Digital Commons Network^™

The Meaning And Relevance Of Video Game Literacy, Jeroen Bourgonjon

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Meaning and Relevance of Video Game Literacy" Jeroen Bourgonjon argues that video gaming deserves scholarly attention as a social practice and a site for meaning-making and learning. Based on an overview of contemporary trends in literacy and cultural studies, he argues that video games cannot be approached like traditional text forms. He contends that video games serve as an important frame of reference for young people and call for informed decision making in the context of culture, education, and policy. Bourgonjon provides an integrated perspective on video game literacy by employing theoretical insights about their distinctive …

Metalanguage In Carroll's "Jabberwocky" And Biggs's Reread, Asunción López-Varela

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Metalanguage in Carroll's 'Jabberwocky' and Biggs's reRead" Asunción López-Varela discusses Simon Biggs's installation reRead <http://www.littlepig.org.uk/reRead/reRead.htm> in relation to Lewis Carroll's poem. López-Varela posits that both works draw attention to the functioning of self-reflexive semiotic mechanisms present in human discourse and gestures. Based on the examples of the poem and the installation, López-Varela discusses how the human mind creates narratological coherence out of random and recursive patterns and argues that it does so by including other media which enable formats beyond the textual and the iconic. Further, López-Varela discusses how we are pre-disposed to process any semiotic …

Ontogenetic Scaling Patterns And Functional Anatomy Of The Pelvic Limb Musculature In Emus (Dromaius Novaehollandiae), Luis P. Lamas, Russell P. Main, John R. Hutchinson

Department of Basic Medical Sciences Faculty Publications

Emus (Dromaius novaehollandiae) are exclusively terrestrial, bipedal and cursorial ratites with some similar biomechanical characteristics to humans. Their growth rates are impressive, as their body mass increases eighty-fold from hatching to adulthood whilst maintaining the same mode of locomotion throughout life. These ontogenetic characteristics stimulate biomechanical questions about the strategies that allow emus to cope with their rapid growth and locomotion, which can be partly addressed via scaling (allometric) analysis of morphology. In this study we have collected pelvic limb anatomical data (muscle architecture, tendon length, tendon mass and bone lengths) and calculated muscle physiological cross sectional area …

Privacy-Preserving And Outsourced Multi-User K-Means Clustering, Bharath Samanthula, Fang-Yu Rao, Elisa Bertino, Xun Yi, Dangxi Liu

Cyber Center Publications

Many techniques for privacy-preserving data mining (PPDM) have been investigated over the past decade. Often, the entities involved in the data mining process are end-users or organizations with limited computing and storage resources. As a result, such entities may want to refrain from participating in the PPDM process. To overcome this issue and to take many other benefits of cloud computing, outsourcing PPDM tasks to the cloud environment has recently gained special attention. We consider the scenario where n entities outsource their databases (in encrypted format) to the cloud and ask the cloud to perform the clustering task on their …

An Activity Aimed At Improving Student Explanations Of Biological Mechanisms, Caleb M. Trujillo, Trevor R. Anderson, Nancy J. Pelaez

PIBERG Instructional Innovation Materials

This document is intended for use by instructors and their students. The activity contains steps to introduce students to the MACH model involving analyzing and discussing explanations about biological mechanisms. Initially, students read modified articles about biological mechanisms during class, although instructors may prefer to assign readings outside of class before the activity. During the activity, students are required to analyze the readings for evidence of research methods, analogies, context, and mechanisms. In so doing, students learn how to integrate the information pertaining to each of the MACH model components into a coherent explanation about their biological mechanism. After performing …

A Tetrahedral Version Of The Mach Model For Explaining Biological Mechanisms, Caleb M. Trujillo, Trevor R. Anderson, Nancy J. Pelaez

PIBERG Instructional Innovation Materials

This document is intended for both instructors and students. Modified from the original MACH model this version, once cut and folded, creates a tetrahedral model that can conveniently be used as a teaching and learning tool to inform and guide students on how to write expert quality explanations of biological mechanisms. Each vertex of the tetrahedron represents a component of the model namely, Methods, Analogy, Context, and How. For a coherent and complete explanation about molecular mechanisms, it is important to integrate information pertaining to all four components of the model. The tetrahedral MACH model has been tested in both …

Misalignments: Challenges In Cultivating Science Faculty With Education Specialties In Your Department, Seth D. Bush, Nancy Pelaez, James A. Rudd Ii, Michael T. Stevens, Kimberly D. Tanner, Kathy S. Williams

PIBERG Publications

Science Faculty with Education Specialties (SFES) are increasingly being hired across the United States. However, little is known about the motivations for SFES hiring or the potential or actual impact of SFES. In the context of a recent national survey of US SFES, we investigated SFES perceptions about these issues. Strikingly, perceptions about reasons for hiring SFES were poorly aligned with perceptions about potential and actual contributions reported by SFES themselves, and the advice they extended to beginning SFES was varied. While preparation of future teachers and departmental teaching needs were common reasons offered for SFES hiring, the potential and …

And They Were There: Reports Of Meetings, Sever Bordeianu

Against the Grain

No abstract provided.

Increasing Bridge Deck Service Life: Volume Ii—Economic Evaluation, Samuel Labi, Robert J. Frosch, Ashish Samdariya, Qing Ye

JTRP Technical Reports

Deterioration of bridge decks is a primary factor limiting the lifespan of bridges especially in cold climates where deicing salts are commonly used. While controlling deck cracking or decreasing the permeability and porosity of concrete can improve performance and service life, chloride and moisture ingress as well as cracking cannot be eliminated. Full-depth cracks which are caused by restrained shrinkage allow for corrosive conditions at early ages for both the top and bottom reinforcement mats. Therefore, the use of corrosion-resistant reinforcement is essential to mitigate deterioration of bridge decks. The objective of this research program to examine the efficacy of …

A Vision For Change In Bioscience Education: Building On Knowledge From The Past, Nancy J. Pelaez, Trevor R. Anderson, Samuel N. Postlethwait

PIBERG Publications

High quality undergraduate education is central to the success of all life scientists. Several major bioscience educational issues are the targets of much debate, research, funding, publications, and reports (e.g. Vision and Change). Surprisingly, these issues are considered by modern bioscience instructors as unresolved despite historical reports that claim the contrary. Here we illustrate with evidence how, more than 50 years ago, Sam Postlethwait successfully instituted strategies to address several issues in plant biology education with his audio-­‐tutorials. These strategies succeeded in individualizing instruction of students with diverse educational backgrounds in large classes, incorporating authentic and active learning, integrating lab …

Students’ Perceptions Of And Responses To Teaching Assistant And Peer Feedback, Kelsey J. Rodgers, Aladar K. Horvath, Hyunyi Jung, Amanda S. Fry, Heidi Diefes-Dux, Monica E. Cardella

Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning

Authentic open-ended problems are increasingly appearing in university classrooms at all levels. Formative feedback that leads to learning and improved student work products is a challenge, particularly in large enrollment courses. This is a case study of one first-year engineering student team’s experience with teaching assistant and peer feedback during a series of open-ended mathematical modeling problems called Model-Eliciting Activities. The goal of this study was to gain deep insight into the interactions between students, feedback providers, and written feedback by examining one team’s perceptions of the feedback they received and the changes they made to their solutions based on …

The Chicago Teachers Strike And Its Public, Amy B. Shuffelton

Education and Culture

This article considers the 2012 Chicago Teachers Strike in light of John Dewey's The Public and Its Problems. It engages Dewey's conceptualization of practical reason to challenge the educational reform movement's commitment to technocratic decision-making.

Adaptive Systems: History, Techniques, Problems, And Perspectives, William S. Black, Poorya Haghi, Kartik B. Ariyur

School of Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

We survey some of the rich history of control over the past century with a focus on the major milestones in adaptive systems. We review classic methods and examples in adaptive linear systems for both control and observation/identification. The focus is on linear plants to facilitate understanding, but we also provide the tools necessary for many classes of nonlinear systems. We discuss practical issues encountered in making these systems stable and robust with respect to additive and multiplicative uncertainties. We discuss various perspectives on adaptive systems and their role in various fields. Finally, we present some of the ongoing research …

Fast And Efficient Discrimination Of Traveling Salesperson Problem Stimulus Difficulty., Matthew J. Dry, Elizabeth L. Fontaine

The Journal of Problem Solving

The Travelling Salesperson Problem (TSP) is a computationally difficult combinatorial optimization problem. In spite of its relative difficulty human solvers are able to generate close-to-optimal solutions in a close-to-linear time frame, and it has been suggested that this is due to the visual system’s inherent sensitivity to certain geometric properties of TSP stimuli. In the current study we employed a novel experimental paradigm in which we presented participants with sets of four TSP stimuli that varied in terms of their relative solution difficulty and asked them to indicate which of the four stimuli they would prefer to solve. The results …

Enclothed Cognition And Controlled Attention During Insight Problem-Solving, Charles A. Van Stockum Jr., Marci S. Decaro

The Journal of Problem Solving

Individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) increase the ability, and tendency, to devote greater attentional control to a task—improving performance on a wide range of skills. In addition, recent research on enclothed cognition demonstrates that the situational influence of wearing a white lab coat increases controlled attention, due to the symbolic meaning and physical experience of wearing the coat. We examined whether these positive influences on attentional control lead to negative performance outcomes on insight problem-solving, a task thought to rely on associative processes that operate largely outside of explicit attentional control. Participants completed matchstick arithmetic problems while either …

Effects Of Cover Stories On Problem Solving In A Statistics Course, Travis Rex Ricks, Jennifer Wiley

The Journal of Problem Solving

Does having more knowledge or interest in the topics used in example problems facilitate or hinder learning in statistics? Undergraduates enrolled in Introductory Psychology received a lesson on central tendency. Following the lesson, half of the students completed a worksheet with a baseball cover story while the other half received a weather cover story. Learning was assessed using a quiz that contained two kinds of items: computation and explanation. Measures of baseball knowledge and interest in baseball were collected. The results indicated that overall the students performed better on computation items than explanation items. The weather example led to better …

Wait For It . . . Delaying Instruction Improves Mathematics Problem Solving: A Classroom Study, Abbey Marie Loehr, Emily R. Fyfe, Bethany Rittle-Johnson

The Journal of Problem Solving

Engaging learners in exploratory problem-solving activities prior to receiving instruction (i.e., explore-instruct approach) has been endorsed as an effective learning approach. However, it remains unclear whether this approach is feasible for elementary-school children in a classroom context. In two experiments, second-graders solved mathematical equivalence problems either before or after receiving brief conceptual instruction. In Experiment 1 (n = 41), the explore-instruct approach was less effective at supporting learning than an instruct-solve approach. However, it did not include a common, but often overlooked feature of an explore-instruct approach, which is provision of a knowledge-application activity after instruction. In Experiment 2 (n …

Activation Of Operational Thinking During Arithmetic Practice Hinders Learning And Transfer, Dana L. Chesney, Nicole M. Mcneil

The Journal of Problem Solving

Many children in the U.S. initially come to understand the equal sign operationally, as a symbol meaning “add up the numbers” rather than relationally, as an indication that the two sides of an equation share a common value. According to a change-resistance account (McNeil & Alibali, 2005), children's operational ways of thinking are never erased, and when activated, can interfere with mathematics learning and performance, even in educated adults. To test this theory, undergraduates practiced unfamiliar multiplication facts (e.g., 17-times table) in one of three conditions that differed in terms of how the equal sign was represented in the problems. …

Persistent And Pernicious Errors In Algebraic Problem Solving, Julie L. Booth, Christina Barbieri, Francie Eyer, E. Juliana Pare-Blagoev

The Journal of Problem Solving

Students hold many misconceptions as they transition from arithmetic to algebraic thinking, and these misconceptions can hinder their performance and learning in the subject. To identify the errors in Algebra I which are most persistent and pernicious in terms of predicting student difficulty on standardized test items, the present study assessed algebraic misconceptions using an in-depth error analysis on algebra students’ problem solving efforts at different points in the school year. Results indicate that different types of errors become more prominent with different content at different points in the year, and that there are certain types of errors that, when …

What Are The Odds? A Practical Guide To Computing And Reporting Bayes Factors, Andrew F. Jarosz, Jennifer Wiley

The Journal of Problem Solving

The purpose of this paper is to provide an easy template for the inclusion of the Bayes factor in reporting experimental results, particularly as a recommendation for articles in the Journal of Problem Solving. The Bayes factor provides information with a similar purpose to the p-value – to allow the researcher to make statistical inferences from data provided by experiments. While the p-value is widely used, the Bayes factor provides several advantages, particularly in that it allows the researcher to make a statement about the alternative hypothesis, rather than just the null hypothesis. In addition, it provides …

Thinking Critically About Data Consumption: Creating The Data Credibility Checklist, Lisa Zilinski, Megan R. Sapp Nelson

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

As STEM areas increasingly rely on pre-existing data, either to validate or extend the scientific body of knowledge, students who have baseline knowledge of how to find, evaluate, and access data will have an advantage. Accordingly, undergraduate STEM curricula is increasingly focused on research-based group projects that develop professional skills, building the professional portfolio needed for early career scientists, technologists, and engineers. This project works to develop new tools to implement basic data skills within the undergraduate disciplinary curricula. The first step in this process was to identify the competencies that are likely to be needed by those seeking data …

Poster: Protecting Against Data Exfiltration Insider Attacks Through Application Programs, Asmaa Mohamed Sallama, Elisa Bertino

Cyber Center Publications

In this paper, we describe a system that distinguishes be- tween legitimate and malicious database transactions per- formed by application programs. Our system is particularly useful for protecting against code-modification attacks performed by insiders who have access to and can change the programs' source code to make them execute different queries than those they are expected to execute. Our system works with any type of DBMS and requires minimum modification to application programs.

Development Of Simulation Of Short Rotation Woody Crops - Hybrid Populars In Swat Model, Tian Guo, Bernard Engel

Purdue GIS Day

The objective of this study is to establish growth parameters of hybrid poplar in SWAT model. Energy security and sustainable require a suite of biomass crops, including woody species. Selected hybrid poplar is expected as bioenergy feedstock for the capability of rapid growth. The quality of water and soils will be a concern when hybrid poplars are planted at wide geographic and latitudinal rang as a biomass feedstock. In this study, Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) modeling was employed to simulate the water and soil impacts of the hybrid poplar. In SWAT, fast growing tree growth parameters for hybrid …

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Against the Grain

No abstract provided.

Giscience Driven R&D: Interdisciplinary Gist Group At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Marie Urban

Purdue GIS Day

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is the largest DOE multi-research facility in the US and is located in Oak Ridge, TN. One of the signature strengths of ORNL is Computational Science and Engineering and the Geographic Information Science and Technology (GIST) group contributes to that strength as part of the Computer Sciences and Engineering Division (CSED) within the Computer Sciences Directorate. The GIST group is at the forefront of High Resolution Population and Social Dynamics research and development resulting in innovative products such as LandScan Global (population distribution at 30 arc seconds) and now LandScan HD (population distribution at 3 …

And They Were There: Reports Of Meetings, Ramune Kubilius

Against the Grain

No abstract provided.

Hydraulic Fracture Test To Determine Aggregate Freeze-Thaw Durability, Belayneh Desta, Nancy M. Whiting, Mark B. Snyder

JTRP Technical Reports

The freeze-thaw durability of carbonate aggregates can vary greatly from durable to highly susceptible to freeze-thaw distress. Using nondurable aggregate in concrete pavement exposed to freeze-thaw cycles may lead to serious distress and greatly decrease the pavement’s service life. The testing needed to identify freeze-thaw durable aggregates can take several months to complete. The main objective of this study was to develop a reliable, quick test method for determining the freeze-thaw resistance of carbonate quarried aggregates in Indiana using the Hydraulic Fracture Test (HFT) equipment.

Aggregate samples collected from 18 quarried carbonate sources from across Indiana that represented a range …

Driven By Beliefs: Understanding Challenges Physical Science Teachers Face When Integrating Engineering And Physics, Emily A. Dare, Joshua A. Ellis, Gillian H. Roehrig

Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)

It is difficult to ignore the increased use of technological innovations in today’s world, which has led to various calls for the integration of engineering into K-12 science standards. The need to understand how engineering is currently being brought to science classrooms is apparent and necessary in order to address these calls for integration. This multiphase, mixed-methods study investigated the classroom practices and beliefs of high school physical science teachers following an intensive professional development on physics and engineering integration.

Classroom observations showed that teachers new to incorporating engineering into their physical science classrooms often struggled to maintain focus on …

Design Practices Of Preservice Elementary Teachers In An Integrated Engineering And Literature Experience, Kristen Bethke Wendell

Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)

The incorporation of engineering practices and core ideas into the Next Generation Science Standards at the elementary school level provides exciting opportunities but also raises important questions about the preparation of new elementary teachers. Both the teacher education and engineering education communities have a limited literature base on the resources that novice elementary teachers bring to learning and teaching engineering. The purpose of this descriptive exploratory research study was to characterize the design practices used by preservice elementary teachers during an integrated engineering and literature experience. Using a modification of the Design Activity Coding Scheme (Atman et al., 2007), we …

High And Low Computer Self-Efficacy Groups And Their Learning Behavior From Self-Regulated Learning Perspective While Engaged In Interactive Learning Modules, Harry B. Santoso, Oenardi Lawanto, Kurt Becker, Ning Fang, Edward M. Reeve

Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)

The purpose of this research was to investigate high school students’ computer self-efficacy (CSE) and learning behavior in a selfregulated learning (SRL) framework while utilizing an interactive learning module. The researcher hypothesizes that CSE is reflected on cognitive actions and metacognitive strategies while the students are engaged with interactive learning modules. Two research questions guided this research: (1) how is students’ CSE while engaged in interactive learning modules? and (2) how do high and low CSE groups plan and monitor their cognitive action, and regulate their monitoring strategies based on their CSE level? The research used a mixedmethods approach to …