Empathic design involves two social practices -- one is collaboration with users to elicit and make a meaning of user experiences, and another is intrateam collaboration to develop a mutually understood, agreed-upon interpretation of user experiences among team members. This study is focused on the latter phenomenon, conceptualizing this social…

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to describe the essence of student connection in an associate degree nursing program. Eight participants shared their experiences with connection to one another and the impact that connection had on their journey. They shared the benefits as well as the risks of participating in closely connected…

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine the experiences of participants in a long-standing academic and student affairs partnership at a large public research institution. Using a grounded theory approach, the experiences of 12 participants were analyzed to understand the extent to which challenges to collaboration were…

Variations in educational policy outcomes have always been perceived as policy failures, and they are often associated with policymakers insensitivity to what is happening down at the grass roots level, and with implementers' inefficiency and non-compliance. Based on institutional theory, the nested layers theory in particular, and the Four…

Past IS studies on culture have primarily focused on two levels of analysis: national culture and organizational culture. The gap in our knowledge of culture is in the area of occupational culture of IT professionals. Occupational culture, unlike organizational culture, is not bounded by a single organization, but rather forms itself around…

People are increasingly looking to online social communities as ways of communicating. However, even as participation in social networking is increasing, online communities often fail to coalesce. Noted success factors for online communities are linked to the community's purpose and culture. They are also related to structures that allow for…

Within the past few decades, university-industry research centers have been developed in large numbers and emphasized as a valuable policy tool for innovation. Yet little is known about the heterogeneity of organizational structure within these centers, which has implications regarding policy for and management of these centers. This dissertation…

Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs are a recent and popular approach in developing countries to improve health and education prospects of poor families through conditional financial incentives. However. due to sub-optimal transfers and administrative difficulties in identifying needy families, many CCT programs suffer from incomplete…

The purpose of this study was to examine the degree to which academic achievement in U.S. schools could be explained by several indicators of belongingness (i.e., close teacher-student relationships, peer acceptance, school liking, low levels of loneliness in school and positive perceptions of peers) and school engagement. For this study, data…