Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Lightcraft Previzion In Distance Education, Perry L. Cox

Open Access Theses

Visual Effects has continued to progress at an astonishing rate and green screen technology can be seen in all aspects of the video industry from Hollywood blockbusters down to training videos and distance education.

As video technology has increased, so has the quality and capability of distance education. Purdue University has set itself to be at the forefront of distance education. This study looked to evaluate Purdue's investment in the Lightcraft Technology's Previzion system and its impact on distance education at Purdue. There were 65 initial participants and this study compared the impact of two separate videos on their learning. …

Design And Plan Of A Modified Hydroponic Shipping Container For Research, John A. Houtman

Open Access Theses

As the world’s population continues to increase, food production will need to increase in order to meet the predicted rise in food demand. However, with increased pressure on cropland available from environmental effects and urbanization, new innovative methods of crop production need to be researched in order to increase agricultural production with limited land. This research focuses on the design of a single form of urban agriculture that is considered Zfarming and has the potential to produce quality urban agricultural produce through ground-based measures. This project produced detailed step-by-step analysis of the design process, develop variability within the modified hydroponic …

Encounters Beyond The Interface: Data Structures, Material Feminisms, And Composition, Christine L. Masters

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation argues that data literacy should be taught in college writing classes along with other new media literacies. Drawing from several areas of study, this dissertation establishes a definition of data literacy, introduces a feminist methodological approach to Big Data and data studies, and makes a case for teaching data literacy in first year composition and professional writing courses as a foundational writing-related literacy. Information written into and read from databases supports research activities in any number of fields from STEM to the humanities; while different disciplines approach databases and data structures from diverse perspectives, all students need foundational …

Decentering The Writing Program Archive: How Composition Instructors Save And Share Their Teaching Materials, Stacy Olivia Nall

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation decenters the writing program archive through research on instructors’ digital archives. Artifacts of composition instruction are no longer saved to print archives alone; rather, digital technologies expand the locations where artifacts of writing pedagogy can be archived and accessed. The following archival ethnography, focused on a community engagement writing course in the Introductory Composition at Purdue (ICaP) program, finds that many digital archives of composition are hidden to outside researchers or not sustained (which are theorized as either “abandoned” or “pop-up” archives). At the same time, some pedagogical materials are publicly visible by virtue of personal web spaces …

Wayfinding Localized Research Practices Through Mobile Technology, Adam W. Strantz

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation presents wayfinding—the process of orienting oneself amid the myriad users, technologies, and digital spaces impacting any writing work—as a research methodology for contextualizing writing in mobile environments. Central to web design and non-web service design, wayfinding is an important addition to rhetoric and writing studies. First, it is descriptive: it observes and records first, showing how people go about tasks, and revealing relationships among people and their environments. Second, it helps when people get lost and then found. It records traces of the mental work people do to get unlost. Finding themselves, peoples’ maps help them both narrate …

What Is Contemporary Art?, Irina A. Hinkel

Open Access Theses

The topic of the thesis is “What is contemporary art?”. While exploring contemporary art, its conceptions, characteristics and remarkable events related to it, I concentrate mainly on research of contemporary art as universal, particularly on such phenomena as multicultural art, postdramatic theater, audience interaction, as well as challenged aesthetics. This thesis also considers postmodern art, since contemporary art in its current form departed from postmodern art. I rely on and address the German language prose and drama, as well as visual arts. The work of Elfriede Jelinek, John von Düffel, Peter Handke, Kristof Magnusson, and multicultural artists Vladimir Kaminer, Feridun …

Superheroes And Social Action: Reproduction, Recurrence, And Recognition In The Superhero Genre, Max M. Renner

Open Access Theses

Rhetorical genre analysis examines genre as social action and is primarily concerned with the experiences of individual users (Miller, 1984). The genres that rhetorical genre scholarship takes up are typically functional genres or genres in which individuals have direct means of utilizing and modifying a genre. This focus on functional genres makes sense in terms of the tradition’s interest in user experience and reciprocity. This project seeks to examine the potential implications rhetorical genre analysis has for vernacular genres which, for the most part, have remained the domain of literary scholarship due to their focus on structural, formal elements.

This …

Automating Stem Learning By Engaging In Artful-Inspired Play, Katie E. Roth

Open Access Theses

A full range of experimental methodologies split between two distinct yet related projects was performed in an effort to define ways to automate STEM learning in artful-inspired play. Both projects aim to offer impactful learning experiences through artful-inspired activities meant to automate STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) learning in children that are both scientifically and non-scientifically inclined. By participating in play that is both fun and engaging, learning is a byproduct of the activity which acts to automatically embed STEM knowledge and experiences within the user. Bridging the gap between STEM and artistic tendencies has the potential to provide a …

A Platform For Otakus To Gradually Learn And Adapt To Social Conventions, Shang Xu

Open Access Theses

It is believed that good design should not only satisfy users’ needs, but also improve their overall quality of life. Nowadays, with the rapidly increasing amounts of time spent on the internet, more and more people, the majority of them youngsters, claim themselves as otakus since they cut themselves off from face-to-face communication. From my primary and secondary user studies, most otakus have difficulties interacting with strangers in real world contexts, but some do want to expand their social networks. This design hypothesis is to provide opportunities for otakus to meet people and build friendships in real life. The purpose …

A Study Of The Color Selection Workflow Of Web Design Students, Yawen Yu

Open Access Theses

This study investigated the color selection workflow of web design students as they create websites, as well as the resources, past experiences, and thoughts that go into this process.

Interviews and task activities were conducted to identify the color selection workflow, and the process was found to contain many micro-interactions that ultimately went beyond just color selection. Furthermore, the color selection workflow was observed to be composed of “modes,” where each contributed to the behaviors of the student designers.

Cook Blind: Enhancing Cooking Experiences For Visually-Impaired People, Xiaohang Zhang

Open Access Theses

This paper introduces a new method to assist visually-impaired people to find what they need in order to complete cooking. Following the design thinking made by me at the beginning of my research, I started to create a new design based on target users` suggestions and preferences. This study focuses on the demands and user experiences of visually impaired people, the integration of design principles adapted from industrial design, user-centered design, and interaction design. I recorded the daily activities of the visually impaired individuals, and then investigated the most reasonable and effective solutions. My method of recording these individuals’ daily …

Pick Yourself Up By Your Broadband: Access, The Digital Divide, And Migrant Workers, Enrique Reynoso Jr.

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation proposes a process called pizarron borrado: reorienting “failure” as a productive part of the research process. Using the backdrop of research on migrant workers’ technological access, I argue that classrooms can become much more accessible by moving from failure and looking at points where writing and research have moved in unexpected ways. As scholars such as Grabill have pointed out, access to computers and the Internet is an issue of public policy, and technical communicators are strategically positioned to contribute to, “policy making, research, and teaching” in ways that can help expand these services to underserved and underrepresented …

Emerging Genres, Dangerous Classifications: The Kairos Of Digital Composing Policy, Ellery Sills

Open Access Dissertations

Emerging Genres, Dangerous Classifications: The Kairos of Digital Composing Policy argues that writing policy infrastructure plays a significant (if often invisible) role in affording emerging digital genres in rhetoric and composition. Within the last few decades, the accelerating transformations and instabilities of emerging genres have posed a challenge for contemporary writing programs, which demonstrate a persistent wariness over incorporating digital composing into their mission. In response to this challenge, national educational associations have issued a growing number of policy statements meant to encourage a broader understanding of composing in the classroom. Curiously, relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to …

Storytelling Failure In The Vale Of Leven: How A Bacterial Outbreak Became A Wicked Problem, Kyle P. Vealey

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation examines the rhetorical work of a public inquiry investigation into an outbreak of Clostridium Difficile at the Vale of Leven Hospital in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland that resulted in 143 cases of infection and the tragic deaths of 34 patients. In light of these deaths and subsequent protests from local citizens, the National Health Service (NHS) Scotland launched a public inquiry in 2009 to investigate the events precipitating the outbreak. Extending rhetoric and technical communication’s sustained engagement with post-accident reports, this study explores how citizens and government officials accounted for the causes, boundaries, and impact of the outbreak. Specifically, …

Technical Communication In Place-Making Professions: Exploring The Network Pictures Of Urban Designers, Fernando Sanchez

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation addresses how professional writing as a field can pay attention to broader definitions of design in order to help further conversations of spatial justice (the act of helping to promote equity in matters of development in urban spaces). I begin by noting the conversations that have circulated regarding the relationship between urban design and rhetoric, noting that professional writing can help add a unique lens to the conversation. The second chapter provides an overview of how design is discussed in technical communication scholarship. Here, I showcase how most of these discussions regarding research in design have centered on …

Enhancing The Campus Experience: Helping International Students To Adapt To North American Campus Life, Qiaoying Wang

Open Access Theses

This thesis investigates how culture adaption topic can be applied to a design solution by enhancing international students experience on North American campus. Each year more than half a million international students enroll in American colleges and universities. Many will spend several years on a campus working toward their degree. Most of them arrive with clear academic goals, but they may have no clue what their social lives will be like. In that case, a common phenomenon that most of the international students need to get along with is called “Culture Shock”, which involves culture and academic adapting difficulties, limited …

E-Commerce Mental Models Of Upper Middle Class Chinese Female Consumers In Beijing, Yunfan Song

Open Access Theses

The purpose of this study was to understand and explore the mental models of Chinese consumers towards e-commerce. A mental model is a representation formed by consumers based on their experience and observation, which finally influence their task performances. Due to the different experiences and contexts, the mental models of Chinese consumers could be various. This study investigated one of the subgroups in depth, which is the upper middle class female in Beijing, China.

To achieve the purpose of the study, a qualitative research was conducted in China, and participants were interviewed about their perceptions of, and experiences with, online …

A Black Art: Ontology, Data, And The Tower Of Babel Problem, Andrew J. Iliadis

Open Access Dissertations

Computational ontologies are a new type of emerging scientific media (Smith, 2016) that process large quantities of heterogeneous data about portions of reality. Applied computational ontologies are used for semantically integrating (Heiler, 1995; Pileggi & Fernandez-Llatas, 2012) divergent data to represent reality and in so doing applied computational ontologies alter conceptions of materiality and produce new realities based on levels of informational granularity and abstraction (Floridi, 2011), resulting in a new type of informational ontology (Iliadis, 2013) the critical analysis of which requires new methods and frameworks. Currently, there is a lack of literature addressing the theoretical, social, and critical …

Understanding The Communicative Processes Of Baby Boomer Women Adjusting To Retirement: Connecting Micro And Macro Discourses, Patricia E. Gettings

Open Access Dissertations

Baby Boomers are changing the face of retirement in the United States. For example, retirement traditionally refers to the time when an individual who has worked full-time for the majority of her life chooses to entirely and permanently exit the workforce, but now includes a range of formations (e.g., bridge employment). Baby Boomer women are most affected by this “new” retirement because they have worked a broader range of jobs for longer periods of time than ever before. Transitioning to retirement implicates processes of adjusting beyond just a change in one’s employment status as retirees potentially confront instrumental (e.g., where …

Enhancing Travel Experience With The Combination Of Information Visualization, Situation Awareness, And Distributed Cognition, Weiran Lei

Open Access Theses

With the new forms of travel introduced by new technologies of transportation and communication, a satisfied travel experience could be affected by various factors before and during a trip. Especially for road trips, traveling by car provides freedom on time control while leading to more possibilities of rescheduling initial plans made under time constraints. When overwhelmed with the need for changed travel context to avoid unexpected events that will require a serious change of initial plans, travelers need to find and access helpful contextual information quickly. This is a context-related decision making process that requires amplifying human situation awareness and …

Designing Prenatal M-Health Interventions Through Transmigrants Reflection On Their Pregnancy Ecology, Hana Aljaberi

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation presents the findings from three participatory focus group and co-design sessions with Caribbean transmigrant women in the United States. Informed by their focus group discussions regarding their pregnancy experiences in the United States, the participants produced design ideas that reflected on physical, emotional, informational and social gap themes. The purpose of this study was to understand the challenges affecting the women’s prenatal wellbeing practices, and to conceive a set of recommendations and opportunities for mHealth technology design to assist with prenatal preventative care and management. The study uses the theoretical concept of pregnancy ecology to identify gaps in …