Digital Commons Network^™

At The Core Of School Reform: A Culture Of Commitment, Collaboration, And Collective Leadership, Lari Ann Nelson

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Public education in America today is a product of more than a century of reform. Innovators of each era have attempted to transform the education system to match their ideals and beliefs. Educational reform efforts to improve learning for all students have been an issue of debate since the founding of America – seeking for equality and quality of education. The most recent educational initiative an emphasis on accountability via high-stakes tests, many schools are now branded as “failing” and requiring program improvement. As such, leaders search for reform models that will save their school from further sanctions.

Of the …

October 13th 2014, Csusb

Coyote Chronicle (1984-)

No abstract provided.

Celebrities, Drinks, And Drugs: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Celebrity Substance Abuse As Portrayed In The New York Times, Brent John Austin

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This study is an examination of the ideologies present in celebrity substance abuse news stories in The New York Times online from December 2012 to December 2013. I analyzed news stories by employing a critical discourse analysis to determine the dominant discourses in celebrity substance abuse news articles. Drawing from cultivation and framing theories, celebrity substance abuse stories in The New York Times are presented in a limited, individual fashion with relatively little effort when it comes to recovery. Rather than treating substance abuse as a serious social issue and a medical condition, it is presented as an individual, moral …

Owusu Hodari, Wilmer Amina Carter Foundation

Bridges Digital Archive: Audio and Video Recordings

Ratibu Jacocks interviews Owusu Hadori, a man with an interest in community activism and uplifting people through education and Black history. The interview starts with Hodari mentioning how he changed his birth name to his current one, which means “alert and intelligent” and “clear of the way”, respectively, in the Swahili language. After this, Hodari explains how he saw the need to educate the young Black community through an independent, Black institution. The interviewee speaks about his background, stating that he was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and Chicago, Illinois, but had decided to stay in California based on college being …

Time Travel With Gilles Deleuze, John M. Winslade

Special Education, Rehabilitation & Counseling Faculty Publications

My focus here will be on working in therapy with an elastic concept of time built on Deleuze’s readings of time as a synthesis of the past, present and future. This interest has particular value for the construction of remembering conversations. I shall speak to the value I can see for this field of practice. The poststructuralist philosopher Gilles Deleuze has much to offer narrative practice through the concepts he developed. I intend to explore some specific aspects of his reconceptualization of time in this presentation.

Supporting Complex Business Decisions With A Fuzzy Mobile Assistant, Tod Sedbrook, Charmayne Cullom

Communications of the IIMA

Researchers have recognized the importance of semantic expressiveness in understanding and solving complex problems and have identified a need to incorporate reasoning about uncertainty into decision tools that assist business managers. This study extends current approaches and develops new tools to allow artificial mobile assistants to manage rule-driven consultations by capturing and recommending problem solutions through natural language interfaces. A prototype assistant is described to support fuzzy knowledge representations and fuzzy rule-based consultations. The prototype’s application is implemented in a Windows 8 mobile device and applied in a case study of business outsourcing decisions.

Modeling And Simulation Of A Resource Allocation Problem, Oredola A. Soluade

Communications of the IIMA

Resource allocation can be viewed from several perspectives. One perspective is to view it as a capacitated Facility Location Problem, whereby resources that are located in certain places are being employed to certain other locations at a minimum cost. One of the most challenging scenarios in any organization is the ability to allocate resources to specific functions so as to maximize productivity. This paper develops a mathematical model that can be used to “optimally” deploy human resources to various parts of an organization, while at the same time minimizing the overall cost of operations. The technique to be used belongs …

Towards A Conceptual Framework Of An Educational Web Portal, Lara Preiser-Houy, Margaret Russell

Communications of the IIMA

Technology plays an important role in everyday life of K-6 students born in the digital age. In the past several decades, educational institutions have made substantial investments in technology infrastructure with the aim of enhancing student learning, increasing student achievement, and helping students acquire digital literacy skills early on in their education. However, to fully leverage web-based technologies for student learning and communication inside and outside of school, teachers must be prepared to effectively plan, develop, and integrate technology into the curriculum-based activities of their classrooms. Educational web portals with resources for teaching, learning and communicating, can help teachers create …

From Data To Wisdom: The Progression Of Computational Learning In Text Mining, Robert P. Schumaker

Communications of the IIMA

The DIKW hierarchy has long been a standard framework with which researchers can differentiate between levels of what they see and know. However much of the research conducted explores the nuances and precise divisions between each hierarchy level and assumes that the user will know how to use them. We plan to restrict our study to textual Web documents and propose a framework extension to the DIKW hierarchy that encompasses acquisition, delivery and prediction elements. We feel that such an extension can help better define each level of the DIKW hierarchy into discrete units that can be applied to the …

A Fuzzy Logic Based Decision Support System For Business Situation Assessment And E-Business Models Selection, Hussein Fakhry

Communications of the IIMA

A new decision support system is developed for assisting business executives in deciding the e-business models to adopt for new business ventures. The developed system is based on a new framework using fuzzy logic theory. A detailed conceptual design is developed. The proposed system solves important challenges such as the use of linguistic terms to capture the executives’ assessments of the key business measures. It uses fuzzy assessment rule to find the overall grade for each business dimension. Moreover, its rule-base allows adding large number of new e-business models. A prototype is tested with business executives and received positive feedback.

The Effect Of Comment Errors In Multilingual Electronic Meetings, Milam Aiken, Shilpa Balan, Mahesh Vanjani, Bart Garner

Communications of the IIMA

Previous studies of multilingual electronic meetings have shown that members often comprehend the automatic translations, but accuracy is affected by errors in the source comments. However, no study has investigated to what extent these text errors reduce understanding. An experiment with six groups of students showed that participants were able to comprehend translations from German to English, even when the source text contained 5% word errors, but translations from source comments with no errors were understood better. Further, the differences in comprehension affected students’ perceptions of the system’s ease of use and usefulness.

Dear: A New Technique For Information Extraction And Context-Dependent Text Mining, Tod Sedbrook, Jay M. Lightfoot

Communications of the IIMA

The desire to store and the need to use electronic data has greatly increased as the power, availability, and connectivity of computers has grown. A large portion of this data is in the form of unstructured text documents. Locating specific information within this amorphous mass of documents is an area of active research. Our contribution to this pursuit is the development of the Document Entity and Resolution (DEAR) system. This system combines semantic similarity matching as provided by the open source WordNet database with the ability to recognize named entities through the OpenCalais system. When used in concert, this provides …

Analyzing Parts Of Speech And Their Impact On Stock Price, Robert P. Schumaker

Communications of the IIMA

Financial articles can move stock prices. The terms used in an article can be a predictor of both price direction and the magnitude of movement. By investigating the usage of terms in financial news articles and coupling them with a discrete machine-learning algorithm, we can build a model of short-term price movement. From our research, we investigated the terms creating the largest price movements amongst five part of speech textual representations; bag of words, noun phrases, named entities, proper nouns and verbs.

June 9th 2014, Csusb

Coyote Chronicle (1984-)

No abstract provided.

An Evaluation Of The Accuracy Of Online Translation Systems, Milam Aiken, Kaushik Ghosh, John Wee, Mahesh Vanjani

Communications of the IIMA

Until fairly recently, translation among a large variety of natural languages has been difficult and costly. Now, several free, Web-based machine translation (MT) services can provide support, but relatively little research has been conducted on their accuracies. A study of four of these services using German-to-English and Spanish-to-English translations showed that Google Translate appeared to be superior. Further study using this system alone showed that while translations were not always perfect, their understandability was quite high.

An Ontology-Based Collaborative Knowledge Management Network To Enhance The Reusability Of Inter-Organizational Knowledge, Nelson K.Y. Leung, Sim Kim Lau, Joshua Fan

Communications of the IIMA

A number of knowledge management (KM) approaches based on individual organizational KM strategies and business requirements have been developed without taking system interoperation into consideration. In this paper, a collaborative inter-organizational KM network is proposed to allow various organizations to access and retrieve inter-organizational knowledge. While knowledge engineers can reuse the inter-organizational knowledge to create and evaluate its own organizational knowledge, general users benefit from the effectiveness and efficiency of searching for relevant inter-organizational knowledge within the network

Knowledge Management And Information Technology: Enablers Of E-Commerce Development, Muhammed A. Badamas

Communications of the IIMA

Information and Communication Technologies provide the platform for development across economic and other sectors. Knowledge and information are interconnected. The effective use of information and knowledge, however, depend on the availability of an efficient information technology. This in turn will accelerate the establishment of e-commerce in developing economies. This paper examines the relationship between knowledge, information, information technology and how they can be enablers for the development of e-commerce in Africa

“Tengo Que Habla Español. Yo No Entiendo Ingles!”: A Qualitative Case Study On A Bilingual Child With Autism Spectrum, Hyun Uk Kim, Marilyn Roberti

The Journal of Special Education Apprenticeship

Language differences in children with Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) often lead professionals to believe that children with ASC cannot or should not become bilingual, thus advising parents with a child with ASC raised in a bilingual household to adhere to English only. Emerging studies, however, attest that children with ASC can become bilingual, and that there are no language differences between bilingual and monolingual children with ASC. Although these findings are promising, very few studies investigated external factors, such as cultural expectations, school practices and other pertinent factors involved in raising and educating children with ASC bilingually. Drawing from video-and …

Perceptions Towards Special Education Of Japanese Parents Of Children With Special Needs In The United States, Yuki Ikezaki, Janice Myck-Wayne, Adrian W. Jung

The Journal of Special Education Apprenticeship

The purpose of this study was to examine Japanese parents of children with disabilities’ perceptions towards special education in the United States. This study included 40 participants who were born and raised in Japan and they are now living in the United States. The results revealed that most Japanese parents still maintained some negative perceptions towards special education from its history of labeling individuals with disabilities as “abnormal” in Japanese culture. Moreover, a majority of participants agreed that America’s special education was more focused on each individual’s needs and promoted independence whereas Japanese ideas of special education was mainly focused …

Narrative Conflict Coaching, Ashley J. Pangborn

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Narrative conflict coaching is a counseling technique which focuses on separating clients from their problems and encouraging them to see their lives and futures from new perspectives. It has been used in a variety of arenas and is consistent with other practices within the field of narrative conflict resolution, such as narrative mediation. In this project I utilized qualitative research methods to analyze the immediate effectiveness of conflict coaching questioning techniques within the setting of a counseling conversation. The analysis focuses on the detail of the process of narrative conflict coaching more than on the final outcomes. The data …

Cultural Sensitivity And Elder Abuse: Considerations For Social Work Practice, Katherine R. Bernardo

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore how social workers identify elder abuse, factors they find contribute to or protect from elder abuse, and cultural considerations they identify as important. The qualitative research approach was utilized, and an interview instrument was created to explore participants’ perceptions and generate recommendations for developing cultural sensitivity in practice. The study sample consisted of 10 social workers with experience working with the elderly population recruited by snowball sampling. Face-to-face interviews were conducted, audio-recorded, and transcribed for analysis. This study found that social workers are particularly knowledgeable about risk factors for elder abuse and …

Kalamazoo Revisited: Heritage Language Maintenance Among Latvians In North America, Margaret J. Stepe

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the entwined roles of schooling, family support and investment, and community contact in Heritage Language Learning (HLL), Heritage Language Maintenance (HLM) and identity formation among two groups of North American Latvians. One is made up of 49 teenagers at Gaŗezers language camp in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The other comprises 25 parents, other adult Latvian speakers and camp staff members. I explore differences and similarities among them by age, gender and self-stated national identity and language proficiency. Primary data consist of some 70 questionnaires completed by youths and adults and six 30- to 90-minute …

Understanding The Lived Experience Of Late-Entry English Learners In The Vista Canyon Unified School District, Joseph W. Boffa

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Many researchers have attempted to identify best practices, habits, and conditions of English Language Learners (ELs, ELLs) pertaining to school success. It is clear EL students pose unique and significant challenges, yet unclear what strategies and program models educators can implement to motivate learning, improve educational experiences, and appropriately acknowledge and reward these learners’ accomplishments. Few studies have attempted to determine the difficulties and challenges associated with academic success and probability of graduation for Late-entry English Learners (LEELs), defined as those entering the school system as eighth-through-twelfth grade students. Their test scores weigh heavily on high-stakes standardized testing accountability measures. …

Toward A New Framework For Presence Evaluation: A Representational Design Perspective, Yan Wu

Communications of the IIMA

Although researchers suggest that presence is a multi-dimensional concept, little research is available to explain the underlying relationships among the dimensions and variables. A new framework with four components for presence evaluation is introduced. It argues that investigating how media content affects presence is the solution to achieving a more complete understanding of presence and to taking individual characteristics and contexts as important factors in presence study.

Exploring Factors Associated With Wireless Internet Via Mobile Technology Acceptance In Mainland China, June Lu, Chang Lu, Chun-Sheng Yu, James E. Yao

Communications of the IIMA

This study explores factors significantly impact the acceptance of Wireless Internet via Mobile Technology (WIMT) in China. The results indicate that the acceptance of WIMT is related with factors of: perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, social influences, wireless trust environment, and facilitating conditions. It provides diagnostic insight into how different factors influence user intention to accept WIMT in China, and thus help business build solid strategy to prompt WIMT and m-commerce there.

March 3rd 2014, Csusb

Coyote Chronicle (1984-)

No abstract provided.

The Development Of A Non-Profit Organization, Keep In Touch, As A Solution To The Problem Of Visitation, Shalom Z. Lapoint, Shalom Z. Lapoint

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

This project discusses the development of Keep in Touch. Keep in Touch is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization which is designed to aid the visitation process. Visitation is concerned with children and their families who have been separated. Reasons for separation vary; however, many children have been separated and would benefit greatly from a local visitation program. Items such as children’s rights, California’s mandatory mediation law, and the current conditions of the family court house in San Bernardino County are all discussed and examined as supporting evidence to the problem of family visitation. The goal of Keep in Touch is …

"Purple People": "Sexed" Linguistics, Pleasure, And The "Feminine" Body In The Lyrics Of Tori Amos, Megim A. Parks

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The notion of a “feminine” style has been staunchly resisted by third-wave feminists who argue that to posit a “feminine” style is essentialist. Yet, linguists such as Norma Mendoza-Denton and Elinor Ochs discuss indexicality and shifting through salient variables, a process called entextualization. Further, French feminists such as Hélène Cixous and Julia Kristeva use the linguistic concept of intertextuality to explain certain poetic uses of language that might cause what Luce Irigaray calls “irruption of the semiotic chora”—moments within language where boundaries in the semiotic chain of signification are “blurred.” Thus, while current feminism has moved strictly away …

The Unbreakable Circle: An Intellectual History Of Michel Foucault, Chris Mb Moreland

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The following is a chronologically ordered internal intellectual history of Michel Foucault. The objective of this analysis is to determine whether or not Foucault provides a viable critical social theory of bourgeois society. In order to examine this topic, I trace the development of Foucault’s thought during his early, pre-archaeological stage, his archaeological stage, and his genealogical stage. I frame Foucault’s stages as attempts to overcome Kant’s subject/object division—or the paradox that man operates as both a meaning-giving subject and an empirical object—that one encounters in discourses pertaining to the social sciences. Foucault’s pre-archaeological stage is characterized by two humanistic …

January 21st 2014, Csusb

Coyote Chronicle (1984-)

No abstract provided.