Digital Commons Network^™

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 …

Implementing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles To Collect Human Gait Data At Distance And Altitude For Identification And Re-Identification, Donn E. Bartram

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Gait patterns are a class of biometric information pertaining to the way a person moves and poses. Gait information is unique to each person and can be used to identify and reidentify people. Historically, this task has been achieved through the use of multiple ground-based imaging sensors. However, as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) advance, they present the opportunity to evolve the process of persons identification and re-identification. Collecting human gait data using UAVs at distances ranging from 20m to 500m and altitudes ranging from 0m to 120m is a challenging task. The current biometric data collection methods, primarily designed for …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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, …

Contributors, Beth Buyserie, Travis N. Thurston

Teaching and Generative AI: Pedagogical Possibilities and Productive Tensions

No abstract provided.

33. Chatgpt Assistance In Creating Chemistry Practice Problems: Pitfalls, Positives, And Possibilities, Michael A. Christiansen

Teaching and Generative AI: Pedagogical Possibilities and Productive Tensions

ChatGPT, a relatively new Large Language Model (LLM) artificial intelligence (Al) chatbot, has gained significant attention as the most downloaded software app, accruing over 100 million users within two months of its release. This software can generate quick, articulate responses to virtually any textual query. Many educators are concerned about its potential for enabling student cheating. However, it currently suffers significant limitations in solving chemistry problems-documented through peer-reviewed articles and from the author's experience suggesting that chemistry students will perform far better, on average, by studying than by relying on ChatGPT. This is particularly true of math-centric problems, which the …

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, …

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. …

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 …

Ethical Education Data Mining Framework For Analyzing And Evaluating Large Language Model-Based Conversational Intelligent Tutoring Systems For Management And Entrepreneurship Courses, Joseph Benjamin R. Ilagan, Jose Ramon Ilagan, Ma. Mercedes T. Rodrigo

Quantitative Methods and Information Technology Faculty Publications

Educational data mining (EDM) can be used to design better and smarter learning technology by finding and predicting aspects of learners. Amend if necessary. Insights from EDM are based on data collected from educational environments. Among these educational environments are computer-based educational systems (CBES) such as learning management systems (LMS) and conversational intelligent tutoring systems (CITSs). The use of large language models (LLMs) to power a CITS holds promise due to their advanced natural language understanding capabilities. These systems offer opportunities for enriching management and entrepreneurship education. Collecting data from classes experimenting with these new technologies raises some ethical challenges. …

Addressing Spectral Bias Of Deep Neural Networks By Multi-Grade Deep Learning, Ronglong Fang, Yuesheng Xu

Mathematics & Statistics Faculty Publications

Deep neural networks (DNNs) have showcased their remarkable precision in approximating smooth functions. However, they suffer from the spectral bias, wherein DNNs typically exhibit a tendency to prioritize the learning of lower-frequency components of a function, struggling to effectively capture its high-frequency features. This paper is to address this issue. Notice that a function having only low frequency components may be well-represented by a shallow neural network (SNN), a network having only a few layers. By observing that composition of low frequency functions can effectively approximate a high-frequency function, we propose to learn a function containing high-frequency components by composing …

Table Of Contents, Beth Buyserie, Travis N. Thurston

Teaching and Generative AI: Pedagogical Possibilities and Productive Tensions

No abstract provided.

31. Collaborative Writing And Ai: A Research Assignment For An Undergraduate Professional Communication Course, Beth Buyserie

Teaching and Generative AI: Pedagogical Possibilities and Productive Tensions

This chapter contextualizes and describes a collaborative Al research assignment for an in-person 2000-level Professional Communication general education course. This "Collaborative Writing and Al" assignment asks teams of students to 1) conduct their own secondary research on a specific topic connected to Al, 2) conduct primary research using Al itself, and 3) make recommendations to their peers and future colleagues in the profession or community on how to navigate and respond to a range of interdisciplinary conversations and perspectives on the technology. Within this chapter, the author provides a rationale for the assignment, includes suggestions for background readings included in …

25. Using The Ai Explainpaper To Help Students Better Understand Journal Articles, Erin Jensen, Daniel Hutchinson

Teaching and Generative AI: Pedagogical Possibilities and Productive Tensions

We have students use the Al Explainpaper to be able to read and understand journal articles as this is a common assignment in many core classes. In our experiences, students often struggle to understand the content of journal articles and then struggle to use the journal article as a source in their writing. The Al Explainpaper provides an opportunity for students to use the bot to better understand the journal article and have an opportunity to ask the program additional questions about the article. We have found Explainpaper to provide help to students in being able to read and understand …

24. Revisioning A Bibliography Assignment To Center Discovery And Critical Source Engagement, Lillian Campbell, Jenna Green, Nicole Bungert

Teaching and Generative AI: Pedagogical Possibilities and Productive Tensions

This chapter shares context, assignment details, and impact of revisions of a research journal assignment in our first-year writing program at a mid-sized private university in the Midwest. With the rise of access to large language processing models like ChatGPT in Spring 2023, we reviewed our curriculum to consider what assignments might be most vulnerable to Al-generated writing. Our bibliography assignment was an obvious contender, since it focused on summary of individual sources. Thus, we worked with our research librarian liaison to reimagine this assignment, guided by a conversation about learning goals. After reviewing relevant scholarship on source use and …

22. Examining Ways Of Using Ai To Better Support Teaching Faculty, Mitigate Burnout, And Increase Teaching Creativity, Jennifer Grewe

Teaching and Generative AI: Pedagogical Possibilities and Productive Tensions

Faculty burnout is a concern within academics particularly for the most student-centered teaching faculty. In attempts to support students, faculty can sometimes do so at the expense of their own time and energy that over time can become overwhelming. There exist many concerns within academia on the use of Al and yet this is a tool that could be helpful to teaching loads if utilized properly. This chapter explores ways in which Al might help alleviate some of the workload that teaching faculty experience, which is a start to addressing burnout issues. Ideas are shared in this chapter surrounding Al's …

21. My Summer With Chatgpt, Mary Lourdes Silva

Teaching and Generative AI: Pedagogical Possibilities and Productive Tensions

Out of necessity, I first used ChatGPT to process mentally and emotionally two major injuries. Trapped at home for the entire summer, I learned to write with ChatGPT to complete a large-scale research project. The anthropomorphizing experience left me feeling less alone. For nearly a year, news about Al-generated writing software sparked nationwide concern about the future of traditional essays. As an early adopter of most digital technologies and the type of person who welcomes chaos, I chose to learn everything | could about ChatGPT, which meant I needed to learn how to "cheat" with ChatGPT. Inspired by similar assignments …

9. Uses, Benefits, And Limitations Of Ai Chatbots: Implementing Chatgpt In The First-Year Writing Classroom, Walker Smith, Cora Alward, Jacob Morris, Lydia Peach, Veronica Pulley, Parker Routt, Kolby Sanders, Josh Vogeler

Teaching and Generative AI: Pedagogical Possibilities and Productive Tensions

This essay shares the findings of a Spring 2023 honors composition course in which students conducted their own primary research project to investigate the uses and limitations of ChatGPT for first-year writers. By experimenting with integrating ChatGPT into various stages of their writing and revision processes, the students identified the strengths and weaknesses of the writing tool. Then, they observed and interviewed faculty as they graded different versions of essay drafts with varying levels of ChatGPT assistance. Ultimately, they found that ChatGPT was incredibly useful for certain small-scale tasks, but posed significant risks, especially for students with less experience in …

3. Empowering Educators In The Age Of Generative Ai: A Critical Media Literacy Approach, Ali Söken, Kysa Nygreen

Teaching and Generative AI: Pedagogical Possibilities and Productive Tensions

This chapter draws from the authors' experience teaching an undergraduate course in the context of Generative Al (GenAl), and shares three instructional innovations we are implementing in response: 1) establishing an appropriate tone; 2) designing in-class activities to engage critically with GenAl; and 3) revising assessment and grading policies. These adaptations are informed by the framework of Critical Media Literacy (CML), which grounds the course. They aim to strike a balanced view that acknowledges both challenges and potentials of GenAl. This chapter aims to furnish a contextual framework for fellow educators to critically engage with the realm of GenAl. Core …

2. Some Ethical Considerations For Teaching And Generative Ai In Higher Education, Lydia Wilkes

Teaching and Generative AI: Pedagogical Possibilities and Productive Tensions

The chapter discusses some ethical considerations for teaching and generative Al in higher education with a focus on large language models like ChatGPT. These considerations include generative Al's effects on the environment and labor, its reliance on data and tendency to violate privacy, the biases encoded in it, and the digital divide. As more sophisticated generative Al is integrated into word processors, these ethical concerns will become more difficult to perceive and the ethics of using Al more difficult to parse. This chapter concludes with a note on power and justice.

Development Of A Modular Lab Automation System With Applications To Animal And Bacteria Cell Culture, Timothy William Hartman

Dissertations and Theses

The challenges faced while executing wet lab protocols encourage the development of automation systems to come alongside human scientists. Today’s cutting-edge experiments involve complex protocols with precise measurements usually performed manually. Even simpler biological protocols can be tedious and prone to error, as was seen during the COVID-19 pandemic and society’s demand for high-volume, rapid sample analysis. Moreover, reproducibility suffers when there is excessive variability and insufficient data. Here, we leveraged the Stanford Biodesign process to develop a modular lab automation system and image analysis workflow to address challenges like these. This flagship automation platform at The University of South …

Artificial Intelligence And News Consumption: A Study Of Trust, Credibility And Transparency In Automated Journalism, Julia Lobo Paes

Dissertations and Theses

According to Gallup poll (2023), over the last 50 years there has been a decline in how much Americans trust mass media. While in the 1970’s 72% of the population responded that they trust the media a 'great deal/fair amount', this number dropped to 34% in 2023. Given the decreasing public trust in news, this thesis focused particularly on analyzing trust in the organization, trust in the news story and perceived credibility in AI generative content. In addition to articles created by AI, this study also aimed to analyze how the public perceives information that has been personalized and distributed …

Flexible Attenuation Fields: Tomographic Reconstruction From Heterogeneous Datasets, Clifford S. Parker

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

Traditional reconstruction methods for X-ray computed tomography (CT) are highly constrained in the variety of input datasets they admit. Many of the imaging settings -- the incident energy, field-of-view, effective resolution -- remain fixed across projection images, and the only real variance is in the detector's position and orientation with respect to the scene. In contrast, methods for 3D reconstruction of natural scenes are extremely flexible to the geometric and photometric properties of the input datasets, readily accepting and benefiting from images captured under varying lighting conditions, with different cameras, and at disparate points in time and space. Extending CT …

Content Moderation On Social Media: Social And Computational Standards And Implications, Mohit Singhal

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Social media has become a powerful tool that reflects human communication's best and worst aspects. They allow individuals to freely express opinions, communicate with others, and learn about new stories. On the other hand, they have become fertile grounds for several forms of abuse, harassment, and the dissemination of misinformation. Social media platforms have established and employed content moderation to counteract the spread of abuse and misinformation.

Some critical challenges hinder the understanding of the social media content moderation ecosystem. This dissertation investigates various aspects of content moderation, including their coverage, fairness, and effectiveness. Firstly, it investigates how, in practice, …

Natural Language Generation From Large-Scale Open-Domain Knowledge Graphs, Xiao Shi

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations - Archive

This dissertation delves into the realm of natural language generation (NLG) from expansive open-domain knowledge graphs, aiming to bridge the gap between existing methods primarily tested on limited datasets and the demands of real-world large-scale, diverse graph structures. Prior works in NLG often relied on small-scale or restricted datasets, neglecting the complexities of broader knowledge graphs. To address this, we introduce a new dataset called GraphNarrative, designed to encompass a wide range of graph structures and enhance the realism of NLG tasks.

The core contribution of this research lies in devising a novel approach to mitigating information hallucination, a common …

Claim Sensing: A Study Linking Factual Claims To Human Behaviors On Social Media, Zeyu Zhang

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations - Archive

The ubiquity of social media has transformed it into a rich source for reflecting people's opinions, behaviors, and interactions. Users frequently encounter factual claims in news, stories, and political statements, which can be either true or false. These claims significantly shape people's minds and behaviors, influencing not only individual perspectives but also broader public discourse. This study explores individuals' behaviors and perceptions toward factual claims by leveraging the concept of "check-worthiness" to analyze the relationship between such claims and user behaviors across datasets containing tens of millions of social media posts, particularly tweets from the platform X (formerly Twitter). It …

Escape The Planet: Revolutionizing Game Design With Novel Oop Techniques, Qusai Kamal Fannoun

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Mobile devices are continuously evolving and greater computing power and graphics capabilities are being introduced every year. As a result, there is an increasing demand for challenging and engaging mobile games that leverage these advanced features. This project explores best design practices using the development of Escape the Planet, which is an intricate maze game for mobile devices in which players navigate using a spaceship that is trapped in a hostile planet’s maze while avoiding obstacles and enemy attacks. The goal is to safely guide the spaceship out of the maze without colliding into walls or taking bullets from defensive …