| AU EDUCATION PROFESSOR WINS PRESTIGIOUS DISSERTATION AWARD David DiRamio, an AU assistant professor of educational leadership, will be awarded the 2006 Melvene D. Hardee Dissertation of the Year Award presented by the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators during its annual conference in Washington, D.C., this month. DiRamio joined the AU College of Education faculty in the fall of 2005 after completing his doctorate at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. DiRamio had to whittle his 200-page dissertation down to a mere 10 pages to enter it in the competition against 89 other participants. He was then notified that his dissertation summary had been selected as one of the final four. DiRamio was asked to send his dissertation - Virtual Learning Community: A Student Exit Survey & Qualitative Framework - in its entirety to the panel of reviewers. “When it got down to the final four and I was notified, I thought that was it,” he said. “Winning this award is nice, but in the bigger picture I see it as a testament to two organizations - the University of Nevada Las Vegas where my dissertation was completed and also Auburn for recognizing my work and bringing me on board.” His dissertation looked to answer what factors contribute to an online learning community and how can they be measured. He found that the instructor’s role in course organization, including expectations, virtual classroom rules and instructor duties affected the learning community. The other two identified factors which contribute to the community include connections created through participation and familiarity and the student’s responsibility based on motivation and maturity. In an article published in the online newsletter, Online Cl@ssroom: Ideas for Effective Online Instruction, DiRamio said he plans to take the findings from his research and develop a half-day seminar at Auburn based on the three factors and their indicators, tentatively scheduled for the fall of 2006. Faculty who participate will then develop their online courses based on the seminar, and DiRamio will compare the results of courses designed using the information from this study with those designed without it. “What’s nice about this survey is that it’s not subject-matter dependent, but it does measure engagement and community. And all the literature on learning says that if students are engaged and there’s a sense of community, then they’re learning,” DiRamio said. “If you think about it, it’s a proximal measure of learning. I can’t really prove that they are learning, but I can measure a precursor of learning - that students are engaged, that the class has a sense of community and that students are sharing with each other and the instructor.” |
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