Digital Commons Network^™

Educational Data Mining Techniques To Analyze Student Behavior In A Learning Management System, Mohamad Ali Bin Baba

Dissertations

This study identifies course-level patterns of LMS use in fully asynchronous graduate engineering management courses and examines the relationships between LMS use, course type, student satisfaction, and performance. Using the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework and Moore’s interaction types, LMS metrics were mapped to learner–content, learner–learner, and learner–instructor interactions and clustered with k-means across nine courses. Profiles emerged—content-dominant, instructor-active, and balanced—showing that knowledge-based courses often emphasize content engagement, while application-based courses tend to be more balanced or instructor-driven. Satisfaction correlated most strongly with teaching/social-presence indicators (e.g., feedback cadence, discussion activity), whereas performance aligned with content-oriented engagement. The five strongest predictors …

Assessing The Impact Of Social Network On Cyber-Argumentation, Bhargav Krishna Thota

Dissertations

Argumentation is one of the basic activities people perform in our society. People often spend a lot of time arguing about social, cultural, economic, financial, political, and other issues. Existing cyber-argumentation platforms facilitate large-scale discussions among participants and play an important role in the analysis of collective opinions and collective decision-making. However, they do not provide social networking capabilities and are not designed to be used in social networking environments. Social networks in argumentation platforms can reveal the patterns, shifts, and true relationships between the users in a discourse that influence the collective decision-making process, outlier opinions and so on. …

Ending The Cycle: A New Approach To Decriminalize Mental Illness, Paige E. Kohn

Southern Illinois University Law Journal

Today, America faces a health paradox: the nation’s largest jails are the nation’s largest psychiatric institutions. In a criminal justice system designed for punishment, solutions like mental health units or mental health courts try to address this contradiction. Yet, if mental illness is a health issue, and not a criminal issue, then increased investments in the criminal justice system seem misplaced. Instead, a more promising approach is to stop the mentally ill from entering the criminal justice system at all.

This article presents just that: a new approach to decriminalize mental illness. Viewed under an overarching “health justice” lens, the …

Debating Empire: The Yucatan Crisis And The Political Aftermath Of The Mexican-American War, Colton Matthew Warnes

Theses

This study examines the impact of the Caste War of Yucatán had on the geopolitical relationship between the United States and Mexico in the aftermath of the Mexican-American War. The briefly independent Republic of Yucatán requested foreign intervention to end the Caste War. The United States debated intervention in Yucatán, while Mexico, still reeling from the loss of the Mexican-American War and dealing with internal political conflict, made steps to reincorporate Yucatán back into Mexico and to diplomatically resist American expansion. Examining the political landscape of the United States and Mexico in the spring of 1848 offers an alternate perspective …

Existence, Difference, And The Nigerian Woman: A Feminist Praxis Beyond Patriarchy, Hannah Yemisi Ajewole

Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the postcolonial condition of Nigerian woman through a critical philosophical engagement with feminist theory, focusing particularly on Simone de Beauvoir’s existentialism and Irigaray’s ethics of sexual difference. It interrogates the historical processes through which gender became the basis of hierarchy in the Nigerian society, arguing that colonial and patriarchal override precolonial forms of relationality—marked by dual-sex relationship and age-based hierarchies—into rigid, male-dominated structures of authority and representation. Drawing also on Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí’s critique of western gender epistemologies, the work contextualizes the Nigerian woman’s experience within a broader matrix of colonial imposition, cultural displacement, and epistemic violence. This …

Ukrainian Women In The Russo-Ukrainian War: Between Survival And Resistance, Jelena Nikolic Khatatbeh

Dissertations

This dissertation explores how the Russo-Ukrainian war has transformed the lives, identities, and resistance strategies of Ukrainian women. Drawing on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with forty-five Ukrainian women conducted between March 2022 and February 2023, it analyzes how everyday survival, political thought, and civic activism have changed during the war. Using a modified grounded theory approach and a feminist lens, this study examines women’s psychosocial experiences, their evolving political consciousness, and their active roles in humanitarian, cultural, and cyber resistance.Findings reveal that the war simultaneously reinforced and disrupted traditional gender expectations. While Ukrainian women dealt with increased domestic and caregiving burdens …

A Qualitative Interpretative Meta-Analysis Of The Experiences Of Women Under Community Supervision, Gifty Kinful

Research Papers

Research reveals that women parolees or probationers encounter both challenges and support systems as they navigate their reintegration into the community. More specifically, most women returning from prison and those on probation are released into a society of stigma where access to housing, employment, education, transportation, and healthcare services is either severely limited or nonexistent. These serious obstacles can undermine their ability, motivation, and desire to succeed while on probation or parole. Support systems may be more or less available and effective. The qualitative literature on women under community supervision is large but to our knowledge, the diverse studies have …

Where Do I Belong? What Should I Call Home?, Viplav Bhaskar Subramanian

Deliberately Queer Journal

Employing autoethnography, this reflection explores the contestations of home-place for queer racialized identities. Tony Adams asserts the vitality of such an embodied investigation when speaking about intersectionally assembled marginalized communities and identities through stating, “I turned to writing stories that others could use in times of relational distress […] by doing and living autoethnography” (Jones et al., 2013, p. 21). In this piece, I delve into my lived experiences, chartering conceptions of belonging while integrating personal stories and theoretical discourses. Such an embodiment, as expressed by Ellingson (2017), considers the body as “simultaneously physical and affective, social and individual, produced …

Pinterest Can Help Teachers Cook A Casserole, But What About Lgbtqia+ Affirming Lesson Plans For Students Of Color?, Denise Villarrial Nealon

Deliberately Queer Journal

We have learned to be crafty homemakers, small space decorators, and even teachers through the eye-catching appeal of sites like Pinterest or Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT). The accessibility and ease of searching for a preset lesson saves time, and in a society where teachers are paid far less than what they are worth and asked to work longer hours than they are paid for, this makes sense. Using the theoretical frameworks of CRT, QueerCrit, and CRP, along with the concepts of intersectionality, can build learning tools for new teachers to disrupt previous exclusionary practices that prevent LGBTQIA+ students of Color …

Pretty And Problematic: The Use Of Music In Guadagnino's 'Call Me By Your Name', Brandon L. Foskett

Deliberately Queer Journal

Tension in the reception of the American-Italian film Call Me by Your Name (dir. Guadagnino, 2017)—as a beautiful film that implicitly condones a problematic narrative—is shaped in part by its compilation soundtrack. Already lauded as a timeless masterpiece in cinematography, sensuality, and music, the film also receives steadfast criticism regarding its portrayal of homosexuality and alleged condoning of interage desire between Elio, a 17-year-old Italian-French boy, and Oliver, a 24-year-old American man. In this paper, I analyze five musical episodes from the film, including The Psychedelic Furs’ “Love My Way,” Ravel’s Une barque sur l’océan, and Sufjan Stevens’s “Mystery …

The Supernatural Shadow Of The Philosophic Fallacy: A Critical Examination Of John Dew-Ey’S Experience And Nature, Danica Jenck

Center for Dewey Studies Essay Award

In Experience and Nature, John Dewey asserts the existence of the philosophic fallacy. He describes the philosophic fallacy as understanding reality through abstractions rather than material causes that are situated in experience. However, Dewey’s writings on moral and religious development, particularly his criticisms of the supernatural, puts his philosophic fallacy into question. I argue that Dewey’s rejection of the supernatural is a mistake that limits his ability to clearly articulate his metaphysical project, demonstrating that Dewey’s rejection of supernatural experience commits the philosophic fallacy and is based in a Eurocentric tendency that can be escaped by challenging Eurocentric metaphysical …

Your Accent Sounds Tough: Exploring Shifting Indexicalities Of Appalachians Through The Lens Of Citizen Sociolinguistics, Sarah Ramsey

Honors Theses

This study investigates how Appalachian English is perceived in online discourse, focusing on the intersections of dialect, identity, and ideology. In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene’s 2024 devastation across Southern Appalachia, YouTube became a site of unexpected metalinguistic and cultural commentary. A citizen sociolinguistics framework is used to examine how outsiders engage with perceived Appalachian English, especially through discussions of class, gender, and accents.

Findings show that Appalachian identity is more favorably received when speakers minimize regional dialect features and align with urban, mainstream ideals. In contrast, speakers who are strongly marked as Appalachian, especially the rural and working class, …

The Problem Of The Whiteness Of Wealth, Elizabeth Tharakan

Dissertations

In 2021, households with a White householder made up 65.3% of all U.S. households and held 80.0% of all wealth. Those with a Black householder made up 13.6% of all U.S. households but held only 4.7% of all wealth. And their median wealth ($24,520) was about one-tenth the median wealth of households with a White householder ($250,400). This disparity in Black wealth and White wealth is almost an order of magnitude. I seek to understand why the racial wealth gap exists and what people of any race can learn from a nuanced understanding of the interplay among culture, education, and …

“For There Is Hope Of A Tree…”: A Study Of Two Historic African American Cemeteries In Pope County, Illinois, Martha Clare Buchert

Theses

To add to a growing body of academic literature regarding historic African American cemeteries, this study examines two such cemeteries located in Pope County, Illinois: the Miller Grove Cemetery and the Hill Cemetery. Utilizing several different investigative methods, including pedestrian survey, geophysical survey, and historic research, the archaeological features and material culture of both cemeteries were studied to see what could be learned about their associated communities without ground disturbance. The results of these methods demonstrate the connections of members within these communities and the interconnectedness of historic African American settlements throughout southern Illinois and the greater Midwest. They also …

The Surge Of The Populist Radical Right: How Transnationalism And Party Systems Influence Populist Radical Right Success And Decline, Liucija Balciunaite

Dissertations

My dissertation examines the causes behind the slows and surges of the populist radical right (PRR) success. I attempt to answer the following question in the context of the growing global legitimacy of the populist radical right (PRR). What process contributes to the slows and surges of populist radical right (PRR) legitimacy? Previous explanations have narrowed the possible conditions influencing populist radical right success in two ways. First, the available literature often analyzes separately the structural and strategic conditions behind populist radical right success. This has created a gap in the literature, especially regarding the possible interaction between the structural …

The Regulatory Void Of Pfas And Contaminated Sites, Irem Tekogul, David Lampert, Farzad Mohammadi, Amandeep K. Sandhu, Matthew Shapiro

Journal of Contemporary Water Research and Education

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), often referred to as “forever chemicals,” are widely used due to their unique properties. The adverse health impacts of PFAS have been available for the last two decades, but the persistence of inadequate and poorly enforced regulations has led to pervasive environmental contamination. Recent regulatory changes by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency address PFAS in drinking water under the Safe Drinking Water Act and address PFAS in contaminated sites under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act. However, regulatory gaps persist, particularly regarding acceptable risks from sites contaminated with thousands of PFAS. This paper …

Aligning Audience Needs With Scientists’ Information In The Complex Harmful Algal Bloom Outreach To Engagement Continuum, Erica Clites, Heather Triezenberg, Diane Doberneck

Journal of Contemporary Water Research and Education

Algae, an important foundation of aquatic ecosystems, can become a nuisance or harmful when it grows in excess. Many government agencies have a role in monitoring, responding to, and confirming a harmful algal bloom (HAB). HAB scientists have important information to share, however, given the complexities of HABs, which often involve decoupled drivers from observed impacts, presents challenges to outreach and engagement. Understanding key audience information needs can help scientists prioritize key science communication and engagement opportunities to maximize the impact of such efforts. Scientists may need additional science communication training or support for scientist-community partnerships. This will be evermore …

Program Review: Build (Bridging Universal Inclusion & Leadership Development) Mentoring Program, Dominic E. Dorsey Ii

Ed.D. Capstone Reports

No abstract provided.

Empirically Testing The “Unbiased Factfinder[S]”, Chris Cox

Southern Illinois University Law Journal

This scholarly investigation examines the decision-making processes in sexual assault cases, juxtaposing the charging decisions of lay individuals with the factual sufficiency reviews conducted by appellate judges. The study's comprehensive analysis of 254 cases provides a unique perspective on criminal justice decision-making within the context of the military justice system—a singular jurisdiction that confers prosecutorial discretion upon lay individuals and permits extensive factual sufficiency reviews by appellate courts, akin to quasi-jury fact-finding articulated in written opinions.

The research findings challenge the paradigm of formal legalism, lending support to a legal realist perspective that posits both lay individuals and judges are …

Adverse Childhood Experiences, Somatic Symptoms, And Athletic Injury Among Collegiate Student-Athletes, Samuel Aswegan

Research Papers

No abstract provided.

Comparisons Of Major Healthcare Systems In Europe And The United States Through The 20th And 21st Century, Isaac Shaw

Research Papers

This paper examines how healthcare systems have been created in four countries, the USSR (and then Russia post 1991), Poland, Germany and the United States, how they changed throughout the decades, their efficacy, as well as focusing on aspects such as funding, budget allocation, care quality, and the overall structure of the system. These cases were chosen to give a contrast between the development and subsequent abandonment of the Soviet Semashko system which proposed an entirely state ran and centralized program that was imposed on other Soviet Bloc Countries and the United States’ decentralized employer led health insurance system. Germany …

Networked To Work?: An Analysis Of A Community College Workforce Development Program, Cynthia Finley, Kim E. Bullington, Mitchell Williams, David Ayers

Online Journal for Workforce Education and Development

Barriers to education and training can have a generational impact on socioeconomic status and economic development. Post-traditional students have been shown to experience a variety of barriers to education and family sustaining employment. Social capital has been shown to help alleviate some of the barriers for students resulting in stronger economic outcomes, such job retention, and higher wages.

The purpose of this case study was to determine if the Network2Work model at Piedmont Virginia Community College (PVCC) can affect outcomes for students from low socio-economic backgrounds by comparing Network2Work outcomes to non-Network2Work noncredit industry training outcomes. The research compared outcome …

Artificial Intelligence, Machines, Devices, And Robots: Mobilizing Humanness And Intelligence In The American Techno-Landscape, Carlos A. Batres

Dissertations

This dissertation is an ethnographic inquiry of artificial intelligence (AI) in the techno-landscape of three major metropolitan areas in the United States. It traces the ways in which both experts and non-experts talk about their interactions with AI via machines, robots, and other devices, and how the ways in which people deal with AI-technologies have come to shape how we think about our own ways of going about doing things. The goal is to discern what the social ramifications of this technology may be as relationships and relations are formed betwixt and between people and artificially intelligent things.

Oh, But If I Had The Stars From The Darkest Night…, Kendra Jean Keefer

Theses

This paper explores how memory and loss interact with a yearning for home in the installation, Oh, but if I Had the Stars from the Darkest Night. Through sound, moving image, photography, mark-making, and poetry this thesis work explores universal themes of exile and migration, alongside the impact the current high stakes political climate had on one LGBTQIA+ teen and their mother, as they leave a home and extended family in North Texas to find sanctuary in Carbondale, Illinois. The natural world of Southern Illinois, with a focus on the lives of local white-tailed deer, becomes a mirror and a …

The Case Of Cronos: A Study Of Familial Resilience And Transnational Political Critique, Nicole Tanquary

Kaleidoscope: A Graduate Journal of Qualitative Communication Research

Resilience as a trope is often associated with the neoliberal ideal of individualized personal success, an ideal that is frequently used to deny the existence of structural oppression (Phipps, 2014). Analyzing cultural artefacts, however, can offer a reappraisal of how publics understand resilience in relation to neoliberal economic policy. In this paper, I analyze a 1993 film by Guillermo del Toro, titled Cronos, to understand how resilience can be presented as familial rather than individual, as well as the trickiness of using film to critique neoliberalism while under the influence of state agencies. In examining Cronos, I argue that …

Co-Ethnic Voting And The Analysis Of Trust Levels In Nigeria, Ayorinde Olanrewaju

Research Papers

Hale's (2008) relational theory posits that when less politically relevant ethnic groups experience marginalization and exploitation from the dominant ethnic groups, it creates an orientation in which these groups trust only their co-ethnics in distributing patronage and public goods. To what extent do variations in institutional trust among ethnic groups influence co-ethnic voting behavior? I argue that levels of trust in the president can be understood as one of the conditions under which voters use ethnic identity to decide their vote choice. When trust in a co-ethnic candidate is high, members of an ethnic group will prefer to vote along …

A Proposal To Reform The Institution Of Marriage In The Post-Dobbs Era Though The Twenty-Eighth Amendment, Allison J. Cozart

Southern Illinois University Law Journal

In the United States, marriage is considered a fundamental right. In the summer of 2022, the Supreme Court ruled on a landmark decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. There were significant changes that came from this decision and implications that could heavily affect marriage rights in this country. While the majority opinion focused on overturning the right to abortion, Justice Thomas’s concurrence shed light on the possibility that marriage might have been “wrongfully decided.” Thus, creating an uproar from American citizens across the country. In 2015, the Court recognized same-sex marriage as legally valid and held that all …

The Role Of Apologies In Labor Arbitration Outcomes, Michele Hoyman, Lamont Stallworth, David Kershaw

Southern Illinois University Law Journal

This article considers the extent to which apologies provided by grievants affect the rulings of labor arbitrators in discipline and discharge cases. We used an experimental survey design which asked respondents to render awards on hypothetical arbitration cases. Hypothetical cases varied across four variables of importance: (1) the (perceived) sincerity of an apology, (2) the timing of the apology, (3) the issue in the case—sexual harassment, insubordination due to refusal to work, and insubordination due to profanity, and (4) the seniority of the grievant. All members of the National Academy of Arbitrators were surveyed, which provided a total of 177 …

Recognition And Analysis Of The Works Of Contemporary Female Photographers In Iran (Case Studies: Maryam Zandi, Rana Javadi, Shadi Ghadirian, Azadeh Akhlaghi, Newsha Tavakolian), Maryam Sadat Nasrazadani

Research Papers

During the Qajar era, photography was exclusively in the hands of the king and the courtiers. After many years, it first made its way into the studios of the capital and then into studios in other major cities. The revolution, the war, and the subsequent years brought about various social and cultural conditions in Iran. Following the emergence of new intellectual and ideological movements, artistic trends also underwent changes, leading to the teaching of various art disciplines, including photography, in art universities and the pursuit of artistic photography in a new form. As a result of these changes, women were …

Impact Of Foreign Aid To Agriculture In Reducing Poverty In Developing Countries., Richard Amoako

Theses

The effectiveness of foreign aid in reducing poverty has been a contentious issue in development economics. This paper focuses specifically on aid directed towards agriculture, a sector critical for rural livelihoods and poverty alleviation. It investigates the empirical relationship between agricultural aid flows and poverty levels in 46 developing countries between 1997-2020. Fixed effects panel regressions estimate models with the $2.15/day (based on 2017 PPP) poverty headcount ratio as the outcome variable. The key finding is that agricultural aid has a statistically significant poverty-reducing impact. The regression coefficients indicate that on average, a 1% increase in agricultural aid is associated …