Connecting Concepts of Self-Efficacy, Engaged Scholarship, and Civic Responsibility Among Student-Veterans

An estimated 23 million veterans lived in the United States in 2013, when the U.S. spent approximately $99 billion on veterans' benefits, $4.4 billion of which funded education and vocational rehabilitation. This denotes increased presence of combat student-veterans in colleges, which signifies a growing need to understand their educational experiences. Research connects high self-efficacy and academic achievement. This study aimed for a deeper understanding of the educational experiences of combat student-veterans who had achieved academic degrees following deployment in Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF)/Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). Qualitative methodology was used as a source of in-depth exploration to identify conditions enhancing combat student-veterans' motivation in the college classroom. Using Yin's multiple-case-study research design, information was gathered from nine individual combat student-veteran perspectives. Findings indicated that mastery experience, vicarious experience and social persuasion were major sources of self-efficacy among student-veterans.

Financial Literacy Education Program Post Financial Housing Crisis

As Americans faced financial devastation resulting from the 2008 housing financial crisis, left them in a critical financial hardship. Many affluent suburban neighborhoods now resembled desolate ghost towns as families abandon homes in the middle of the night to avoid ugly snares and embarrassment (Bradford, 2011). Homeowners that once lived in upper middle-class communities achieving the American dream faced the horrifying reality of facing foreclosure, bankruptcies that will force themselves into financial ruin (Bradford, 2011). As a result of the financial housing crisis, 6.9 million homeowners faced mortgage delinquency causing financial institutions to begin foreclosure proceedings (Bradford, 2011; Crotty, 2009). This research focuses on the background to the problem, the underserved populations that were deeply impacted by the financial housing crisis and financial literacy education program that can assist the community toward financial recovery.

Collaboration

Driving on the works of Dr. King, this researcher developed an integrated framework for understanding how engaged scholarship and civic responsibility organize into three diverse modes: social justice, economic opportunity, and educational uplift: prospectively, in real time, and retrospectively. The researcher unveils how these modes are generally positioned in an influential discourse of risk that lead organizations to reduce risk by controlling risk uniformly that propels the approval of certain risk conditions over others, and through the privatizing of certain key points of information. Besides identification of the communal manner risk is categorized in the three given modes, and demonstrating the manner in which risk is appended by influential discourse, the researcher purports different ways to organize risk that leads to demonstrated positive social justice, enhanced economic opportunity, and educational uplift. This chapter provides for academicians, community leaders, and government official enhanced knowledge about engaged scholarship and civic responsibility.

Telemedicine and Telehealth

Despite identifying the importance of telemedicine and telehealth education in scholarly environments, researchers rarely explore the dynamics of taking some of this learning to the community to engage in prevention. Medical professionals are consistently receiving education to enhance their knowledge, skills, and capabilities. Telemedicine and Telehealth have a new role in the community and is akin to house calls from the past. Engaged in this text is the action for medical professionals, government officials, and civic leaders to work together to move prevention health study to the community. This movement promotes the sharing of knowledge and understanding between the scholarly world and the communities they serve. The researcher concludes with the discussion of the responsibility required in the learning process at all levels. This text will provide a guideline for such an engaged and shared approach to healthcare prevention, as well as implications for future research and practice.

Empowering Civic Responsibility

The engaged scholarship has been widely viewed as academic service-learning and community service, which aim to link the classroom and community through courses with a transformative experiential education. It becomes an initiative to inculcate civic responsibility among students with the goal to produce responsible citizens and active participants in the community. This chapter will critically explore the main contribution of service learning to build civic responsibility. The literature review was conducted from referred books and journals on the topic of civic responsibility and service learning. As a core guideline to give a clear understanding and insightful view on the importance of the civic responsibility, this study could contribute to the significant insights towards different aspects of engaged scholarship and civic responsibility. Putting together awareness and goodwill from the community towards the group or organization should do with building civic engagement to get involved in social events to produce responsible citizens and active participants in the community.

NuuED, Academia, and Community

Exploring the development of an engaged scholarship and civic responsibility policy and procedure, and project plan with the purpose of providing an avenue for enhancing knowledge retention for the disadvantaged and low-income is the purpose of this chapter. This avenue of knowledge retention is driven through data collection, that was designed and developed into a tool to enable the pulling of data according to the learning and social styles of its users. Academics learn how the tools supports their deliveries of information to be learned. This chapter will enhance its readers' knowledge reach regarding the usage and value of scholarship through learning and social styles learning. Second, the chapter provides a reach into communities to embrace academics, thereby supporting the uplift of the human condition. Next, the chapter adds to the body of knowledge regarding engaged community outreach, learning and social styles, and knowledge retention for individuals of all ages.

Driving STEM Through Engaged Scholarship and Civic Responsibility

Pew Research Center revealed a scarcity of U.S. science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) students with advanced degrees at U. S. higher education institutions. Engaged Scholarship opens broad new outlooks in the understanding of STEM professionals, and in how these individual identities and life experiences act as strengths in tackling engaged work. Exposure to STEM engaged scholarship and civic responsibility continues to break boundaries and restraints understood through four key questions. This research works through who can perform STEM? How can these ‘who' individuals perform STEM? What results can scientist, technologist, engineers, mathematician, and non-academes teamed together realize? How can academia, government, business, and community bride the digital divide to ensure a continued flow of STEM ready professionals who are academically prepared and civic minded? This chapter provided qualitative data, explored answers to the four (4) questions, and offered a roadmap to proactivity to recover America's strength in STEM education.

Higher Education Out-of-the-Box

Engaged Scholarship entails utilizing Technology driven Learning Innovation in Higher Education (HE) in an integrative manner and more than before in an Out-of-the-Box approach. Proper use of ICTs in higher learning educational systems ensures that not only the resources of the institutions are put in good use but that academic service learning, community based research and community engagement are enhanced. This chapter looks to discuss and address the various challenges HE institutions face as they try to adopt engaged scholarship by putting emphasis on proper use of ICTs and examining the implementation and impact of various ICT tools and of the social media. This will drive engaged scholarship, and the type of learning and development required to empower the stakeholders. Our main point is that proper and often Out-of-the-Box use of ICT tools in Higher Education could increase the engagement of the individuals in the learning process, help empower them and thus also improve their Quality of Life but also lead to improved Economic Development and Sustainability.