Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Disentangling Fluency, Comprehensibility And Coherence: Toward A Better Understanding Of Oral Proficiency Profiles, Haiying Cao

Open Access Dissertations

This study is an empirical attempt to examine how removal of all possible disfluency markers can help disentangle proficiency components assessed by the Oral English Proficiency Test (OEPT) in order to help build empirical foundations for establishing OEPT profiles. Silent and filled pauses, false starts and repetitions were removed from 50 test recordings in WAVEPAD SOUND EDITOR. Five trained OEPT raters rated the original and edited speeches. Statistical analyses addressed three research questions: 1) do fluency, comprehensibility and coherence ratings significantly change after the disfluency manipulation; 2) do correlations between fluency, comprehensibility, coherence and coherence subcomponents change after the disfluency …

Culturally Responsive Engineering Education: A Case Study Of A Pre-College Introductory Engineering Course At Tibetan Children's Village School Of Selakui, Marisol Mercado Santiago

Open Access Dissertations

Culturally responsive teaching has been argued to be effective in the education of Indigenous youth. This approach emphasizes the legitimacy of a group's cultural heritage, helps to associate abstract academic knowledge with the group's sociocultural context, seeks to incorporate a variety of strategies to engage students who have different learning styles, and strives to integrate multicultural information in the educational contents, among other considerations. ^ In this work, I explore the outcomes of a culturally responsive introductory engineering short course that I developed and taught to Tibetan students at Tibetan Children's Village of Selakui (in Uttarakhand, India). Based on my …

Chinese Undergraduate Students’ Preference For Chinese Tas And American Tas In The U.S. Context, Ruochen Li

Open Access Theses

This study researches and compares Chinese undergraduate students' (N=70) perceptions of and preferences for American TAs and Chinese TAs, and identifies factors that play significant roles in influencing Chinese students' perceptions and preferences. Multiple independent variables were measured, including age; gender; years at Purdue; years in the U.S.; GPA; overall TOEFL score; experiences with Chinese TAs; effectiveness of Chinese TAs; effectiveness of American TAs; English ability of Chinese TAs; and native speaker preference, ethnic identity, and level of acculturation, among which ethnic identity and level of acculturation are the major variables the current study aims to examine. Preference for Chinese …

Makers: Technical Communication In Post-Industrial Participatory Communities, John Timothy Sherrill

Open Access Theses

In the past few decades, web technologies and increasingly accessible digital fabrication technologies such as 3D printers and laser cutters have made it easier for individuals and communities to create complex material objects at home. As a result, communities of individuals who make things outside formal institutions, known as maker communities, have combined traditional crafts and technical knowledge with digital tools and web technologies in new ways. This thesis analyzes maker communities as post-industrial participatory design communities and examines them as participatory spaces where technical communication occurs between individuals with varying levels of expertise and sometimes drastically different knowledges. Ultimately, …

Playing On The Periphery: Metagaming And Transgressive Play, Patrick S. Love

Open Access Theses

Gaming and play exist in connection to forces outside of the game systems themselves. Together, all these intersecting forces make up a meta game that informs and enables variance in play as well as creates barriers to entering play. This thesis fleshes out the framework of a metagame and shows how players can take a metagame perspective to transform, transcend, or even transgress barriers. This thesis discusses sources of metagaming and encompasses examples from video and traditional games.

The Rhetorical Constitution Of Online Community: Identification And Constitutive Rhetoric In The Community Of Reddit, Bradley Stephen Ludwig

Open Access Theses

The concepts of online identity and online community within the context of social media have been major research interests in the field of communication in recent years. Questions of interest include how the Internet and social media contribute to the construction of identity both online and offline, and what factors encourage participation in and contribution to online communities. This thesis will address these questions related to online identity and community from a rhetorical perspective to examine the role rhetoric plays in these processes and build on the application of rhetorical approaches to online contexts. Specifically, this project proposes a rhetorical …

Computer Animation For Learning Building Construction Management: A Comparative Study Of First-Person Versus Third-Person View, Jun Yu

Open Access Theses

In this paper, we have explored the effect of perspective view in educational animations on students' learning of building construction management tasks and on students' preference of perspective views. We conducted a pre-test and post-test and found no significant advantages of computer animation presented in different perspective views across three different groups. Results showed that although students have preference on perspective views, perspective views did not influence learning outcome. The study also investigated the efficacy of animation as a teaching/learning tool in comparison to the traditional textbook. Findings showed that animation enhanced student learning, although the difference was not statistically …

Analyzing Responses To Open Ended Questions For Spirit Using Aspect Oriented Sentiment Analysis, Animesh Jain

Open Access Theses

Open ended questions provide an effective way of measuring the attitude and perception of respondents towards a topic. Surprising Possibilities Imagined and Realized through Information Technology (SPIRIT) was a program (2008-2012) that employed open-ended questions to gauge program participants' attitudes related to computing. SPIRIT sought to increase the interest of high school students, especially female students, towards computing courses and careers. Pre- and post-attitude surveys were used during the program to measure the changes in attitudes of the participants towards IT and also to analyze the impact different sessions had on different demographic groups of participants. The open-ended survey questions …

The Hong Kong-Zhu Hai-Macau Bridge: Impacts On The Greater Pearl River Delta, Jun He

Open Access Theses

This research looks at the impacts of megaprojects on their host regions through a case study of the Hong Kong-Zhu Hai-Macau Bridge (HZMB). The purpose of this study is to analyze the potential economic impact of the HZMB on the region through existing data and stakeholder interviews. The research will specifically focus on megaprojects' impacts on tourism industry and economic development in general. The research results are aimed to address the four research objectives of the study, which are similarities and differences between the HZBM and other megaprojects, common issues involved in developing megaprojects, the future impacts of the HZMB …

The Effect Of Color On Emotions In Animated Films, Andrew Kennedy

Open Access Theses

Lighting color in animated films is usually chosen very carefully in order to portray a specific mood or emotion. Artists follow conventional techniques with color choices with the intention to create a greater emotional response in the viewer. This study examined the relationship between color variations in videos and emotional arousal as indicated by physiological response. Subjects wore a galvanic skin response (GSR) sensor and watched two different videos: one portraying love and one portraying sadness. The videos were watched multiple times, each with variations in the lighting color. No significant effects on emotion for either hue or saturation were …

Increasing The Supply Of Affordable Housing In Urban India - Mumbai, Upasna Viswanathan

Open Access Theses

The need for housing in today's world is irrefutable. The growing population, accompanied with the fast pace of urbanization, are producing great housing demand, in urban areas in particular. This study focused on one segment of housing - affordable housing, in Mumbai, India, the demand for which has been on a steady rise over the past decade. Though traditionally the State was the provider of affordable housing, private sector has been increasingly involved in the segment, beginning the economic meltdown of 2008-2009. Yet there is a huge demand-supply gap that exists, which needs to be filled. The researcher looks at …

Historical Configurations Of Knowledge Among The Iñupiat In Arctic Alaska, Joshua Andrew Van Drei

Open Access Theses

This thesis explores how the Iñupiat of the North Slope of Alaska have responded to cultural pressures, specifically those arising from the introduction of missions and schools, and characterized by an increase in permanent outsider settlement, and how they have internalized these pressures into their knowledge system. By examining political, economic, and social factors, this thesis provides a more holistic picture of how and why Iñupiat knowledge has changed through time, beginning with the contact period in the early to mid-1800's until the present day. I find existing models of knowledge transmission cannot account for the ways in which Iñupiat …

Prejudice Reduction Strategies And Their Efffect On Interracial Interactions, Mason Dyess Burns

Open Access Theses

With increased awareness of implicit bias in both research and media, understanding ways to reduce the negative effects of such bias has become of practical importance. The present research examined how implicit bias reduction strategies affect the experience of an implied interracial interaction. Results indicated that self-regulation learning (SRL) and counterstereotyping (CS) differentially impact how individuals experience an interracial interaction depending on their internal motivation to respond without prejudice (IMS). Specifically, results showed that individuals low in IMS self-disclosed more, were more promotion focused, and less physically avoidant following CS training relative to SRL training. At high levels of IMS, …

Climate Change In Native American Communities: Challenges Of Comprehension, Context, & Communication, Patrick Austin Freeland

Open Access Theses

Very little literature exists which details how climate change impacts Indian Country. This study first investigates how US newspaper stories published from 1991 to 2011 present American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) perceptions, and observations, of environmental changes resulting from climatic change. Several specific risk, impacts, and vulnerabilities were documented, and observations of climate change from AI/AN perceptions were analyzed for content to identify three frames of perspective: pan-Indian, tribally-specific, and individual perceptions. By law, ethical considerations are paramount when dealing with research in Native American tribes and communities. While each nation is supposed to review research to assess the risk and …

Patterns Of Language Use And Language Choice Among The Cuban Community In Russia, Maria Yakushkina

Open Access Theses

The multiculturalism of a modern society involves constant interrelations of minority and dominant linguistic communities, which are reflected in language. Within this context patterns of language use and choice, language attitudes and language and identity connection have received special attention from a sociolinguistic perspective to better understand the outcomes of such language contact

The aim of the present study is to analyze patterns of language use, language choice, and language identity issues of two groups of Cuban immigrants in Russian society: individuals born in Cuba with both parents of Cuban origin (CC group) and individuals born in Cuba from mixed …

The Case Of Capaz In Argentina: An Epistemic Adverb With Mood Variability, Boris Yelin

Open Access Theses

This thesis examines mood selection in Argentine Spanish with epistemic adverbs considering the independent variables of certainty, temporal reference, and epistemic adverb. It is the first known study to investigate mood selection with the epistemic adverb capaz . A sentence completion task included 24 written contexts, each followed by a sentence with an epistemic adverbial to be completed with a verb, either in the indicative or subjunctive. The contexts contained information that made participants Certain (N = 12) or Not Certain (N = 12). Within the Certain and Not Certain contexts, four contexts expressed events in the future, four in …