from the qualitative findings: convenience, higher order thinking, discussions, professor engagement, professor and student interaction, and face-to-face interaction. Findings from this study indicate the factors students perceive as contributing to learning outcomes in an online course are consistent among all students and are supported in the existing literature. Higher order thinking, however, emerged as a stronger theme than indicated in the current research, and the face-to-face nature of the traditional classroom may be more an issue of familiarity than a factor contributing to learning outcomes. As education continues to reach new heights and developments in technology advance, the factors found to contribute to student learning outcomes will be refined and enhanced. These developments will continue to transform the ways in which we deliver and receive knowledge in both traditional and online classrooms. While there is a growing body of research on online education, the field’s evolution has unsettled earlier findings and posed new areas to investigate.

Conceptual Decolonization of Space: Worldview and Language in Anishinaabe Akiing

This dissertation examines the role of worldview and language in the cultural framework of American Indian people. In it I develop a theory of worldview which can be defined as an interrelated set of logics that orients a culture to space (land), time, the rest of life, and provides a prescription for understanding that life. Considering the strong links between language and worldview, it is methodologically necessary to focus on a particular language and culture to decolonize concepts of and relationships to land. In particular, this dissertation focuses on an Anishinaabe worldview as consisting of four components, which are; (1) an intimate relationship to a localized space; (2) a cyclical understanding of time; (3) living in a web of relatedness with all life, and (4) understanding the world around us in terms of balance. The methodological approach draws from Anishinaabemowin, the traditional Anishinaabe language, as a starting place for negotiating a linguistic-conceptual analysis of these logics to decolonize the understandings of land, time, relatedness and balance. This dissertation helps to demonstrate that the religious language as codified in the 1st Amendment to the United States Constitution as religious freedom is unable to carry the meaning of the fundamental relationships to land that are embedded in Anishinaabemowin and culture. I compare the above Anishinaabe worldview to that of the eurowestern culture in America, which is; (1) the domination of space; (2) a linear progression of time; (3) a hierarchical organization of life; and (4) understanding the world as a Manichean battle of good versus evil. This dissertation seeks to decolonize American Indian translational methodologies and undermine the assumptions of eurowestern cultural universality.

Transcending Cultural and Language Differences: Ethical Codes of Conduct for Translators and Interpreters in Afghanistan

This project examines what an ethical code of conduct would look like in Afghanistan through analysis of historical, cultural and linguistic aspects found within its regions, as well as an examination of ethical codes of conduct for translators and interpreters in other countries. While numerous ethical guidelines and codes of conduct for translators and interpreters exist throughout global communities, it seems that creating a successful standardized ethical code of conduct in Afghanistan may be difficult to achieve given cultural and linguistic complexities. An ethical code of conduct for translators and interpreters in Afghanistan should include particular focus on: cultural sensitivity and courtesy, impartiality, conflict of interest, options for withdrawal, as well as reflect the importance of Pashtunwali.