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Cosm News, Georgia Southern University

College of Science & Mathematics: News & Publications (2012-2022)

• Georgia Southern University Professors Receive $360,000 Grant from the Office of Naval Research

Multitasking In The University Classroom, Lydia Burak

International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning

Although research evidence indicates that multitasking results in poorer learning and poorer performance, many students engage with text messaging, Facebook, internet searching, emailing, and instant messaging, while sitting in university classrooms. Research also suggests that multitasking may be related to risk behaviors. This study’s purpose was to describe the multitasking behaviors occurring in university classrooms and to determine relationships between multitasking and risk behaviors. Surveys assessing multitasking, grades, and risk behaviors were completed by 774 students. Results show that the majority of students engage in classroom multitasking, which is significantly related to lower GPA and an increase in risk behaviors.

Reflections On A Teaching Commons Regarding Diversity And Inclusive Pedagogy, Michelle Glowacki-Dudka, Jennifer Murray, David Concepción

International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning

Recently, twenty-one instructors at a Midwestern university participated in a faculty development seminar entitled, “Developing Pedagogies to Enhance Excellence and Diversity.” They designed a pedagogical change for the following academic year based on the workshop. During the following year, we collected data on the workshop participants through surveys and interviews to discover if they had implemented the proposed changes and what they discovered in the process. Thirteen of the twenty-one participants responded to our request for information and nine implemented their proposed changes during our data collection. Reviewing the data, we found three areas where participants made changes: application of …

An Investigative, Cooperative Learning Approach For General Chemistry Laboratories, Liz M. Díaz-Vázquez, Barbara Casañas Montes, Ileabett M. Echevarría Vargas, Griselle Hernandez-Cancel, Fernando Gonzalez, Anna M. Molina, Moraima Morales-Cruz, Carlos M. Torres-Díaz, Kai Griebenow

International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning

The integration of research and education is an essential component of our university’s teaching philosophy. Recently, we made a curricular revision to facilitate such an approach in the General Chemistry Laboratory, to teach students that investigative approaches are at the core of sciences. The curriculum revision included new interdisciplinary experiments and a research project. Investigative, peer review, and cooperative learning strategies were introduced to enhance student learning and engagement. An environment in which students can analyze results within a laboratory session and reach comprehensive and quantitative conclusions was encouraged.

To assess our results, students completed questionnaires, evaluated their peers and …

Use Of Learner-Centered Instructional Strategies In Higher Education: Doctoral Student Assessments, Tricia Browne-Ferrigno, Rodney Muth

International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning

Based on multiple sources, this article concludes that, when learner-centered instructional strategies are used with doctoral students, these adult learners take charge of their individual and collective learning, become accountable for both, and enhance their ability to transfer learning to practice. The students studied skills of developed teams in advance of their group-conducted dissertation research first by engaging in team-development activities, then by conducting group-constructed pilot studies, and finally by collaboratively authoring related conference papers. These student-centered activities sought to ensure that the doctoral students could work together to conduct and complete their degree ending, team-conducted dissertation research.

Improving The Development Of Student's Research Questions And Hypotheses In An Introductory Business Research Methods Course, Laurie Strangman, Elizabeth Knowles

International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning

In an introductory research methods course, students often develop research questions and hypotheses that are vague or confusing, do not contain measurable concepts, and are too narrow in scope or vision. Because of this, the final research projects often fail to provide useful information or address the overall research problem. A Lesson Study approach was used to develop a new lesson that models the development of research questions and hypotheses and provides multiple opportunities for students to practice this skill. Two tools were also developed to help students navigate this process, and the learning outcomes of the lesson were clearly …

Analysis Of The Effectiveness Of Traditional Versus Hybrid Student Performance For An Elementary Statistics Course, Kamal M. Kakish, Lissa Pollacia, Adrian Heinz

International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning

This paper investigates the performance of students enrolled in traditional versus hybrid Elementary Statistics courses at Georgia Gwinnett College (GGC). For this study, we collected and analyzed student performance data for the course goals over the spring semester of 2011. GGC is unique as it is an open access undergraduate institution, which has experienced rapid growth since its recent foundation in 2006. This presents a distinct challenge because there is a diverse student population, with various degrees of mathematical knowledge and learning capabilities. Based on the results of our findings, we have discovered that there is no significant difference between …

Student Opinions And Preferences Regarding Personal Response Systems In The Graduate Physical Therapy Classroom: A Mixed-Methods Inquiry, Andi Beth Mincer, Anne W. Thompson

International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning

Little investigation has been conducted on the use of Personal Response Systems (PRS) in either graduate-level courses or health professions education. Through anonymous participation in focus groups, graduate physical therapy students described specific aspects of PRS that they felt facilitated their learning, as well as aspects that hindered their learning. A Likert-type survey was constructed based on focus group outcomes and was offered to the entire population of physical therapy students at our institution. Results indicated that PRS was perceived to be useful for examination preparation, application of concepts, facilitation of discussion, and immediate feedback. Participants perceived cost and technical …

Criteria For Evaluating Journals In The Scholarship Of Teaching And Learning In Agriculture, Natural Resources, And The Life Sciences, Marianne S. Bracke, Sharon A. Weiner, Judith M. Nixon, Scott Deatherage

International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning

The purpose of this paper was to identify existing criteria that may be considered in evaluating journals in the scholarship of teaching and learning in agriculture, natural resources, and the life sciences. This can assist faculty authors and evaluators of promotion and tenure cases to explain indicators of the quality of the publications. The commonly accepted criteria are: peer review; acceptance rate; longevity; open access availability; inclusion in indexing/abstracting services; citation analysis; and expert opinion. These data were collected for a representative set of journals which indicated that: acceptance rates for the journals varied widely; most of the journals existed …

Cosm News, Georgia Southern University

College of Science & Mathematics: News & Publications (2012-2022)

• Dr. Stephen Vives Selected as a 2012-2013 Governor’s Teaching Fellow

Newsroom, Georgia Southern University

Newsroom (2006-2023)

• Georgia Southern University to Receive $4.7 Million to Support Complete College Georgia Initiative

Rickettsia Felis In Ctenocephalides Felis From Guatemala And Costa Rica, Adriana Troyo, Danilo Alvarez, Lizeth Taylor, Gabriela Abdalla, Olger Calderon-Arguedas, Maria L. Zambrano, Gregory A. Dasch, Kim A. Lindblade, Laya Hun, Marina Eremeeva, Alejandra Estevez

Environmental Health Sciences: Faculty Publications

Rickettsia felis is an emerging human pathogen associated primarily with the cat flea Ctenocephalides felis. In this study, we investigated the presence of Rickettsia felis in C. felis from Guatemala and Costa Rica. Ctenocephalides felis were collected directly from dogs and cats, and analyzed by polymerase chain reaction for Rickettsia-specific fragments of 17-kDa protein, OmpA, and citrate synthase genes. Rickettsia DNA was detected in 64% (55 of 86) and 58% (47 of 81) of flea pools in Guatemala and Costa Rica, respectively. Sequencing of gltA fragments identified R. felis genotype URRWXCal2 in samples from both countries, and genotype Rf2125 in …

Balance With Unbounded Complexes, Edgar E. Enochs, Sergio Estrada, Alina Iacob

Mathematical Sciences: Faculty Publications

Given a double complex X there are spectral sequences with the E₂ terms being either H_I (H_II(X)) or H_II(H_I(X)). But if H_I(X)=H_II(X)=0, then both spectral sequences have all their terms 0. This can happen even though there is nonzero (co)homology of interest associated with X. This is frequently the case when dealing with Tate (co)homology. So, in this situation the spectral sequences may not give any information about the (co)homology of interest. In this article, we …

President's Newsletter, Brooks Keel

President's Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Thinking About The Gym: Greek Ideals, Newtonian Bodies, And Exercise In Early Eighteenth-Century England, Robert K. Batchelor

History: Faculty Publications

Revival of Greek ideas about exercise in the British and Irish Enlightenment by doctors led to a shift in understandings about the independent mind by establishing a relation between bodily and mental health. By the late 1730s, interest shifted away from mind and body and towards the sentiments and passions, which marked gender distinctions and held together national communities. Gilbert West’s writing about the Olympics in the 1740s indicated the difficulty in resolving tensions about exercise and sport as producing aristocratic distinction and violent passions as against their encouragement of healthy minds and civic virtue in the nation.

The George-Anne, Georgia Southern University

The George-Anne

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Newsroom, Georgia Southern University

Newsroom (2006-2023)

• Georgia Southern University Researchers Receive Grant to Investigate Historical Tropical Cyclone Activity along Georgia Coast

Cosm News, Georgia Southern University

College of Science & Mathematics: News & Publications (2012-2022)

• Dr. Marshall Ming receives the Roon Award

Franklin Nathaniel "Pistol" Mikell

African American Funeral Programs

Franklin_Nathaniel_Pistol_Mikell.pdf - Funeral program for Franklin Nathaniel Mikell

Cosm News, Georgia Southern University

College of Science & Mathematics: News & Publications (2012-2022)

• Honors Student Stephen Crooke Selected for Research Fellowship

President's Newsletter, Brooks Keel

President's Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Factors Affecting Social Attainment Among Individuals: Evidence From The National Educational Longitudinal Study 1988-2000, Michael Foleng Ndofor

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This study draws from extant literature on social attainment to examine what factors affect the attaining of higher incomes, education, and occupational ranks. Research on five distinct factors is examined and analyzed using a sample of about 6,000 students from a national longitudinal study across the United States between 1988-2000 as they transitioned from eight grade through high school and into the labor force: (1) background characteristics: household type, race, and gender, (2) social capital, (3) cultural capital, (4) academic ability, and (5) parental social class. The results revealed that these factors affect social attainment. I also examined if parental …

A Preliminary Investigation Comparing Craniofacial Metric Measurements And 3d Virtual Measurements, Christopher Todd Kowalczyk

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

The development and advancement of new laser scanning techniques enables the capture of 3D imaging which can be quantitatively assessed for use on the human skull. I used a Polhemus Fast Scan Scorpion scanner to scan 8 skulls and evaluated the standard 24 metric measurements in Delta analysis software in comparison to standard metric measurements. The scanned measurements were then compared to the standard metric measurements using the same landmarks. Of the original 48 measurements, 33 (68.75%) fail to reject the null and 10 (20.83%) reject the null with the remaining 5 (10.41%) being unknown due to n=1 because of …

The George-Anne, Georgia Southern University

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Precovering Dgc-Complexes, Jonathan G. Crosby

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

In this thesis we prove that with the hypotheses that dg e C is injectively resolving and that the class C is closed under arbitrary direct limits we have that the following are equivalent to dgC being covering: Every complex of C-modules is in dg e C and every exact complex of C-modules is in e C.

Compact Filters And The Arzelá-Ascoli Theorem, Nathan Denton Farmer

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

The Arzelà-Ascoli Theorem gives conditions for a set to be compact in a function space, and is a useful theorem for existence proofs in many different mathematical contexts. The most natural structure for Arzelà-Ascoli type theorems is the continuous convergence - which is not necessarily topological even if the underlying base spaces are. Compact filters, on the other hand, are the logical extension of compact sets to filters with similar compactness-type properties. Compact filters have proved to be a useful tool in optimization and analysis. This thesis will show conditions for a filter to be compact on a function space, …

The Diver's Distance, Aristide Zezouma Sanou

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

The visual assessment of clustering tendency (VAT) method, which was developed by J. C. Bezdek, R. J. Hathaway and J. M. Huband uses a reordering of the rows and columns of a dissimilarity matrix; it then displays the ordered dissimilarity matrix (ODM) as a 2D gray-level image called an ordered dissimilarity image (ODI). Al- though successful in determining potential clustering structure of various data sets, the technique offers room for improvement. In this thesis, we propose a new proximity measure called the diver's distance which is defined based on concepts in graph theory. We then theoretically study the diver's distance …

Analysis Of The Family Of Generalized Cumulative Sum Type Control Charts, Wenmin Wang

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

As an aid to the practitioners, various Phase II quality control charts have been developed to monitor for a change in the parameters of the distribution of a quality measurement. In this project, the family of generalized cumulative sum type charts was studied. An equivalent chart version that requires fewer parameters was given. Some useful integral equations were derived for determining the run length distribution of the lower and upper one-sided charts. The Markov chain methods were also given. The parameters unknown version was presented and the performance analysis was studied for the chart for monitoring for a change in …

An Analysis Of Rigid Image Alignment Computer Vision Algorithms, Rajeshree R. Joshi

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Computer vision is a field of computer science that includes methods for acquiring, processing, and analyzing images. Image registration is one of the methods used in the computer vision field to transform different sets of data into one coordinate system to align images. Registration is important in order to be able to compare or integrate the data obtained from multiple measurements. Rigid image alignment is a type of image registration technique used to align two two-dimensional images into a common coordinate system based on two transformation parameters, translation and rotation. Before any comparative studies can be performed on two images …

Identifying Best Practices For Student Success In Developmental Education In Georgia, Rodney B. Carr

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Two-year colleges have long enrolled students who are academically underprepared. A key component of the mission of the two-year college is open-access. This overarching mission drives more than 60% of enrollment in developmental education. The national successful completion rate of required developmental education coursework is less than 60%. This study identifies institutions within the University System of Georgia with more than 60% of total student enrollment in developmental education and with an overall successful completion rate of more than 60% as well as the practices that guide these developmental education programs. Two highly effective institutions (HEI) were identified and evaluated …