Education Commons^™

Asserting Individuality In A Futuristic Dystopia: A Critical Analysis Of "Dirty Computer", Sam Spethman

Honors Theses

"Dirty Computer" is a groundbreaking science fiction film directed by visionary artist Janelle Monáe, which delves into the complexities of individuality in a dystopian future dominated by oppressive societal forces. Through intricate narrative construction and thematic depth, the film asserts the indomitable nature of human identity against the backdrop of advanced technology and mind control. This paper explores how "Dirty Computer" challenges traditional narratives of conformity and celebrates the power of self-expression and authenticity. By employing critical lenses such as feminist, queer, and racial critiques, along with narrative and visual analysis techniques, the analysis highlights Monáe's embrace of her Black …

Off The Rails: Cinematic Trains As Technological Controls Of The Natural World, Trinity Thompson

Honors Theses

Short train rail lines across the United States are seeing increased national funding to reduce toxic chemical spills caused by train derailments, the most notable of which happened in February 2023 in East Palestine, Ohio. A year prior, the film White Noise (2022) featured a similar toxic train derailment incident, taking place, too, in Eastern Ohio, and featuring actors from the town of East Palestine. In considering other films featuring trains, I identified a pattern of environmental conflict, leading me to question the relationship between trains and the natural environment as portrayed in popular cinema. To conduct my research, I …

Social Studies Teacher Perceptions Of News Source Credibility, Christopher H. Clark, Mardi Schmeichel, H. James Garrett

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Politically tumultuous times have created a problematic space for teachers who include the news in their classrooms. Few studies have explored perceptions of news credibility among secondary social studies teachers, the educators most likely to regularly incorporate news media into their classrooms. We investigated teachers’ operational definitions of credibility and the relationships between political ideology and assessments of news source credibility. Most teachers in this study used either static or dynamic definitions to describe news media sources’ credibility. Further, teachers’ conceptualizations of credibility and perceived ideological differences with news sources were associated with how credible teachers found each source. These …

Googly Eyes And Yard Signs: Deconstructing One Professor’S Successful Rebuffing Of A Right-Wing Attack On An Academic Institution, Theresa Catalano, Ari Kohen

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Right-wing populism is on the rise worldwide, and political attacks against universities have increased in the United States since the election of Donald Trump. In 2017, an incident occurred at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln which resulted in accusations of hostility toward conservative students. Just over a year later, political forces again attempted to denigrate the university’s reputation, but this time they did not succeed. This (multimodal) positive discourse analysis/ generative critique combines collaborative auto-ethnography to describe the way these events were represented in the media, deconstructing a professor’s methods of countering a right-wing attack on an academic institution. Findings demonstrate …

Missing The (Turning) Point: The Erosion Of Democracy At An American University, Anthony Fucci, Theresa Catalano

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

On August 25, 2017, student members of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), a right-wing conservative organization who advocates for smaller government and free market enterprise, recruited on the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL) campus. Members of the UNL community protested nearby. Part of the protest was recorded on video and released to social media leading to harsh public criticism that accused the university of restricting free speech and being an unsafe environment for conservative students. Drawing on cognitive linguistics (e.g. metonymy, framing) and multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA), this paper explores how the TPUSA incident at UNL was recontextualized in local and …

The Use Of Zingari/Nomadi/Rom In Italian Crime Discourse, Theresa Catalano

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This study examines the use of the metonymies zingari/nomadi/rom [Gypsies/Nomads/Roma] in Italian media discourse, in order to critically reflect on their relation to the perception of Roma. The author analyses the frequency of these terms in general discourse and crime discourse, as well as the way they are used in context. The findings reveal that nomadi and rom are used to directly and indirectly index Roma, and have a sig­nificant impact on their ethnicization and criminalization. In addition, the episodic framing of crime events, combined with the use of these metony­mies, erases the Italian government’s responsibility for the conditions of …

Mixing It Up: Teaching Information Literacy Concepts Through Different ‘Ways Of Learning’, Lorna M. Dawes

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

The new ACRL Framework for Information Literacy (ACRL, 2015) has propelled librarians into new approaches to teaching that concentrate on the concepts and not the procedures or tasks that relate to the effective use of information. It is known that students vary their learning strategies in response to the context of their learning environment (Richardson, 2011) and so it is imperative that instruction facilitates various ways of learning, that can be accommodated in both the small and large classes. Historically librarians have focused on the teaching of the skills: how to search databases, how to find information, how to evaluate …

Tacit Cultural Knowledge: An Instrumental Qualitative Case Study Of Mixed Methods Research In South Africa, Debra Rena Miller

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Notwithstanding the dramatic expansion of mixed methods research, research methodologies, methods, and findings are culturally situated. Problematically, studies conducted outside the global north often embrace canonical methodologies aimed at understanding concepts more explicit than tacit. Learning about the needs of researchers and participants in South Africa may bring to light taken-for-granted assumptions in Anglo-American orientations of mixed methods. Hence, the purpose of this study is to explore aspects of tacit cultural knowledge that contextualize mixed methods research in South Africa.

In-person interviews among South African professors as well as a corpus of books, sections, journal articles, and theses informed the …

What Did You Learn In School Today?: The Recursive Relationship Between Media Coverage Of Public Education And The Crafting Of Education Policy, Elisabeth Reinkordt

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

How does the public learn about issues in contemporary education policy? While changes in the economics of the media industry have shifted the mass media landscape, local communities continue to receive information about the state of their local schools primarily through local newspapers or television stations. It is arguably the most important task of a local paper to provide education coverage, as the schools are often the primary beneficiary of local tax revenues. This thesis reviews the literature surrounding the interface between education reporting and the crafting of education policy, examines the way in which education stories are framed by …

Undergraduate Instructor Assistants (Uias): Friend Or Foe, William J. Seiler, Jenna Stephenson Abetz

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Undergraduate students have been and continue to be employed as instructor assistants (UIAs) in a variety of courses across disciplines. However, relatively little empirical research has been published regarding the educational merits for them or their students. The present essay extends such research by focusing specifically on UIAs’ perceived value of the Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) on their learning and personal growth. The authors conducted in-depth interviews with six former UIAs and employed a qualitative thematic analysis of their responses. Perceived benefits that emerged from the analysis include, for example, learning how to balance many different roles and responsibilities, …

Feminism, Neoliberalism, And Social Studies, Mardi Schmeichel

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

The purpose of this article is to analyze the sparse presence of women in social studies education and to consider the possibility of a confluence of feminism and neoliberalism within the most widely distributed National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) publication, Social Education. Using poststructural conceptions of discourse, the author applies second-wave feminist theory and Fraser’s (2009) work on neoliberalism as lenses to illuminate the limited attention to women and feminism in this text during the 1980s in order to better understand how women have been marginalized in social studies education and to consider the possibility that the …

An Assessment Of Local Peoples Opinions Of Community Conservation Initiatives In Relation To Livelihood Strategies In Kenya, Jill Mechtenberg

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

Abstract This paper analyzed the changing livelihood strategies in Kenya, and their cultural impacts via a literature review. I then combined this understanding with the data I collected while in Kenya to examine the opinions local people have of community conservation initiatives, based on their changing livelihood strategies. I expected to find that the following factors would have an affect on the opinions local community members have of community conservation initiatives: livelihood strategy, gender, ethnicity, whether or not they believe the distribution of benefits coming from wildlife conservation is equitable, what issues they would like to see improved within community …

Protecting Communication Departments: Reflections On The Nebraska Experience, Ronald Lee, William J. Seiler

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Eight years ago, in the first week of the 1991 fall semester, the Acting Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs announced a series of vertical budget cuts that included the elimination of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s department of Speech Communication (now Communication Studies). Over the next seven months the department fought against the proposed action. In March 1992, the Budget Reduction Review Committee voted against the Vice Chancellor’s recommendation. Later in the month, the Academic Planning Committee also voted to rescind the budget cutting measure.

These actions ended the battle and assured the continuation of the department. In an earlier …

Envisioning A Capstone Course In Communication: The View From A Departmental Armchair, William J. Seiler

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

For many departments, the need to develop an assessment package has been the driving force in the consideration of adding a capstone course to their communication curricula. But there are other reasons to justify the creation of such a course. In general, the capstone course has been described by some as a course in which students are required to integrate diverse bodies of knowledge to solve a problem or formulate a policy of societal importance. The dictionary describes a capstone as the “final or crowning part.” That may be a bit presumptuous, but it illustrates the notion of what most …

The Nebraska Department Of Communication Studies Story: There Are Happy Endings That Go Beyond Football And A Good Crop Year, William J. Seiler

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

The following essay discusses the proposed targeting of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Department of Communication Studies for total elimination. The essay describes the department’s demographics, the university’s budget crisis, and the department’s status at its time of peril. The essay reveals how the department learned of the proposal to eliminate it, how the department reacted to the proposed cut, how the administration established an appeals process to the proposed cuts, what explanation and criteria were used to target the department, how the department responded to the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affair’s (VCAA) criteria for targeting the department, how the VCAA …

Developing The Personalized System Of Instruction For The Basic Speech Communication Course, William J. Seiler, Marilyn Fuss-Reineck

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

The purpose of this article is to discuss major planning and development decisions required in order to use the Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) method in the basic speech communication course. In this article we examine: (1) how major PSI components are implemented and (2) how the PSI course is managed. By documenting the decisions required to use PSI in speech communication courses which include performances, we hope to provide helpful guidelines for those interested in applying the PSI method to their basic speech communication courses.

Psi: An Attractive Alternative For The Basic Speech Communication Course, William J. Seiler

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

The Personalized System of Instruction (PSI), often referred to as the Keller Plan after its founder Fred Keller, was developed to teach introductory psychology courses. Since it was first used, however, PSI has seen widespread use in many disciplines. Sherman estimates that six thousand PSI courses have been taught at all levels of education by virtually all disciplines. Boylan reports that more than thirteen hundred individuals presently use the PSI method on the university and college level; that 80.5% of the individuals surveyed represent four-year institutions, with the remainder representing two-year institutions; that 66% of the colleges and universities are …

Communication Apprehension And Teaching Assistants, William J. Seiler, John P. Garrison, David W. Brooks, Frederick K. Sikora, Thomas J. Tipton

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

The authors of this note have developed a program aimed at training, providing feedback to, and evaluating the performance of graduate teaching assistants. It includes the use of a tool called the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension, which is reliable and valid.