Redefining Educational Opportunity in America

This chapter discusses the historic progression of American higher education and its role in opportunity and work. There are social and economic costs in higher education's current opportunity structure, in that many Americans are excluded by campus models, traditions, and values coupled with broader societal norms. For them, the higher education opportunity pathway remains an opportunity monopoly beyond their reach. Clayton Christiansen's theory of disruptive innovation is referenced to reframe this education-opportunity debate.

The Influence of Politics and Diversity in Educational Differentiation

Current societal shifts are unfolding connections between laws, acts, and behaviors of the past that affect education in the present. There is limited scholarship that reveals the historical intentionality in excluding underrepresented and marginalized persons from education. The concern is that the quest for higher industry recognition based on the old models of elite and traditional schools will make online environments vulnerable to those same exclusions. The mission is to apply transparency to the underlying disparate history in education and how severely it has affected so many generations of people, change the paradigm going forward, and not repeat homogeneity online. This chapter proposes a critical examination of factors that necessitated the evolution from past education models established to perpetuate societal dominance by a select few, to the present inclusive online learning models. The chapter argues that technology, along with the failure to include diverse populations as a unique demographic, contributed to the disruption that became online learning.

A Safer Place for Women

A feature of online study not widely recognized is that apart from its convenience, which eases the burdens of managing family and work demands, the online educational environment offers control over privacy and visibility. To convey how women, in particular, place importance on having control over privacy, this chapter describes studies the authors have conducted to investigate gender differences in reactions to situations where public performance vs. privacy is involved. While recognizing the success of online courses in meeting privacy needs, attention is also drawn to the challenge that online instructors face to prepare students with skills in public presentation important for success beyond the classroom.

Enhancing Student Involvement in a Technologically Connected World

In the multi-faceted domain of adult online education, administrators, researchers, and practitioners have an opportunity to assist adults who bring unique experiences, talents, challenges, and needs to the online learning environment. The purpose of this chapter is to refresh the reader's awareness about two theories: student involvement and transactional distance. It is the hope of the author that a heightened understanding of these theories will spark new ideas, research, and practices, facilitating successful outcomes. Taken individually or paired as theoretical or conceptual frameworks, these theories are seminal to both adult and distance education domains. Researchers, decision-makers, and practitioners are encouraged to objectively observe their educational environments through the lenses of these two theoretical perspectives and consider what is working and what is not working in the context of today's rapidly changing cultural, socio-political climate.

Facilitating Civility in Distance Education

Higher education has a long history of incivility, and the advent of distance learning has further exacerbated the issues. Increasing incivility in our society adds another challenging dimension to combating incivility and maintaining a supportive, educational environment. This chapter addresses the challenges of maintaining civility in the online teaching and learning environment that facilitates access 24/7. Specific issues relevant to disruptive actions in distance learning are covered, as well as strategies for preventing and reducing online incivility. Promoting a sense of connectiveness and social interaction is recommended, while also maintaining a professional relationship. Online culture is discussed as a key element in establishing an effective online environment.

A Critical Review of Barriers to United States Military Spouse Education and Employment

In the United States, there are over one million military spouses. Frequent geographical relocations, the psychological stress and anxiety associated with spousal deployments, and supporting their children as the only parent while their active duty spouse is away leave military spouses disproportionately accountable for all family obligations. Ultimately, these inequities create barriers for military spouses and their employment and educational pursuits. Despite similarities in lifestyle to active duty service members, military spouses are not categorized as an at-risk population and have not been studied in depth. This chapter utilized the source, survey, synthesize method to address the literature gap surrounding the barriers to military spouse education and employment. Findings from the existing literature were synthesized to present the key themes for studies that investigated the military culture, barriers to military spouses' pursuits of higher education, employment, and career advancement and earnings.

Representation in 21st Century Online Higher Education

This chapter examines representation of women and minorities in 21st century higher education with regard to how the online learning culture serves diverse students. Over the past two decades, faculty and student representation by women and minorities has increased, while online learning has also grown exponentially, becoming almost ubiquitous in its reach and scope. Even with differences across institutions (public versus private, size of the university, and populations served), the online learning environment has a seemingly agreed-upon set of rules, standards, and practices. Arguably, online learning has a distinct culture, which can thus be viewed through the lens of Vygotskyian sociocultural theory. While online learning may have some perceived downsides, a potential benefit is that the nature of the technology and the agreed-upon culture of 21st century online learning across institutions may serve to mask and inhibit implicit bias and thus level the playing field for women and minority students and faculty in higher education.

Managing Generational Diversity

Germany is undergoing a dramatic demographic change that requires its organizations to make workforce talent of all ages a strategic priority. Practitioners in Germany focus largely on Generation Y employees, because this young employee cohort expresses new and different work-related values. However, diverse attitudes and behaviors of employees in different age groups can potentially lead to conflict and have an overall negative impact on organizational performance. Given US labor legislation and media pressure, managing workforce diversity has been on the agenda of U.S. organizations for many years. Consequently, it can be assumed that there are areas in which German organizations can learn best practices from the U.S. experience. Although data collected from Silicon Valley organizations suggest that taking specific action for managing the multi-generational workforce is currently not a pressing issue in the tech industry, setting up innovative workplaces is an action field in which Germany can learn from its U.S. counterparts.

Pedagogy in a Potentially Hostile Online Environment

Student-on-student bullying in brick and mortar schools is unfortunately commonplace and has been the subject of research for many years. Alongside the growth of online learning, there has been a corresponding growth in cyberbullying, not only in the student-on-student category, but also student-on-teacher. This new form of bullying can be devastating for the target because, unlike the traditional form of bullying where interactions take place face to face, cyberbullying incorporates email, social media, and texts, which allows the aggression to spread rapidly across a potentially vast range of communication outlets, thus magnifying the effect. Given the potential for significant harm to instructors who are at risk of being targeted by an aggrieved or angry student, more research needs to be done concerning student to teacher cyberbullying. This chapter will examine various cases of student to teacher cyberbullying as well as the role that gender plays in online bullying and end with recommendations for prevention or recourse on the part of the targeted instructor.

Native American Cultural Identity Exploration in Their Postsecondary Education

Thirteen percent of American Indians/Alaskan Natives have achieved a bachelors' degree or higher compared to 28% of the overall United States population. Improving Native American educational attainment is critical as a pathway to economic prosperity and social equality. The problem is that educational leaders do not know what American Indians/Alaskan Natives consider a successful educational experience as aligned with their cultural identity. The purpose of this qualitative narrative inquiry was to examine the post-secondary experiences of American Indians/Alaskan Natives through their online stories via social media. Results showed the American Indians/Alaskan Natives' culture dominated their educational experience, and they were unlikely to widen their social identity. Moving from a mono-cultural view to one that includes a Eurocentric college culture could be contributory and fruitful. Online education might allow these Native American students to remain in their culture and still experience the Eurocentric college culture.