Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Digital Commons Network™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

University of Central Florida

Discipline
Keyword
Publication Year
Publication
Publication Type
File Type

Articles 1381 - 1410 of 1739

Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

Preparing Teachers To Partner With Families, Mary Senne Jan 2005

Preparing Teachers To Partner With Families, Mary Senne

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Decades of research have demonstrated that family involvement significantly contributes to improved student outcomes relating to learning and overall school success. Teachers must be prepared to promote effective family involvement in the education of all children including those students with disabilities. Many factors can be attributed to successful outcomes for a student with a disability both in the school and the broader community. Families of children with disabilities can be one of these significant factors, yet teachers and those who prepare teachers are often ill prepared and lack essential skills and basic knowledge about the process of partnering with families …

Go to article

Academic Achievement Of Hispanic Students In Orange County Public High Schools:Do Hispanic Students Have Varying Degrees Of Academic Success Based On The High School They Attend?, Lawrence Marc Fox Jan 2005

Academic Achievement Of Hispanic Students In Orange County Public High Schools:Do Hispanic Students Have Varying Degrees Of Academic Success Based On The High School They Attend?, Lawrence Marc Fox

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined academic achievement levels of Hispanic high school students. Seven high schools in Orange County Public Schools in Orlando, Florida were selected. The schools were selected based on socio-economic status and demographics to provide a wide range of participation. The following are some of the purposes that guided this study: (a) to determine if there are differences in academic achievement among Hispanic high school students in each school, (b) to determine differences in academic achievement based on gender, (c) to determine differences in academic achievement based on LEP status, and (d) to determine if there is a relationship …

Go to article

Regional Readiness For Intelligence Information Sharing To Support Homeland Security, Christine Genet Kemp Jan 2005

Regional Readiness For Intelligence Information Sharing To Support Homeland Security, Christine Genet Kemp

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Markle Task Force on National Security in the Information Age was created to produce recommendations on how to best leverage intelligence and information to improve security without compromising existing civil liberties. Their second report proposed that the government set up an information-sharing network using currently available technology to improve our ability to prevent terrorist attacks, while protecting civil liberties. The Markle recommendations have been incorporated into the recent Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. The proposition is that the Markle task force recommendations are sufficient to achieve the required data integration in the United States. To affirm …

Go to article

An Inquiry Into Discourse Choices As Indicators Of Gender Attitudes In A Non-Profit Conservative Christian Business, Dawn Marie Kruger Jan 2005

An Inquiry Into Discourse Choices As Indicators Of Gender Attitudes In A Non-Profit Conservative Christian Business, Dawn Marie Kruger

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper is an inquiry into the discourse styles of men and women who work together in a conservative Protestant Christian business. Many conservative Protestant Christian churches teach that the Bible forbids women from holding positions of authority over men. Yet in the communications department of this particular business, women fill the top three management positions, supervising a mixed-gender staff of 15. Research has shown that men and women subconsciously use language markers that indicate personal attitudes toward the same and the opposite genders. This research project draws on that information while it analyzes the oral and electronic discourse of …

Go to article

Supplemental Instruction In A Community College Developmental Mathematics Curriculum: A Phenomenological Study Of Learning Experiences, Julie Meer Phelps Jan 2005

Supplemental Instruction In A Community College Developmental Mathematics Curriculum: A Phenomenological Study Of Learning Experiences, Julie Meer Phelps

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Mirroring the changing demographics of the nation, the community college student population continues to grow in size and in diversity. Almost half of all students who enter these institutions need at least one remedial course, which is often developmental mathematics. Developed in 1973, Supplemental Instruction (SI) has quickly gained recognition as an academic support program that is used to aid student performance, retention, and academic success. This dissertation used a phenomenological approach to identify factors that motivated students' attendance and subsequent learning experiences in SI sessions associated with developmental mathematics. Sources of data included five rounds of interviews (three with …

Go to article

Collective Teacher Efficacy And Reading Achievement For Hispanic Students In Reading First And Non-Reading First Schools In Southwest Florida, Larry Hylemon Jan 2005

Collective Teacher Efficacy And Reading Achievement For Hispanic Students In Reading First And Non-Reading First Schools In Southwest Florida, Larry Hylemon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined explicit and systematic reading instruction for Hispanic, limited English, lower SES students in a southwest Florida school district. Additionally, collective teacher efficacy was assessed to determine if differences existed between a Reading First and a non-Reading First school. A total of 68 students participated in the study and were divided equally between a Reading First and non-Reading First school. While the Reading First school concentrated resources on grades 2 and 3, all students received some degree of Reading First strategies. Available reading measures for analyses at the time of the study included the Group Reading Assessment and …

Go to article

Investigation Of The Outcomes Of Delivering Training To Spanish Speakers In Standard Spanish Versus Their Native Dialect, Mary Kosarzycki Jan 2005

Investigation Of The Outcomes Of Delivering Training To Spanish Speakers In Standard Spanish Versus Their Native Dialect, Mary Kosarzycki

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present study explored the outcomes of delivering training to Spanish speakers in either their native dialect or in Standard Spanish in the context of a self-running, narrated PowerPoint presentation on a health topic, "The Importance of Vaccinations." The training outcomes that were examined included learning scores; attitudes toward the training; and attitudes toward employment with organizations that employed the same or different dialect-speaking employees, supervisors, and trainers. In addition to examining the effects of ethnicity upon outcomes, this study also examined the effect of age, education level, time in the U.S., and familiarity with the locally dominant subgroup's dialect. …

Go to article

Developing Technical Communication Pedagogy For Nonnative Technical Graduate Students, David Sepulveda Jan 2005

Developing Technical Communication Pedagogy For Nonnative Technical Graduate Students, David Sepulveda

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to develop a pedagogy for teaching academic writing to nonnative graduate students of technical disciplines in order to give them the skills they need to write papers that they can submit to academic journals and conferences, thereby advancing their careers and gaining recognition for their academic institutions. The work draws on research from the fields of technical communication and second-language acquisition in order to develop pedagogical principles for a class in which nonnative technical graduate students write an academic paper that they can submit for publication. The thesis proposes an approach that incorporates content-based instruction, certain plain …

Go to article

A Probe Into Learning Approaches And Attitudes Towards Technology-Enhanced Language Learning (Tell) In Chinese Instruction, Rong Yuan Jan 2005

A Probe Into Learning Approaches And Attitudes Towards Technology-Enhanced Language Learning (Tell) In Chinese Instruction, Rong Yuan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This quantitative research, carried out at the military environment at the Defense Language Institute investigated whether learning approaches could predict learners' language proficiency and learners' attitude towards technology-enhanced language learning (TELL). In addition, it also examined whether learners' demographic factors, such as age, educational backgrounds, prior experience in foreign language learning and in TELL as well as their ability to use PC and the World Wide Web could predict the above mentioned language proficiency and attitude. A cluster sampling method was adopted and data was collected in four Chinese departments at the institute. Both the learning approaches inventory ASSIST and …

Go to article

Reading Motivation In Upper Elementary Students: How Children Explain Reading For Pleasure, Rebecca Lynn Poppe Jan 2005

Reading Motivation In Upper Elementary Students: How Children Explain Reading For Pleasure, Rebecca Lynn Poppe

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study investigated the phenomenon of the pleasure reading experience in fourth and fifth grade students. The purpose of the study was to create a dialogue with children regarding their leisure reading habits in an effort to inform our understanding of aliteracy, a term that refers to having the ability to read but choosing not to. Fourth grade students were surveyed to uncover their attitudes toward pleasure reading and eleven students were chosen for interviews. Comparative data was obtained from those students who conveyed either extremely negative or extremely positive attitudes toward reading. Students of both genders were selected …

Go to article

Latinate Word Parts And Vocabulary:Contrasts Among Three Groups Comprisingthe Community College Preparatory Reading Class, Tom Bellomo Jan 2005

Latinate Word Parts And Vocabulary:Contrasts Among Three Groups Comprisingthe Community College Preparatory Reading Class, Tom Bellomo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Students enrolled in a college preparatory reading class at one particular community college were categorized based on language origin. Native English speaking students comprised one group and foreign students formed two additional groups--students whose language origin was Latin-based (i.e. Romance languages) and students whose language origin was not Latin-based (i.e. Japanese). A pretest assessment measure was used to quantify the extent that pre-existing knowledge of Latinate word parts and morphologically complex vocabulary differed among groups based on language origin. The identical instrument served as a posttest to measure the extent that direct instruction in morphological analysis resulted in change among …

Go to article

Second Language Learners' Recognition Of Unknown Words, Chai-Wei Lin Jan 2005

Second Language Learners' Recognition Of Unknown Words, Chai-Wei Lin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recent research has underscored the important role of second language (L2) vocabulary acquisition in the reading process. The present study examined how accurately eighteen learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) were able to identify unknown words within a reading passage. It is assumed that "noticing" unfamiliar words in a text plays an important role in being able to extract meaning from context, which may ultimately result in word learning; thus, whether or not learners are able to recognize unknown words as unknown is a key step in vocabulary learning. The design of this study was based on previous …

Go to article

Designing For A Japanese High-Context Culture: Culture's Influence On The Technical Writer's Visual Rhetoric, Russell Carpenter Jan 2005

Designing For A Japanese High-Context Culture: Culture's Influence On The Technical Writer's Visual Rhetoric, Russell Carpenter

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the challenges technical writers face when designing documents for high-context cultures, such as the Japanese. When developing documents intended to cross cultural gulfs, technical writers must take into consideration cultural expectations, preferences, and practices in document design and communication. High-context cultures, such as Japan, design documents using drastically different design strategies than those used in the United States. Japanese communication habits are more ambiguous than communication in the United States. Thus, the Japanese often use visuals for their aesthetic appeal, not for their ability to complement the text that surrounds the visual. The ambiguous nature of high-context …

Go to article

Only Screen Deep? Evaluating Aesthetics, Usability, And Satisfaction In Informational Websites, Carrie Avery Jan 2005

Only Screen Deep? Evaluating Aesthetics, Usability, And Satisfaction In Informational Websites, Carrie Avery

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the role aesthetics plays in informational websites. In commercial interfaces, aesthetics (the perceived visual appeal and appropriateness of an object) has shown to correlate positively with many aspects of usability and emotional satisfaction. This thesis examines whether aesthetics has similar positive correlations in informational websites. Heuristics or guidelines for evaluating informational websites are developed based on empirical research and practitioner expertise. Categories for heuristic evaluation include usability, credibility, visual clarity, visual richness, and emotional satisfaction. A class of graduate students browsed three academic websites, evaluated them, and critiqued the heuristics. Results indicate that aesthetics does correlate with …

Go to article

The Public Policy Implications Of Audit Regulation: Three Studies Related To The Passage Of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act Of 2002, Steven Thornburg Jan 2005

The Public Policy Implications Of Audit Regulation: Three Studies Related To The Passage Of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act Of 2002, Steven Thornburg

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation documents and evaluates certain financial and non-financial strategies used by the public accounting profession to influence audit regulation during the policy formation period of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX). The dissertation is comprised of three separate, but related studies. Each study uses prior research in accounting and related disciplines to investigate significant aspects the profession's strategies. The first study evaluates the rationality and effectiveness of political action committee (PAC) contributions paid by the accounting profession to members of Congress. The study finds that the accounting profession rationally allocated more PAC contributions to top congressional leaders and to …

Go to article

Central Florida Future, Vol. 37 No. 17, October 11, 2004 Oct 2004

Central Florida Future, Vol. 37 No. 17, October 11, 2004

Central Florida Future

SGA Senate runoffs will fill 13 open seats: United UCF and the Golden Ticket battle for more victories; In second debate candidates get nasty: Bush discovers he has a lumber company; Arabic lessons find new audience: Interest is rising in the dominant language of the Middle East.

Go to article

Central Florida Future, Vol. 37 No. 03, August 26, 2004 Aug 2004

Central Florida Future, Vol. 37 No. 03, August 26, 2004

Central Florida Future

Raw fish added to campus food choices: Two new venues in Student Union give lunchtime rush more variety; Frat punishments lifted; SAE and Phi Delt are now free to recruit this fall; More passes more cars same spaces: Heavy traffic makes parking hard to come by on campus; Power use called 'wasteful' while lights are left on.

Go to article

Informe Preliminar Del Trabajo, 2004, John H. Walker Aug 2004

Informe Preliminar Del Trabajo, 2004, John H. Walker

ProSIGAB Documents

No abstract provided.

Go to article

Morpheme Acquisition In Second Language Learners, Timothy Andrew Schuwerk Jan 2004

Morpheme Acquisition In Second Language Learners, Timothy Andrew Schuwerk

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study explored morpheme acquisition in learners of English as a Second Language (ESL). Specifically, it looked at the development of eight selected individuals from Korea over the course of an intensive 8-week instruction program and tracked their acquisition of three specific English morphemes: indefinite articles used with singular count nouns, progressive -ing forms, and third person -s markers. The individuals were given an assessment test to place them at the correct level within the program prior to their selection for the study. The participants provided four sets of data in the form of writing samples at fixed intervals during …

Go to article

Improving Comprehension Of Capital Sentencing Instructions: A Bias Reduction Approach, Charles W. Otto Jan 2004

Improving Comprehension Of Capital Sentencing Instructions: A Bias Reduction Approach, Charles W. Otto

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Previous research has demonstrated that judicial instructions on the law are not well understood by jurors tasked with applying the law to the facts of a case. The past research has also shown that jurors are often confused by the instructions used in the sentencing phase of a capital trial. Social scientists have used two different methods to improve juror understanding of legal instructions, psycholinguistic rewrites and bias-reduction techniques. Psycholinguistic rewrites of legal instructions have been shown consistently to improve juror comprehension of general legal instructions and instructions used in the sentencing phase of a capital trial, however, there has …

Go to article

Techniques For Assessing And Improving Performance In Navigation And Wayfinding Using Mobile Augmented Reality, Brian Goldiez Jan 2004

Techniques For Assessing And Improving Performance In Navigation And Wayfinding Using Mobile Augmented Reality, Brian Goldiez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Augmented reality is a field of technology in which the real world is overlaid with additional information from a computer generated display. Enhancements to augmented reality technology presently support limited mobility which is expected to increase in the future to provide much greater real world functionality. This work reports on a set of experiments that investigate performance in search and rescue navigating tasks using augmented reality. Augmentation consisted of a spatially and temporally registered map of a maze that was overlaid onto a real world maze. Participants were required to traverse the maze, answer spatially oriented questions in the maze, …

Go to article

Adaptive Intelligent User Interfaces With Emotion Recognition, Fatma Nasoz Jan 2004

Adaptive Intelligent User Interfaces With Emotion Recognition, Fatma Nasoz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The focus of this dissertation is on creating Adaptive Intelligent User Interfaces to facilitate enhanced natural communication during the Human-Computer Interaction by recognizing users' affective states (i.e., emotions experienced by the users) and responding to those emotions by adapting to the current situation via an affective user model created for each user. Controlled experiments were designed and conducted in a laboratory environment and in a Virtual Reality environment to collect physiological data signals from participants experiencing specific emotions. Algorithms (k-Nearest Neighbor [KNN], Discriminant Function Analysis [DFA], Marquardt-Backpropagation [MBP], and Resilient Backpropagation [RBP]) were implemented to analyze the collected data signals …

Go to article

Decision Support Model For Construction Crew Reassignments, Angela M. Sist Jan 2004

Decision Support Model For Construction Crew Reassignments, Angela M. Sist

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The reassignment of crews on a construction project in response to changes occurs on a frequent basis. The factors that affect the crew reassignment decision can be myriad and most are not known with certainty. This research addresses the need for a decision support model to assist construction managers with the crew reassignment problem. The model design makes use of certainty factors in a decision tree structure. The research helped to determine the elements in the decision tree, the appropriate combination rules to use with the certainty factors, and the method for combining the certainty factors and costs to develop …

Go to article

Rate Of Graduation Among Students With Histories Of Specific Language Impairment, Amy Jean Hadley Jan 2004

Rate Of Graduation Among Students With Histories Of Specific Language Impairment, Amy Jean Hadley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The rate of graduation among students with histories of specific language impairment (SLI) was investigating by comparing the target population to matched, nondisabled peers. Data regarding the graduation outcomes for 176 matched pairs of students, over a five-year period, were analyzed to determine if a significant difference in achievement of a high school diploma was observable between the two groups of students. In addition, the study addressed the variables of socioeconomic status and attendance rate as related to graduation rate. For students with histories of specific language impairment, model of service delivery was also examined with regard to graduation rate. …

Go to article

Using Noninvasive Wearable Computers To Recognize Human Emotions From Physiological Signals, Christine Laetitia Lisetti, Fatma Nasoz Jan 2004

Using Noninvasive Wearable Computers To Recognize Human Emotions From Physiological Signals, Christine Laetitia Lisetti, Fatma Nasoz

Faculty Bibliography 2000s

We discuss the strong relationship between affect and cognition and the importance of emotions in multimodal human computer interaction (HCl) and user modeling. We introduce the overall paradigm for our multimodal system that aims at recognizing its users' emotions and at responding to them accordingly depending upon the current context or application. We then describe the design of the emotion elicitation experiment we conducted by collecting, via wearable computers, physiological signals from the autonomic nervous system (galvanic skin response, heart rate, temperature) and mapping them to certain emotions (sadness, anger, fear, surprise, frustration, and amusement). We show the results of …

Go to article

The Effect Of Peer Advisors On Esl Students' Perspectives Of University Academic Tasks, Monica Fishkin Jan 2004

The Effect Of Peer Advisors On Esl Students' Perspectives Of University Academic Tasks, Monica Fishkin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A review of the related literature revealed that international students face specific academic challenges. The goal of this research was to investigate the effect of international student peer advising sessions on English as a Second Language (ESL) international students' perceptions of their language skills and strategies for dealing with academic tasks. The research design included a control and an experimental group with a pretest and a posttest administration of the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) and the Xu International Student Academic Language Needs Assessment (ISALNA-2) instruments. Qualitative data was also collected. The participants in the study were upper-intermediate level …

Go to article

Ocr: A Statistical Model Of Multi-Engine Ocr Systems, Mercedes Terre Mcdonald Jan 2004

Ocr: A Statistical Model Of Multi-Engine Ocr Systems, Mercedes Terre Mcdonald

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a benchmark performed on three commercial Optical Character Recognition (OCR) engines. The purpose of this benchmark is to characterize the performance of the OCR engines with emphasis on the correlation of errors between each engine. The benchmarks are performed for the evaluation of the effect of a multi-OCR system employing a voting scheme to increase overall recognition accuracy. This is desirable since currently OCR systems are still unable to recognize characters with 100% accuracy. The existing error rates of OCR engines pose a major problem for applications where a single error can possibly effect significant outcomes, such …

Go to article

A Software-Based Knowledge Management System Using Narrative Texts, Thomas Rudy Mcdaniel Jan 2004

A Software-Based Knowledge Management System Using Narrative Texts, Thomas Rudy Mcdaniel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Technical and professional communicators have in recent research been challenged to make significant contributions to the field of knowledge management, and to learn or create the new technologies allowing them to do so. The purpose of this dissertation is to make such a combined theoretical and applied contribution from the context of the emerging discipline of Texts and Technology. This dissertation explores the field of knowledge management (KM), particularly its relationship to the related study of artificial intelligence (AI), and then recommends a KM software application based on the principles of narratology and narrative information exchange. The focus of knowledge …

Go to article

A Journey Of Teaching And Learning In Science Education: The Microculture Of Emerging Inquiry-Based Science Instruction In An Urban, Low Socioeconomic Elementary School Science Lab, Kimberly Dahl Jan 2004

A Journey Of Teaching And Learning In Science Education: The Microculture Of Emerging Inquiry-Based Science Instruction In An Urban, Low Socioeconomic Elementary School Science Lab, Kimberly Dahl

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This ethnographic study of emerging inquiry-based science instruction in an urban, low socioeconomic elementary school science lab was designed to gain insight into the perspectives of the teacher and students. The study involved a Central Florida elementary school whose population was over 80 percent African-American. In this six month study, the researcher examined the classroom setting of a science lab teacher and her fourth and fifth grade students during a six month period of time. Data sources included interviews, field notes, reflections, and student work , which were used to identify the emerging themes and patterns in the study. The …

Go to article

An Investigation Into The Apparent Over-Representation Of Blacks In Educable Mentally Handicapped Programs In K-12 Schools Within The 67 Florida Public School Districts, Arlene H. Thomson Jan 2004

An Investigation Into The Apparent Over-Representation Of Blacks In Educable Mentally Handicapped Programs In K-12 Schools Within The 67 Florida Public School Districts, Arlene H. Thomson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Placement into educable mentally handicapped (EMH) programs is necessary for some students in order to allow them the opportunity to receive an education appropriate for their special needs. Nonetheless, identification as EMH is often perceived as negative and demeaning. Decades of research have substantiated the over-representation of black students into certain categories of special education, including EMH, in comparison to white and Hispanic students. This disparity has raised questions within schools, academe and research communities, and legislative and governing bodies as to the causes, compelling factors, and related variables impacting the phenomenon. This study investigated the apparent over-representation of blacks …

Go to article

First Prev Next Last