Digital Commons Network^™

“Surfaces And Appearances”: Character, Physiognomy, And Communication In Charles Dickens’S And Wilkie Collins’S A Message From The Sea, Rachel Gouff

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis analyzes the way physiognomy works within Charles Dickens’s and Wilkie Collins’s novella, A Message from the Sea. The novella develops and promotes a version of physiognomy with limits, illustrating these limits through the experiences of its characters and through the symbolism of various objects such as tombstones, ghosts, and—most notably—the message in the bottle. Physiognomy, used repeatedly by various characters throughout the text, is nearly always able to correctly predict people’s general moral character. However, using physiognomy alone leaves a character’s history, motivations, and deep emotions as indecipherable as the parts of the bottle’s message where the ink …

Focusing Of High-Amplitude Sound Waves Using The Time Reversal Process, Brian D. Patchett

Theses and Dissertations

Time reversal is a method often used to focus sound to a desired location, and works best in a reverberant environment. The effect of focus location within a reverberant environment is presented first, revealing that proximity to reflecting surfaces has a significant effect on the amplitude of the focus both experimentally and when using a modal summation model. These effects are a primary component to creating focus signals at high amplitudes. High-amplitude focusing experiments show that when multiple sources are used simultaneously to generate a focus, a peak amplitude pressure spike of 200 dB can be achieved in air. A …

Exploring Experiential Education In The Online Learning Environment, Rhonda Sandberg

Theses and Dissertations

Research indicates that experiential learning enhances learning and increases student engagement. As online education in higher education increases, incorporating experiential learning into the online experience has been occurring. For this case study, interviews with five online instructional designers and three online instructors examined answers to the questions of how online instructional designers and online instructors define, value, and design experiential learning in their online courses. Insights regarding the benefits and challenges of designing online experiential learning are discussed. Online instructional designers discussed coaching online instructors through the process of designing experiential learning for their online courses. Online instructors expressed that …

Prescriptive Lists: A Taxonomy Of Lists Used In Prescriptive Discourse, Kelsie Westphal

Undergraduate Honors Theses

English prescriptive discourse generally shares language rules in the form of entries, many of which contain lists. However, while lists have recently caught the attention of scholars in several fields, not much if any research has been dedicated to the use of lists in prescriptive discourse. This thesis begins the exploration of the use of lists in prescriptive discourse by creating a taxonomy of lists found in prescriptive reference works such as usage guides and style guides. The study then discusses how characteristics of lists and of the categories featured in the taxonomy interact with prescription, opening the door for …

An Examination Of The Associations Between Relationship Education, Trust, Communication, Relationship Satisfaction, And Sexual Satisfaction, Samantha Baker

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Relationship education courses are commonly used by couples seeking to increase their relationship and sexual satisfaction. In this study, I examined the mediating roles of trust and communication between marriage education classes and relationship and sexual satisfaction. This study used data from the Couple Relationships and Transition Experiences (CREATE) study, a longitudinal, nationally representative survey of newlywed couples. While the present study did not find a significant relationship between marriage preparation and relationship and sexual satisfaction, it does not rule out the possibility of a relationship existing due to some limitations of the present study. This study did find significant …

Exploring Heuristics And Best Practices For Redesigning Instructional Video, Kelly L. Murdock

Theses and Dissertations

Instructional video is a common staple for delivering content in online courses. However, if the included videos are not properly created, many students will skip the video and its content. Improving instructional video has been the topic of many research projects, and we can learn from these studies how to create effective and engaging instructional videos--this is the topic of my dissertation. The first paper is an extended literature review that examines which key instructional design principles are supported in the literature. This helps developers to know which principles to focus on when designing video. The second paper is a …

Methods For Engineers To Understand, Predict, And Influence The Social Impacts Of Engineered Products, Phillip Douglas Stevenson

Theses and Dissertations

Engineered products can impact the day-to-day life of their users and other stakeholders. These impacts are often referred to as the product's social impacts. Products have been known to impact the people who use them, design them, manufacture them, distribute them, and the communities where they exist. Currently, there are few methods that can help an engineer identify, quantify, predict, or improve a product's social impact. Some companies and organizations have tried to identify their impacts and, for example, set goals for achieving more sustainable business practices. However, engineers, in large part, do not have methods that can help improve …

Understanding The Role Of Institutional Support For Student Academic Engagement In Higher Education Online And Blended Learning Settings Through The Lens Of The Academic Communities Of Engagement Framework, Sara Hirschi Tuiloma

Theses and Dissertations

This multiple-article dissertation explores institutional support for student academic engagement through the lens of the Academic Communities of Engagement (ACE) framework. A literature synthesis explores the current research on teaching assistant (TA) support in online and blended environments in higher education, with a special emphasis on their role in providing support for affective engagement, in addition to supporting cognitive and behavioral engagement. The review suggests that additional research needs to be done in this area to better understand the role of TAs in online environments and how institutions can prepare them for this role through meaningful training. The second article …

Full Issue

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Forthcoming Publications

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

Astronomy, Papyrus, and Covenant, edited by John Gee
and Brian Hauglid, is volume 3 in the Book of Abraham
Series. It includes FARMS conference papers on the Book
of Abraham and its commonalities with ancient texts,
Abraham’s vision of the heavens, and the significance of
the Abrahamic covenant. Available autumn 2003.

The New World Promised Land’S Economic Base

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

A majority of people in the modern world are absorbed in performing their daily work, conceived in terms of jobs, money, food, and other things practical and economic. Would it have been different for the Nephites or Lamanites? Not really. The center of their daily concerns, too, was “making a living.” But what that meant differed greatly from what we mean by the expression.

Return, Leilani Bascom

Theses and Dissertations

Return is a video-based installation which includes sound, performance, and textile elements. Leilani Bascom is the lone actor navigating the water and where the water meets the land in this personal project exploring concepts of the life cycle from birth to death and rebirth. Life's paradox of struggle and release unfolds with imagery of battling through waves to swim deep underwater, fighting a river current and then surrendering to the flow, and carving a hole in the sand to climb into and be held. Viewers are immersed in the movement and sounds of water to witness the power and meaning …

Audience And Mockingbird: A Narrator's Guide, Charisse Baxter

Theses and Dissertations

While adaptation research possesses longstanding applications and ample material for study, seldom has a data set proven to be as iconic and culturally relevant as the various iterations of To Kill a Mockingbird. Novel to film to stage play, and then nearly 60 years later to a second stage play, the story has resonated with audiences in a range of performative variations. A defining characteristic of Harper Lee's tale is her use of a narrator; this characteristic provides an effective entry-point in examining the two stage adaptations by way of their interpretation of the narrator. A study of the respective …

A Hug For Humanity: Metamodernism And Masculinity On Television In Ted Lasso, Kennedy Lesley Koford

Theses and Dissertations

The Apple TV+ sports comedy Ted Lasso has been a hit among fans, who flock to the show and its positive messages. The show offers a refreshing tone, one that promotes positivity and optimism even when faced with the reality of a cynical world. By using the analytical perspective of metamodernism to understand its popularity, scholars and fans alike can gain a deeper understanding of core message of the show, which mimics the oscillation between the cynical and the sincere. Fundamental scholars in the emerging study of metamodernism, such as Robin Van Den Akker, Timotheus Vermeulen, and Alison Gibbons will …

Fault Tolerant Robotics Using Active Diagnosis Of Partially Observable Systems And Optimized Path Planning For Underwater Message Ferrying, Devon M. Webb

Theses and Dissertations

Underwater robotic vehicles are used in a variety of environments that would be dangerous for humans. For these vehicles to be successful, they need to be tolerant of a variety of internal and external faults. To be resilient to internal faults, the system must be capable of determining the source of faulty behavior. However many different faults within a robotic vehicle can create identical faulty behavior, which makes the vehicles impossible to diagnose using conventional methods. I propose a novel active diagnosis method for differentiating between faults that would otherwise have identical behavior. I apply this method to a communication …

Pollination Ecology Of Island Endemic Plants: A Case Study On The California Channel Islands, C. Sheena Sidhu, Giselle E. Lozano, Michelle C. Miner, Emily Howe, Erin E. Wilson-Rankin

Western North American Naturalist

Understanding the pollination requirements of threatened species is critical for the success of long-term conservation strategies. In a series of greenhouse experiments, we assessed the effects of different pollination treatments, including autogamy, facilitated autogamy, and cross-pollination on fruit and seed set for 2 generations of a rare island endemic plant. Santa Cruz Island rockcress, Sibara filifolia (Brassicaceae), is a rare, endangered annual herb that is endemic to the California Channel Islands. While efforts are underway to monitor and conserve this rare plant species, little is known about its pollination biology. We quantified the index of self-compatibility and multiplicative fitness. We …

Full Issue

Journal of Response to Writing

No abstract provided.

Student Interpretation And Use Arguments: Evidence-Based, Student-Led Grading, Ll Aull

Journal of Response to Writing

Assigning grades is conventionally the exclusive, lonely terrain of the instructor, even as other aspects of teaching and responding to student writing are collaborative. As an alternative that promotes student engagement and agency, labor-based contract grading is used in a growing number of writing classrooms. This article strives to add to these conversations by describing evidence-based, student-led grading as an option that engages students as well as a broad construct of writing. This approach foregrounds students’ own response to their writing, in the form of evidence-based interpretation and use arguments for their grades. It engages students in the process of …

Feedback As Boundary Object: Intersections Of Writing, Response, And Research, Lindsey Harding, Joshua King, Anya Bonanno, Joseph Powell

Journal of Response to Writing

While a great deal is known about instructor response to student writing—from commenting practices to student perceptions—less is known about how feedback impacts students’ writing and writerly development. While we set out to study students’ explicit engagement with written instructor feedback, our initial experimental design was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Accordingly, we describe the dialogic collaborative process that emerged as we considered both the data we were able to collect and, in turn, feedback anew. This article proposes that feedback on student writing is a boundary object which affords those interacting with it the opportunity for collaboration despite the …

Feedback Practices In Hybrid Writing Courses: Instructor Choices About Modality And Timing, Ariel M. Goldenthal, Jessica Matthews, Courtney Adams Wooten, Brian Fitzpatrick, Lourdes Fernandez

Journal of Response to Writing

Despite a wealth of research on feedback practices in synchronous and asynchronous courses, little has been done to investigate such practices in hybrid writing pedagogy. How do instructors make choices about providing feedback when both instructional modes are operating in a course?

A qualitative study conducted with fourteen instructors who teach hybrid writing courses at a large state university reveals how they navigate a series of choices about providing feedback on student writing. This study shows that instructional modality, use of the LMS, and labor conditions influence the decisions instructors make about how and when to provide feedback, especially on …

Editorial Introduction, Kat O'Meara, Betsy Gilliland

Journal of Response to Writing

No abstract provided.

“I Suppose An Island Dweller Should Expect It To Be So”: The Contradiction And Drama Of Maternity And Islands In Caleb’S Crossing, Shayla Frandsen

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Islands have a long tradition of capturing human imagination and functioning as a space that nurtures both magic and mystery. As geographic locations, they seem to avoid easy taxonomy even while behaving easily categorizable: they exist as tourist fantasies separate from everyday landscape even while many operate as an othered land that is still “safe” enough to visit. They are isolated yet capable of nurturing strong cultural identity. They also act as autonomous entities while still being interconnected within larger natural structures, coastlines, and waterways. In these ways and more islands navigate as border spaces of inherent contradiction—contradictions which are …

To The Lighthouse Or To Mrs. Ramsay? A Study Of Materialization Through The Symbolism Of The Lighthouse In Virginia Woolf’S To The Lighthouse, Virginia Moscetti

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

In this paper, I argue that the “lighthouse” in Virginia Woolf’s novel To The Lighthouse operates as a symbol for Mrs. Ramsay’s “self-hood” and for Mr. Ramsay’s obscure desire for sanctuary and domesticity in Mrs. Ramsay. Through this symbolism I further contend that Woolf renders the ambiguous processes associated with self-hood and desire materially legible and, in doing so, demonstrates how metaphor and symbolism reconstitute our material world into representation. Moreover, I argue that we can conceptualize the lighthouse symbolism revolving around and centered in Mrs. Ramsay in terms of T.J. Clark’s “dual figure”; a figure with two symbolic connotations …

The Applicability Of Joint Source-Channel Coding Systems To Aeronautical Mobile Telemetry Data, Jesse Richmond

Theses and Dissertations

Broadcast spectrum restrictions require greater efficiency from wireless transmission systems, particularly in applications where sections of spectrum previously reserved for military purposes have been sold to private interests. A joint source-channel coding system, in tandem with smart data selection techniques, is proposed as a potential solution to this problem. The workings of this joint source-channel coding system are detailed, with particular attention given to the decoding process.

Hybrid Machine Learning And Physics-Based Modeling Approaches For Process Control And Optimization, Junho Park

Theses and Dissertations

Transformer neural networks have made a significant impact on natural language processing. The Transformer network self-attention mechanism effectively addresses the vanishing gradient problem that limits a network learning capability, especially when the time series gets longer or the size of the network gets deeper. This dissertation examines the usage of the Transformer model for time-series forecasting and customizes it for a simultaneous multistep-ahead prediction model in a surrogate model predictive control (MPC) application. The proposed method demonstrates enhanced control performance and computation efficiency compared to the Long-short term memory (LSTM)-based MPC and one-step-ahead prediction model structures for both LSTM and …

Full Issue

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

The Only Way Out Is Through: Community, Death, And The Desacralization Of Trauma In George Saunders’ Lincoln In The Bardo, Josey Gardner

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

The arrival of George Saunders’ novel Lincoln in the Bardo as yet another trauma narrative is not surprising. What began as a desire for representation of trauma in media and literature has morphed into an obsession in which trauma is the gold standard. Upon becoming so, trauma is inevitably placed upon a pedestal—the shining object that all other decisions are measured against and based upon. Its placement on this pedestal marks the “sacralization” of trauma. However, Lincoln in the Bardo fills a unique niche in the current portrayals of trauma found in popular media by seeking to minimize its importance …

Biblical Hebrew As A Negative Concord Language, J. Bradley Dukes

Theses and Dissertations

The typological distinction between negative concord and double negation languages has received increasing attention over the past century beginning with Jespersen (1922). Multiple negation in Biblical Hebrew has been subject to mixed treatment in this regard. Some scholars have treated all multiple negation in Biblical Hebrew as emphatic (Gesenius, Kautzsch & Cowley 1910; Dahood 1975; Holmstedt 2016) while others have labeled these constructions as pleonastic (Jouon & Muraoka 2006). Snyman (2004) determines that Biblical Hebrew is neither a negative concord language nor a double negation language based upon his assessment that "BH does not exhibit multiple negation elements." In this …

Visual Thunder: The Power Of The Image In Calderón's La Cena Del Rey Baltasar, Kelly Ann Russell

Theses and Dissertations

After the Council of Trent, Catholic Spain in the seventeenth century increasingly turned to the arts to articulate their identity and mission as a church. Writing for the Spanish Court in the early 1630s, Pedro Calderón de la Barca uses La cena del rey Baltasar to portray the Church as an essential mediator for the relationship between the congregant and the divine, specifically through the use of didactic imagery and authoritative interpretation of God’s word. This essay reviews elements in the play that support this message and articulates the eucharistic and allegorical elements therein. The action of the Biblical narrative …

Mtc Training Applicant Education, Taylor Godfrey

Instructional Psychology and Technology Graduate Student Projects

The purpose of this project was to better prepare people to apply as teachers at the Provo Missionary Training Center (MTC). Areas of this education include the benefits of being an MTC teacher, the requirements of employment that should be considered, and the application process that will be followed. The two primary objectives of this education are (1) increasing the number of qualified applicants who apply to be teachers at the MTC and (2) increasing applicant satisfaction with the MTC hiring process through increasing the amount of helpful information that better answers their questions/concerns and saves them time. To do …