Community college students are attracted to courses with alternative delivery formats such as hybrid courses because the more flexible delivery associated with such courses provides convenience for busy students. In a hybrid course, face-to-face, structured seat time is exchanged for online components. In such courses, students take more responsibility for their learning because they assume additional responsibility for learning more of the course material on their own. Thus, self-regulated learning (SRL) behaviors have the potential to be useful for students to successfully navigate hybrid courses because the online components require exercise of more personal control over the autonomous learning situations inherent in hybrid courses. Self-regulated learning theory includes three components: metacognition, motivation, and behavioral actions. In the current study, this theoretical framework is used to examine how inducing self-regulated learning activities among students taking a hybrid course influence performance in a community college science course. The intervention for this action research study consisted of a suite of activities that engage students in self-regulated learning behaviors to foster student performance. The specific SRL activities included predicting grades, reflections on coursework and study efforts in course preparation logs, explanation of SRL procedures in response to a vignette, photo ethnography work on their personal use of SRL approaches, and a personalized study plan. A mixed method approach was employed to gather evidence for the study. Results indicate that community college students use a variety of self-regulated learning strategies to support their learning of course material. Further, engaging community college students in learning reflection activities appears to afford some students with opportunities to refine their SRL skills and influence their learning. The discussion focuses on integrating the quantitative and qualitative data and explanation of the findings using the SRL framework. Additionally, lessons learned, limitations, and implications for practice and research are discussed. Specifically, it is suggested that instructors can foster student learning in hybrid courses by teaching students to engage in SRL processes and behaviors rather than merely focusing on delivery of course content. Such SRL behaviors allow students to exercise greater control over the autonomous learning situations inherent in hybrid courses.

Matilda of Canossa (1046 to 1115), the Great Countess of Tuscany, was a noblewoman, a warrior, and a papal supporter who later generations adapted to satisfy a variety of cultural and ideological interests. Matilda's life as a ruler was amplified over the following five hundred years in an avalanche of words and images that served many purposes. This thesis considers the art produced during her lifetime in the context of disputes over papal authority, as well as art produced about Matilda subsequently. The study includes a discussion of her appearance in Dante's Comedy; her importance to Florentine artists such as Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo Buonarroti in the 16th century; and concludes with the significance of the elaborate tomb sculpted for her reburial by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in St. Peter's Cathedral. An examination of Matilda through these shifting representations from the 12th to the 17th century enables an understanding of how and why she became an impressive symbol in the visual arts. Finally, the study examines the process through which a strong, powerful woman was transformed from an historical person to a legend. Matilda's remarkable life and myth is still relevant to art historical, religious and cultural studies because of the pervasiveness of her influence a millennium after her death.