Digital Commons Network^™

Fundamentals Of International Religious Freedom: An Open Access Asynchronous Online Course Design, Johanna Chan

Instructional Psychology and Technology Graduate Student Projects

The International Center for Law and Religion Studies (ICLRS) associated with the J. Reuben Clark Law School, has presented religious freedom training around the world to government officials, non-governmental organization (NGO) leaders, scholars, and others. The purpose of this project was to redesign their original training presentations into an openly accessible asynchronous online course. The content for this online course has previously been used in live instruction (in the form of brief lesson plans and PowerPoints), including a presentation of six two-hour sessions to 100 Guatemalan human rights officials. Live training on religious freedom was previously completed in China, Myanmar, …

Shortening Remediation Time In A University Excel Course Through Custom, Automated Feedback, Kainalu Barino

Instructional Psychology and Technology Graduate Student Projects

This project aimed to implement an automated feedback tool for students taking IS 110. Implementing a feedback tool was identified by a previous research group as one of the best ways to shorten remediation time (Colby, 2018, p. 1). They chose a design for their feedback tool that resulted in faster turn-around times and better scores on assignments, but their design did not improve test results by a significant margin. Our project redesigned the feedback tool in the hope that it not only maintains the benefits of the previous tool, but achieves long term learning results as well.

Less Friction, More Business—Graphite Connect Onboarding, David Storey

Instructional Psychology and Technology Graduate Student Projects

Graphite recently experienced four times the growth in a single quarter as the company has experienced in an entire year. Future growth projections are even higher, and the need for more rapid and effective onboarding is abundantly clear—our growth will outpace our ability to train and hire new employees and therefore slow down business.

This project provided new employees with an onboarding program consisting of eight learning modules.

Know Better, Do Better?: Parental Financial Socialization's Indirect Association With Couple Financial Communication Through Financial Self-Efficacy, Rachel M. Okamoto

Theses and Dissertations

Emerging adults find themselves in a time of great transition, especially related to finances and relationships. This study used a sample of 1,950 U.S. emerging adults currently in romantic relationships to investigate the role that parent financial socialization plays in the financial communication for emerging adult couples. This study also investigated if financial self-efficacy, in part, explained this association. Parent financial socialization was found to be positively associated with couple financial communication. In addition, financial self-efficacy was found to partially mediate this relationship. Individuals whose parents taught them effectively regarding finances had higher levels of self-efficacy regarding finances and had …

Semantic Memory And Decision-Making: An Fmri Study Regarding Covid-19 Vaccine Misinformation, Morgan Chase

Undergraduate Honors Theses

With the continued use and prevalence of social media, misinformation is likewise becoming more prevalent. Information about the COVID-19 pandemic was an example of the way misinformation spreads and presents challenges to society through polarization and discord. As people made decisions regarding whether to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, misinformation may have impacted their decision making. The goal of this study was to understand how misinformation and corrections to misinformation differentially activate the brain, in contrast to how correct information activates the brain, and how misinformation impacts decision making.

A Rhetorical Analysis Of Motivational Speeches In Sports Films, Brenna Seeman

Theses and Dissertations

This paper applies Aristotle's historic modes of persuasion, namely ethos, logos, and pathos, to the motivational speeches found in 20 popular sports films. Through this analysis, major themes concerning how coaches utilized persuasive tactics were found and used to compile a list of important characteristics of motivational speeches. This initial analysis found pathos to be the most effective form of persuasion among motivational speeches in sports films. Because of this finding, a deeper analysis took place with five of the speeches, focusing specifically on how the visual, sound and other thematic elements contributed to the overall pathos of those rhetorical …

Exploring Posttraumatic Growth In Aphasia: A Qualitative Investigation, Camille Williams

Theses and Dissertations

This study explored posttraumatic growth (PTG) in people with aphasia and is the qualitative arm of a larger mixed-methods study. After an initial experimental session, 23 people with aphasia (PWA; 12 females and 11 males) completed a 60-minute semi-structured interview during which participants expanded on previously-given questionnaire responses and then answered five additional open-ended questions about communication in their daily life. Interviews were transcribed orthographically and coded using reflexive codebook analysis. A stakeholder with aphasia was consulted to gain insight from an insider's perspective about whether codes and themes captured the experiences of aphasia. Reflexive codebook analysis revealed two themes. …

The Impact Of Growth Mindset Training On Entrepreneurial Action Among Necessity Entrepreneurs: Evidence From A Randomized Control Trial, Shad Morris, W. Chad Carlos, Geoffrey Kistruck, Robert Lount, Tumsify Elly Thomas

Faculty Publications

Although entrepreneurship training programs are designed to help necessity entrepreneurs acquire skills and capabilities to take entrepreneurial action, participants in these programs often fail to do so. In partnership with a local government agency, we conducted a randomized field experiment involving 165 entrepreneurs in rural Tanzania where in addition to providing technical-skills training, approximately half of the participants also received ‘growth mindset’ psychological training. Those who received the growth mindset training displayed more entrepreneurial action in their business than those in the control group. Importantly, higher levels of entrepreneurial self efficacy mediated the positive impact on entrepreneurial action displayed by …

Microaggressions That Students From Underrepresented Groups Experience In Communication Sciences And Disorders, Samantha Berryhill

Theses and Dissertations

This study explored microaggressions that underrepresented students in Communication Sciences and Disorders experience. Phase I included a survey that was sent out to 276 undergraduate and graduate students at one university with 14 questions. Students were asked to identify with demographic variables, rate their sense of belonging, and discuss microaggressions they had experienced. Phase II comprised of individual interviews with six participants that further explored their experience as an underrepresented student in Communication Sciences and Disorders. Interviews were transcribed and coded using a content analysis. Across the two phases, quantitative, mixed-method, and content analyses were completed. Interviews were transcribed and …

Leasing Setup Preview, Amy Rogers

Instructional Psychology and Technology Graduate Student Projects

This article summarizes my IP&T design project.

Sex-Specific Variation In Deep Brain Shape Is Attenuated In Schizophrenia - An Enigma Consortium Meta-Analysis, Delaina Brooke Cimmino

Theses and Dissertations

Schizophrenia (SCZ) is characterized by a disconnect from reality that manifests as various clinical and cognitive symptoms, as well as consistent neurobiological abnormalities. However, unique sex-related differences have been observed regarding clinical presentation that imply separate brain substrates. The present study characterized deep-brain morphology using shape features to understand whether the neurobiology of schizophrenia varies as a function of sex. This study analyzed multi-site archival data from 1,579 male (M) and 836 female (F) participants with SCZ, as well as 1,934 male and 1,828 female healthy controls (CON) from twenty-four cross-sectional study samples from the ENIGMA Schizophrenia Workgroup. Harmonized shape …

Can Community Resilience Be Achieved? An Investigation Of Subjective Household Resilience, Place Meanings, And Individual Perceived Preparedness To Respond To Environmental Threats, Anh Minh Ly

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the effects of place meanings and perceived individual preparedness on subjective household resilience and socio-psychological community resilience. Earlier research has shown an active controversy of whether place meanings and individual preparedness could transform into the perception of household resilience and community resilience. Thus, while place meanings, in a transformative norm, perform like place attachment and may support adaptation to change and strengthen the perception of resilience, it can present in forms of place dependence or inflexibility which might be a barrier for household and community resilience. Similarly, individual preparedness is claimed to be essential but insufficient to …

Validating A Predictive Early Kindergarten Dynamic Assessment Of Word Level Reading And Language, Taylor Jordan Cena

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the preliminary psychometrics to revisions to the decoding subtest of the Predictive Early Assessment of Reading and Language (PEARL) dynamic assessment and to further examine the predictive validity of the language subtest of the PEARL. Specific aims were to (a) determine if kindergarten students made gains on the PEARL decoding subtest from pretest to a delayed standard posttest and to a delayed novel posttest, indicating that floor effects were mitigated, (b) to examine if there was variance in the delayed standard posttest and novel posttest scores, (c) to determine if there was …

Examining The Validity Of The Cubed Narrative Language Measures Listening And Reading Subtests, Trevor David Read

Theses and Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the concurrent and predictive validity of the CUBED Narrative Language Measures Listening and Reading subtests to evaluate their psychometric properties as defined by Deno (2003). Method: Evidence of concurrent validity for the NLM Listening and Reading subtests was examined using data from 1,146 preschool through third grade students. The NLM subtests were compared to similar subtests from other assessments administered at approximately the same time. Evidence of predictive validity was examined using data from these same NLM subtests from 1,512 kindergarten through third grade students, including 71 third grade students for …

Full Issue

Swiss American Historical Society Review

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Time Pressure On Speech Fluency In Aging Adults: Comparisons With Divided Attention, Caleb Henderson Sanford

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the impacts of dual task and time pressure conditions on the speech fluency of 60 neurotypical adults between the ages of 26 and 85. Participants retold short stories in baseline, time pressure, dual task, and combined dual task and time pressure conditions. Dependent variables included five measures of speech fluency: words per minute (WPM), fillers per verbalization, false starts and repetitions per verbalization, extended pauses per utterance, and speech naturalness. Each of these variables was compared between age groups of younger, older, and elderly adults and across conditions. Results reveal that time pressure causes speech rate to …

Mediators Of The Insomnia-Suicidality Association, Zach Simmons

Theses and Dissertations

Rationale: The severity of insomnia symptoms, including difficulty falling asleep and returning to sleep when awakened in the night, are major risk factors for more severe suicidality including suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, and death by suicide. As a modifiable risk factor, insomnia is a potential target for suicide prevention. There are several commonly observed gaps in the literature studying the association between insomnia and suicidality including little exploration of potential mediators, limited assessments of insomnia and suicidality, and a lack of sample diversity and representativeness. As such, the models that explain the association between insomnia and suicidality remain unclear and …

Group Therapeutic Relationships Codevelopment In Short-Term Therapy: A Conceptual Replication And Extension Of Lo Coco Et Al. (2019), Tate M. Paxton

Theses and Dissertations

Objective: The empirical study of member-group mutual influence in group therapy is an emerging area of study. However, few replications have tried to generalize prior findings related to mutual influence. The aim of this study is to conceptually replicate the longitudinal group actor-partner interdependence models (LGAPIM) employed by Lo Coco et al. (2019) measuring how mutual influence and other factors affect the codevelopment of the group therapeutic relationships. Method: 343 clients were included in this archival analysis. Group Questionnaire (GQ) main subscales, positive bond (PB), positive work (PW), and negative relationship (NR), were gathered from early, middle, and late timepoints. …

Switzerland’S Banished Children, Una Suseli O'Connell

Swiss American Historical Society Review

Over a one hundred year period a practice known as verdingen (indentured servitude) operated in Switzerland. Children were removed from their families and sent to work on farms. It is estimated that between 1860 and 1960, one hundred thousand children were verdingt in this way, a quarter of them in the Canton of Bern. Local parishes paid farmers a monthly allowance to provide disadvantaged children with board and lodging. Although some treated their charges well, countless children suffered terrible hardship over many years. A veil of silence fell across entire communities as clergy, social workers and villagers chose to ignore …

Literature As An "Affective Magnet": Defining, Engaging And Investigating Emotions In A (Russian) Language-Literature Classroom, Sofya Yunusova

Russian Language Journal

The purpose of this article is to conceptualize affective processes in reading literature in a foreign language. While generations of scholars and methodologists have stressed the educational potential of literary texts in terms of engaging learners’ emotions, the field has a relatively poor research base for discussing what these reading-induced emotions are and how to systematically promote them in a language-literature classroom. To this end, the current study first conceptualizes the different types of emotions that are arguably involved in reading literature in a foreign language and then formulates a set of pedagogical principles to foster their emergence in a …

A Corpus-Based Analysis Of Vvodnye Slova: Pedagogical Applications, Joan F. Chevalier

Russian Language Journal

Parenthetical expressions referred to as vvodnye slova in Russian have remained on the periphery of Russian linguistics. This is, no doubt, due to the fact that they are heterogeneous and difficult to define as a category. Traditional and more recent approaches to vvodnye slova are discussed. Vvodnye slova play a key role in expressing authorial stance and in organizing and providing cohesion to texts. On the basis of these two main functional characteristics, an argument is made for the inclusion of vvodnye slova in Russian Language L2 curricula. This corpus-based study establishes frequency patterns for semantic sub-groups of vvodnye slova …

Review: Student-Centered Approaches To Russian Language Teaching: Insights, Strategies, And Adaptations, William J. Comer

Russian Language Journal

This volume consists of twelve chapters, three written by the editors setting an overview of "student-centered teaching" (two at the start of the volume and one at the end), with nine chapters in the middle, written by different authors. These nine center chapters share a basic structure: an opening statement of the problem they will look at, a Russian-language version of that overview, then several pages of theory/background on the specific topic being addressed, and then a discussion of the specific study/intervention conducted. Each chapter ends with both a conclusion and a "lessons learned" section. Each of the nine center …

Review: Dostoevsky's Crime And Punishment. A Reader's Guide, Michael Ossorgin

Russian Language Journal

For decades, Martinsen fostered international dialogue on Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, gathering interpretations from the most dedicated students and scholars. Her reader's guide distills this criticism into a concise, accessible handbook, an authoritative scholarly guide in English. Martinsen' s guide is handy for syllabus writing and as a teaching supplement to cover the novel's central themes and narrative techniques.

Adolescent's Perceptions Of The Parent's Marital Relationship And The Impact On Their Suicide Risk, Savannah Heaton Hurt

Theses and Dissertations

Suicide risk is rapidly increasing in children and adolescents. It is vital that research explores the causes in child and adolescent suicide risk. Research has failed to identify if the marital relationship may be correlated with this increase in suicide ideation in children. This study set out to determine if a child's perception of their parents' marital conflict impacts the child's suicidal risk. Using the Family Foundations of Youth Development project this study analyzed 1,692 parent and child participants to test if the child's perceptions of the marital conflict impacted their suicide risk and if the parent's own report of …

The Ideal Spanish Candidate: The Effects Of Gender On The Electability Of Religious Candidates, Arabella Smith

Undergraduate Honors Theses

While the existing literature illustrates that voters living in Western countries are likely to elect female candidates and less likely to elect minority non-Christian candidates, literature has not yet addressed how the intersectionality of gender and religion affect voter preference. In this paper, I investigate how a candidate’s gender and religion interact to affect their likelihood of being elected. I use vignettes in a conjoint survey experiment of Spanish voters to show voter preference across two intersecting identities: gender and religion. I find that female Muslim candidates are significantly more electable than male Muslim candidates. This contributes to the body …

The Everydayness Of Instructional Design And The Pursuit Of Quality In Online Courses, Jason K. Mcdonald

Faculty Publications

This article reports research into the everydayness of instructional design (meaning designers’ daily routines, run-of-the-mill interactions with colleagues, and other, prosaic forms of social contact), and how everydayness relates to their pursuit of quality in online course design. These issues were investigated through an ethnographic case study, centered on a team of instructional designers at a university in the United States. Designers were observed spending significant amounts of time engaged in practices of course refinement, meaning mundane, workaday tasks like revising, updating, fine-tuning, or fixing the courses to which they were assigned. Refining practices were interrelated with, but also experienced …

Informal Practices Of Localizing Open Educational Resources In Ghana, Emily Durham Bradshaw, Jason K. Mcdonald

Faculty Publications

Research on the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) often notes the potential benefits for users to revise, reuse, and remix OER to localize it for specific learners. However, a gap in the literature exists in terms of research that explores how this localization occurs in practice. This is a significant gap given the current flow of OER from higher-income countries in the Global North to lower-income countries in the Global South (King et al., 2018). This study explores how OER from one area of the world is localized when it is used in a different cultural context.

Findings indicated …

How Female Bipoc Students At A Predominantly White Institution Think About Belonging: A Multiperspective Study, Delirio Juarez

Theses and Dissertations

Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) students at predominantly White institutions (PWIs) report decreased sense of belonging compared to White students (Hunn, 2014; Hurtado & Carter, 1997; Museus et al., 2018; Strayhorn, 2019). The study aimed to answer, "What are the daily lived experiences of BIPOC students at a PWI?" and "How do BIPOC students at a PWI describe feelings of belonging (if at all)?" The study was conducted at a private, religiously affiliated, PWI, in the Western United States. The University Belonging Questionnaire (Slaten et al., 2018) was used to sort students' feelings of belonging. Female participants who …

"I Think They're Poisoning My Mind": Understanding The Motivations Of People Who Have Voluntarily Adopted Secure Email, Warda Usman

Theses and Dissertations

Secure email systems that use end-to-end encryption are the best method we have for ensuring user privacy and security in email communication. However, the adoption of secure email remains low, with previous studies suggesting mainly that secure email is too complex or inconvenient to use. However, the perspectives of those who have, in fact, chosen to use an encrypted email system are largely overlooked. To understand these perspectives, we conducted a semi-structured interview study that aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the mindsets underlying adoption and use of secure email services. Our participants come from a variety of countries …

Racial Empathy Gap In The Workplace: The Existence Of And Consequences For Racial Workplace Disparity Through Lack Of Empathy, Kathleen Bahr

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Extensive research has been done on racial disparities in the workplace and the racial biases and discrimination that causes and contributes to said disparities. This research explores the existence of and causes for a racial empathy gap in the workplace, focusing on empathy between peers. An experimental study was conducted with a sample of 451 people in the United States and the United Kingdom. Using a scenario experiment, I manipulated the gender and race (randomized between male or female and Black or White) of a co-worker who had a negative event occur in their life. The study showed that there …