Persistence factors revealed: students’ reflections on completing a fully online program

Despite their rapid growth, online programs routinely face student attrition. How to retain students and help them successfully complete is usually a top priority for online programs. This study investigated persistence factors that contributed to students’ successful completion from one of the largest and most successful online programs in the United States of America. Results show that both personal and program attributes contributed to students’ successful completion of a fully online program. Main individual attributes include interest in or career goals related to technology, time and effort invested, and perceived utility of learning. Main program attributes include relevancy of courses to individual or professional needs, satisfaction with courses and program, and ties between coursework and job promotion. Results of this study have implications in terms of prioritizing different attributes and strategizing resources to improve completion and graduation rates for fully online programs.     

Validation of the swimming competence questionnaire for children

ABSTRACT

Two studies were employed to test the reliability and validity of the Swimming Competence Questionnaire (SCQ) among primary school children. Study 1 was a cross-sectional survey in 4959 primary school children. Study 2 was a pre-post-test quasi-experiment among 1609 primary school children who underwent a 20-lesson learn-to-swim programme. In Study 1, exploratory structural equation modelling revealed excellent goodness-of-fit and scale reliability for a two-factor model comprising distance and skill factors, which supported the construct and convergent validity. SCQ scores were significantly and positively correlated with swimming outcomes (i.e., self-efficacy, intention, swimming frequency), which supported SCQ’s concurrent and criterion validity. Average variance extracted for the SCQ factors exceeded cut-off criteria supporting discriminant validity. In Study 2, pre-test SCQ scores correlated significantly and positively with the SCQ scores, self-efficacy, intention, and swimming frequency at post-test, which supported SCQ’s test-retest reliability and predictive validity. Positive intraclass correlation between SCQ scores and coach ratings at post-test provided evidence for SCQ’s inter-rater reliability. SCQ scores significantly improved at post-test, which supported SCQ’s ecological validity. In conclusion, findings indicate that the SCQ is a valid and reliable measure to assess primary school children’s swimming competence, in terms of swimming distance and basic water survival skills.     

An Insidious Poison or a Door to the Story?

The aim of this paper is to grasp the influence of the newsroom on frame-building processes. First, journalists’ own understanding of “frames” and “framing” is discussed. Second, from an academic interpretation of these concepts, journalists’ framing practices are studied. To this end an ethnographic study was conducted at two newsrooms, one in Belgium and one in the Netherlands. The findings reveal that while the noun “frame” is sporadically used as a tool, the verb “framing” is considered as something from which a journalist should refrain. This is explained by the associations journalists make with strategic framing from sources as well as by the newspapers’ explicit attempt to no longer view the world from a single ideological frame. It is argued that the studied newsrooms have replaced ideology by, respectively, a counterframing strategy that strives to disprove existing frames (deframing) and a narrative approach that, one the one hand, sharpens existing frames but, on the other hand, offer more opportunities to create alternative frames (reframing) for events.     

Prosodic sensitivity and reading fluency of musicians and non-musicians

Reading and Writing - This study investigates the effects of prosodic sensitivity on reading. Highly capable adult musicians (i.e., persons with potentially excellent prosodic skills) and...     

The relationships of communicator style, personality-based learning style, and classroom community among online graduate students

This study examined the relationships among communicator style, personality-based learning style, and sense of classroom community among 72 graduate students enrolled in online doctoral coursework. Findings suggested that communicator style patterns were related to learning styles and to classroom community. Moreover, the results of a canonical correlation suggested that friendly and open communicator styles were significantly related to feelings of being connected and the precise communicator style was related to both feelings of connectedness and to feelings that membership in the online learning community fostered educational goal attainment. No significant relationships were found between learning styles and classroom community.