UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
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Item Competent readers' online multimodal reading strategies use(2023) Ahn, Hyoju; Afflerbach, Peter; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)As literacy and reading evolve, it is important to identify and describe the strategies and skills used in constructing meaning. This study examines online multimodal reading (OMR) strategies: those used in constructing meaning from multimodal information sources (e.g., images, audio, written words) on the Internet. Participants read online multimodal texts from a laptop screen and provided verbal reports of their reading processes as they read multimodal texts on the Internet to learn a scientific topic. I collected and analyzed think-aloud data, using verbal protocol analysis. I cataloged and described their multimodal reading comprehension strategies. The verbal report data were complemented with retrospective interviews focused on participants’ accounts of how they read, reader-computer interaction captured in the screen-recording video, and written pre- and post-reading knowledge reports focused on what is learned from OMR. OMR strategies they used were coded and categorized to provide insights into the nature of the competent readers’ strategic online multimodal reading. I used the integrated data to create a taxonomy of OMR reading strategies as a key outcome of this study. The results of this study may inform theoretical models of online multimodal reading, as well as instruction intended to foster student learning.Item Hello Internet! - An Online Starting Point For Adult Digital Literacy Learners(2014) Dodge, Steven; Jaeger, Paul T; Master in Information Management; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)While physical access to information technology is critical to actively engaging and participating in an increasingly digital society, having physical access alone is not enough as people need the skills necessary to use the technology to reap its benefits. Teaching adults how to use technology is a challenge that public libraries in the United States are currently confronting through various methods. This paper explores how American public libraries can use an online starting point to help adult patrons learn and practice basic Internet skills. In the case study presented in this report, an online starting point called Hello Internet! was created and tested over the course of three stages at the District of Columbia Public Library.Item Community and Educational Opportunity in the US: The Relative Utility of Technology and Digital Literacy in a Transcultural Community(2008-11-21) Pruitt-Mentle, Davina; Finkelstein, Barbara; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This ethnobiographic study explores the ways in which five low income transmigrants living in an urban Mid-Atlantic transcultural community made use of technology and digital literacy. Specifically, the study focuses on the ways in which participants defined the purpose, importance, and utility of technology and digital literacy in their lives. The stories reveal complex and often heroic efforts to become digitally literate and apply technological learning to their obligations as parents, breadwinners, and community participants in widely dispersed social networks that cross family, community, and national boundaries. Their stories reveal: 1) the desire for digital literacy to participate in our modern society; 2) limitations in concepts of access and equity as currently conceived in scholarly literature; 3) trust as a key component of successful programs; and 4) the importance of technology in sustaining transcultural networks. The voices of the participants reveal that immigrants recognize the need for technology training, not only for jobs, but also to aid and enhance their everyday life. They shared the need for training to include: basic classroom skills instruction for children; learning opportunities for adults; programs that include authentic tasks and design features that consider cost, time and day of the week, location, language options, and word of mouth confirmation regarding the quality of content and trust in instructors and training location. Their search for safety extends to protecting their personal information and children by acquiring cyber safety and security knowledge. This study adds to transcultural scholarly work, and also expands both digital divide and digital inequity literature that only rarely focuses on the relationship between participants and transcultural community constructs. Increasingly, computer based forms of communication are taking the place of letters, telephone and travel to maintain and expand ties to family and friends dispersed throughout the globe. Technology becomes a way to support their transmigrant identities and strengthen the networks of friends and family used to identify places to live and work. Rather than creating a homogeneous global society, technology may actually serve to strengthen national identities across borders.