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Journal Of The Association For Communication Administration: Complete Volume 40

Journal of the Association for Communication Administration

This is the complete volume of JACA Volume 40.

Curacao Milestone 2023: Welcoming Over Half A Million Tourists, Manuel Rivera, Valeriya Shapoval, Margaret Zorrilla

Hospitality+™ Center for Innovation and Training

In 2023, the Curaçao Tourism Board achieved significant milestones in promoting and developing the island as a premier tourist destination. The tourism sector experienced remarkable growth, with a 19% increase in stayover arrivals, reaching 582,400 visitors compared to 489,599 in 2022. This marked the first time Curaçao exceeded half a million stayover arrivals.

The success of Curaçao's tourism sector was bolstered by targeted marketing campaigns in key source markets. The Curaçao Tourist Board actively promoted the island through collaborations with local stakeholders, enhancing the effectiveness of their efforts. Additionally, the Board launched several initiatives to raise consumer awareness, such as …

Vocabulary Masks, Kim Hardiman

Journal of English Learner Education

As language instructors, we should teach vocabulary in every lesson. How can we combine L2 vocabulary with active teaching and learning techniques? In the past, language instructors taught EL to write long word lists int their notebooks. Do ELs remember these new words? Is there a better way to teach vocabulary for ELs to practice using them in authentic context? Wearing masks has become a daily activity around the world. ELs can express and share their raw emotions by writing and wearing inspirational words on their masks. Vocabulary masks will ignite salient discussions and reconnect ELs with their emotional journeys …

Effects Of Synchronous And Asynchronous Online Instructional Approaches On English-Learning Undergraduate College Students: An Exploratory Study, Ivana Markova, Cristina Azocar

Journal of English Learner Education

Although the significance of the use of online classes remains evident due to their growing prevalence at US universities, they still remain an untested experience for countless English learners (ELs). This research explores EL students’ perceptions of the opportunities for interaction in synchronous and asynchronous online university classroom modalities. It also examines how socioacademic relations and Bandura’s social learning theory can explain the interactions between students and instructors that influence EL students’ literacy development. Participants (n=105) were selected from a large sample pool of 261 EL undergraduate student participants aged 18 to 35. A mixed methods design was …

Creating Pedagogically Effective And Visually Appealing Instructional Slides: Design Tips For Language Educators, Anny Fritzen Case

Journal of English Learner Education

Utilizing slides to augment instruction is a common and promising practice among language educators. However, slide design matters. While well-designed slides can support students' comprehension and engagement, poorly designed slides can produce misunderstanding, frustration, and disengagement. This article describes five basic graphic design principles teachers can apply when creating slide presentations. Through the application of these principles, instructional materials have a higher potential of being both visually appealing and pedagogically effective.

Technology In The Classroom: The Features Language Teachers Should Consider, Sophie Cuocci, Padideh Fattahi Marnani

Journal of English Learner Education

The fast development of technology and the new generation of highly computer literate students led to consider the integration of technology in school as essential. Throughout the last two decades, research has identified multiple factors leading to the successful and unsuccessful integration of technology in the classroom. Educators must consider these factors when deciding on which technology tools to use and how to integrate them to their lessons. Simultaneously, the increasing number of English learners in the United States calls for the identification of teaching strategies that will best support their needs. Many language teachers now rely on teaching techniques …

Making Thinking Visible: Reading Metacognitive Strategies In Intensive English Programs, Adil Bentahar

Journal of English Learner Education

The use of metacognitive strategies has been linked to increased motivation for reading as well as reading fluency and accuracy. In this study, I evaluated whether teaching three metacognitive strategies (planning, monitoring, and evaluating) would (a) improve intensive English program international students’ metacognitive knowledge, which in turn would (b) improve their comprehension. Eight college English learners (ELs) completed the Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategy Inventory (MARSI) (Mokhtari et al., 2018) and a reading test at the beginning of a reading-writing course and again at the end of the course. The results revealed an increase from pretest to posttest in all …

Foreign Language Anxiety: A Review On Theories, Causes, Consequences And Implications For Educators, Padideh Fattahi Marnani, Sophie Cuocci

Journal of English Learner Education

Anxiety has been considered one of the main obstacles in second language learning in instruction-based contexts. During the last few decades, many scholars have tried to shed light on different aspects of this phenomenon. This literature review clarifies previous scholarly works and covers some of the most significant empirical studies conducted in this field. The purpose of this literature review is to review various aspects of foreign language anxiety, its corresponding theoretical frameworks and models, causes, consequences, gender differences, class modalities (face-to-face and online) and lastly, implications for educators. Foreign language anxiety is a significant barrier that hinders the learning …

Implementing A Humanistic Approach Towards Educational Equity For English Learners, Deborah Wheeler

Journal of English Learner Education

Schools must provide equitable education to English learners (ELs), ensure equitable opportunities to education programs, and facilitate comprehensible instruction. ELs encounter challenges consisting of learning English, adjusting to a new culture, achieving academic expectations, and assimilating. Implementing a humanistic approach helps ELs mediate through cultural nuances, language learning, academic objectives, and by applying a humanistic approach, educational equity will be established. To guarantee that every student is given an equitable opportunity, all stakeholders are responsible for ensuring the educational system is prepared for diversity, equipped with multicultural knowledge, provided with enriching resources, and ready to implement of a humanistic approach. …

Human-Machine Communication: Complete Volume 5. Gender And Human-Machine Communication

Human-Machine Communication

This is the complete volume of HMC Volume 5

Designing A Loving Robot: A Social Construction Analysis Of A Sex Robot Creator’S Vision, Annette Masterson

Human-Machine Communication

In 2018, one of the world’s first sex robots was released by CEO Matt McMullen and his company, RealDoll. With artificial intelligence capabilities, the Harmony model is meant to support and converse with users. Using a social construction of technology theory lens, this study develops the theory’s fourth level of analysis, emphasizing mass media’s construction abilities. A critical discourse analysis of 38 publicity interviews found a tendency to emphasize the companionship of sex robots while envisioning a future where integration is normalized, and a sentient robot is possible. As the creator, McMullen’s vision could determine the future of robotic design, …

Gender Ambiguity In Voice-Based Assistants: Gender Perception And Influences Of Context, Sandra Mooshammer, Katrin Etzrodt

Human-Machine Communication

Recently emerging synthetic acoustically gender-ambiguous voices could contribute to dissolving the still prevailing genderism. Yet, are we indeed perceiving these voices as “unassignable”? Or are we trying to assimilate them into existing genders? To investigate the perceived ambiguity, we conducted an explorative 3 (male, female, ambiguous voice) × 3 (male, female, ambiguous topic) experiment. We found that, although participants perceived the gender-ambiguous voice as ambiguous, they used a profoundly wide range of the scale, indicating tendencies toward a gender. We uncovered a mild dissolve of gender roles. Neither the listener’s gender nor the personal gender stereotypes impacted the perception. However, …

Gender And Human-Machine Communication: Where Are We?, Leopoldina Fortunati, Autumn P. Edwards

Human-Machine Communication

In this introduction to the fifth volume of the journal Human-Machine Communication, we present and discuss the five articles focusing on gender and human-machine communication. In this essay, we will analyze the theme of gender, including how this notion has historically and politically been set up, and for what reasons. We will start by considering gender in in-person communication, then we will progress to consider what happens to gender when it is mediated by the most important ICTs that preceded HMC: the telephone, mobile phone, and computer-mediated communication (CMC). We outline the historical framework necessary to analyze the last section …

Bowls, Bowls, Bowls, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

When you come across the word “bowl,” what comes to mind?

Peat And Patty: Providing A Voice For Nature Through Animation, Clinnie Brinson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Peat and Patty is a 3D animated short story of a young scientist, Patty, and her pet parrot Peat, whose goal is to save their world from a dying ecosystem. Ultimately, they inadvertently receive help from a nearby polar bear which leads to the success of Patty's experiment. The purpose of this story is to highlight the dangers of global warming to our own ecosystem thus building eco-consciousness in viewers. We currently have natural disasters increasing in frequency, a rising global temperature, and pollution in our bodies of water (Rossati). By personifying nature, animation can invoke empathy from viewers towards …

The Y-Chromosome's Role In Sexually Dimorphic Evolution And Mother's Curse Compensation, Tobias Nielsen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

The Y-chromosome and mitochondria (containing mtDNA) appear entirely dissimilar, the former being a sex chromosome found in the nucleus and the latter an organelle with thousands of copies in the cytoplasm. However, both experience uniparental inheritance, with Y-chromosomes being patrilineal and mitochondria matrilineal. This leads to various other similarities including haploidy, high mutation rates, and limited or lack of genetic recombination. Moreover, the low number of protein-coding genes contained on both led to the belief that neither contributes significantly to the adaptive evolution of complex traits. However, recent studies show the Y-chromosome and mitochondria both influence roughly 10% of male …

Low-Resource Machine Learning Techniques For The Analysis Of Online Social Media Textual Data, Toktam Amanzadeh Oghaz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Low-resource and label-efficient machine learning methods can be described as the family of statistical and machine learning techniques that can achieve high performance without needing a substantial amount of labeled data. These methods include both unsupervised learning techniques, such as LDA, and supervised methods, such as active learning, each providing different benefits. Thus, this dissertation is devoted to the design and analysis of unsupervised and supervised techniques to provide solutions for the following problems: Unsupervised narrative summary extraction for social media content, Social media text classification with Active Learning (AL), Investigating restrictions and benefits of using Curriculum Learning (CL) for …

Data-Driven Power System Stability Analysis And Control, Jian Xie

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

In recent years, with the expansion of power system size, the increase of interconnection and the use of large-scale renewable energy, power system stability and safe operations have become more prominent, causing challenges to the normal operation of power grid. Traditional analysis rely on detailed models of the system. But for real power systems, the operating state of the system is variable, and the model-based analysis methods may not accurately reflect the real operating state of the system. Therefore, this dissertation is focused on data-driven stability analysis and control. First, a method for locating the oscillation source of multi-machine systems …

A Transdisciplinary Emergent Approach For Systems And Interventions (Easi), Chaithanya Renduchintala

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

In modeling human behavior and social structures several factors can emerge over time this can be attributed to the availability of new data, increased complexity, changes to the organizational structure, interventions, introduction of innovative technology or services and due to improved knowledge and treatments. We hypothesize a new class of emergent decision support systems that continually evolve to account for this "Causal Drift". In this work, we illustrate the application of the Emergent Approach to Systems and Intervention (EASI™) methodology with the example of Community Intervention Activity Model (CIAM) to reduce the rate of diabetic hospitalization at the local/ county …

Modeling The Effects Of Diversity And Corporations On Participation Dynamics In Floss Ecosystems, Olivia Newton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

A multitude of societal issues associated with the development of technology have emerged over the years including, but not limited to: insufficient personnel for maintenance; a lack of accessibility; the spread of harmful tools; and bias and discrimination against marginalized groups. I propose that a systems perspective is necessary to identify potential leverage points in technology production systems to influence them towards increased social good and evaluate their effectiveness for intervention. Toward this end, I conducted a mixed-methods study of a widely-adopted approach in tech production, free/libre and open source software (FLOSS) development. A survey was distributed to elicit responses …

Torward Real-World Cross-View Image Geo-Localization, Sijie Zhu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Cross-view image geo-localization aims to determine the locations of street-view query images by searching in a GPS-tagged reference image database from aerial view. One fundamental challenge is the dramatic view-point/domain difference between the street-view query images and aerial-view reference images. Recent works have made great progress on bridging the domain gap with advanced deep learning techniques and geometric prior knowledge, i.e. the query is aligned at the center of one aerial-view reference image (spatial alignment) and the orientation relationship between the two views is known (orientation alignment). However, such prior knowledge of the geometry correspondence of the two views is …

High Performance And Low Cost Passivating, Carrier-Selective Contacts For Silicon Photovoltaics, Jannatul Ferdous Mousumi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

The world is now focusing on expanding renewable energy sources to reduce the carbon footprint and mitigate climate change. Solar energy is one of the most environment-friendly and fastest-growing renewable energy sources in the present world. While crystalline silicon (c-Si) based devices dominate the global photovoltaics (PV) market with a current share of 95%, it is still challenging to achieve the theoretical efficiency limit of 29.4% with this technology due to a few performance limiting factors. Contact recombination losses are dominant among them which result from the recombination of photo-generated charge carriers due to the presence of defects at the …

High Voltage Aqueous Electrolyte Based Structural Supercapacitors For Electric Vehicles, Deepak Pandey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

The current electric vehicles (EVs) face many challenges like limited charge capacity, low miles/charge, and long charging times. Herein, these issues are addressed by developing "energized composite," which is a multifunctional supercapacitor-based energy-storing carbon fiber reinforced polymer composite that can store supplemental electric energy and function as the body shell of EV's. This is achieved by developing a unique design, vertically aligning graphene sheets on carbon fiber electrodes and depositing metal oxides to obtain high energy density electrodes. A high-strength multilayer composite is fabricated using an alternate layer pattern configuration of epoxy and polyacrylamide gel electrolyte. The composite so developed …

Adaptive Analytic Continuation For The State Transition Tensors Of The Two-Body Problem, Tahsinul Haque Tasif

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

In the past few decades, Kessler syndrome (named after Donald J. Kessler) has become a point of concern in the field of Space Situational Awareness and the future of space missions. It refers to a scenario, where space debris in Earth's orbits collides and creates an exponential increase in space debris numbers leading to more collisions and more debris. In order to handle the resulting challenges like conjunction analysis, tracking, and probability of collisions, the State Transition Matrix (STM) and Tensors (STTs) of the orbit problem play a significant role. In addition, STM and STTs are ubiquitous in spaceflight dynamics, …

Processing And Characterization Of Ultra High Temperature And High Conductive Composites, Haonan Song

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

There are significant challenges for materials in extreme environments for a variety of applications such as aircraft engines, gas turbines, nuclear reactors, re-entry vehicles, and hypersonic structures. Ceramic matrix composites (CMCs) could be ideal candidates to meet these stringent requirements for materials due to their high melting temperatures, high oxidation, corrosion and ablation resistance, low creep, and thermal cycling behavior in such extreme environments. Particularly, continuous fibers can bridge cracks in CMCs and therefore improve the strength and fracture toughness of composites. Metal matrix ceramics are important materials in various industries, such as aerospace and automobile. MMCs have excellent mechanical …

Progress In Chaos: Cash Transfers And Women Economic Empowerment Amidst Climate Change And Violent Conflicts In West Africa, Jennifer Obado Joel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Do cash transfers shift gender norms of economic relations within households and communities during crises? This study explores the effect of social protection programs like cash transfers on women's economic empowerment in contexts where climate change and violent conflicts co-occur. Cash transfers have become a policy of choice for governments and development agencies seeking to alleviate poverty, address economic and political grievances, and build individual and community resilience to climate change. Due to the recent popularity of cash transfers, there needs to be more scholarship on its effect on women's intra-household economic agency and voice in communities. Therefore, this study …

Extracellular Vesicle-Associated Biomolecules As Potential Biomarkers For Alzheimer's Disease Diagnosis, Lina Bedoya Martinez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Alzheimer's disease (AD) involves progressive neurodegeneration leading to the loss of normal neuronal function. Extracellular accumulation of amyloid-beta (Aß), through the abnormal cleavage of the amyloid precursor protein (APP) by ß- and γ-secretases, is one of the hallmarks of AD. Current research focuses on finding potential candidates for biomarkers and techniques with improved sensitivity for early disease detection. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) found in body fluids are a source of biomarkers for AD diagnosis. EVs transport pathologically significant biomolecules, like nucleic acids and proteins, across the blood-brain barrier, mediating local and distant cell-to-cell communication. Therefore, this study evaluated EV-associated DNA and …

Polyelectrolyte Functionalized Forward Osmosis For Water Reclamation From Synthetic Spacecraft Wastewater, Alina Ripp

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

This study investigated the application of a polyelectrolyte (PE)-assisted metallic iron nanoparticle-integrated forward osmosis (FO) membrane to treat synthetic spacecraft wastewater comprising urea, ammonium carbonate, and linear alkylbenzene sulfonate (LAS). The draw solution (MgSO4) diluted via the FO operation was further treated using a nanofiltration (NF) membrane aimed at producing potable quality water by the FO-NF hybrid process. A cellulose triacetate FO membrane was functionalized by layer-by-layer deposition of polyallylamine hydrochloride (PAH) and polyacrylic acid (PAA) followed by incorporating zero valent iron nanoparticles (ZVINP) within the "bilayers". It required 14 bilayers to ensure a uniform coating as demonstrated via scanning …

Observation Of Novel Phases Of Quantum Matter Beyond Topological Insulator, Sabin Regmi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Because of the unique electronic properties, intriguing novel phenomena, and potentiality in quantum device applications, the quantum materials with non-trivial band structures have enticed a bulk of research works over the last two decades. The experimental discovery of the three-dimensional topological insulators (TIs) - bulk insulators with surface conduction via spin-polarized electrons - kicked off the flurry of research interests towards such materials, which resulted in the experimental discovery of new topological phases of matter beyond TIs. The topological semimetallic phase in Dirac, Weyl, and nodal-line semimetals is an example, where the classification depends on the dimensionality, degeneracy, and symmetry …

The Facile Preparation Of Bis(Imino)Pyridine Complexes Via Mechanochemistry And Inorganic Synthons Via Benign Reductants, Thomas Shaw

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

This thesis is comprised of two key themes: (i) leveraging mechanochemical synthetic methods for the green preparation of bis(imino)pyridine ligands and associated first row transition metal coordination complexes, and (ii) the preparation and characterization of both historic and novel mid-valent inorganic synthons via the use of dimethylphenylsilane as a stoichiometric reducing agent. The first portion of this thesis highlights the utilization of solvent-free vibratory ball-milling in lieu of traditional, solvent-based refluxes. A variety of both bis(imino)pyridine ligands and complexes were formed in drastically reduced timeframes with solvent-economical work-up procedures. This methodology was also leveraged for the isolation of acetyl(imino)pyridine ligands …