3/2/06 Contact:
Michael Tullier, 334/844-1324, (tullimj@auburn.edu)
David M. Granger, 334/944-9999 (grangdm@auburn.edu)
AU EDUCATION
PROFESSOR WINS PRESTIGIOUS DISSERTATION AWARD
AUBURN - David DiRamio, an Auburn University 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.”
Auburn University is a preeminent land-grant and comprehensive research
institution with more than 23,000 students and 6,500 faculty and staff.
Ranked among the top 50 public universities nationally, Auburn is Alabama’s
largest educational institution, offering more than 230 undergraduate,
graduate and doctoral degree programs.
(Contributed by Michael Tullier.)
###
mar06:AU-diramio