Digital Commons Network^™

Hollywood, Ai, And The Moral Universe: An Analysis Of The Terminator And Battlestar Galactica, Lara Sumera Samms

Masters Theses

This thesis defends the argument that depictions of artificial intelligence in Hollywood film and television point to a moral universe. Films The Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), as well as the television series Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009) are analyzed to find clues of moral facts. This research paper submits that these stories add weight to the moral argument and provide evidence that humans implicitly recognize a moral universe. Such acknowledgment of moral structures cannot be adequately explained within a secular framework such as utilitarianism or evolutionary ethics. However, the Christian worldview frames reality around the existence of God, …

To Buzz Or Not To Buzz: A Survey Design Of Embouchure Development Among Kentucky Brass Musicians In Higher Education, Christopher P. Schmidt

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This survey design study examined the methods of embouchure development practiced by Kentucky brass musicians in higher education. The purpose of the study was to explore how collegiate brass professors, their graduate teaching assistants, and undergraduate student musicians apply or omit mouthpiece buzzing in their daily practice routines and private-studio instruction. The study explored pedagogical influences rooted in the teachings of William Adam, Philip Farkas, Emory Remington, and Arnold Jacobs to identify how their philosophies inform contemporary approaches to brass pedagogy. The findings revealed consistent pedagogical diversity among KPUBPs, with most participants using mouthpiece buzzing, long tones, airflow drills, and …

Examining The Role Of Metacognitive Strategies In Sight-Reading Instruction: Insights From Middle School Chorus Teachers, Krystin M. Kicklighter

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Sight-reading in middle school chorus classes is emphasized more heavily due to the standards of learning. Teachers use various approaches to teach sight-reading. One strategy teachers can use is metacognition during the sight-reading process. However, there is limited research on teachers' perspectives on metacognition in middle school. Metacognition involves self-awareness, self-evaluation, and self-regulation. By engaging in these activities, learners can gain better control over their thought processes. This is especially important for music educators, since music learning and practice involve many metacognitive concepts. This qualitative-hermeneutic study explored middle school chorus teachers' perceptions of sight-reading practice and how they incorporate metacognition …

Vocal Pedagogy Training For Vocal Music Education Students, Melissa N. Hinds

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this qualitative grounded theory research is to investigate choir teachers’ perceptions of their undergraduate vocal pedagogy training. The problem is that choir teachers may enter the profession with insufficient vocal pedagogy training to teach their choral ensembles adequately. The rationale for this study is to help close the gap by creating a vocal pedagogy curriculum designed for preservice vocal music educators. The foundation of the created curriculum is the participants’ perception of their undergraduate training. The research questions that guided this study are as follows: (1) How do secondary-level choral conductors’ perceptions of their undergraduate vocal pedagogy …

The Hunt For "Dragon Shards Of Knowledge": A Study On The Information Needs Of The Mmorpg Community, Jessamy Hallie

School of Information Student Research Journal

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the information needs and information-seeking behaviors of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) information community. To evaluate and define these needs and behaviors a literature review of research contributions published by established information professionals studying MMORPG and video game players was performed. The results showed that the MMORPG community is considerably understudied and lacking sufficient library programming and educational opportunities compared to other communities. It also revealed their dependence on collaboration and the promotion of social connection between members. Their shared goals and common interests helped to facilitate members’ information-seeking and …

150 Years Of Purdue Engineering: Celebrating Our Consequential Impact On The World, Arvind Raman, Jim Small

Purdue University Press Books

Since its founding 150 years ago, Purdue University’s College of Engineering has profoundly shaped and improved the world, amassing breakthroughs spanning nearly all facets of society. Highlighting the indomitable spirit, ingenuity, and achievements of more than 100 Boilermaker alumni and faculty members, 150 Years of Purdue Engineering describes the program’s journey to become one of the most consequential engineering colleges in the United States. Richly illustrated with archival and contemporary images, this book includes stories that focus on Purdue innovators who have created everything from the barcode and the electronic TV receiver to the soft-serve ice cream machine and artificial …

Language Of The Law: Understanding The Impact Of Code-Switching Within Legal Fields Through Legal Blog Analyses, Kira A. Johnson

Honors Program Theses and Research Projects

Code-Switching is a linguistic phenomenon that can occur between different languages, cultures, or dialects. This study focuses on code-switching within the legal field, specifically through an analysis of legal blog websites. Through searching the terms, “code-switching” and “foreign language”, this study will compare legal blog websites in their coverage of the phenomenon. The various websites’ definitions of code-switching, how the topic is written with context, and what implications are suggested in the writing will be considered when crafting a comparative analysis. Individuals who communicate using different languages or dialects depending on situations and interactions are important to understand within the …

Patent Searching With Uspto, Derwent Innovation And Lens.Org, Ibis Anette Moreno-Lozano

Day Family Research Lab Workshop Series

No abstract provided.

My First Conversation With Chatgpt (February 22, 2023): Origins Of A Generative Dialogue, David Smith

Publications and Research

This working paper presents the first recorded interaction between the author and the generative AI system ChatGPT, written on February 22, 2023 during the initial weeks of a faculty sabbatical in Boston. The document preserves a complete and unedited transcript of an exploratory conversation conducted without predetermined research aims, marking the author’s first encounter with a large-language-model conversational interface. Although the exchange includes creative experimentation—including musical and poetic prompts—the discussion remains informal and wide-ranging, and no theoretical framework is articulated at this stage. Rather, this transcript is published as primary-source material documenting the moment of discovery and experimentation that precedes …

Ai And A Possible Renaissance For Christian Higher Education, Derek Schuurman

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

The early Greeks saw the essence of education as Paideia: the process of forming a whole person into an ideal citizen. They emphasized the formation of virtues like prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance in preparation for active citizenship. In Plato’s Republic, we read that “The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful,” which involves the shaping of desire.¹ For the Greeks, the purpose of education was training in virtue.

Ada News - 12/8/2025, American Dental Association, Publishing Division

ADA News

Established in 1970 as the official newspaper of the American Dental Association, the ADA News serves practicing dentists and others allied to the dental profession in the U.S. and internationally. It is the No. 1 source of news and information about the many benefits and services the ADA delivers to members daily as well as timely information on scientific, social, political and economic developments affecting dentistry and health care.

Systematics And Systems Theory: Reconstructability Analysis Of The Tetrad, Martin Zwick

Complex Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

This talk discusses the relationship between systems theory, specifically Reconstructability Analysis, and Systematics, a systems theory-like framework of number symbolism developed by John G. Bennett, which he presented in his four-volume magnum opus, The Dramatic Universe. The talk, given to a community of people interested in Bennett's ideas, focuses on Martin Zwick's paper "Ideas and Graphs: the Tetrad of Activity" archived at https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/36249.

Human Evil (In The Weird), Lucas Ethridge

University Honors Theses

This paper examines a trending doom in speculative fiction: the post-human age. Many modern works have started to look past human civilization as humans surrender all hope and faith in a climate-doomed world. Honing in on core concepts in Weird fiction, this paper explores human merit through Old and New Weird. A good part spends time establishing the canon, looking at similar patterns across age, philosophy, war and genre. The chief question asks if humankind was ever worth saving.

Learning To Play Drums: Rote Learning Versus Note Approach, Jacob R. Brumback

Masters Theses

The purpose of this qualitative historical study is to determine whether rote-learned drummers perform better than formally trained drummers. The issue is that some drummers may excel by watching and developing aural skills exclusively, while others perform well by only reading sheet music. The goal is to decide if drummers with strong aural skills or those who rely on note-reading performed better. The rationale explained how the applicability of rudiments, complex timing, creative fills, and improvisational soloing skills influences the performances of both rote-learned and note-approach drummers. Data collection methods for this research included oral history traditions and analyzing secondary …

Edward Lowe - Part 1, Mark Naison, Steven Payne

Oral Histories

In 1960, Lowe’s parents moved to Paulding Avenue, and they lived right next to the Fordham Rose Hill campus and the Bronx Zoo. At this time, Lowe’s mother had recently graduated from Brooklyn Law School in 1954, and was now getting her Masters in law at Columbia University. When he wasn’t bothering his mother studying, Lowe and his friends would often play around Paulding Avenue, visiting the Rose Hill campus and the Bronx Zoo. He also had a sister named Leslie and they both went to PS 59 on 183rd and Bathgate together. His family then moved to Teaneck, New …

Charles Latta, Mark Naison, Steven Payne

Oral Histories

Due to Latta’s initiatives, the BAC has won many awards for community service and social action. He works to make BAC visible to the borough president, congressmen, and councilmen in order to stay involved. In his fifth year as President, BAC hosted the conference for the Northeast Province and the Metro Founders Day, assisting with Atlantic hurricane relief initiatives. Though the COVID-19 pandemic made these initiatives difficult, they still try to persist in their message of outreach that they have held for decades. Latta’s goal is to see the Chapter bring in more people and to develop the ideals and …

Improving Palliative Care Knowledge And Intentions Among Great Plains American Indians: Efficacy Results From A Randomized Clinical Trial Testing A Culture-Centric Palliative Care Message, Mary J. Isaacson, Kah Meng (Charlie) Soh, Christopher S. Wichman, Gina Johnson, Kelly Le Beaux, Semhar Michael, Lisa Sparks, Karla M. Hunter

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

Background

Methods

Results

Bridging Machine Learning And Islamic Scholarship: A Study In Hadith Translation And Similarity Analysis, Asiyah R. Speight

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Translation of Islamic religious texts poses unique challenges requiring both linguistic and theological expertise. This study explores the application of neural machine translation (NMT) models to Arabic-English hadith translation while analyzing semantic similarity patterns across different human translations. Using the complete Sahih Bukhari corpus (7,550 hadiths) as the primary dataset, we adopt a dual approach combining transfer learning and comprehensive neural network analysis to demonstrate the critical impact of corpus size on model performance.

First, we fine-tune a pre-trained MarianMT Arabic-English translation model on the full Sahih Bukhari corpus, comparing models trained on 40 hadiths versus 7,550 hadiths. Performance is …

Show, Don't Tell: Looking For New/Old Strategies For Assessing Design Work, Kristina Andersen, Joep Frens, Janet Yi-Ching Huang

IASDR Conference Series

Design education is centered on making and reflecting, as a way to `work through' the process of becoming a designer. To do this, we rely on project-based learning that often culminates in reports alongside demonstrations and show-and-tell. Over the years, we have seen an increased reliance on language to validate student design ideas, and written reflections have become a way of assessing learning. With Generative AI becoming more widespread, such deliverables risk becoming less reflective or even meaningless. At the same time, some of our students treat written reflections as a necessary evil to be done on the eve of …

Teaching Design In The 21st Century: New Studio Pedagogies For Emerging Challenges, Wonjoon Chung

IASDR Conference Series

The rapid integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and other advanced technologies is driving a new paradigm shift in design education, calling for a re-examination of traditional studio pedagogies. This paper argues that current design curricula, often constrained by rigid academic schedules and a focus on polished final deliverables, inadvertently foster a fear of failure and discourage the iterative, exploratory processes that are essential for creativity. To address these systemic issues, this paper proposes a pedagogical framework that reconceptualizes the design studio as a space for cultivating creative confidence, adaptability and resilience in the face of uncertainty. Drawing on Edward de …

Co-Creating Futures Of Communication: Three-Phase Speculative Co-Design With Adults Of The One-Child Generation, Ines Ziyou Yin, Xinjun Miao, Yirong Jiang, Yijun Yin, Kin Wai Michael Siu

IASDR Conference Series

Traditional linear models of human communication inadequately address emotional and social dynamics in everyday contexts. This study explores speculative futures of interpersonal communication through research through design (RtD) paradigm, integrating participatory co-creation, speculative design, role-playing, and Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI). Situated within the socio-cultural context of China’s one-child generation in the Greater Bay Area (GBA), the research transcends linear transmission metaphors in existing information communication technologies (ICTs) to address subtle interpersonal needs among friends. The study adopts a three-phase methodology, including a co-design workshop to generate speculative scenarios, designer-AI collaboration to refine scenarios, and a role- playing session to generate …

Gameful Experiences In Vr Game: Comparison Between Eye-Gazing And Controller Interaction, Gong Zhengya, Nurmela Petra, Colley Ashley, Georgiev Georgi V., Häkkilä Jonna

IASDR Conference Series

As virtual reality (VR) technology continues to advance, researchers are exploring new interaction methods to enrich players’ gameful experiences. While handheld controllers remain the standard input device, emerging alternatives, such as eye-gazing, offer novel and potentially more engaging ways to interact within VR environments. This study examines how different interaction methods—traditional handheld controllers versus eye-gazing—affect players’ experiences during gameplay. A VR game was developed to support both input methods, and 22 participants engaged with the game under both conditions. Their experiences were assessed across multiple dimensions, such as playfulness, immersion, and competition. The results revealed significant differences in two gameful …

Xrecycle: A Gamified Xr System For Enhancing Youth Engagement And Learning In Plastic Recycling, Yuhao Li, Mingming Wang, Hanzhe Bao, Yuhao He, Tiantian Lo, Henry Duh

IASDR Conference Series

This study proposes XRecycle, a physical-digital (phygital) gamified system that integrates extended reality (XR) technologies with game-based learning mechanisms to address challenges in engaging youth in plastic recycling within high-density cities like Hong Kong. The system merges tangible devices made from locally recycled plastics with immersive virtual environments, forming a multi- layered framework of main tasks, side quests, and reward feedback. A mixed-method study with 20 participants validated the system ’ s effectiveness in enhancing circular literacy and sustaining behavioral motivation. Quantitative results revealed significant improvements in knowledge retention and engagement. Qualitative feedback suggested that participants were particularly drawn to …

"The Limbs That I Built": Understanding In Co-Creation Human Augmentation Design And User-Driven Testing, Keren Zhang, Kin Wai Michael Siu, Yijia Jiang, Shiyu Liu, Huiyi Zhang

IASDR Conference Series

Current co-creation design research on human augmentation technologies focuses primarily on restoring functions for individuals with disabilities, overlooking the increasing potential demand for augmentation among ordinary users. To bridge this research gap, this study combined speculative design with user co-creation workshops to examine the practical implications and behavioural impacts of supernumerary robotic limbs (SRLs) on everyday users. Initial questionnaires and interviews (n=42) revealed considerable user interest, particularly regarding upper limb and back augmentations. Based on these insights, we collaboratively developed two prototypes: the 'Mirror Hand', which enhances grasp capabilities by mirroring finger movements, and the 'Third Akimbo', a robotic arm …

Who Designs, Who Teaches, Who Knows? Negotiating Co-Creation With Visually Impaired Children, Anqi Rong, Nina Hansopaheluwakan-Edward

IASDR Conference Series

This article examines how co-creation reshapes roles, power relations, and material practices in the design of tactile learning resources for visually impaired children (VIC). Drawing on Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) and interviews, prototyping sessions, and observations in Chinese educational settings, the study highlights three under explored dimensions of co-creation: (1) the recalibration of power from hierarchical expertise to fluid, reciprocal collaboration, (2) the active agency of tactile materials as non-human co-authors, and (3) the cultural-technical hybridity that enables design innovations to scale within broader educational and policy landscapes. Contrary to top-down or purely technological approaches, findings reveal that effective co-creation …

Uncovering Usability Problems Of A Hospital Online Appointment Platform: Insights From Hierarchical Task Analysis And Cognitive Walkthrough, Yongsheng Tan, Yu-Hsiu Hung, Ching-Yi Yau

IASDR Conference Series

To date, online appointment platforms (OAPs) have achieved widespread adoption within healthcare systems. While they offer significant convenience, they also present considerable challenges during use, particularly for inexperienced novice users or individuals who did not grow up in the internet era. Therefore, identifying usability issues within these online systems and analyzing their attributes and potential impact is essential. This study employed the Hierarchical Task Analysis (HTA) and Cognitive Walk through (CW) evaluation methods to analyze usability problems in an OAP. First, HTA was utilized to decompose the OAP process into a series of executable tasks. Subsequently, CW was applied to …

Metacognitive Cycle Design Based On Aigc And Science Exploration Autonomous Games, Li Yi, Yanfei Xu

IASDR Conference Series

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to explore the facilitating effect of AI-generated content (AIGC)–assisted science exploration autonomous games on children’s metacognitive development, to propose a metacognitive cycle design, and to verify its effectiveness through experimental methods. METHODS: The study was conducted with 60 five-year-old children in a public kindergarten in Hunan Province, China. The experimental group received a science exploration autonomous game with AIGC assistance and a metacognitive cycle design intervention, while the control group played regular autonomous games only. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to measure and analyze changes in children’s metacognitive levels. RESULTS: The metacognitive ability of the …

Designing Led Expressions In An Interactive Ai Product, Jounghyuna Kim, Kwanmyung Kim

IASDR Conference Series

As AI is increasingly integrated into everyday products, LED expressions offer a compact and intuitive channel for communication. While LEDs are widely used as simple indicators, their expressive potential remains under explored in design research. This study aims to investigate how LEDs can be designed to convey various types of messages more expressively and communicatively. To this end, we adopted a three-step research process based on a design methodology: (1) design ideation workshop to collect possible messages and their corresponding expression, (2) creating LED expression GIF animations following the design guidelines, and (3) an online survey to evaluate the appropriateness …

Co-Designing Tools For Dialogic Learning: Insights From The "Datafy" Project, Yu-Yu Liu, Maja Dybboe, Johanne Birkkjær Bjerrum, Johannes Ellemose, Christian Dindler

IASDR Conference Series

This study presents a co-design process for developing tools that foster critical data literacy in K–12 education through dialogic learning opportunities. Adopting a research-through-design approach, we explore how teachers and interdisciplinary researchers can co-create con textually grounded, pedagogy- informed learning artefacts. In this paper, we document the co-design process, describe the resulting artefacts, and report classroom observations involving 40 students and two teachers using these tools in a primary school. Our findings highlight: (i) how artefact-enabled dialogic learning opportunities shaped children’s learning experiences and (ii) the process and outcomes of interdisciplinary co-design with teachers. Our results underscore the value of …

The Emergence Of Cultural Signals In Typographic Systems, César Arturo Puertas, Juan Alfonso De La Ros

IASDR Conference Series

This paper explores how through visual analysis of contemporary design of typographic systems in Colombia, it is possible to create a custom framework for clustering and analysis to help recognize the possible emergence of cultural signals of colonised communities and cultural groups. Based on that framework we described these signals in four categories: Abstracted indigenous heritage (cultural revival); hybrid graphic vernacular (vernacular typography); Indigenous linguistic forms (direct linguistic revival); and hybrid cultural abstraction (indirect linguistic revival). We argue that local/regional type design and typography are increasingly serving as a medium of cultural resistance (intentional or unintentional), where designers engage with …