Due to ongoing financial cuts and budget restraints, community colleges have turned to alumni association fundraising to support their mission and advance their institution. Fundraising for any organization is challenging, but community college alumni institutions have a more difficult time than their university counterparts in recruiting alumni…

Social Stories (SS) serve as a catalyst to increase social engagement for children with autism. While numerous studies have examined the impact of SS on behavior, the research has mostly focused on static, paper-based stories. This study breaks new ground by examining Interactive Social Stories (ISS), which offer a more inclusive and dynamic…

Recognising emotions, facial expressions and tone of voice and body language, expressing and managing their own emotions, and understanding and responding to other people's emotions are often difficult for children with autism spectrum disorder. Since the emotional codes of individuals with autism spectrum disorder are different, those people will…

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted educational activities and created a long-lasting impact on educational systems worldwide. Multiple educational stakeholders were challenged by the pandemic, including students and families, teachers and administrators, schools and districts, and the government/policy makers. As an increasingly popular platform for…

The problem of practice this research sought to study and offer solutions for was centered around social media communications from a housing and dining department at a major university in a large United States city during times of crisis and emergencies. The purpose of this Action Research study was to examine and make recommendations to improve…

As colleges and universities across the United States continue to grapple with enrollment challenges, many are embracing the concept of customer service as way to improve the student experience and positively impact retention. However, as many institutions of higher education begin to evaluate their own organizational structure, the notion of…

Students' voices are all too often missing in classrooms today. Research over the past 50 years has identified a number of problems associated with these missing voices. There are ingrained habits of "initiation-response-evaluation" (I-R-E) during which teachers assume responsibility for guiding classroom conversation and a tendency for…

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to understand how connective experiences are built between elementary teachers and parents in a virtual setting at the ABC school district in the southeastern region of the United States. The theory guiding this study was Siemens' connectiveness theory, as it explored the students'…

During the COVID-19 pandemic, in-person classroom instruction was placed on hold and university courses transitioned to online instruction. This transition resulted in novel challenges for instructors, including reduced professor-student interactions due to limited student webcam usage. The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of a…

Background: Cognitive-communication disorders (CCDs) are common in the traumatic brain injury (TBI) population. Despite this, there has been limited research that explores the long-term impacts of reduced cognitive-communication functioning on daily life for this population. Aims: To identify the long-term impacts of cognitive-communication…

Cooperative learning is associated with a variety of potential benefits to students, including better comprehension and retention, improved perceptions and attitudes, and increased openness to diversity. Yet, there is limited evidence or instruction on cooperative learning activities in asynchronous online classrooms, an increasingly common course…

The normative, developmental changes in affect-biased attention during the preschool years are largely unknown. To investigate the attention bias for emotional versus neutral faces, an eye-tracking measurement and free viewing of paired pictures of facial expressions (i.e., happy, fearful, sad, or angry faces) and nonface pictures with neutral…

Adults and children easily distinguish between fine-grained variations in trustworthiness intensity based on facial appearance, but the developmental origins of this fundamental social skill are still debated. Using a fast periodic visual stimulation (FPVS) oddball paradigm coupled with electroencephalographic (EEG) recording, we investigated…

Experiencing anxiety is a major obstacle for language learners, especially in productive skills. Among these, speaking is considered to be generally the most challenging. Clearly, many students are affected by Foreign Language Speaking Anxiety (FLSA) and this negatively affects many aspects of their language learning experience, such as group…

This qualitative descriptive study explored the experiences and perceptions of older, self-employed workers born before 1980 regarding computer self-efficacy related to communication technology before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings of this study provided insight into their perception of age as an influencer on their use of…