Digital Commons Network^™

A Faculty Development Handbook For Quality Online Instruction, Joan Carol Frese

CCE Theses and Dissertations

The offering of online classes has been growing at an incredible rate. Many institutions coerce their instructors into teaching online classes even if they are not prepared. If teachers are unprepared when they teach, there is a negative effect on the students and can jeopardize the reputation of the institution. In order to teach over the Internet, instructors need to learn new competencies. Students in online classes are usually not traditional students. In addition, there can be miscommunication in online classes, because there are no visual cues. Instructors need to learn new communication strategies as well as teaching strategies for …

Using Neural Networks To Develop A New Model To Screen Applicants For Apartment Rentals, Michael T. Furick

CCE Theses and Dissertations

Credit scoring is a mathematical means of summarizing a consumer's credit and financial history into a three-digit number. This number provides an easy means of identifying and sorting consumer behavior into categories based on their financial history. To select applicants for loans and to set interest rates on loans, banks and financial institutions routinely use credit scoring. Auto insurance companies also use scoring to decide which consumers will be offered auto insurance and to set the price for auto insurance. Despite success in these two industries, scoring does not appear to be effective in the apartment rental industry in picking …

Information Policies And Practices Of Knowledge Management(Km) As Related To The Development Of The Global Aviation Information Network(Gain)- An Applied Case Study And Taxonomy Development, Jeffrey S. Forrest

CCE Theses and Dissertations

The Global Aviation Information Network (GAIN) was initiated in response to U.S. Government policies seeking to reduce airline accidents. GAIN was to disseminate airline or aviation safety information in environments where public disclosure impedes the diffusion of information. Government legislation such as the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and other information policies create risks of public disclosure to those reporting information. Therefore, the problem investigated in this research was to identity and evaluate potential solutions to policy issues in public disclosure that prevent the collection and sharing of aviation safety information.

Interactions between GAIN, information policy, and knowledge management (KM) …

Standards Directory: An Engineering And Technology Standards Digital Library And Information Retrieval System For The Walt Disney Company, Shawn Harrs

CCE Theses and Dissertations

Walt Disney Company (Company) engineers and architects utilize engineering and technology standards in the design, development, and maintenance of its physical infrastructure worldwide. There was a need to improve the methods by which Company standards are organized and retrieved. While the leading commercial information brokers for engineering and technology standards provide standards search engines and online standards catalogs, these search services are poor in supporting standards seekers who have only a general understanding of their information needs because their searches only utilize a standard's document number, title, and keywords as metadata for searching.

In order to provide a tool for …

Developing A Nisga'a Learning Objects Repository For Use In The Schools, Kim A. Hansen

CCE Theses and Dissertations

The use of information technologies to develop, manage, access, and to use learning resources and content from a variety of sources has changed the academic and learning environment. There was a need to focus on the identification of tools and the development of skills to manage these resources, particularly in the kindergarten to grade 12 classrooms. For the students and educators of School District 92 (Nisga' a), there was also a need to provide access to important Nisga'a cultural and heritage learning objects as many preserved videos, pictures, historic documents, cultural teaching materials, and various printed matter were not available …

Scholarly Communication And Knowledge Management In American Zoos, Julia Innes

CCE Theses and Dissertations

The researcher investigated whether frontline, tacit knowledge about zoo animals was captured by zookeepers, curators, researchers, veterinarians, and outside researchers and, if so, whether and how it was transmitted into the scholarly literature. A bibliometric analysis was done of a representative sample of peer-reviewed zoo research articles published between 1973 and 200 I. This was extended to grey literature and acknowledgements statements from the same period to obtain a more global picture.

Research participants were evaluated in terms of their contributions (journal articles, conference papers, or acknowledged research assistance). Changes were mapped chronologically and by profess ion. The participation of …

An Investigation Of The Effects Of The Gerogis Framework For Integrating Technology(In Tech) Training Program On Teachers' Computer Self-Efficacy And Computer Utilization, Ian Johnson

CCE Theses and Dissertations

National technology standards drafted by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) are incorporated into the technology standards required of American public schools. The state board of education in Georgia instituted the Georgia Framework for Integrating TECHnology (InTech), which is a 50-hour training program that prepares teachers to help their students accomplish technology standards and performance objectives.

The goal of this study was to investigate the effects on teachers' computer self-efficacy, technology integration, current instructional practices, personal computer use and factors relating to use or non-use of computers in the curriculum after completing the Georgia Framework for Integrating TECHnology …

Privacy Policies: A Study Of Their Use Among Online Canadian Pharmacies, Joanne Kuzma

CCE Theses and Dissertations

The use of online Canadian pharmacies has grown over the past decade due to lower cost medications and ease of use. In order for these firms to gain business and marketing information, they collect a variety of consumer data. This has raised concerns among consumers as to privacy issues of the data collected by these online firms. However, researchers have not effectively examined how online consumers value specific privacy factors when deciding whether to use the sites. Also, studies have not determined if many of these sites have comprehensive privacy policies that indicate if they protect consumers' data for a …

A Quantitative Analysis Of Performance In A Multi-Protocol Ad Hoc 802.11b-Based Wireless Local Network, Paul Christian Nielsen Jr.

CCE Theses and Dissertations

The popularity of the Internet and the growing demand for ubiquitous connectivity accelerate the need for viable wireless local area network (WLAN) solutions. As a consequence, increasing number of manufacturers have adopted the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) 802.11a/b/g set of WLAN standards and produced inexpensive wireless products to expand capabilities of existing LANs. IEEE 802.11 b wireless products are widely accepted. Mobile ad hoc networks, a variant of the 802.11 standards, exist without the requirement for a wired infrastructure or host to provide routing, connectivity, and maintenance services. Because of the high variability of environments in which …

Blogging: An Inquiry Into The Efficacy Of A Web-Based Technology For Student Reflection In Community College Computer Science Programs, Jane W. Perschbach

CCE Theses and Dissertations

Reflection in learning is a pedagogical technique used to promote the higher order cognitive skills of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation that constitute the concept of critical thinking. To foster reflection in learning, the Internet technology of online journals known as blogs was employed in a two-semester, four-course investigation of the efficacy of this educational technology for vocational computer science students in a community college. The process involved an instructor-designed and maintained course blog containing suggestions for student reflection as well as hyperlinks to individual student peer blogs. Students were required to read both the course and peer blogs, and to …

Effectiveness Of Asynchronous Reference Services For Distance Learning Students Within Florida's Community College System, Patricia C. Profeta

CCE Theses and Dissertations

The impact of distance learning on higher education and the need to provide equitable library services to students in the digital environment emerged as critical areas during the 1990s. Library services available to distance learning students included digital reference and instructional services, remote access to online research tools, database and research tutorials, interlibrary loan, and document delivery. Digital reference services appeared to be one of the more significant services proffered by academic libraries although these services were developed often without forethought to goals and assessment. The purpose of this study was to examine the adequacy of asynchronous e-mail reference services …

Establishing A New Paradigm In Engineering And Technology Education: An Experimental Analysis Of Multiple Learning Methodologies And Examination Of Cognitive Profiles Of Continuing Education Students, James A. Sinclair

CCE Theses and Dissertations

This study consisted of two inter-related components. The first part compared three instructional methods for delivering a Computer Aided Design (CAD) course for adult Continuing Education (CE) students. The second part established a comprehensive cognitive profile matrix of adult continuing education students entering careers in technology. The first part examined the use of three delivery methods, using three randomly selected groups of students. The three methods were as following:

• Traditional classroom-based training.
• Instructor-facilitated course presented online.
• Independent study, using a CD-ROM tutorial.

The experimental design consisted of three randomly selected sample groups’ of20 students. The independent variable in the study …

An Improved Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm With Adaptable Parameters, Khoa Duc Tran

CCE Theses and Dissertations

Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithms (MOEAs) are not easy to use because they require parameter tunings of three main parameters - population size, crossover probability, and mutation probability - in order to achieve desirable solutions and performance for an arbitrary complex problem. Moreover, the use of fixed parameter settings may lead to slow convergence and sub-optimal solutions. This dissertation develops a MOEA with self-adaptive crossover, self-adaptive mutation, and adaptive population size parameters for automating the process of adjusting appropriate parameter values in order to make the MOEA more efficient, simple to use and available to more users. The MOEA with adaptable parameters …