Digital Commons Network^™

Learning To Facilitate Highly Interactive Literary Discussions To Engage Students As Thinkers, Cheryl L. Rosaen, Amber Meyer, Stephanie Strachan, Jessica Meier

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

Helping novices learn to facilitate interactive whole-class discussions is an important “high-leverage practice” for becoming an effective teacher due to its strong potential to increase students’ learning opportunities. A semester-long classroom-based assignment in a senior-level elementary literacy methods course supported preservice teachers in developing the practice of leading one text-based interactive literary discussion, along with learning to establish norms and routines for discussions, and to analyze instruction for the purpose of improving it. Analysis of 83 preservice teachers’ written work investigated their learning during the beginning stages of developing the complex practice of leading discussions. We propose a learning trajectory …

Implementation Of Common Core–Based Curriculum In A Fourth-Grade Literacy Classroom: An Exploratory Study, Elizabeth Jaeger

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were adopted by most states by 2010. Yet, many teachers still lack confidence in their ability to integrate these standards into their classroom instruction and this uncertainty undermines their effectiveness. This article presents findings from a study of a fourth grade literacy curriculum informed by the CCSS. The study mobilized the Vygotskian notion of mediation as it applies in a literacy learning context and addresses the following research questions: (a) What were fourth grade student English language arts achievement levels and beliefs about literacy prior to and following the implementation of a CCSS-based curriculum? …

A Socio-Psycholinguistic Perspective On Biliteracy: The Use Of Miscue Analysis As A Culturally Relevant Assessment Tool, Bobbie Kabuto

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

Through the presentation of two bilingual reader profiles, this article will illustrate how miscue analysis can act as a culturally relevant assessment tool as it allows for the study of reading across different spoken and written languages. The research presented in this article integrates a socio-psycholinguistic perspective to reading and a translanguaging perspective to language use to highlight how differences in language and writing systems did not lead to difficulties or barriers in orally reading or comprehending texts. Contrarily, the use of miscue analysis was a culturally relevant assessment that provided a multidimensional perspective into the ways in which the …

Self Management: Overcoming Barriers To Success, Jazmyn Souryamat

Honors Theses

Individuals with an autism spectrum diagnosis often have a social-skills deficit that may include the tendency to avoid eye contact. In addition, they may have sensory issues and become easily overwhelmed by excessive sensory stimuli. Self-management is a treatment that has been found to enhance the quality of life for individuals with or without an autism spectrum diagnosis. It has been helpful in treating procrastination, used to increase physical activity, lower caloric intake, and increase independence. In this study, self-management treatments were used to increase instances of appropriate social responding and to decrease behaviors that posed a barrier to personal, …

Ferns By Kaneko Mitsuharu, Douglas Slaymaker

Transference

Translated from Japanese by Doug Slaymaker

Western News, January 26, 2017, Western Michigan University

Western News (1972-2018)

Story highlights: Rinvelt; Bolger to lead governing board, Businessman’s estate gift benefits multiple unit, WMU postgrad data shows 92 percent find swift success, NEH grant aiding first-generation college students, Emeriti Council awards $10,000 in book scholarships for spring semester, On Campus with Jim Hilliker, Nonresident undergraduate tuition sharply decreased

15-07 App-Based Crowd Sourcing Of Bicycle And Pedestrian Conflict Data, Stephen Mattingly, Colleen Casey, Taylor Johnson

Transportation Research Center Reports

Most agencies and decision-makers rely on crash and crash severity (property damage only, injury or fatality) data to assess transportation safety; however, in the context of public health where perceptions of safety may influence the willingness to adopt active transportation modes (e.g. bicycling and walking), pedestrian-vehicle and other similar conflicts may represent a better performance measure for safety assessment. For transportation safety, a clear conflict occurs when two parties’ paths cross and one of the parties must undertake an evasive maneuver (e.g. change direction or stop) to avoid a crash. Other less severe conflicts where paths cross but no evasive …

Human-Nonhuman Chimeras, Ontology, And Dignity: A Constructivist Approach To The Ethics Of Conducting Research On Cross-Species Hybrids, Jonathan M. Vajda

The Hilltop Review

Developments in biological technology in the last few decades highlight the surprising and ever-expanding practical benefits of stem cells. With this progress, the possibility of combining human and nonhuman organisms is a reality, with ethical boundaries that are not readily obvious. These inter-species hybrids are of a larger class of biological entities called “chimeras.” As the concept of a human-nonhuman creature is conjured in our minds, either incredulous wonder or grotesque horror is likely to follow. This paper seeks to mitigate those worries and demotivate reasonable concerns raised against chimera research, all the while pressing current ethical positions toward their …

The Uncatchable Crook: Pursuing Effective State Crime Control, Daniel J. Patten

The Hilltop Review

This article investigates an interesting conundrum of addressing crime when the state commits a crime itself, and most often is the primary apparatus of crime control. Even more difficult in pursuing state crime control, the state typically plays a major role in defining crime. Criminologists commonly suggest state sanctions to address crime, and states to sanctions other states for their crimes. However, such an approach struggles when faced with the punishment of a powerful state’s criminal actions such as the United States. After laying out the controversy at the heart of controlling state crimes, several criminological theories traditionally employed to …

The Hilltop Review, Vol 9, No 1. Fall 2016

The Hilltop Review

No abstract provided.

Using High Fidelity Simulation To Impact Occupational Therapy Student Knowledge, Comfort, And Confidence In Acute Care, Debra M. Gibbs, Mary Dietrich, Emmy Dagnan

The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy

Background: As the demand for occupational and physical therapists in acute care settings is increasing, students are reporting a need for increased educational preparation to handle the complexities they may face in this setting. This pretest/posttest study examines the impact of an inter-professional high fidelity simulation experience on perceived levels of knowledge, comfort, and confidence among occupational therapy doctorate students when handling an acutely ill patient in an ICU setting.

Methods: Two cohorts of occupational therapy students participated in an inter-professional acute care scenario with high fidelity simulation mannequins (Cohort 1, n = 19; Cohort 2, n = …

Adapting To A Challenging Fieldwork: Understanding The Ingredients, Emily Raphael-Greenfield, Ivettedari Miranda-Capella, Myra Branch

The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy

Two occupational therapy students were assigned to an inpatient psychiatric unit for their first Level 1 fieldwork. With limited on-site supervision provided, they looked to each other for peer support and collaboration in assisting one patient with severe depression who was considered the “sickest patient on the unit.” The students were able to work together and make a positive intervention with this patient despite their novice status. Understanding what each of them brought personally to this experience as well as the nature of their working relationship and their use of concepts taught in the classroom has important implications for occupational …

Western Michigan University Graduate Catalog 2017-2018, Western Michigan University

Western Michigan University Course Catalogs (1904-present)

• General Information
• Calendars
• Western Michigan University Strategic Plan
• Graduate College

Writing With Parents In Response To Picture Book Read Alouds, Danielle L. Defauw

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

High-quality writing instruction needs to permeate elementary students’ in- and outside-of-school experiences. The aim of this research was to explore how teaching writing to parents may support home-school literacy connections. This qualitative case study explored parents’ experiences in interactive writing sessions. The descriptive coding and constant comparative analysis of transcribed parent writing sessions, field notes, and documents revealed three themes: (1) Writing Tips and Strategies, (2) Parent-Writers, and (3) Story Connections. The parent writing sessions facilitated parents’ understanding of how to support their elementary-age children’s writing development. Parents demonstrated a desire to support their children’s writing development, and they needed …

A Hybrid Mpi-Openmp Strategy To Speedup The Compression Of Big Next-Generation Sequencing Datasets, Sandino Vargas-Perez, Fahad Saeed

Parallel Computing and Data Science Lab Technical Reports

DNA sequencing has moved into the realm of Big Data due to the rapid development of high-throughput, low cost Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies. Sequential data compression solutions that once were sufficient to efficiently store and distribute this information are now falling behind. In this paper we introduce phyNGSC, a hybrid MPI-OpenMP strategy to speedup the compression of big NGS data by combining the features of both distributed and shared memory architectures. Our algorithm balances work-load among processes and threads, alleviates memory latency by exploiting locality, and accelerates I/O by reducing excessive read/write operations and inter-node message exchange. To make the …

Gpu-Pcc: A Gpu Based Technique To Compute Pairwise Pearson’S Correlation Coefficients For Big Fmri Data, Taban Eslami, Muaaz Gul Awan, Fahad Saeed

Parallel Computing and Data Science Lab Technical Reports

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) is a non-invasive brain imaging technique for studying the brain’s functional activities. Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient is an important measure for capturing dynamic behaviors and functional connectivity between brain components. One bottleneck in computing Correlation Coefficients is the time it takes to process big fMRI data. In this paper, we propose GPU-PCC, a GPU based algorithm based on vector dot product, which is able to compute pairwise Pearson’s Correlation Coefficients while performing computation once for each pair. Our method is able to compute Correlation Coefficients in an ordered fashion without the need to do post-processing reordering …

Discovery: Research Annual Report 2017, Office Of Vice President For Research

Research Annual Reports

• Center for Research on Instructional Change in Postsecondary Education (CRICPE)
• The Office of the Vice President Initiated a New Program - Undergraduates Discover Discovery
• NSF Career Award Winners - Fahad Saeed, Elena Litvinova, and Wendy Beane
• Interdisciplinary Majors and Minors Focus on Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts
• Faculty Scholar Award
• From Invention to Commercialization
• External Funding
• WMed Research Activities
• Undergraduate Research Excellence Award Recipients
• Support for Faculty Scholars Award
• Graduate Student Research and Travel Grants
• External Awards to Faculty and Staff
• Research and Creative Activities Poster Day - Graduate Student Participant Winners
• Technology Development Fund Awards
• Faculty Research and Creative …

College Of Fine Arts 2016-17 Year In Review, College Of Fine Arts

College of Fine Arts Year in Review

• From the Dean's Desk- News, notes and updates from Dean Daniel G. Guyette
• By the Numbers- Numeric highlights from the 2016-17 academic year
• Milestone Moments- defining events and memories from this dynamic year
• A Time for the Arts- A preview of the 2017-18 excitement that is just around the corner

Professional Reflections - Winter 2017, College Of Education And Human Development

College of Education and Human Development News

The magazine for the College of Education and Human Development. Alumni Edition 2016-17, Celebrating 60 years with 60 alumni stories.

A Message from the Dean
Celebrating 60 years
Make a Difference & Eat Healthy

• Libby MacQuillan
• Gregory Stacey
• Shantel Fessler
• Sarah Price

Make a Difference & Be Active

• Ashleigh Rogers
• Kyle Gleason
• Micah Zuhl
• Rob Kennedy

Make a Difference & Coach

• Mike McCarthy
• Tim Lester

Make a Difference & Be Positive

• Ronicka Hamilton
• Darrick Tovar-Murray
• Janee Steele
• Kristel Briney

Make a Difference & Guide

• Amy Dunham
• Kathrine Hyatt
• Ben Williams

Meijer Alumni

• Michelle Bieke
• Courtney Skinner
• Amber Hunt
• Kerry Johnson …

Reading In English And In Chinese: Case Study Of Retrospective Miscue Analysis With Two Adult Ells, Yang Wang, Carol J. Gilles

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

Retrospective Miscue Analysis (RMA) has proved to be a useful instructional tool in language arts classrooms and for English learners from various cultures. However, it has not been used with native Mandarin-speaking English learners. This qualitative case study explored the reading process of two adult Mandarin-speaking ELs through RMA. They read two pieces in simplified Chinese and two in English respectively. This study demonstrates that RMA supports adult ELs to become more metacognitive about their reading process, uncover reading strategies they use, build their confidence to read, acquire more agency, and learn more about the English language. RMA is a …

Conferring In The Café: One-To-One Reading Conferences In Two First Grade Classrooms, Bethanie Pletcher, Rosalynn Christensen

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive case study was to explore the teacher/student reading conferences in two first grade teachers’ classrooms in one primary school. Sixteen one-to-one reading conferences were recorded and transcribed over a two-month period and coded for content as related to the CAFÉ (Boushey & Moser, 2009) model of reading instruction, which the teachers used daily. We found that the two teachers placed heavy emphasis on students’ reading accuracy (the “A” in CAFÉ) and did not spend as much time working on comprehension, fluency, or expanding vocabulary (the C, F, and E in CAFÉ). We suggest teachers …

Written Language Performance Following Embedded Grammar Instruction, Ginger Collins, Jan Norris

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

This study explored whether presenting grammar instruction within the context of reading and writing would improve writing skills. The participating schools were using a traditional grammar instruction in which grammar lessons were predominately taught using worksheets and were presented separately from other reading and writing activities. This was termed Discrete Grammar Instruction (DGI). The researchers introduced a contextualized grammar instruction approach, termed Embedded Grammar Instruction (EGI), which taught grammar within authentic contexts of reading and writing. Students in grades three through eight were assigned to either the EGI group (N = 164) or the DGI group (N = 156). Two …

Exploring Writing Circles As Innovative, Collaborative Writing Structures With Teacher Candidates, Sherron Killingsworth Roberts, Norine Blanch, Nandita Gurjar

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

Writing circles are “small groups . . . meeting regularly to share drafts, choose common writing topics, practice positive response, and in general, help each other become better writers” (Vopat, 2009, p. 6). In this exploratory study, writing circles were employed with elementary teacher candidates in hopes of enhancing their perceptions about writing and authorship. This mixed methods pilot used a convenience sample of 28 teacher candidates in a language arts methods course. Based on interest and using writing workshop elements, weekly writing circles were formed and generated one collaborative manuscript. Afterward, 68% of candidates reported improvement in writing skills. …

16 Year Old Baseball Pitcher Presenting With Gradual Worsening Of Posterolateral Right Elbow Pain And Negative Mri Findings, Nithin Natwa, Reema Sheth, Nisha Sheth

Research Day

Background: Elbow pain is a common presenting symptom in repetitive motion performing athletes. Due to the popular use of prolonged conservative therapy in elbow pain, and the importance of early surgical intervention in Elbow Synovial Fold Syndrome, proper and prompt diagnosis is essential. In our case report, a 16 year old male right hand-dominant baseball pitcher presents with gradual onset of posterolateral right elbow pain over 4 months. Purpose: This study helps reflect the correct timeline in imaging along with the appropriate duration of conservative management. After reviewing this study the reader will be better able to differentiate between Lateral …

Mycobacterial Disease Overlooked In A Frail Diabetic Male Treated For Pneumonia, Aydin Tavakoli Md Msc, Glenn V. Dregansky Do

Research Day

Mycobacterial disease has been characterized to cause human illness since the 1950’s but practitioners whom address pulmonary disease can overlook its insidious presentation. This case report documents the presentation of a mycobacterial illness treated as a severe pneumonia. This is the case of a critically ill 43-year-old male, with poorly treated diabetes who presented with severe, long-standing respiratory distress in DKA. He had a history of weight loss, night sweats, decreased oral intake, and weakness for about a month. He was treated for euglycemia and his pulmonary disease was characterized as a bacterial pneumonia. Common pathogens were ruled out in …

Delivery Of Health Education In Adolescents With Behavioral Health Challenges, Ashley Akkal, Ransome Eke Md, Phd, Sulin Wu, Amy Rechenberg, Michael Madrid, Jose Lopez-Vera, Duncan Vos

Research Day

BACKGROUND Adolescents with behavioral health issues tend to have inadequate access to health education, and are thus less aware of the importance of personal and dental hygiene, exercise, and healthy diet and lifestyle habits. Due to this disparity, this population has been known to harbor a higher prevalence of STI’s, drug and alcohol abuse, physical altercations, juvenile detention, and suicide attempts. PURPOSE The overall objective of this study was to examine the effect of integrating a health science curriculum in this population. METHODS Participants aged 5-17 years old were recruited and assigned to either control or science groups by Family …

A Case Of Native Valve Staphylococcus Epidermidis Endocarditis With Cardiac Abscess Formation, Emily Cordes, Chris Jacob, Mark Loehrke

Research Day

Introduction: Staphylococcus epidermidis is the most common commensal bacteria of the skin; however it can be pathogenic and is the most frequent cause of medical device associated endocarditis. It is also a well-known cause of endocarditis in IV drug abuse (IVDA). However, in individuals without obvious disruption of the skin barrier, it is a relatively rare, but emerging entity of native valve endocarditis. Coagulase negative staphylococci account for only 1-5% of community acquired native valve infective endocarditis and most resolve with treatment. We report a case of a 56 year old male with an aggressive strain of community acquired Staphylococcus …

A Review Of Transcatheter Ablation For The Treatment Of Avnrt In Children, Keegan Colletier, Sulin Wu, Stephanie Van Alsten, Brittany Chow

Research Day

Background: Atrioventricular nodal reentrant tachycardia (AVNRT) is an arrhythmia due to re-entrant rhythm within the region of the atrioventricular (AV) node, which accounts for most supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) cases in children. There are two main pathways involved for the re-entrant rhythm, slow and fast pathways, with different anatomic locations and involvement in the circuit associated with AVNRT. AVNRT is rare in newborns, but an increase of prevalence throughout childhood was previously reported.Study Objective/Purpose: Currently, Radiofrequency (RF) ablation is the primary method for the treatment of AVNRT in pediatrics. However, multiple modalities with varying efficacies can also be utilized. In this …

Cto Updates - 01/2017, Office Of Information Technology

Tech Talk

• Information Technology Acquisition Policy
• Computer lab file storage (H drive) ending
• Ransomware
• Register to receive WMU public safety advisories
• Bulk emailing and SPAM
• Please open a ticket
• Personal web pages (homepages.wmich.edu) update
• Mario, Mario, Mario

Minutes Of The Faculty Senate Councils, 2017-18, Wmu Faculty Senate

Minutes of the WMU Faculty Senate Councils

No abstract provided.