The purposes of the research were to (1) examine the relationships between faculty behaviors that promote critical thinking and the resulting critical thinking within peer interaction and (2) identify specific faculty behaviors that result in the highest levels of critical thinking within peer interactions. Using a concurrent embedded mixed methods approach, 19,595 peer-to-peer responses were coded along the 5-point scale of the Interaction Analysis Model (IAM) and faculty behaviors within 91 courses were reviewed for 19 different behaviors. Comparing each individual faculty behavior to the IAM scores yielded interesting results. There were six significant correlations between faculty behaviors and scores on the IAM. Two of the correlations involved "negative" faculty behaviors, perhaps suggesting that peers make up for the lack of instructor presence within discussions. Multiple considerations for discussion design and facilitation are suggested along with recommendations for future research.

There are a vast number of studies that examine narrowly focused aspects of collaborative activities. However, rare is the research that synthesizes the findings of these studies and suggests an overall picture of well-designed collaborative activities. Toward this end, this manuscript discusses the characteristics of collaboration related to communication, structure, group composition, and grounding. The design of a collaborative activity should allow for certain types of conversations, feedback, and questions. The structure of a collaborative activity should consider tasks, scripts, and roles. Group size and ability grouping are flexible based on the analyses conducted at the beginning of the design process. The social space should afford grounding by not only allowing for social interaction, but also by stimulating such interaction.

Using an illustrative case study, this chapter explores the two-year design process of a practice-based Doctor of Education degree program in an online university. Emerging from the continuous improvement lens, the redesign process centered around the examination of the purpose of the degree in the context of meeting the educational needs of practitioners in the field. Principally, this program redesign led to greater differentiation between the practitioner-based EdD degree and the PhD to provide students with distinct options for meeting their personal and professional goals.

“In your work on ethics you have provided us with resources for moving ahead, the importance of which we have been slow to recognize; we think of your stubborn insistence that a koinonia ethic is concerned with relations and functions, not with principles and precepts; your emphasis upon insight rather than calculation, upon coherence rather than consistency; … It now seems clear to us that you are pointing to a basic shift, long overdue, not only in ethics but also in the whole theological enterprise.”