Universities have been increasingly engaged in international collaborations with peer institutions overseas. In recent years, Confucius Institutes have emerged as a new model of collaboration between American universities and Chinese universities. In an attempt to identify factors contributing to successful international university collaborations, this study used the case study method and focused on one Confucius Institute between MMU, an American University, and ZZU, a Chinese university, and intended to identify factors leading to the success of the MMU-ZZU Confucius Institute collaboration. The study investigated the MMU-ZZU Confucius Institute collaboration within the framework of the MMU-ZZU institutional partnership. Based on data collected from the institutional documents, interviews, site visits and news reports, this study examined the experiences and perceptions of the university's stakeholders involved in creating and sustaining this particular Confucius Institute, including stakeholders at the program level, at the college level, and at the institutional level both at MMU and ZZU. Using the glonacal agency heuristics framework, the MMU-ZZU Confucius Institute collaboration was a result of joint forces of stakeholders at the program level, at the college level, and at the institutional level from ZZU and MMU. Stakeholders, no matter what level they are and which institution they are affiliated with, had to navigate through the significant differences between them to develop synergy to be successful. Synergy, including vertical synergy developed among stakeholders within each institution and horizontal synergy developed among stakeholders between institutions, turned out to be critical to the success of the MMU-ZZU CI. The study concluded that synergy in leadership, organizational contexts, stakeholders' resources, and the synergy in the MMU-ZZU Confucius Institute collaboration and the MMU-ZZU institutional partnership, led to the success of the MMU-ZZU Confucius Institute collaboration.

This dissertation reports on an action research study that sought to discover how a new WiFi, tablet computing device, the Apple iPad, affected, enhanced, and impacted student engagement in an English Honors course at Scottsdale Community College. The researcher was also the instructor in the two semester, first-year, college composition sequence (English 101/102) in which all 18 students were provided the new Apple iPad tablet computing device. The researcher described how students adapted the Apple iPads to their academic lives, assessed iPad compatibility with current instructional technology systems, and interviewed participating students to document their beliefs about whether iPad activities enhanced the course. At the conclusion of the college composition sequence, 13 students agreed to participate in focus groups to describe how they made use of the iPad and to report on how the iPad influenced their engagement. Among other findings, students reported that there were compatibility problems with current SCC instructional technology systems, that the iPad increased their efficiency in completing informal educational tasks, but that the iPad was not useful for doing word processing and research. Recommendations for future use of the iPad in this course include reducing the number of iPads accessing the WiFi network at the same time, piloting the use of iPad word processing applications, researching more "mobile-friendly" web sites and documents, and developing innovative assignments that take advantage of iPad capabilities.

Although U.S. rates of college enrollment among 18-24 year olds have reached historic highs, rates of degree completion have not kept pace. This is especially evident at community colleges, where a disproportionate number of students from groups who, historically, have had low college-completion rates enroll. One way community colleges are attempting to address low completion rates is by implementing institutional interventions intended to increase opportunities for student engagement at their colleges. Utilizing logistic and linear regression analyses, this study focused on community college students, examining the association between participation in institutional support activities and student outcomes, while controlling for specific student characteristics known to impact student success in college. The sample included 746 first-time, full-time, degree-seeking students at a single community college located in the U.S. Southwest. Additional analyses were conducted for the 440 first-time, full-time, degree-seeking students in this sample who placed into at least one developmental education course. Findings indicate that significant associations exist between different types of participation in institutional interventions and various student outcomes: Academic advising was found to be related to increased rates of Fall to Spring and Fall to Fall persistence and, for developmental education students, participation in a student success course was found to be related to an increase in the proportion of course credit hours earned. The results of this study provide evidence that student participation in institutional-level support may relate to increased rates of college persistence and credit hour completion; however, additional inquiry is warranted to inform specific policy and program decision-making at the college and to determine if these findings are generalizable to populations outside of this college setting.