Digital Commons Network^™

Fostering Student Success Through Meaningful Communication And Positive Connections In Language Teaching, Bracken Lind

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This portfolio is a compilation of the research I completed during my studies in the Master of Second Language Teaching program at Utah State University. The research was informed by my personal experiences as a high school aide to English Language Learners and as a college-level Spanish instructor, as well as by my coursework throughout the program.

The portfolio is divided into two main sections: teaching perspectives and research perspectives. In the teaching perspectives, I highlight some of the crucial themes in language teaching. The section on research perspectives contains two research papers written in support of my teaching philosophy.

Bookscapes: A Study In The Interconnectivity Of Landscape And Narrative Visualization And Communication In Landscape Architecture, Tonya Randall

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The fields of landscape architecture and literacy have the potential to be linked through a simulated environment. Through this connection, opportunity for education arises. This thesis creates and describes a program called Bookscapes, which presents a narrative inside a simulated landscape for the purpose of communicating landscape architecture/urban planning principles.

Bookscapes is a stand-alone computer program designed using theories in education and guidelines for virtual and restorative environments (including Huang’s elements, Kaplan’s Attention Restoration Theory for restorative environments, constructivist theory of situational learning) and the revolving design process in landscape architecture’s communication to clients through 3D modeling.

This thesis first …

Hyperreal Communication, Idil Tayhan

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

”In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles.” -Guy Debord

Particularly in the contemporary era, image duplication and manipulation techniques have been advancing rapidly. These advancements are forming a new discourse around communication that is drastically different from its predecessors. For this reason, in the contemporary era, communication has become questionable in its truthfulness and sincerity. As a designer, I am concerned with the extreme commercialization and commodification of communication. My work looks to the situationist movement of the 60's, which sought to disrupt every cultural front in order …