Engineering Commons^™

Impact Of Student Beliefs And Self-Efficacy On Performance In Higher Education Stem Courses, Lauren Nicole Fogg

Doctoral Dissertations

In engineering education, students often face feelings of inadequacy, leading to academic struggles and potential dropout. This dissertation investigates the impact of interactive course materials on students' confidence and self-efficacy in problem-solving, focusing on an Engineering Materials class at Louisiana Tech University. Over four quarters, involving seven sections and 218 students, a 13-question Likert scale survey was administered repeatedly, alongside demographic data and textbook usage surveys. The study aims to compare students’ attitudes and beliefs when not using a textbook versus when using an interactive web-native book. Hypotheses suggest that the interactive book will enhance problem-solving beliefs, confidence, and grades. …

Optimization Of Dynamic Simulations To Identify Movement Patterns That Simultaneously Reduce The Risk Of Injury And Enhance Human Performance, Dhruv Gupta

Doctoral Dissertations

Every movement, whether routine or sporting, achieves certain goals. Routine movements like walking takes us from one place to the other and sporting movements like hitting a volleyball help win the game. But each motion puts strain on certain joints of the body putting them at risk of injury. Walking can lead to chronic disorders like knee osteoarthritis over the years. Hitting a volleyball can put the shoulder at risk of a rotator cuff injury. The purpose of this work is to find optimal movement patterns that enhance human ability to achieve the goals of the movement, but at the …

The Impact Of Change On System Of Systems Performance With An Application To Small And Medium Multihospital Systems, Karima Tayeb

Doctoral Dissertations

An entity that functions as a system of systems (SoS) is composed of multiple systems that individually provide various functions which collectively provide a holistic functional capability. It is complex in design and function and tends to become even more complex over time as it evolves and responds to both internal and external changes. These changes might be in the composition or in the interoperability among its system members. Since interoperability affects how well the members work as one system, managing it is critical to the performance of the SoS over its lifespan.

In support of this goal, this dissertation, …

Performance Controlled Power Optimization For Virtualized Internet Datacenters, Yefu Wang

Doctoral Dissertations

Modern data centers must provide performance assurance for complex system software such as web applications. In addition, the power consumption of data centers needs to be minimized to reduce operating costs and avoid system overheating. In recent years, more and more data centers start to adopt server virtualization strategies for resource sharing to reduce hardware and operating costs by consolidating applications previously running on multiple physical servers onto a single physical server. In this dissertation, several power efficient algorithms are proposed to effectively reduce server power consumption while achieving the required application-level performance for virtualized servers.

First, at the server …