Digital Commons Network^™

Building Societal Resilience Against Child Grooming Using Digital Technologies: The Solution Design, Christina Thorpe, Armin Shams, Matt Bowden

Conference Papers

Extended Abstract

Child grooming is when someone builds a relationship, trust and emotional connection with a child so they can manipulate, exploit and abuse them, therefore building societal resilience against it is of prime importance1. Although progress has been made, it is among the yet unresolved challenges in Ireland (the focus of research). With direct SFI2 training support and using Theory of Change and Design Science as the methods for research and innovation, we have done extensive stakeholder analysis, and we keep doing it further such that a solution is evolved in order to create societal resilience against child grooming, …

Creative Technologies: A Conversation With Roy Magnuson, Roy Magnuson, Maureen Russell

Faculty Publications - Music

[In lieu of an abstract, the introduction is provided.] Today I am speaking with Roy Magnuson, Associate Professor Creative Technologies in the School of Music at Illinois State University (ISU). (see Figure 1) His music has been performed throughout the United States and Europe at venues such as the World Saxophone Congress, WASBE, CBDNA, the RED NOTE New Music Festival, and the Robb Composers’ Symposium. Magnuson is also the creator of the virtual reality composition software solsticeVR and the conducting software RibbonsVR. He is a member of ASCAP, and his music is recorded on Albany Records and NAXOS.

Racism Detection In Tweets, Ndjeuha Gihane

All Graduate Projects

Since the advent of social networks in 1997, businesses and people’s lives have changed in a good way. From promoting companies to reaching out to friends and family, social networking has become a major element in our lives. X is a very popular platform that is used by many people, including celebrities and politicians, to communicate with their audience. Like other platforms, X is not spared by the racism contained in the tweets. We should be able to catch those racist comments on any social media and block the accounts of those responsible for them. To do so, we have …

Usage And Knowledge Of Online Tools And Generative Ai: A Survey Of Students, Rahul R. Divekar Phd, Lisette Gonzalez, Sophia Guerra, Natasha Boos

Department of Experience Design (XD) Faculty Publications

Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT are poised to transform student and educator workflows in higher education. However, there is less documentation on the range of tools students in higher education use, how they use them and in coordination with other online tools for learning, and their expertise using AI tools. We present a mixed-method analysis of a survey conducted at a doctoral-granting university in the United States investigating the adoption of AI tools in the context of other technologies. The findings include how the students used GenAI tools in light of other on-line technologies, their perception of expertise on …

Improving Document Classification By Integrating Human-Crafted Semantic Knowledge, Lubomir Stanchev, Zachary Weinfeld

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Document classification is a pivotal task in various domains, warranting the development of robust algorithms. Among these, the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) algorithm, introduced by Google, has proven to perform well when fine-tuned for the task at hand. Leveraging transformer architecture, BERT demonstrates stellar language understanding capabilities. However, the integration of BERT with a range of approaches has shown potential for further enhancing classification accuracy. This paper investigates three techniques that leverage semantic understanding to improve the performance of document classification models trained with BERT. First, we balance corpora afflicted by imbalanced training data distributions. Next, we substitute …

Are Academia And Industry Listening To Each Other? A Citation Analysis Of Ux Research Methods Resources, Abigail Bakke, Leonard Dibono

English Department Publications

Technical and Professional Communication (TPC) has been facing concerns of viability, in both its relationship with industry and its ability to build a relevant and valid body of research. TPC’s disconnection with industry may be reflected in its relationship to UX as well, despite both fields’ shared values. To better understand how TPC and User Experience (UX) are relating to each other, we conducted a citation analysis of a sample of SIGDOC papers and a sample of Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g) practitioner articles focused on research methods. The SIGDOC papers tended to cite TPC sources, while the NN/g articles cited …

How Increased Ransomware Attacks Have Impacted Hospitals In The United States, Mackenzie Dotson

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Introduction: The healthcare industry, particularly hospitals, have fallen prey to the alarming rise of ransomware attacks. In recent years, highly sophisticated cybergroups, armed with substantial funds and advanced technology, have intensified their focus on hospitals. Despite the advice against it, most hospitals have paid the ransom in order to regain access to their electronic systems and patient data, underlining the severity of these attacks.

Purpose of the Study: The purpose of this research was to evaluate the effects of ransomware attacks on hospitals in the US to determine if the patients were at risk due to hackers withholding patient information …

The Measure Of Efficiency And Effectiveness When Using Artificial Intelligence (Ai) In Radiology, Jordan Watts

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Introduction: The use of artificial intelligence in radiology has helped radiologists identify patterns and abnormalities in medical images to diagnose and treat patients. Deep learning and machine learning algorithms have been used to assist physicians in detecting features that are not noticeable to the human eye. The FDA has approved almost 400 AI algorithms for radiology and estimated that the market for AI in medical imaging would grow from $21.48 billion in 2018 to $264.85 billion in 2028.

Purpose of the Study: The purpose of this research was to evaluate the use of artificial intelligence in radiology to determine its …

Resource Management And Optimization Of Interactive Microservice And Mpi-Based Ensemble Applications In The Cloud, Md Rajib Hossen

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations - Archive

As user-interactive applications in the cloud transition from monolithic services to agile microservice architectures, efficient resource management becomes a key challenge. The multitude of loosely coupled components and fluctuating traffic patterns make traditional cloud autoscaling methods ineffective. Existing machine learning-based approaches, while attempting to address this, often require extensive training data and can lead to intentional violations of service level objectives (SLOs). To tackle these challenges, I propose PEMA (Practical Efficient Microservice Autoscaling), a lightweight resource manager for microservices. PEMA aims to optimize resource allocation through opportunistic resource reduction, considering the intricate dependencies between microservices.

On another front, scientific workflows …

Leveraging Software Testing Techniques To Explain, Analyze, And Debug Machine Learning Models, Sunny Shree

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Machine learning (ML) algorithms are changing many aspects of modern life by analyzing data, identifying patterns, and making predictive decisions across industries such as healthcare, transportation, finance, and e-commerce. However, ML models often operate as "black boxes," making it difficult to interpret their decision-making processes. This lack of transparency creates challenges in testing, debugging, and understanding model behavior, which affects user trust and raises concerns about trustworthiness, accountability, reliability, and fairness in high-stakes applications.

Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) aims to address these challenges by providing tools and methods that explain the decision-making processes of ML models in a way that …

The Specter Of Representation: Computational Images And Algorithmic Capitalism, Samine Joudat

CGU Theses & Dissertations

The processes of computation and automation that produce digitized objects have displaced the concept of an image once conceived through optical devices such as a photographic plate or a camera mirror that were invented to accommodate the human eye. Computational images exist as information within networks mediated by machines. They are increasingly less about what art history understands as representation or photography considers indexing and more an operational product of data processing.

Through genealogical, theoretical, and practice-based investigation, this dissertation project traces a lineage of computation through images from early cybernetics to contemporary machine learning under algorithmic capitalist conditions of …

How Economically Marginalized Adolescents Of Color Negotiate Critical Pedagogy In A Computing Classroom, Jean Salac, Lena Armstrong, Megumi Kivuva, Jayne Everson, Amy J. Ko

Computer Science Faculty Work

Background and Context: With the growing movement to adopt critical framings of computing, scholars have worked to reframe computing education from the narrow development of programming skills to skills in identifying and resisting oppressive structures in computing. However, we have little guidance on how these framings may manifest in classroom practice. Objectives: To better understand the processes and practice of critical pedagogy in a computing classrooms, we taught a critically conscious computing elective within a summer academic program at a northwest United States university targeted at secondary students (ages 14–18) from low-income backgrounds and would be the first …

Github Uncovered: Revealing The Social Fabric Of Software Development Communities, Abduljaleel Al Rubaye

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation 2023-2024

The proliferation of open-source software development platforms has given rise to various online social communities where developers can seamlessly collaborate, showcase their projects, and exchange knowledge and ideas. GitHub stands out as a preeminent platform within this ecosystem. It offers developers a space to host and disseminate their code, participate in collaborative ventures, and engage in meaningful dialogues with fellow community members. This dissertation embarks on a comprehensive exploration of various facets of software development communities on GitHub, with a specific focus on innovation diffusion, repository popularity dynamics, code quality enhancement, and user commenting behaviors. This dissertation introduces a popularity-based …

A Comprehensive And Comparative Examination Of Healthcare Data Breaches: Assessing Security, Privacy, And Performance, Mohammed Al Kinoon

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation 2023-2024

The healthcare sector is pivotal, offering life-saving services and enhancing well-being and community life quality, especially with the transition from paper-based to digital electronic health records (EHR). While improving efficiency and patient safety, this digital shift has also made healthcare a prime target for cybercriminals. The sector's sensitive data, including personal identification information, treatment records, and SSNs, are valuable for illegal financial gains. The resultant data breaches, increased by interconnected systems, cyber threats, and insider vulnerabilities, present ongoing and complex challenges. In this dissertation, we tackle a multi-faceted examination of these challenges. We conducted a detailed analysis of healthcare data …

The Crash Consistency, Performance, And Security Of Persistent Memory Objects, Derrick Alex Greenspan

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation 2023-2024

Persistent memory (PM) is expected to augment or replace DRAM as main memory. PM combines byte-addressability with non-volatility, providing an opportunity to host byte-addressable data persistently. There are two main approaches for utilizing PM: either as memory mapped files or as persistent memory objects (PMOs). Memory mapped files require that programmers reconcile two different semantics (file system and virtual memory) for the same underlying data, and require the programmer use complicated transaction semantics to keep data crash consistent.

To solve this problem, the first part of this dissertation designs, implements, and evaluates a new PMO abstraction that addresses …

Advancing Policy Insights: Opinion Data Analysis And Discourse Structuring Using Llms, Aaditya Bhatia

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation 2023-2024

The growing volume of opinion data presents a significant challenge for policymakers striving to distill public sentiment into actionable decisions. This study aims to explore the capability of large language models (LLMs) to synthesize public opinion data into coherent policy recommendations. We specifically leverage Mistral 7B and Mixtral 8x7B models for text generation and have developed an architecture to process vast amounts of unstructured information, integrate diverse viewpoints, and extract actionable insights aligned with public opinion. Using a retrospective data analysis of the Polis platform debates published by the Computational Democracy Project, this study examines multiple datasets that span local …

Improving The Accuracy Of Software Models Using Refinement And Mutation Testing, Ana Jovanovic

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Writing correct software models is important in today’s society. Unfortunately, software development is an error-prone task that frequently leads to buggy software. That is why users, both novices and experts, make use of additional techniques and tools to make software more reliable and correct. One of the languages that proposes a solution to this is Alloy. Alloy is a declarative language based on first order logic. Its main advantage is the ability to describe complex systems using concise formal logic. To verify the model and its properties, Alloy uses the Alloy Analyzer, an SAT-based verification tool that supports fully automatic …

Understanding Social Dynamics In Toxic Conversations And Public Health Intervention Acceptance On Social Media, Ana Aleksandric

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Social media is now central to daily life, offering users a space to share content and opinions. However, these platforms also facilitate the spread of hate speech and misinformation, which can negatively impact public health. This dissertation develops methodologies to analyze social media data for insights that could inform health interventions. The research first examines user responses to toxic content, focusing on behavioral and emotional reactions, as well as group dynamics and bystander effects in toxic interactions. Another key focus is public opinion toward health interventions, particularly COVID-19 vaccination, using geolocated posts and analyzing factors such as race, ethnicity, and …

Living Datasets: Towards Data-Centric Ai Explainability And Bias Mitigation, Akib Zaman

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Benchmark datasets are critical to the evolution of AI efforts yet often embed unintended biases that influence the models that drive human-AI interactions. A deeper inspection and awareness of data is needed to understand the biases datasets may contain. In this dissertation, I introduce the Tag-and-Release method, inspired from wildlife research, that treats data as an organism and examines how different environments (i.e., CNNs) select for unique traits or characteristics that ultimately impact data's survival. Using the canonical MNIST handwritten digit dataset as a case study, I describe how the Tag-and-Release method can be used to analyze how dataset imbalance …

Advancing Deep Learning With Graph-Based Structural Insights: From Graph Classification To Semantic Segmentation, Xin Ma

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Deep learning has profoundly transformed machine learning by offering sophisticated data representations, yet effectively incorporating structural information remains a challenge. Structural data, whether explicit or implicit, has the potential to significantly enhance the performance of deep learning tasks. This research investigates the benefits of structural information across three crucial tasks: classification, clustering, and segmentation. For explicit structural data, where inputs are directly represented as graphs, we investigate graph-level classification in brain connectivity networks. We introduce the Multi-resolution Edge Network (MENET), a novel framework designed to identify disease-specific connectomic benchmarks with high discriminatory power across diagnostic categories. MENET leverages graph-level representations …

Identification And Quantification Of Authorial Style Similarity, Mary E. Koone Phd

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations - Archive

This thesis studies the topic of identifying author similarity, grouping authors together based on that similarity. To solve that problem, the thesis proposes concrete solutions to a series of subproblems. The initial sub-problems are: how to identify a pool of possible features for representing documents, and how to select and combine some of those features to map a document into a feature vector. Another sub-problem is how to evaluate the usefulness of such feature vectors in identifying language style similarity. This thesis proposes, as part of addressing that sub-problem, a novel method for evaluating the quality of document representations obtained, …

A Unified Cross-Modal Interactive System For Assisting Vision Impaired In Human Navigation And Indoor Based Human Robot Interaction, Harish Ram Nambiappan

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations - Archive

People who are blind and vision impaired often require assistance in performing various tasks. With new technologies emerging in the recent years, vision impaired people either require assistance in accessing those technologies or in using those technologies to perform different tasks in real life. Previous works have focused on assisting vision impaired people in different scenarios such as navigation, accessing smartphone interfaces etc. With the recent developments in robotics, a new research has emerged where new systems can be developed for vision impaired people to interact with robots to perform various human robot interactive tasks. But with developing new and …

Preparing Healthcare Education For An Ai-Augmented Future, Jiajie Zhang, Susan H Fenton

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Artificial intelligence (AI) fundamentally transforms healthcare education as a knowledge enterprise, creating a distributed cognitive system composed of the human brain, which remains relatively unchanged, and AI-based knowledge and cognitive functions, which have accelerated exponentially in scale and power. Education must focus on developing skills to collaborate with AI and on achieving outcomes like problems solved and discoveries made. Curriculum and education policies also need to adapt to this transformation.

34. "Language Weaves Its Tapestry": Crafting Found Poetry Using Ai Tools, Ruth Li

Teaching and Generative AI: Pedagogical Possibilities and Productive Tensions

In this chapter, I offer a pedagogical approach to teaching creative writing in the era of Al technologies. I share an activity that engages students in crafting found poetry using Al tools such as ChatGPT. Found poems are collage-like assemblages drawn from other sources such as newspaper or magazine articles. By immersing students in crafting found poems using Al, I inspire creative experimentation with Al-generated texts. Even as writing processes become automated and writing styles standardized, I posit that this found poem activity nurtures students' careful attunement to the materiality of language, to its shape and texture as words unfold …

Contributors, Beth Buyserie, Travis N. Thurston

Teaching and Generative AI: Pedagogical Possibilities and Productive Tensions

No abstract provided.

Introduction, Beth Buyserie, Travis N. Thurston

Teaching and Generative AI: Pedagogical Possibilities and Productive Tensions

With the rapid development of generative Al, teachers are experiencing a new pedagogical challenge, one that promises to forever change the way we approach teaching and learning. As a response to this unprecedented teaching context, this collection-Teaching and Generative Al: Pedagogical Possibilities and Productive Tensions-provides interdisciplinary teachers, librarians, and instructional designers with practical and thoughtful pedagogical resources for navigating the possibilities and challenges of teaching in an Al era. Because our goal with this edited collection is to present nuanced discussions of Al technologies across disciplines, the chapters collectively acknowledge or explore both possibilities and tensions-including the strengths, …

26. Working Alongside, Not Against, Ai Writing Tools In The Composition Classroom: A Dialectical Retrospective, Daniel Frank, Jennifer K. Johnson

Teaching and Generative AI: Pedagogical Possibilities and Productive Tensions

This article presents a dialectical retrospective on thoughtfully integrating Generate AI tools such as ChatGPT into composition classrooms. Drawing on their experiences and research, the authors outline key principles for using AI as a supplemental aid rather than a replacement for student writing, promoting academic integrity, and fostering critical perspectives on the technology's capabilities and limitations. They share experimental classroom activities and assignments that engage students in hands-on exploration and reflection on their AI-assisted writing processes. Student responses reveal nuanced engagement with the tools to support rather than shortcut learning. The authors argue that attempting to simply prohibit AI use …

6. More Is Less?: Using Generative Ai For Idea Generation And Diversification In Early Writing Processes, Franziska Tsufim, Lainie Pomerleau

Teaching and Generative AI: Pedagogical Possibilities and Productive Tensions

As writing teachers, we are strong proponents of process writing. At the same time, we are aware that early process work, especially in a group setting, can be time consuming and anxiety-inducing. Students may also self-censor when sharing work with peers especially if they are not confident in their ideas. Drawing on the process of nominal, electronic brainstorming, we created two different prompts that allowed students to incorporate generative Al into their idea generation process. This first activity improves the efficiency of individual idea generation, while the second exercise helps increase student confidence in their ideas in collaborative brainstorming situations. …

14. Indigenous Futures In Generative Artificial Intelligence: The Paradox Of Participation, Rogelio E. Cardona-Rivera, J. Kaleo Alladin, Breanne K. Litts, Melissa Tehee

Teaching and Generative AI: Pedagogical Possibilities and Productive Tensions

As we work toward expanding and diversifying accurate representations of Indigenous peoples in classrooms, we must also consider the role of Native people in the construction of these technologies. Indigenous communities face the following paradox in the Generative Al space: in wanting to be represented by the Generative Al by sharing data representations their ways of knowing and being, they lose the agency to exert their rhetorical, technological, and data sovereignty over whatever is shared into the Generative Al system. Alternatively, not participating in the Generative Al space continues to perpetuate Western-centric biases and systemic racism built into the existing …

The End Of Consent: Data And The Corporate-Consumer Relationship, Faisal Hijjawi

LL.M. Essays & Theses

Consumer data is largely regulated through the notice-and-choice approach in the United States, which relies on consumer consent. The notice-and-choice approach is rooted in the control theory of information privacy. This paper will argue that the control theory is limited due to its reliance on property law, its breadth, as well as it reinforcing the ‘no privacy in public’ concept. Further, the notice-and-choice approach relies on consent being both free and informed. However, consent cannot be considered free due to the lack of choice and the manipulation exerted on the consumer. Also, consent is not informed as the consumer lacks …