Academic literature on the topic 'Distance education – Oregon'

Summary Background: There is a growing need and interest worldwide for healthcare and information technology professionals trained in medical informatics. Distance learning technologies are increasingly used to deliver such education, but have mainly been limited to the English language. Objective: Describe the implementation and student satisfaction of a medical informatics course delivered in Spanish for a Latin American audience. Methods: The course was based on the 10 x 10 program of the American Medical Informatics Association and Oregon Health & Science University that was translated and adapted to the Latin American setting. The initial course consisted of ten one-week units, currently the course has 15 modules that are delivered in 16 weeks with topics that address the needs of medical informatics in the region. We also administered an anonymous questionnaire of student satisfaction. Results: A total of 499 individuals have enrolled in the course, and 70% have completed it. Most of the students have been healthcare professionals (86%), with the largest proportion from Argentina. Student satisfaction with all aspects of the course was high. After the initial experience and feedback from the students, the course has been adapted to better meet regional needs. Conclusion: The initial experience obtained in training healthcare professionals in medical informatics in Latin America in their own language demonstrated that it could be used across the region, and this could represent a model for disseminating knowledge of medical informatics across other languages and cultures.

This study aims to create a model for developing expertise evaluation programs at the IAIN Surakarta PIAUD Department. The research method used is development research (Research and Development). The results showed that the EPPK model produced had two-dimensional constructs, namely processes and products. The dimensions of the process of publishing instrument planning, implementation and output. The product dimensions are complete instruments of dance ability, musical ability, storytelling ability and artistic ability. This EPPPK model has approved the feasibility of criteria: a. has a good format (average 79.7%), b. has approved the substance of a good evaluation model (average 79.2%), c. has a good evaluation procedure (average 80%). The EPPK model has a very good success rate, it is proven that expertise program lecturers can use the EPPK model easily. The results of the evaluation using the EPPK model can provide a complete and comprehensive description of the program for conducting expertise in the Surakarta IAIN PIAUD Department.
 Key Words: Early Childhood Education (PIAUD), Evaluation Model, Expertise Practice Programs for Early Childhood (EPPK)
 References
 Amrein-Beardsley, A., Polasky, S., & Holloway-Libell, J. (2016). Validating Bvalue added^ in the primary grades: one district’s attempts to increase fairness and inclusivity in its teacher evaluation system. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability.
 Borg, W. R., & Gall, M. D. (1989). Educational research. New York: Longman.
 Briggs, D. C., & Dadey, N. (2017). Principal holistic judgments and high-stakes evaluations of teachers. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability.
 Cizek, B. J. (2000). Pockets of resistance ini the assessment revolution. Educational measurement issues and practice journal, 192.
 Elliot, R. B. (2018). Understanding Faculty Engagement in Assessment through Feedback and Dialogues: A Mixed Methods Approach. International Journal of Evaluation and Research in Education, 7(2).
 Eseryel, D. (2002). Approaches to evaluation of training: Theory & Practice. Educational Technology & Society, 5(2).
 Hallinger, P., Heck, R., & Murphy, J. (2014). Teacher evaluation and school improvement: an analysis of the evidence. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability.
 Hasan, H. (2009). Evaluasi Kurikulum (II). Bandung: PT Remaja Rosdakarya.
 Herpich, S., & Pratoreus, K. A. (2018). Teachers’ assessment competence: Integrating knowledge-, process-, and product-oriented approaches into a competence-oriented conceptual model. Teaching and Teacher Education.
 Meng, L., & Muñoz, M. (2016). Teachers’ perceptions of effective teaching: a comparative study of elementary school teachers from China and the USA. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability.
 Ovretveit, J. (2002). Evaluation of quality improvement programmes. Quality and Safety in Health Care, 11(3), 270–275. https://doi.org/10.1136/qhc.11.3.270
 Roegman, R., Goodwin, A. L., & Reed, R. (2016). Unpacking the data: an analysis of the use of Danielson’s (2007) Framework for Professional Practice in a teaching residency program. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability.
 Seng, K.-H., Diez, C. R., Lou, S.-J., Tsai, H.-L., & Tsai, T.-S. (2010). Using the Context, Input, Process and Product model to assess an engineering curriculum. World Transactions on Engineering and Technology Education, 8(3).
 Skedsmo, G., & Huber, S. G. (2016). Teacher evaluation—accountability and improving teaching practices. Teacher evaluation—accountability and improving teaching practices.
 Skedsmo, G., & Huber, S. G. (2018). Teacher evaluation: the need for valid measures and increased teacher involvement. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 30(1), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11092-018-9273-9
 Steinert, Y., Cruess, S., Cruess, R., & Snell, L. (2005). Faculty development for teaching and evaluating professionalism: From Programme Design To Curriculum Change. Medical Education.
 Stufflebeam, D. L. (2003). The CIPP model for evaluation. Oregon Program Evaluators Network.
 Uerz, D., Vorman, M., & Kral, M. (2018). Teacher educators’ competences in fostering student teachers’ proficiency in teaching and learning with technology: An overview of relevant research literature. Teaching and Teacher Education.
 Vrasidas, C. (2000). Constructivism Versus Objectivism: Implications for interaction, Course Design, And Evaluation In Distance Educatio. International Journal of Educational Telecommunications, 6(4).
 Wahyuni, A., & Kartawagirun, B. (2018). Developing Assessment Instrument Of Qirāatul Kutub At Islamic Boarding School. Jurnal Penelitian dan Evaluasi Pendidikan, 22(2).

A Review of: 
 Bridges, L.M. (2008). Who is not using the library? A comparison of undergraduate academic disciplines and library use. portal: Libraries and the Academy, 8(2), 187-196.
 
 Objective – To determine differences in undergraduate students' use of the physical library and virtual library by academic disciplines.
 
 Design – Online multiple-choice survey followed by focus groups and secondary online survey with open-ended questions.
 
 Setting – Oregon State University (OSU), a land-grant university with over 19,000 students located in Corvallis, Oregon, United States.
 
 Subjects – A random sample of 22% (n = 3,227) of the undergraduate population (n = 14,443), drawn by the registrar's office. Distance education and students at branch campuses were not included. From this pool, 949 usable survey responses (29% of the sample) were collected. The respondent demographics proved to be reasonably equivalent to those of the total undergraduate population in terms of class standing (freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior) and academic discipline.
 
 Methods – The study consisted of three phases. In phase one, an email invitation with a link to the four-item multiple choice online survey was sent to students in the sample population. Results were analyzed using Pearson chi-square tests to determine goodness of fit between the following variables: class standing and library visits, class standing and virtual library use, academic college and library visits, and academic college and virtual library use. When significant dependence was detected, researchers examined relationships between the specific groups (e.g., freshman and sophomore) and library use, and also compared each group to one another using odds ratios and by constructing 95% confidence intervals. 
 
 Phase two was intended to gather qualitative information from the 275 infrequent or non-users of the library in focus groups. However, researchers invited the 95 students in this group who had indicated a willingness to be contacted for further study, and only five students participated. The author therefore does not report on this limited data. 
 
 In phase three, researchers invited the 95 students who had self-reported as infrequent or non-users of the library and who had indicated a willingness to be contacted for further study to complete an online survey consisting of 36 open-ended questions. 38 students responded. Much of the data for phase three is reported on in a separate research article (Vondracek, 2007).
 
 Main Results – Results from phase one are reported in detail: in response to the question of how often undergraduates visit the physical library, 24.6% visited several times a year, 29.6% visited several times a month, 34% visited several times a week, 7.7% visited once or more per day, and 4% reported that they did not visit at all. Response to how often undergraduate students use the online library resources or website from outside the library were: 37.7% use them several times a year, 32.8% use them several times a month, 12% used them several times a week, 1.3% used them once or more per day, and 16.2% reported that they did not use them at all.
 
 No significant relationships were found between class standing and visits to the physical library or class standing and virtual library use.
 
 Researchers determined a significant relationship between academic college and visits to the physical library (p=0.003): College of Agriculture students were significantly less likely to visit the library than students from the Colleges of Health and Human Sciences, Liberal Arts, and Sciences.
 
 Researchers also determined a significant relationship between academic college and virtual library use (p=0.008): students in the College of Engineering were significantly less likely to use the virtual library resources than students in the College of Liberal Arts.
 
 The survey from phase three of this study asked students further questions about their library use and relevant results are discussed in this article. Five students from the College of Agriculture responded to the survey and all five students noted that they study at home. When asked about where they go for help with research, three reported that they ask a friend or peer, one noted a professor and the fifth did not respond to the question. Four engineering students responded to this survey; when asked about where they carry out online research, two responded that they use Google, one responded that he/she uses the library, and the fourth noted that he/she uses a building on campus.
 
 Conclusion – This study determined that College of Agriculture students were less likely to use the physical library than their counterparts in the Colleges of Health and Human Sciences, Liberal Arts, and Sciences, and that College of Engineering students were less likely to use the virtual library resources than students in the College of Liberal Arts.

Obsolescence in Conversation Knick-knacks of uncertain use,[Omitted for space]Somber pictures and distant blues,Faded pastels, hard cameos,Phials still smelling of perfume,Jewelry, rags, rattles, puppets,What a great clutter in this chest!All for sale. Accept my offer,Reader. Perhaps these old thingsWill move you to tears or laughter.You’ll have to pay, and as for me,I shall buy some nice fresh roses. (Cros and Corbière) Orlando, in his book Obsolete Objects in the Literary Imagination, interprets the listing of the objects in this sonnet as intensifying “the primary defunctionalization of the things” (18). Until line 5, the old objects in the chest seemed to bring good reminiscence. In line 6, on the contrary, these objects suddenly turn into “great clutter”, which needs to be sold in order to be replaced with “some nice fresh roses”. This is a representative example of how obsolescence is construed in our everyday lives. Obsolete objects bring memories, warmth, and nostalgia, yet we often view them as the defunctionalized, impractical, uncertain, or worthless that will eventually have to be replaced with the new. When it comes to technological objects, functionality, efficiency, and usefulness are the central reasons for their existence. Accordingly, becoming obsolete poses a great challenge towards the reason for their existence, raising our perception about obsolete technology as a waste. Strasser (Strasser) wrote in the 1920s — “economic growth was fueled by what had once been understood as waste.” This notion carries over to today’s computing environment in which the high rate of machine turnover translates into tremendous profitability for the computing industries. Hence planned obsolescence, planning and engineering the obsolescence, became a long-established principle in American consumer economics (Sterne). The ways in which computing devices are designed today are good resulting representations of planned obsolescence. A study in 2007 showed that American consumers use their phones for only 17.5 months before replacing them (U.S. Wireless Mobile Phone Evaluation Study), and worldwide sales of mobile phones are expected to exceed one billion by 2009 (Gartner). Huang and Truong called the trend of usage lifetime being much shorter than their functional lifetime the disposable technology paradigm. As environmental sustainability became an important issue in our daily lives, the awareness of planned obsolescence and the disposable technology paradigm alarmed researchers to actively engage in the questions of supporting sustainability in computing devices. Because of the notion that obsolescence equals waste, the conversations in designing for sustainability have been based on the view that obsolescence is something that is problematic and need to be prevented. For example, sustainable interaction design (Blevis) suggested ways in which design can prolong the life cycle of the product in order to delay or prevent the product from becoming obsolete. So far we have discussed how the notion of obsolescence is perceived in our everyday lives, what it means to the computing industry, and how it is utilized for economic profit or, in contrary, attempted to be prevented for environmental sustainability. Rather than viewing obsolescence as having negative power, however, we challenge the notion that obsolescence is worthless and furthermore discuss the social and individual values that were surfaced through a case study of a user community that maintained an obsolete machine for over nine years after the product’s discontinuation. HP200LX User Community HP200LX (LX) is a PDA introduced by HP in 1994. It is MS-DOS compatible and comes with 2 or 4 MB of memory including the RAM. Housed in a clamshell-style case, it comes with 640x200 monochrome display, QWERTY keyboard, serial port, and PCMCIA slot. A user claimed that an AA battery would run his LX for up to two weeks. The user community for the LX communicated and shared information through an email list. The email list started in late 1996 and thrived until September 2008. By January of 2008, there were approximately 90,000 accumulated messages that were archived online since 1996. We sampled roughly 35,000 messages from the beginning of the archive, around discontinuation (November, 1999), and later in the archive, and analyzed using standard qualitative analysis through coding and probed for emerging patterns. The LX was discontinued in 1999, officially making the LX to be obsolete. To the LX users, however, the LX was more effective than any other PDAs at the time. Because the LX was running DOS, it allowed the users to flexibly develop and share custom applications that fit their everyday practices. Besides, the LX users considered the LX useful due to it being lightweight and having long lasting battery life. In the attempt to push back against the obsolescence of the machine, during the first few years after discontinuation, the LX user community was actively building resources that would help prolong the life of the rapidly aging LX. This included solutions in dealing with fixing and upgrading hardware and software, adding new features, and maintaining compatibility with the surrounding computing environment. For example, the members shared their know-hows on fixing broken hinges or finding the right memory card that communicated the best with the LX. As well, a user developed a do-it-yourself kit that allowed end users to install backlight to the LX, which was not an existing feature in the original LX. Actively Participating in Building Up the Resources Around the time the LX was discontinued, the LX community was pushing back against the notion of obsolescence that was given to the LX. The LX was still useful to them and they could not find the alternatives that would replace the kinds of functionalities and features that the LX provided. Accordingly, it was up to the members themselves to maintain the LX, which required active participation from the members. The core members of the list shared the knowledge they had accumulated while using the LX. If a member asked a question to the email list, a variety of solutions was followed. This way, over many years, the community had collectively built up resources that were necessary in order for the LX users to maintain the LX on their own. In 2001, a member volunteered to aggregate members’ contact information and their core knowledge skills in maintaining the LX. He wanted to use the database for the newcomers and for those who will continue to use the LX long after the list died when the resources would no longer be available: “…we could create a database which all people who are so kind to support the HPLX community even after they leave the list (if ever) can add their contact information and a short HPLX-related skills profile, so that, when you have a s[p]ecific problem with (for example) an Internet connection with cel[l] phone you simply do a search for "cell phone" and it appears, besides others, the entryname: [David Wong]email: [dw]@epost.deURL: www.[david-wong].deskills: cell phones, LaTeX, Synchronization, serial port,.....”(User EI, Sep. 2001) The responses were favorable, showing that the members valued participation as an important part of sustaining the community and the obsolete machine. A few months later, in February 2002, a member suggested the list to introduce themselves to the list in 80 minutes. The thread continued for about a month from users around the world: [Stanley Bower], New ZealandOwner of one well travelled single speed unit featuring a Hinge Crack and a rubber band modified latch. (User TG, Jan. 2002) [Dan], I hail from Los Angeles, CA, originally from Roseburg, Oregon. USA All the Way! I posted several months ago a suggestion that we set up an HPLX conference to get everyone on the list in a convenient location. Anyone else interested? [John Bulard] (User KC, Feb. 2002) 105 members have responded to the thread. Then user EI suggested to merge the contact information gathered from this email thread to the knowledge database. Currently, the database is offline due to privacy concerns, but this event showed how much the list was conscientious about using the collective knowledge for those who need help in maintaining the obsolete machine that essentially have little resources to depend on. The fact that the LX was obsolete pushed users to actively engage in collectively building resources for maintaining the LX. Unveiling Invisible Collective Creativity Because of the members’ active participation, it also unveiled the creativity of the members in getting around the problems that were created due to the obsolescence. For example, reading a PDF file on the LX was a big issue since existing DOS based PDF readers required higher system requirements than the LX. Accordingly, the members had to come up with their own ways of reading PDF files, and these were shared on the email list starting 1998 through 2005. In February 1999, user UP suggested printing PDF files from a fax driver and reading the output from the fax viewer. However, this fax viewer solution did not seem to get much attention. Instead, user EO followed up saying that some PDF files could be read directly without the viewer while others do not. Because this solution had uncertainties, his second suggestion was to convert PDF files into images from other computers and import them into the LX. From this point on, the members discussed a variety of ways in which PDF files could be read. The members found downloadable programs that could convert PDF files to .TXT or ASCII files as well as email addresses to which the members could send PDF files and receive text files back. In March 2001, a member introduced using Google to open PDF file as a text file and downloading the HTML file to the LX. Later, instead of the PDF to TXT or HTML solution, user CN shared his know-how of viewing PDF files through image capture: you can open it in Acrobat on your desktop, capture a screenshot to your clipboard (I think on a Windows box you press PrtScrn), then trim it neatly in a graphics program before saving the image to .pcx or some other format. Then you can view it in LXPic on your palmtop. It's easier than it sounds. (User CN, Jul. 2001) In April 2005, a member distributed an application that converted PDF files directly into the image files. Another member then complained about the size of the resulting image file, which he then solved through manually getting rid of the white bordering around the text. The LX users were constantly adapting their own ways of solving problems. Aside from viewing PDF files problem, there were many other challenges such as breaking hardware and outdating software that the users had to deal with. However, this very process of overcoming the LX becoming obsolete and losing compatibility with the advancing computing environment has unveiled the collective creativity of the LX users that would otherwise have been hidden. Becoming Well-Informed Even with active knowledge sharing and creative work-arounds, maintaining the LX was still challenging. Accordingly, the members had to constantly look out for alternatives that could replace the LX: I just picked up one of these beasties [Zaurus] at HSN.COM for $180-ish shipped. I was wondering if I could get some feedback from anyone who has used it and can compare/contrast with an LX. There are obvious differences in battery life, color, etc but I was wondering about built-in applications. So far this thing seems like a good alternative for those who want a "modern" color PDA but find PocketWindows too bloated and PalmOS too primitive. The coolest part is that you can use the SD slot form flash mem and the CF slot for ethernet or other periph. (User F, Mar. 2003) During the course of researching the alternatives and sharing experiences on the list, the members became well-informed about the alternative products and their pros and cons of the detailed aspects. Examples included how keyboard touch feels, what available customized as well as built-in applications are, how easy it is to back up, how long the battery life is, or what daily usage practices are. Because the LX was an intricate part of the members’ lives, daily resources and practices were built around the LX, making it one of the impeding factors for the LX users to move on to an alternative device. Thus, it was important to know the degree to which the alternative device can continue to support the workflow that was established around the LX. This forced the members to actively engage in conversations to be well informed about alternative devices beyond features and machine performances. As a result, the members became well aware of the choices they have as consumers and perceived themselves to be able to make well-informed decisions than other general consumer groups. Co-Construction of Group Identity Because the members became well-informed consumers and the LX was not something that anybody could use (it required minimum programming knowledge), the members begun to distance themselves apart from the general group of users. HP200LX becoming abandoned in place of a new mobile platform WinCE, which was supposedly user-friendlier than DOS, pushed the members even further away from “the normal users”, which opened up another space for the LX users to co-construct their group identity. Here is an exemplary conversation thread in which user BN responds to user TE: › HP are NOT making a big mistake by discontinuing the 200LX any more › than your girlfiend was whe[n] she dumped you for the nerd with pots › of money.Yeah, yeah, we react like the dumped boyfriend. But hey, rejection is tough. :)› It's their choice and their problem. _We_ don't have a problem.A little yes… (User BN, July 1999) Notice here how user BN and TE refer to the list members as “we” who react to the discontinuation like the dumped boyfriend, and HP as “they” who abandoned the LX over the new mobile platform. Similarly, in the following, by grouping the users “these days” that buy “crappy computer hardware and software”, user TE contrasts the LX users from the general group of users and characterizes the LX users as those who make informed decisions: They [the companies] don't care if the machines are a pain in the butt and the users are frustrated. These days, users are willing to accept crappy computer hardware and software... (User TE, 1999) However, another user argued that the general group of users, in fact, prefers WinCE or computing devices that they consider “crappy”, placing themselves further away from the general users: No, no, no. They [users] love that [WinCE]. There's nothing better than a big installed base who thin[k]s that a bug fix is properly referred to as an "upgrade." (User MD, 1999) Watkins, in his book Throwaways (Watkins), argued that distancing between the new and the old gave a means of maintaining dominance through distinction from others. For example, rather than being viewed as true progression, to Watkins, avant-gardism was merely another means of social distinction, a way to stay one step ahead. In the case of the LX community, the use of old, instead of the new, has been placed as their ways of staying techno-culturally one step ahead. This process of social distinction played an important part in the formation of the group identity, which in turn tightened the community and brought them closer together. Obsolescence Uncovers Values in Technology Use When we picture obsolete computers, they are dusted, big, heavy, slow, and clunky – they are perceived to have little ability to perform as newer computers do. However, obsolescence is such a situated notion that it may be construed arbitrarily depending on how, to whom, and when an object becomes obsolete. Although planned obsolescence may reclassify a machine as obsolete, its actual disuse may come later. Even if the disuse occurs, again, throwing away may happen later. The LX community showed a representative example of the constant re-interpretation of the obsolescence through the tight tension between reclassification of the LX as obsolete by the corporate and perceived obsolescence by the end-users. For the LX users, the LX was not obsolete – it was still the most functional device they could find at the time. The LX users were then committed to maintain the LX over eight years after discontinuation, challenging the notion of obsolete computers as worthless. The LX users maintained the obsolete machine not solely because of the nostalgic purposes but arguably because of the quality and functionality the machine possessed. In fact, the LX community was merely a representative of many user communities of discontinued computing artifacts (Muniz Jr. and Schau, Frauenfelder) that could attest to the arbitrary notion of obsolescence. The constant tension between the forced obsolescence and the refusal towards obsolescence, in return, allowed the LX community to discover values that may not otherwise have been revealed. In the process of pushing back the notion that the LX is obsolete, the community was able to bring to the surface the active participation of the community, the hidden forms of collective creativity, constant efforts in becoming well informed, and the formation of group identity. References Blevis, E. "Sustainable Interaction Design: Invention & Disposal, Renewal & Reuse." ACM CHI New York, 2007. Cros, Charles, and Tristan Corbière. Œuvres Complètes [de] Charles Cros [et] Tristan Corbière. Bibliothèque de La Pléiade. Paris: Gallimard, 1970. Frauenfelder, M. "Never Say Die." Wired March 2000. Gartner. "Gartner Says Mobile Phone Sales Will Exceed One Billion in 2009." 2005. 15 July 2009 ‹http://www.gartner.com/press_releases/asset_132473_11.html›. Huang, E.M., and K.N. Truong. "Sustainably Ours - Situated Sustainability for Mobile Phones." Interactions-New York 15.2 (2008): 16-19. Muniz Jr., A.M., and H.J. Schau. "Religiosity in the Abandoned Apple Newton Brand Community." Journal of Consumer Research 31.4 (2005): 737-47. Orlando, Francesco. Obsolete Objects in the Literary Imagination : Ruins, Relics, Rarities, Rubbish, Uninhabited Places, and Hidden Treasures. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Sterne, Jonathan. "Out with the Trash: On the Future of New Media." Residual Media. Ed. Charles R. Acland. Illustrated ed. Minneapolis: University of Minessota Press, 2007. 16-31. Strasser, Susan. Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash. 1st ed. New York: Metropolitan Books, 1999. U.S. Wireless Mobile Phone Evaluation Study. J.D. Power and Associates, 2007. Watkins, E. Throwaways: Work Culture and Consumer Education. Stanford University Press, 1993.

“Communicating deep feeling in linear solid blocks of print felt arcane, a method beyond me” — Audre Lorde in an interview with Adrienne Rich (Lorde 87) How do you disclose? In writing, in spoken words, in movements, in sounds, in the quiet energetic vibration and its trace in discourse? Is disclosure a narrative account of a self, or a poetic fragment, sent into the world outside the sanction of a story or another recognisable form (see fig. 1)?These are the questions that guide my exploration in this essay. I meditate on them from the vantage point of my own self-narrative, as a community performance practitioner and writer, a poet whose artistry, in many ways, relies on the willingness of others to disclose, to open themselves, and yet who feels ambivalent about narrative disclosures. What I share with you, reader, are my thoughts on what some may call compassion fatigue, on boredom, on burn-out, on the inability to be moved by someone’s hard-won right to story her life, to tell his narrative, to disclose her pain. I find it ironic that for as long as I can remember, my attention has often wandered when someone tells me their story—how this cancer was diagnosed, what the doctors did, how she coped, how she garnered support, how she survived, how that person died, how she lived. The story of how addiction took over her life, how she craved, how she hated, how someone sponsored her, listened to her, how she is making amends, how she copes, how she gets on with her life. The story of being born this way, being prodded this way, being paraded in front of doctors just like this, being operated on, being photographed, being inappropriately touched, being neglected, being forgotten, being unloved, being lonely. Listening to these accounts, my attention does wander, even though this is the heart blood of my chosen life—these are the people whose company I seek, with whom I feel comfortable, with whom I make art, with whom I make a life, to whom I disclose my own stories. But somehow, when we rehearse these stories in each others’s company (for rehearsal, polishing, is how I think of storytelling), I drift. In this performance-as-research essay about disclosure, I want to draw attention to what does draw my attention in community art situations, what halts my drift, and allows me to find connection beyond a story that is unique and so special to this individual, but which I feel I have heard so many times. What grabs me, again and again, lies beyond the words, beyond the “I did this… and that… and they did this… and that,” beyond the story of hardship and injury, recovery and overcoming. My moment of connection tends to happen in the warmth of this hand in mine. It occurs in the material connection that seems to well up between these gray eyes and my own deep gaze. I can feel the skin change its electric tonus as I am listening to the uncoiling account. There’s a timbre in the voice that I follow, even as I lose the words. In the moment of verbal disclosure, physical intimacy changes the time and space of encounter. And I know that the people I sit with are well aware of this—it is not lost on them that my attention isn’t wholly focused on the story they are telling, that I will have forgotten core details when next we work together. But they are also aware, I believe, of those moments of energetic connect that happen through, beyond and underneath the narrative disclosure. There is a physical opening occurring here, right now, when I tell this account to you, when you sit by my side and I confess that I can’t always keep the stories of my current community participants straight, that I forget names all the time, that I do not really wish to put together a show with lots of testimony, that I’d rather have single power words floating in space.Figure 1. Image: Keira Heu-Jwyn Chang. Performer: Neil Marcus.”water burns sun”. Burning. 2009. Orientation towards the Frame: A Poetics of VibrationThis essay speaks about how I witness the uncapturable in performance, how the limits of sharing fuel my performance practice. I also look at the artistic processes of community performance projects, and point out traces of this other attention, this poetics of vibration. One of the frames through which I construct this essay is a focus on the formal in practice: on an attention to the shapes of narratives, and on the ways that formal experimentation can open up spaces beyond and beneath the narratives that can sound so familiar. An attention to the formal in community practice is often confused with an elitist drive towards quality, towards a modern or post-modern play with forms that stands somehow in opposition to how “ordinary people” construct their lives. But there are other ways to think about “the formal,” ways to question the naturalness with which stories are told, poems are written, the ease of an “I”, the separation between self and those others (who hurt, or love, or persecute, or free), the embedment of the experience of thought in institutions of thinking. Elizabeth St. Pierre frames her own struggle with burn-out, falling silent, and the need to just keep going even if the ethical issues involved in continuing her research overwhelm her. She charts out her thinking in reference to Michel Foucault’s comments on how to transgress into a realm of knowing that stretches a self, allows it “get free of oneself.”Getting free of oneself involves an attempt to understand the ‘structures of intelligibility’ (Britzman, 1995, p. 156) that limit thought. Foucault (1984/1985) explaining the urgency of such labor, says, ‘There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all’ (p. 8). (St. Pierre 204)Can we think outside the structure of story, outside the habits of thought that make us sense and position ourselves in time and space, in power and knowledge? Is there a way to change the frame, into a different format, to “change our mind”? And even if there is not, if the structures of legibility always contain what we can think, there might be riches in that borderland, the bordercountry towards the intelligible, the places where difference presses close in an uncontained, unstoried way. To think differently, to get free of oneself: all these concerns resonate deeply with me, and with the ways that I wish to engage in community art practice. Like St. Pierre, I try to embrace Deleuzian, post-structuralist approaches to story and self:The collective assemblage is always like the murmur from which I take my proper name, the constellation of voices, concordant or not, from which I draw my voice. […] To write is perhaps to bring this assemblage of the unconscious to the light of day, to select the whispering voices, to gather the tribes and secret idioms from which I extract something I call myself (moi). I is an order word. (Deleuze and Guattari 84).“I” wish to perform and to write at the moment when the chorus of the voices that make up my “I” press against my skin, from the inside and the outside, query the notion of ‘skin’ as barrier. But can “I” stay in that vibrational moment? This essay will not be an exercise in quotation marks, but it is an essay of many I’s, and—imagine you see this essay performed—I invite the vibration of the hand gestures that mark small breaches in the air next to my head as I speak.Like St. Pierre, I get thrown off those particular theory horses again and again. But curiosity drives me on, and it is a curiosity nourished not by the absence of (language) connection, by isolation, but by the fullness of those movements of touch and density I described above. That materiality of the tearful eye gaze, the electricity of those fine skin hairs, the voice shivering me: these are not essentialist connections that somehow reveal or disclose a person to me, but these matters make the boundaries of “me” and “person” vibrate. Disclose here becomes the density of living itself, the flowing, non-essential process of shaping lives together. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) have called this bordering “deterritorialization,” always already bound to the reterritorialisation that allows the naming of the experience. Breath-touch on the limits of territories.This is not a shift from verbal to a privileging of non-verbal communication, finding richness and truth in one and less in the other. Non-verbal communication can be just as conventional as spoken language. When someone’s hand reaches out to touch someone who is upset, that gesture can feel ingrained and predictable, and the chain of caretaking that is initiated by the gesture can even hinder the flow of disclosure the crying or upset person might be engaged in. Likewise, I believe the common form of the circle, one I use in nearly every community session I lead, does not really create more community than another format would engender. The repetition of the circle just has something very comforting, it can allow all participants to drop into a certain kind of ease that is different from the everyday, but the rules of that ease are not open—circles territorialise as much as they de-territorialise: here is an inside, here an outside. There is nothing inherently radical in them. But circles might create a radical shift in communication situations when they break open other encrusted forms—an orientation to a leader, a group versus individual arrangement, or the singularity of islands out in space. Circles brings lots of multiples into contact, they “gather the tribes.” What provisional I’s we extract from them in each instance is our ethical challenge.Bodily Fantasies on the Limit: BurningEven deeply felt inner experiences do not escape the generic, and there is lift available in the vibration between the shared fantasy and the personal fantasy. I lead an artists’ collective, The Olimpias, and in 2008/2009, we created Burning, a workshop and performance series that investigated cell imagery, cancer imagery, environmental sensitivity and healing journeys through ritual-based happenings infused with poetry, dramatic scenes, Butoh and Contact Improvisation dances, and live drawing (see: http://www.olimpias.org/).Performance sites included the Subterranean Arthouse, Berkeley, July and October 2009, the Earth Matters on Stage Festival, Eugene, Oregon, May 2009, and Fort Worden, Port Townsend, Washington State, August 2009. Participants for each installation varied, but always included a good percentage of disabled artists.(see fig. 2).Figure 2. Image: Linda Townsend. Performers: Participants in the Burning project. “Burning Action on the Beach”. Burning. 2009. In the last part of these evening-long performance happenings, we use meditation techniques to shift the space and time of participants. We invite people to lie down or otherwise become comfortable (or to observe in quiet). I then begin to lead the part of the evening that most closely dovetails with my personal research exploration. With a slow and reaching voice, I ask people to breathe, to become aware of the movement of breath through their bodies, and of the hollows filled by the luxuriating breath. Once participants are deeply relaxed, I take them on journeys which activate bodily fantasies. I ask them to breathe in colored lights (and leave the specific nature of the colors to them). I invite participants to become cell bodies—heart cells, liver cells, skin cells—and to explore the properties and sensations of these cell environments, through both internal and external movement. “What is the surface, what is deep inside, what does the granular space of the cell feel like? How does the cell membrane move?” When deeply involved in these explorations, I move through the room and give people individual encounters by whispering to them, one by one—letting them respond bodily to the idea that their cell encounters alchemical elements like gold and silver, lead or mercury, or other deeply culturally laden substances like oil or blood. When I am finished with my individual instruction to each participant, all around me, people are moving gently, undulating, contracting and expanding, their eyes closed and their face full of concentration and openness. Some have dropped out of the meditation and are sitting quietly against a wall, observing what is going on around them. Some move more than others, some whisper quietly to themselves.When people are back in spoken-language-time, in sitting-upright-time, we all talk about the experiences, and about the cultural body knowledges, half-forgotten healing practices, that seem to emerge like Jungian archetypes in these movement journeys. During the meditative/slow movement sequence, some long-standing Olimpias performers in the room had imagined themselves as cancer cells, and gently moved with the physical imagery this brought to them. In my meditation invitations during the participatory performance, I do not invite community participants to move as cancer cells—it seems to me to require a more careful approach, a longer developmental period, to enter this darkly signified state, even though Olimpias performers do by no means all move tragically, darkly, or despairing when entering “cancer movement.” In workshops in the weeks leading up to the participatory performances, Olimpias collaborators entered these experiences of cell movement, different organ parts, and cancerous movement many times, and had time to debrief and reflect on their experiences.After the immersion exercise of cell movement, we ask people how it felt like to lie and move in a space that also held cancer cells, and if they noticed different movement patterns, different imaginaries of cell movement, around them, and how that felt. This leads to rich discussions, testimonies of poetic embodiment, snippets of disclosures, glimpses of personal stories, but the echo of embodiment seems to keep the full, long stories at bay, and outside of the immediacy of our sharing. As I look around myself while listening, I see some hands intertwined, some gentle touches, as people rock in the memory of their meditations.nowyour light shines very brightlybut I want youto knowyour darkness alsorichand beyond fear (Lorde 87)My research aim with these movement meditation sequences is not to find essential truths about human bodily imagination, but to explore the limits of somatic experience and cultural expression, to make artful life experiential and to hence create new tools for living in the chemically saturated world we all inhabit.I need to add here that these are my personal aims for Burning—all associated artists have their own journey, their own reasons for being involved, and there is no necessary consensus—just a shared interest in transformation, the cultural images of disease, disability and addiction, the effects of invasion and touch in our lives, and how embodied poetry can help us live. (see fig. 3). For example, a number of collaborators worked together in the participatory Burning performances at the Subterranean Arthouse, a small Butoh performance space in Berkeley, located in an old shop, complete with an open membrane into the urban space—a shop-window and glass door. Lots of things happen with and through us during these evenings, not just my movement meditations.One of my colleagues, Sadie Wilcox, sets up live drawing scenarios, sketching the space between people. Another artist, Harold Burns, engages participants in contact dance, and invites a crossing of boundaries in and through presence. Neil Marcus invites people to move with him, gently, and blindfolded, and to feel his spastic embodiment and his facility with tender touch. Amber diPietra’s poem about cell movement and the journeys from one to another sounds out in the space, set to music by Mindy Dillard. What I am writing about here is my personal account of the actions I engage in, one facet of these evenings—choreographing participants’ inner experiences.Figure 3. Image: Keira Heu-Jwyn Chang. Performers: Artists in the Burning project. “water burns sun”. Burning. 2009. My desires echo Lorde’s poem: “I want you”—there’s a sensual desire in me when I set up these movement meditation scenes, a delight in an erotic language and voice touch that is not predicated on sexual contact, but on intimacy, and on the borderlines, the membranes of the ear and the skin; ‘to know’—I continue to be intrigued and obsessed, as an artist and as a critic, by the way people envision what goes on inside them, and find agency, poetic lift, in mobilising these knowledges, in reaching from the images of bodies to the life of bodies in the world. ‘your darkness also’—not just the bright light, no, but also the fears and the strengths that hide in the blood and muscle, in the living pulsing shadow of the heart muscle pumping away, in the dark purple lobe of the liver wrapping itself around my middle and purifying, detoxifying, sifting, whatever sweeps through this body.These meditative slow practices can destabilise people. Some report that they experience something quite real, quite deep, and that there is transformation to be gained in these dream journeys. But the framing within which the Burning workshops take place question immediately the “authentic” of this experiential disclosure. The shared, the cultural, the heritage and hidden knowledge of being encultured quickly complicate any essence. This is where the element of formal enframing enters into the immediacy of experience, and into the narration of a stable, autonomous “I.” Our deepest cellular experience, the sounds and movements we listen to when we are deeply relaxed, are still cultured, are still shared, come to us in genres and stable image complexes.This form of presentation also questions practices of self-disclosure that participate in trauma narratives through what Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman has called “impression management” (208). Goffman researched the ways we play ourselves as roles in specific contexts, how we manage acts of disclosure and knowledge, how we deal with stigma and stereotype. Impression management refers to the ways people present themselves to others, using conscious or unconscious techniques to shape their image. In Goffman’s framing of these acts of self-presentation, performance and dramaturgical choices are foregrounded: impression management is an interactive, dynamic process. Disclosure becomes a semiotic act, not a “natural,” unfiltered display of an “authentic” self, but a complex engagement with choices. The naming and claiming of bodily trauma can be part of the repertoire of self-representation, a (stock-)narrative that enables recognition and hence communication. The full traumatic narrative arc (injury, reaction, overcoming) can here be a way to manage the discomfort of others, to navigate potential stigma.In Burning, by-passing verbal self-disclosure and the recitation of experience, by encountering ourselves in dialogue with our insides and with foreign elements in this experiential way, there is less space for people to speak managed, filtered personal truths. I find that these truths tend to either close down communication if raw and direct, or become told as a story in its complete, polished arc. Either form leaves little space for dialogue. After each journey through bodies, cells, through liver and heart, breath and membrane, audience members need to unfold for themselves what they felt, and how that felt, and how that relates to the stories of cancer, environmental toxins and invasion that they know.It is not fair. We should be able to have dialogues about “I am poisoned, I live with environmental sensitivities, and they constrict my life,” “I survived cancer,” “I have multiple sclerosis,” “I am autistic,” “I am addicted to certain substances,” “I am injured by certain substances.” But tragedy tugs at these stories, puts their narrators into the realm of the inviolate, as a community quickly feel sorry for these persons, or else feels attacked by them, in particular if one does not know how to help. Yes, we know this story: we can manage her identity for her, and his social role can click into fixity. The cultural weight of these narratives hinders flow, become heavily stigmatised. Many contemporary writers on the subjects of cancer and personhood recognise the (not always negative) aspects of this stigma, and mobilise them in their narratives. As Marisa Acocella Marchetto in the Cancer-Vixen: A True Story puts it: ‘Play the cancer card!’ (107). The cancer card appears in this graphic novel memoir in the form of a full-page spoof advertisement, and the card is presented as a way to get out of unwanted social obligations. The cancer card is perfectly designed to create the communal cringe and the hasty retreat. If you have cancer, you are beyond the pale, and ordinary rules of behavior do no longer apply. People who experience these life-changing transformational diagnoses often know very well how isolating it can be to name one’s personal story, and many are very careful about how they manage disclosure, and know that if they choose to disclose, they have to manage other people’s discomfort. In Burning, stories of injury and hurt swing in the room with us, all of these stories are mentioned in our performance program, but none of them are specifically given individual voice in our performance (although some participants chose to come out in the sharing circle at the end of the event). No one owns the diagnoses, the identity of “survivor,” and the presence of these disease complexes are instead dispersed, performatively enacted and brought in experiential contact with all members of our temporary group. When you leave our round, you most likely still do not know who has multiple sclerosis, who has substance addiction issues, who is sensitive to environmental toxins.Communication demands territorialisation, and formal experimentation alone, unanchored in lived experience, easily alienates. So how can disclosure and the storytelling self find some lift, and yet some connection, too? How can the Burning cell imaginary become both deep, emotionally rich and formal, pointing to its constructed nature? That’s the question that each of the Olimpias’ community performance experiments begins with.How to Host a Past Collective: Setting Up a CirclePreceding Burning, one of our recent performance investigations was the Anarcha Project. In this multi-year, multi-site project, we revisited gynecological experiments performed on slave women in Montgomery, Alabama, in the 1840s, by J. Marion Sims, the “father of American gynecology.” We did so not to revictimise historical women as suffering ciphers, or stand helpless at the site of historical injury. Instead, we used art-based methods to investigate the heritage of slavery medicine in contemporary health care inequalities and women’s health care. As part of the project, thousands of participants in multiple residencies across the U.S. shared their stories with the project leaders—myself, Aimee Meredith Cox, Carrie Sandahl, Anita Gonzalez and Tiye Giraud. We collected about two hundred of these fragments in the Anarcha Anti-Archive, a website that tries, frustratingly, to undo the logic of the ordered archive (Cox et al. n.p).The project closed in 2008, but I still give presentations with the material we generated. But what formal methods can I select, ethically and responsibly, to present the multivocal nature of the Anarcha Project, given that it is now just me in the conference room, given that the point of the project was the intersection of multiple stories, not the fetishisation of individual ones? In a number of recent presentations, I used a circle exercise to engage in fragmented, shrouded disclosure, to keep privacies safe, and to find material contact with one another. In these Anarcha rounds, we all take words into our mouths, and try to stay conscious to the nature of this act—taking something into our mouth, rather than acting out words, normalising them into spoken language. Take this into your mouth—transgression, sacrament, ritual, entrainment, from one body to another.So before an Anarcha presentation, I print out random pages from our Anarcha Anti-Archive. A number of the links in the website pull up material through chance procedures (a process implemented by Olimpias collaborator Jay Steichmann, who is interested in digital literacies). So whenever you click that particular link, you get to a different page in the anti-archive, and you can not retrace your step, or mark you place in an unfolding narrative. What comes up are poems, story fragments, images, all sent in in response to cyber Anarcha prompts. We sent these prompts during residencies to long-distance participants who could not physically be with us, and many people, from Wales to Malaysia, sent in responses. I pull up a good number of these pages, combined with some of the pages written by the core collaborators of our project. In the sharing that follows, I do not speak about the heart of the project, but I mark that I leave things unsaid. Here is what I do not say in the moment of the presentation—those medical experiments were gynecological operations without anesthesia, executed to close vaginal fistula that were leaking piss and shit, executed without anesthesia not because it was not available, but because the doctor did not believe that black women felt pain. I can write this down, here, in this essay, as you can now stop for a minute if you need to collect yourself, as you listen to what this narrative does to your inside. You might feel a clench deep down in your torso, like many of us did, a kinesthetic empathy that translates itself across text, time and space, and which became a core choreographic element in our Anarcha poetics.I do not speak about the medical facts directly in a face-to-face presentation where there is no place to hide, no place to turn away. Instead, I point to a secret at the heart of the Anarcha Project, and explain where all the medical and historical data can be found (in the Anarcha Project essay, “Remembering Anarcha,” in the on-line performance studies journal Liminalities site, free and accessible to all without subscription, now frequently used in bioethics education (see: http://www.liminalities.net/4-2). The people in the round, then, have only a vague sense of what the project is about, and I explain why this formal frame appears instead of open disclosure. I ask their permission to proceed. They either give it to me, or else our circle becomes something else, and we speak about performance practices and formal means of speaking about trauma instead.Having marked the space as one in which we agree on a specific framework or rule, having set up a space apart, we begin. One by one, raw and without preamble, people in the circle read what they have been given. The meaning of what they are reading only comes to them as they are reading—they have had little time to familiarise themselves with the words beforehand. Someone reads a poem about being held as a baby by one’s mother, being accepted, even through the writer’s body is so different. Someone reads about the persistence of shame. Someone reads about how incontinence is so often the borderline for independent living in contemporary cultures—up to here, freedom; past this point, at the point of leakage, the nursing home. Someone reads about her mother’s upset about digging up that awful past again. Someone reads about fibroid tumors in African-American women. Someone reads about the Venus Hottentott. Someone begins to cry (most recently at a Feminisms and Rhetorics conference), crying softly, and there is no knowing about why, but there is companionship, and quiet contemplation, and it is ok. These presentations start with low-key chatting, setting up the circle, and end the same way—once we have made our way around, once our fragments are read out, we just sit and talk, no “presentation-mode” emerges, and no one gets up into high drama. We’ve all taken strange things into our mouths, talked of piss and shit and blood and race and oppression and love and survival. Did we get free of ourselves, of the inevitability of narrative, in the attention to articulation, elocution, the performance of words, even if just for a moment? Did we taste the words on our tongues, material physical traces of a different form of embodiment? Container/ConclusionThe poet Anne Carson attended one of our Anarcha presentations, and her comments to us that evening helped to frame our subsequent work for me—she called our work creating a container, a vessel for experience, without sharing the specifics of that experience. I have since explored this image further, thought about amphorae as commemorative vases, thought of earth and clay as materials, thought of the illustrations on ancient vessels, on pattern and form, flow and movement. The vessel as matter: deterritorialising and reterritorialising, familiar and strange, shaping into form, and shaped out of formlessness, fired in the light and baked in the earth’s darkness, hardened only to crumble and crack again with the ages, returning to dust. These disclosures are in time and space—they are not narratives that create an archive or a body of knowledge. They breathe, and vibrate, and press against skin. What can be contained, what leaks, what finds its way through the membrane?These disclosures are traces of life, and I can touch them. I never get bored by them. Come and sit by my side, and we share in this river flow border vessel cell life.ReferencesBritzman, Deborah P. "Is There a Queer Pedagogy? Or, Stop Reading Straight." Educational Theory 45:2 (1995): 151–165. Burning. The Olimpias Project. Berkley; Eugene; Fort Worden. May-October, 2009Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: Vol. 2. The Use of Pleasure. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage, 1985.Goffman, Erving. Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor, 1969Kuppers, Petra. “Remembering Anarcha: Objection in the Medical Archive.” Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies 4.2 (2006): n.p. 24 July 2009 < http://liminalities.net/4-2 >.Cox, Aimee Meredith, Tiye Giraud, Anita Gonzales, Petra Kuppers, and Carrie Sandahl. “The Anarcha-Anti-Archive.” Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies 4.2 (2006): n.p. 24 July 2009 < http://liminalities.net/4-2 >.Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Berkeley: The Crossing Press, 1984.Marchetto, Marisa Acocella. Cancer Vixen: A True Story. New York: Knopf, 2006.St. Pierre, Elizabeth Adams. “Circling the Text: Nomadic Writing Practices.” Qualitative Inquiry 3.4 (1997): 403–18.

Online learning is taking our nation by storm and changing the face of education forever. By 2014 we are projected to have 10 million students taking at least one online class (Nagel, 2009). The online revolution is one of the greatest changes the field of education has seen in the last 25 years (Greenway & Vanourek, 2006). This major shift in education also represents a major shift in how our teachers are prepared and what great teaching looks like in online settings. The online classroom is distinctly different than the brick-and-mortar classroom, and success in the classroom does not necessarily translate into the online environment (Watson, Murin, Vashaw, Gemin, & Rapp, 2011). Our students deserve the best online teachers to ensure the potential of online learning is fulfilled (Cavanaugh, Gillan, Kromrey, Hess, & Blomeyer, 2004). Top quality online teachers are those who have mastered or can demonstrate the ability to quickly learn the specific skills of technology, online instructional design and delivery, communication, and online learning professional development. This study will explore and analyze the impact of the website K-12 Online Staffing Solutions on the recruitment, hiring, and induction practices for K-12 online administrators. Using the research and development research model, developed by Borg and Gall (1989), the website will undergo a series of qualitative feedback and product revision cycles with participants. The results of the study showed that the website tool was easy to use and impacted the practice of virtual school administrators in Oregon. The results have implications beyond virtual charter schools in Oregon. Online learning is growing and administrators need practical, accessible, and research based tools to successfully meet the need for online K-12 options.

Over the past 6 years, the course retention rate for Marylhurst University's (MU) online courses was 91%, which is within four percentage points of its on-campus course retention rate (Schreck, 2002). This appears to contradict a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education that stated, "Although there is significant variation among institutions with some reporting course-completion rates of more than 80% and others finding that fewer than 50% of distance-education students finish their courses, several administrators concur that course-completion rates are often 10-20 percentage points higher in traditional courses than in distance offerings" (Carr, 2000). Recent studies (Beatty-Gunter 2001; Crabtree, 2000; Cutler, 2000; Fox, 2000; Moore, Bartkovich, Fetzner, & Ison, 2002; Morrow, Woodyard, Mora, & Nather, 2001; Valdez, 2001) corroborate Carr's claim and were used to compare with MU results. This grounded theory, web-based, research study aims to explicate the reasons why MU online students complete courses at high rates and develop this understanding into an online student retention model. A grounded theory approach was used to conduct this study, which is described by Creswell (2002) as, "a systematic, qualitative procedure used to generate a theory that explains, at a broad conceptual level, a process, an action, or interaction about a substantive topic". The research process helped discover and shape the Online Course Retention Model (OCRM). The OCRM theorizes four major areas for inquiry into online course retention (Administration, Course, Student, and Teacher). Each major area of inquiry is divided into three variables of varying importance to online course retention. Perhaps the most profound discovery was not the major themes and supporting variables, but rather, the relationships between variables, and how these relationships explain the MU situation. The research concludes with an examination of possible "best practices" in online course retention, ideas for future research, and recommendations for implementation. Successful online course retention at Marylhurst University: Constructing a model for online course retention using grounded theory.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2007.<br>Typescript. "This study incorporated data from a 14-week pilot ODE course that the American English Institute (AEI) in the Linguistics Department at the University of Oregon (UO) offered fall 2006. Participants included 49 EFL educators living in 15 different developing countries in the Muslim world"--P. 6. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 154-175). Also available online in Scholars' Bank; and in ProQuest, free to University of Oregon users.