Digital Commons Network^™

A Game-Based Learning Model, Fatmah Mohamed Ali Ramsi

Theses

The purpose of this research is to design a conceptual model and develop an implementation as a proof of concept of game-based learning (GBL)to support linguistic skills acquisition. Our model lays the foundations of game-based learning by defining methods, processes, and procedures to support the development of game-based learning systems. Integration of learning and gameplay raises various issues, among them the learning process, learning content, and game characteristics. Language competency is fundamental to academic and social success. Vocabulary acquisition is a primary basis for language competency. Word lists and dictionaries have been used as a resource to enrich vocabulary. The …

An Application Of Fuzzy Logic In Urban Traffic Incident Detection, Feda Wasfi Fayez Mustafa

Theses

Traffic congestion in urban areas is an increasing problem around the world. Traffic incidents (such as accidents) are considered as the major source of traffic congestion. Traffic incidents have negative impacts on traffic flow, air pollution and fuel consumption. As a result, increasing interest in finding new techniques to deal with this issue has been shown. Traffic incident-management systems can decrease the effect of such events and keep roads capacity as close as possible to normal levels. Incident detection system is an important part of any incident management system. This thesis proposes a new approach to incident detection in urban …

Exploring Negative Sexual Experiences, Attitudes, And Behaviors By Auditory Status, Taylor Victoria Vogt

Theses

Sexual assault is a significant problem on college campuses across the United States and an extensive amount of research has been conducted to address the issue. However, only a limited number of empirical studies have examined sexual victimization among the Deaf and hard of hearing population. Using a survey instrument with a sample of Deaf, hard of hearing and hearing students (n = 3,970) at the Rochester Institute of Technology, this study examined the associations between auditory status, prior sexual victimization, rape myths and behaviors. The results showed that Deaf and hard of hearing students are more likely to experience …

The Look Of Fiction: A Visual Analysis Of The Front Covers Of The New York Times Fiction Bestsellers, Daniel Patrick Gallagher

Theses

In spite of the common saying "don't judge a book by its cover," studies show that actual books are overwhelmingly judged on the appearances of their covers. While studies have been conducted on what style or form of cover art is most attractive, most interesting, or most likely to sell, the current research conducts a visual analysis of the conventions contained in the covers of the best selling fiction books in the US, using the methods and ideas found in the theories of semiotics and visual culture, to offer a new perspective on the visual imagery of the covers. This …

Two Blocks From Heaven, David M. Tan

Theses

Two Blocks From Heaven is a story set in the realm of human trafficking. The story follows Chen, a young Chinese prostitute in an illegal brothel above a Chinese restaurant nearby a church in the middle of an unspecified American city. Jaded, abused, and weary of this life she’s been forced to live, she takes on a deal to train the new girl, Mei, in exchange for her own freedom. Upon Mei’s arrival and befriending, Chen is faced with a choice: earn her freedom at the cost of Mei ending up like her or risk their safety by running away. …

Experiential Metaphors: Create Anti-Negative Home Products, Hong Ying Guo

Theses

Experiential metaphor is a user-centered design approach and methodology that I developed for my thesis project. This approach can be applied to a design to influence a user's perception or design process to facilitate the designer's concept ideation. The intention of this approach is to create a pleasurable product experience and a positive emotional response through interaction with the product and interpretation of its meaning. Grounded in meaning association, which is correlated with non-linguistic cognitive metaphor and human emotional models, four different levels of experiential metaphor are formed by the synthesis of the metaphor structure and levels of emotional elicitation. …

Utopia And Human Culture: Alternative Communities Of Higher Learning In America, Eli Orner Kramer

Theses

In this thesis I explore the place of the actualized utopian American alternative community of higher learning within a philosophy of human culture. I carry out such a study in order to articulate a unifying description of movement; to find the “target” that orients the activity of actualized utopia, as opposed to a classificatory rule to define a mechanically determined utopian-object. Although these communities have varied in practice since the first generation of them were created in the mid-nineteenth century, I argue that they have played, and continue to play, a particular role in America. They imagine what a world …

Perception Of /Q/ In The Arabic /Q/-/K/ Contrast By Native Speakers Of American English: A Discrimination Task, Ousmane Sawadogo

Theses

AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF Ousmane Sawadogo, for the Master of Arts degree in Applied Linguistics and TESOL, presented on May 4, 2015, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: PERCEPTION OF /q/ IN THE ARABIC /q/-/k/ CONTRAST BY NATIVE SPEAKERS OF AMERICAN ENGLISH: A DISCRIMINATION TASK MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Soo Jung Chang Studies on speech perception have suggested that non-native sound perception is influenced by the listener’s native language. Non-native sound contrast perception depends on a given sound’s similarity or dissimilarity to the listener’s equivalent native language sound. The Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) posits that it is difficult to …

Analyzing Domestic Abuse Using Natural Language Processing On Social Media Data, J Nicolas Schrading

Theses

Social media and social networking play a major role in billions of lives. Publicly available posts on websites such as Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, and Facebook can contain deeply personal accounts of the lives of users – and the crises they face. Health woes, family concerns, accounts of bullying, and any number of other issues that people face every day are detailed on a massive scale online. Utilizing natural language processing and machine learning techniques, these data can be analyzed to understand societal and public health issues. Expensive surveys need not be conducted with automatic understanding of social media data, allowing …

Tense And Truthmaking: Addressing The Problem Of Tense After The Ontological Turn, Elliott Risch

Theses

The vogue position among many philosophers and physicists is that the perceptual appearance of tensed properties, e.g. was past, is present and will be future, involves a perceptual illusion at a certain level of complexity within our physical system. This position leads to the problem of tense, where the truth of judgments based upon tensed properties is called into question. After appraising several received solutions to the problem of tense, I argue that each is guilty of implicitly assuming a certain estimation of what counts as a truth-maker for tensed judgments. This estimation is reliant upon an entailment relation holding …

Forma Naturalis, Patrick Kana

Theses

Mankind’s fascination with natural form is undeniably long-lived. From collecting and preserving specimens for evolutionary research, to documenting and expressing natural form through artistic practice, Mankind continues to embrace for scientific and aesthetic benefit that which surrounds us. I believe that botany, marine biology, and environmental phenomena—all areas of influence and study from my childhood—are sources that illustrate perfection in form and utility. The sheer beauty evident in these scientific forms continues to inspire me, and I will celebrate them and explore my relationship with them through an experimental making process in wood.

Carved objects, form studies, and functional furniture …

Community Crime Mapping: Increasing Predictive Policing With Dynamic Symbol Sets, Michael Chaszczewski

Theses

Crime prevention is an important area of study in our society that plays an integral role in the lives of citizens and the local police who enlist the aid of strategic counter crime plans to tackle the urgency created everyday when crimes are committed. This mode of counter acting crime is termed “problem oriented policing” and is a policing approach where individual pieces of police data are critically examined with the hope that the findings learned will lead to discovering a new and more effective counter crime strategy. Crime mapping is one of these analyzed tools allowing officers to understand …

Perspectives Of Chaos: Determining Meaning Through Interpretation, Benjamin M. Schmidt

Theses

None provided

Communication Considerations And Relational Dialectical Tensions Experienced By University Sign Language Interpreters, Morgan L. Tucker

Theses

The sign language interpreter/student relationship is unique. The interpreter is present in the educational environment to facilitate communication between deaf/hard of hearing students and hearing professors and fellow students; interpreters help people who use different language modes to communicate effectively. In university environments it is not uncommon for interpreters and students to build relationships and even friendships while they work together. However, professional codes and ethics for interpreters can conflict with the normal affinity and closeness developed in many interpersonal relationships. This can lead to contradictory impulses and tensions. The relational dialects theory is guided by the premise that different …

The Production Of Arabic Geminate Stops By English Learners Of Arabic, Ahmed Saad Almutiri

Theses

This study aims to investigate the developmental ability of beginning and advance L1 English learners of Arabic to pronounce standard Arabic geminate consonants when enrolled in a full time L2 program. The results showed that English learners produced shorter closure duration when pronouncing geminates. In particular, the beginners lengthened singletons more than the advanced learners did, while both groups of learners shortened geminates much more so than native speakers of Arabic. The advanced L1 English learners of Arabic produced longer geminate duration than beginners. The ultimate result was a smaller ratio between singleton and geminate consonants in comparison to native …

Lexical Knowledge Of Verb-Particle By Saudi English Learners, Fadwi Waleed Alturki

Theses

Verb-particle constructions are one of the most complex components of the English language. Understanding and producing such difficult constructs in a second language (L2) is a challenge for L2 learners of English. This research was based on the study by Blais and Gonnerman (2013). The purpose of the current study was to measure American and Saudi participants' sensitivity to the degree of semantic similarity between verb/verb-particle constructions. The survey of similarity ratings was administered to 107 American native English speakers and 67 Saudi English learners. The participants were asked to rate 78 items based on their knowledge of the semantic …

Coeffects Of Experience And Professional Interest On Slps' Assessment Of Chronic Aphasia: A Correlational Survey Study, Alivia Rachelle Berry

Theses

Abstract Background: Aphasia is a commonly treated language disorder; however there is discrepancy among professionals regarding classification and assessment practices (Code & Petheram, 2011; McNeil & Pratt, 2001). Current research focuses heavily on acute treatment; chronic aphasia is severely under-represented. A review of the literature revealed a wide array of standardized and non-standardized tests used to evaluate both acute and chronic aphasia cases. Overall, there appears to be variance in evaluation practices, especially among SLPs (Bland et al., 2013). Aims: The present study aims to quantify two variables that may account for this inconsistency in evaluation procedures: 1) years of …

Exploring English Instructors' Perceptions And Actual Practices Regarding The Strategies Used In Teaching And Assessing Writing In Three Tertiary Education Institutions In The Sultanate Of Oman, Noura Abdullah Hamed Al-Azani

Theses

The aim of this study was to explore the perceptions and practices of ESL/EFL instructors in teaching and assessing writing in three tertiary educational institutions in the Sultanate of Oman (Al Buraimi University College, University of Buraimi, and Sohar University). The researcher used the quantitative and qualitative methods in the study. The data was gathered through a questionnaire (n=147), 15 interviews (n=15), and 18 classroom observations (n=10). The findings of this study revealed that the majority of ESL/EFL instructors believe in and practice aspects of the process- and product-oriented approaches for teaching academic writing in Oman. Many ESL/EFL instructors believe …

Parents Attitude Towards Inclusion Of Students With Disabilities Into The General Education Classrooms, Maitha Khalifa Ali Al Neyadi

Theses

This study aims at examining parents’ attitude toward including students with disabilities into the general education classrooms. The objectives of this study are threefold as follows: a) investigating parents' attitudes towards including children with disabilities in the general education classrooms, b) examining whether there is a difference in attitude between parents of children with and without disabilities, and c) examining the influence of the child's severity level on parents’ attitudes toward inclusion. Participants were 100 parents ( 50 parents of children with disabilities from a rehabiltation centers, and 50 parents of children without disabilities). The research employed a quantitative analysis …

Topic Uncovering And Image Annotation Via Scalable Probit Normal Correlated Topic Models, Xingchen Yu

Theses

Topic uncovering of the latent topics have become an active research area for more than a decade and continuous to receive contributions from all disciplines including computer science, information science and statistics. Since the introduction of Latent Dirichlet Allocation in 2003, many intriguing extension models have been proposed. One such extension model is the logistic normal correlated topic model, which not only uncovers hidden topic of a document, but also extract a meaningful topical relationship among a large number of topics. In this model, the Logistic normal distribution was adapted via the transformation of multivariate Gaussian variables to model the …

Analysis Of Cycle 2 Science Textbooks Representation Of Scientific Literacy And Readability Level, Aisha Abdulla Salem Al Qaydi Al Qaydi

Theses

For over half a century, textbooks have played a decisive role in teaching and learning activities. In today’s classrooms, textbooks serve as primary teaching instruments and greatly influence how knowledge is delivered and communicated. With the development of the society, a majority of teachers use textbooks to guide their instruction. On the other hand, readability of textbooks is an important construct for both educators and textbook authors. Finding the right fit between the students’ reading ability and the text difficulty is an important and challenging task for teachers. This study is about how scientific content is presented and represented in …

Principals' Instructional Leadership Practices And Their Relationship To Teachers' Instructional Practices In Sharjah Schools, Hayat Mohamed Abdalla Al Hosani

Theses

Instructional leadership has become one of the most widely researched topics. This type of leadership has been connected to teacher growth and development, teacher job satisfaction, student achievement, and improving school climate in general. This study focuses on instructional leadership in schools of Sharjah Education Zone. Specifically, the study aims to describe the principal instructional leadership practices, to identify the most and least important teachers' instructional practices, and to investigate whether there is a relationship between the principals' instructional practices and teachers' teaching practices. This study is quantitative in nature and therefore a questionnaire was used to collect data from …

Broken Art, Jihwan Park

Theses

My “Broken Art” series created between 2013 and 2014 is the subject of my Thesis.

My study is focused on three characteristics: Semiotics (signs, symbols, and indices explore artwork in a series that is broken). Great changes in art history between two art movements, Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art are synthesized in one artwork.

Finally, commercialism is dealt with through symbols which I construct.

The following scholars and artists are discussed in relation to my series: Charles Sanders Pierce (1839~1914, American), Rene Magritte (1898~1967, Belgian), Rosy Keyser (1974~, Baltimore, MD), Roy Lichtenstein (1923~1997, American), and Barry Le Va (1941, Long …

Two Indexical Theories Of Names, Costigan Thomas

Theses

In this paper I argue that there is no motivation to support the Strong Indexical Theory of Names as opposed to its counterpart the Weak Indexical Theory of Names. The Strong Indexical Theory, as proposed by Pelczar, argues that names are indexicals. According to Pelczar, names are context-sensitive to an antecedently performed speech-act, which fixes the referent in that context. However, the content of ambiguous terms can also be fixed by a speech-act, and so according to the strong theory ambiguous terms are indexicals. Furthermore, the meaning of any term can also shift over time and thus unambiguous terms could …

How Real Is Reality? : An Examination Of Perceived Realism And Permissive Sexual Attitudes In Relation To Reality Dating Shows, Margaret E. Bennett

Theses

This study investigated whether exposure to reality dating shows shaped participants’ perceptions of reality and permissive sexual attitudes, with the incorporation of more recent reality dating shows. A sample of 156 college-aged students participated in an online survey. Gender predicted the amount of exposure to reality dating shows, with females watching more than males. Heavy exposure was not a predictor of permissive sexual attitudes. Heavy exposure did predict how realistic the viewers perceived the reality dating shows to be. However, perceived realism was not related to permissive sexual attitudes. Perceived realism also did not play a moderating or mediating role …

Riot And Ruckus: Nationalism On Stage In The Early Modernist Theater Of The Futurists And Ballets Russes, 1909-1914, Ashley Diann Ray

Theses

Objective: How and why did the early modernist groups of the Ballets Russes and the Italian Futurists utilize nationalism in their early theatrical programs? In this study we look at the genesis and early artistic influences of Sergei Diaghilev, founder of the Ballets Russes, and F. T. Marinetti, founder of the Italian Futurists. We consider the political affiliations and ideals of nationalism of these two men and those artists crucial to both movements. The issue of the crisis of modernity is discussed, and how both art movements react to, and are products of this crisis. Through early writings, compositions, poems, …

Architecture As Communication: A Study Of The Role Of Form, Function And Context In Evoking Meaning, Priyanka Sondhi

Theses

The aim of this thesis is to understand and design an architecture that includes as part of its program, the function of communication of a certain encoded idea(s) through the public's everyday interaction with it. This thesis is divided into two parts - exploration and design project. The exploration part studies the methods and history of communicating meaning through architecture. Based on this study a design project was defined which included picking an appropriate site, identifying the meaning to be communicated for the site context, studying the context for such communication and designing a building program and form.

Rochester, being …

Mining And Integration Of Structured And Unstructured Electronic Clinical Data For Dementia Detection, Joseph Bullard

Theses

Dementia is an increasing problem for the aging population that incurs high medical costs, in part due to the lack of available treatment options. Accordingly, early detection is critical to potentially postpone symptoms and to prepare both healthcare providers and families for a patient's management needs. Current detection methods are typically costly or unreliable, and could greatly benefit from improved recognition of early dementia markers. Identification of such markers may be possible through computational analysis of patients' electronic clinical records. Prior work on has focused on structured data (e.g. test results), but these records often also contain natural language (text) …

Matural Exams In Kosovo: An Analysis On 2014 Test Results, Genta Agaj

Theses

The focus of this research project was to address some of the criticisms associated with Kosovo’s standardized tests - Matura Exams. The main goal of the project was to statistically analyze students’ test results using three statistical techniques. This problem was tackled by obtaining the 2014 results for the Municipality of Prishtina.

First, Prishtina’s Matura Exam test results were checked for normality. The results from this test suggested that even though Matura Exam is supposed to have normally-distributed results, it failed to do so. Its implications include students and universities not being able to compare individual results with the population …

Participatory Action Research: Effect Of Emphasising Graduate Attributes On Work-Placement Reflection, Julie Dunne

Theses

This project aimed to investigate what the effect of activities to promote awareness of graduate attributes development introduced during 2014/15 would be on the quality of reflection displayed in student pharmacy technicians’ workplacement blogs. The project was undertaken in response to a deficit in critical reflection shown in earlier years. The work-placement blogs from 2013/14 were used as a comparison for this study. The theoretical perspective included a constructivist ontological position and an interpretivist epistemological position. The methodology was participatory action research involving the Pharmacy Technician students as co-researchers. The cycles of action and research aligned to three research objectives, …