Letter of recommendation from my thesis director and professor while working on my masters degree

1. Department of Psychology
P.O. Box 6161
Mississippi State, MS 39762-6161
Telephone: (662) 325-3202
Fax: (662) 325-7212
May 21, 2008
To Whom It May Concern:
This letter is to recommend Adnan Okdeh for your position. I have known Adnan for three years
now, ever since he began his Masters Degree program here at Mississippi State University.
Throughout that time I have served as Adnan's advisor. Adnan has currently completed all of
the requirements for his degree and will shortly be receiving his Masters in Psychology degree
from our program, with a concentration in Experimental Psychology.
Although Adnan received his degree from our experimental track, it is a flexible program that
allows students considerable latitude in their coursework and research specialization. Adnan has
concentrated on developing his expertise in applied cognitive psychology and human factors.
His Masters' project explored the nature of tutoring between an instrument flight instructor and a
student pilot. Our primary data was a video recording of a flight instructor and five student
pilots who were either 'flying' a simulator or flying a single-engine airplane. The first step in
understanding what transpired between the instructor and the tutor was to develop a coding
system for all the utterances made by each of the two people. We had very little previous work
to build upon.
Adnan created a sophisticated and precise coding system four different high-level categories,
fifteen subcategories, and innumerable qualifiers and modifiers. He then proceeded to code all
10 transcripts. Adnan also looked through the tutoring literature to determine what others had
learned about tutoring, regardless of the domain involved. Adnan identified a small literature on
the topic, usually from tutors who worked in formal problem-solving domains like algebra.
Theories of tutoring are also few and far between, though Adnan identified two rather different
'models' of tutoring, one developed by Art Graesser and the other by McArthur. Graesser
identified a Socratic method of tutoring that was used by paraprofessionals, who asked questions
of students rather than providing answers. McArthur's tutors were more skilled professionals.
They didn't ask questions; instead they offered help whenever a student appeared to be study.
Adnan's thesis was designed to explore the generality of these previous models. Neither fit
particularly well to our data, though we did find some overlap with each of the two previous
approaches.
Instead Adnan found that flight instructors spend most of their time 'commanding' pilots to carry
out various actions. They also warned of impending problems a good bit of the time as well.
The minority of instructions included some plans and explanations. Adnan's thesis contributes

2. significantly to the tutoring literature and provides a great perspective on how tutors adapt their
instructional techniques to the characteristics of the domain they are tutoring.
Adnan really 'took the lead' on this project: he located references, spent a good deal of time
developing the coding system, coded the data, performed data analyses, and related his work to
other tutoring theories. He also gave a nice talk at last year's International Symposium on
Aviation Psychology. Given that we were both beginners in the tutoring field, and that the
existing literature is so fragmented and incomplete, Adnan's project came out quite well. We are
going to be working on writing up his results for publication shortly.
I enjoy working with Adnan. He is a very reliable worker who often contributed ideas to our
efforts. He is also a very nice person who is liked by almost everyone who meets him. If I had
additional funding to hire Adnan as a research assistant, I would surely do so. For all these
reasons, I recommend him to you. I am happy to provide more details about Adnan' s
capabilities and strengths. You may contact me by email (glb2@psychology.msstate.edu) or by
telephone (662) 325-0550.
Sincerely,
Gary Bradshaw, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Psychology
Mississippi State University