Digital Commons Network^™

Examining The Effects Of Discussion Strategies And Learner Interactions On Performance In Online Introductory Mathematics Courses: An Application Of Learning Analytics, Ji Eun Lee

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This dissertation study explored: 1) instructors’ use of discussion strategies that enhance meaningful learner interactions in online discussions and student performance, and 2) learners’ interaction patterns in online discussions that lead to better student performance in online introductory mathematics courses. In particular, the study applied a set of data mining techniques to a large-scale dataset automatically collected by the Canvas Learning Management System (LMS) for five consecutive years at a public university in the U.S., which included 2,869 students enrolled in 72 courses.

First, the study found that the courses that posted more open-ended prompts, evaluated students’ discussion messages posted …

Generalization Of Signal Point Target Code, Md Munibun Billah

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Detecting and correcting errors occurring in the transmitted data through a channel is a task of great importance in digital communication. In Error Correction Coding (ECC), some redundant data is added with the original data while transmitting. By exploiting the properties of the redundant data, the errors occurring in the data from the transmission can be detected and corrected. In this thesis, a new coding algorithm named Signal Point Target Code has been studied and various properties of the proposed code have been extended.

Signal Point Target Code (SPTC) uses a predefined shape within a given signal constellation to generate …

Change In The Leading Mode Of North America's Wintertime Stationary Eddies, Yu-Tang Chien

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Extreme winter weather events in North America have become more frequent and increasingly destructive. This phenomenon was linked to a jet stream pattern that generates abnormally warm conditions in the west and cold conditions in the east, referred to as the North American Winter Dipole. Studies have shown that the Dipole may have amplified and this amplification could be linked to global warming. By analyzing the atmospheric and oceanic data worldwide, the wintertime circulation in the Northern Hemisphere shows signs of a persistent change after the 1980s. In the first part of this study, we examine how the ocean has …

Trout Habitat In An Altered Gravel-Bed River With An Augmented Flow Regime, Jacob B. Stout

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Diamond Fork River, and it’s tributary Sixth Water Creek, has been highly altered in terms of shape, function, and ecologicaly due to large, trans-basin flows additions to the system for irrigation starting in the early 1900s. Flows were exceptionally large for 80 years, after which they were reduced in 2004. Larger than natural flows during the low flow season were then added to the river in an effort to improve ecosystem health and recreational fishing opportunities. Since the prescription additional flow during low flow seasons, the river channel has undergone further change, most noticeably in the form of narrowing. …

Tuning Hyperparameters In Supervised Learning Models And Applications Of Statistical Learning In Genome-Wide Association Studies With Emphasis On Heritability, Jill F. Lundell

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Machine learning is a buzz word that has inundated popular culture in the last few years. This is a term for a computer method that can automatically learn and improve from data instead of being explicitly programmed at every step. Investigations regarding the best way to create and use these methods are prevalent in research. Machine learning models can be difficult to create because models need to be tuned. This dissertation explores the characteristics of tuning three popular machine learning models and finds a way to automatically select a set of tuning parameters. This information was used to create an …

The Political Business Cycle: Endogenous Election Timing & Hyperbolic Memory Discounting, Jake R. Cottle

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In the models analyzed in this paper, there exists an incumbent politician with one objective, two choices, and voters who remember the past differently. The politician's primary goal is to get reelected, which is done by maximizing the number of votes on the day of election. The politician can increase their chances of reelection if they influence the state of the economy over time and ensure the economy is in its 'best' state on the days leading up to the election.

In conducting this research, I wanted to study how different rates of memory decay influences the choices the politician …

Stamina: Stochastic Approximate Model-Checker For Infinite-State Analysis, Thakur Neupane

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Reliable operation of every day use computing system, from simple coffee machines to complex flight controller system in an aircraft, is necessary to save time, money, and in some cases lives. System testing can check for the presence of unwanted execution but cannot guarantee the absence of such. Probabilistic model checking techniques have demonstrated significant potential in verifying performance and reliability of various systems whose execution are defined with likelihood. However, its inability to scale limits its applicability in practice.

This thesis presents a new model checker, STAMINA, with efficient and scalable model truncation for probabilistic verification. STAMINA uses a …

Angles-Only Ekf Navigation For Hyperbolic Flybys, Iggy Matheson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Space travelers in science fiction can drop out of hyperspace and make a pinpoint landing on any strange new world without stopping to get their bearings, but real-life space navigation is an art characterized by limited information and complex mathematics that yield no easy answers. This study investigates, for the first time ever, what position and velocity estimation errors can be expected by a starship arriving at a distant star - specifically, a miniature probe like those proposed by the Breakthrough Starshot initiative arriving at Proxima Centauri. Such a probe consists of nothing but a small optical camera and a …

Women In Agriculture: Living In A "Man's World", Ennea A. Fairchild

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Despite women’s involvement in agriculture, their contributions have been overlooked in society. Women make up at least a third of those involved in agriculture as farmers, landowners, and in agricultural faculty positions. These numbers do not appear to be decreasing. Although there are several agricultural roles, this study focuses primarily on those women who own agricultural land, but do not farm the land themselves. Rather, these women rent it out to a farmer who operates the land for them (women nonoperating landowners or WNOLs, in short). Previous research suggests these women may be facing considerable barriers as an agricultural landowner …

The Factors Affecting Wind Erosion In Southern Utah, Mehmet Ozturk

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Wind erosion is a global issue and affecting millions of people in drylands by causing environmental issues (acceleration of snow melting), public health concerns (respiratory diseases), and socioeconomic problems (costs of damages and cleaning public properties after dust storms). Disturbances in drylands can be irreversible, thus leading to natural disasters such as the 1930s Dust Bowl. With increasing attention on aeolian studies, many studies have been conducted using ground-based measurements or wind tunnel studies. Ground-based measurements are important for validating model predictions and testing the effect and interactions of different factors known to affect wind erosion. Here, a machine-learning model …

Deep Learning For Crack-Like Object Detection, Kaige Zhang

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Cracks are common defects on surfaces of man-made structures such as pavements, bridges, walls of nuclear power plants, ceilings of tunnels, etc. Timely discovering and repairing of the cracks are of great significance and importance for keeping healthy infrastructures and preventing further damages. Traditionally, the cracking inspection was conducted manually which was labor-intensive, time-consuming and costly. For example, statistics from the Central Intelligence Agency show that the world’s road network length has reached 64,285,009 km, of which the United States has 6,586,610 km. It is a huge cost to maintain and upgrade such an immense road network. Thus, fully automatic …

Multiple Imu Sensor Fusion For Suas Navigation And Photogrammetry, Matthew Givens

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Inertial measurement units (IMUs) are devices that sense accelerations and angular rates in 3D so that vehicles and other devices can estimate their orientations, positions, and velocities. While traditionally large, heavy, and costly, using mechanical gyroscopes and stabilized platforms, the recent development of micro-electromechanical sensor (MEMS) IMUs that are small, light, and inexpensive has led to their adoption in many everyday systems such as cell phones, video game controllers, and commercial drones. MEMS IMUs, despite their advantages, have major drawbacks when it comes to accuracy and reliability. The idea of using more than one of these sensors in an array, …

Bee Shadow Recognition In Video Analysis Of Omnidirectional Bee Traffic, Laasya Alavala

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Over a decade ago, beekeepers noticed that the bees were dying or disappearing without any prior health disorder. Colony Collapse Disorder(CCD) has been a major threat to bee colonies around the world which affects vital human crop pollination. Possible instigators of CCD include viral and fungal diseases, decreased genetic diversity, pesticides and a variety of other factors. The interaction among any of these potential facets may be resulting in immunity loss for honey bees and the increased likelihood of collapse. It is essential to rescue honey bees and improve the health of bee colony.

Monitoring the traffic of bees helps …

Intermittent Turbulent Exchanges And Their Role In Vineyard Evapotranspiration, Sebastian Alexander Los

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Vineyards are often grown in semi-arid climates, such as California’s central valley, where water resources can be limited. Summer weather conditions result in high water use by these plants. For wine grapes, a high-value commodity, there are known benefits to fruit quality in irrigating grapevines with slightly below optimum for the plant. Growers would like to be able to precisely irrigate without overusing water or overstressing the vines. This calls for improving ways to monitor vineyard water use by estimating the combined soil evaporation and plant transpiration known as evapotranspiration (ET). A computer model developed by the USDA called the …

Error-Floors Of The 802.3an Ldpc Code For Noise Assisted Decoding, Tasnuva Tarannum Tithi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In digital communication, information is sent as bits, which is corrupted by the noise present in wired/wireless medium known as the channel. The Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes are a family of error correction codes used in communication systems to detect and correct erroneous data at the receiver. Data is encoded with error correction coding at the transmitter and decoded at the receiver. The Noisy Gradient Descent BitFlip (NGDBF) decoding algorithm is a new algorithm with excellent decoding performance with relatively low implementation requirements. This dissertation aims to characterize the performance of the NGDBF algorithm. A simple improvement over …

River Hydrology, Morphology, And Dynamics In An Intensively Managed, Transient Landscape, Sara Ann Kelly

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Rivers create beautiful patterns and provide drinking water to millions. However an alarming number of rivers in the US and globally are threatened by excess sediment and nutrients. Agricultural rivers draining erodible soils are particularly vulnerable. Rivers of southern Minnesota provide a unique opportunity to study water and sediment dynamics in a naturally vulnerable system. Sediment reduction strategies are needed to ensure biological integrity and adequate water quality. Here, I address the questions: 1) have climate, land use practices, or both affected streamflows in Midwest agricultural rivers?, 2) which streamflows set the rate of river bluff erosion?, and 3) how …

The Value Of Farmland: Mapping Assessor Data To Understand Land Use Change, Lyndi Perry

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Ideas developed by regional economists have potential applications within the urban planning field. One potential application is toward conserving farmland, and within this thesis this topic is examined for the study area of Utah County, Utah. Using assessor data, a land value map is created and further used to develop a regional economic model and spatial models that were analyzed for patterns of land use change.

Findings show that representing land value as continuous surface maps is a useful approach. The maps reveal that Utah County has densified as its population increased while farmland loss still occurred in agriculturally-important areas. …

Impacts Of Cattle Grazing As A Tool To Control Phragmites Australis In Wetlands On Nitrogen, Phosphorus, And Carbon, Brittany L. Duncan

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Phragmites australis is a plant that is causing problems in wetlands by outcompeting native plants that provide food and shelter for millions of migratory birds. Currently, managers try to control Phragmites australis by spraying herbicide, burning, and mowing, but these methods are costly, time consuming, and have low levels of success. Adding grazing as a tool to control Phragmites australis provides a cheap and low labor alternative. However, there are many concerns regarding if grazing will cause nutrient loading in our wetlands that will decrease water quality and alter beneficial functions of wetlands.

To better understand the effects of grazing …

Development And Testing Of Additively Manufactured Aerospike Nozzles For Small Satellite Propulsion, Isaac W. Armstrong

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Automatic altitude compensation has been a holy grail of rocket propulsion for decades. Current state-of-the-art bell nozzles see large performance decreases at low altitudes, limiting rocket designs, shrinking payloads, and overall increasing costs. Aerospike nozzles are an old idea from the 1960’s that provide superior altitude-compensating performance and enhanced performance in vacuum, but have survivability issues that have stopped their application in satellite propulsion systems. A growing need for CubeSat propulsion systems provides the impetus to study aerospike nozzles in this application. This study built two aerospike nozzles using modern 3D metal printing techniques to test aerospikes at a size …

Juxtaposition At 45 Km Of Temperatures From Rayleigh-Scatter Lidar And Reanalysis Models, David K. Moser

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Weather and climate forecasts are almost exclusively produced by computer models, which use atmospheric measurements as starting points. It is a well-known and joked-about fact that model predictions can be incorrect at times. One of the reasons this happens is due to gaps in our knowledge of atmospheric conditions in areas where measurements don’t often taken place, such as the mesosphere, which stretches from roughly 45-90 km altitude.

A lidar is a device that can shoot out short bursts of laser light to measure things such as atmospheric thickness at a distance. From this information one can then derive the …

Standards-Based Grading: A Correlational Study Between Grades And End-Of-Level Test Scores, Tyler R. Poll

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

As students move from grade level to grade level and onto college, their grades have an impact on the number of opportunities available to students. The competition for entering college and earning a scholarship are at an all-time high and the grades students earn have a direct impact on future opportunities. Grading practices vary by teacher causing students’ grades to mean different things.

Standards-based grading practices focus on removing teacher bias and puts emphasis on the learning students can demonstrate. Students are given assessments to determine learning and are given multiple opportunities to show what they have learned. Emphasis is …

A Case Study Of The Driven 2 Teach Program: Site-Based Experiential Professional Development For History Teachers, Hadyn Bowen Call

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Driven 2 Teach is a privately funded program for history teachers in the state of Utah. The program emphasizes the importance of teacher travel to educate history teachers in the places where history happened. This study investigated the program’s influence on participant gains in learning about history and how to best teach about the past, social studies professional development, teacher beliefs, and changes in instructional practices. This study utilized a case study methodology, autoethnography, and six interconnected frameworks: Professional development, experiential education, site-based learning, pedagogical content knowledge, teacher beliefs, and professional learning communities. This study helps demonstrate the effectiveness of …

Of One Divided Mind: Fundamental Causes Of The Nineteenth-Century Brethren Schism, 1850-1880, Daniel S. Weller

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Historical research involving the schism within the German Baptist Brethren Church in the 1880s has only been found within broad, general histories of the church. The explanations given by historians relating to the cause of the split have previously centered on individuals and the church publications between 1850 and 1883, and on contemporaries who argued among themselves about whether to adopt practices common among surrounding American religions and society. No known project has focused directly on the content within the publications as it relates to the way these brethren used the Bible and other religious and spiritual rhetoric to substantiate …

Analysis Of Small Faults In A Sandstone Reservoir Analog, San Rafael Desert: Implications For Fluid Flow At The Reservoir-Scale, Leslie Noël Clayton

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

We examined small-displacement faults in the Jurassic Entrada Sandstone adjacent to the Iron Wash Fault, central Utah east of the San Rafael Swell, in order to describe the nature and timing of past fluid movement and deformation in the Entrada Sandstone. Using field studies, microscopy, and X-ray diffraction analysis, we identified mineralized fractures and cementation features in association with deformation bands and fractures at the interface of the Earthy and Slick Rock Members of the Entrada Sandstone.

Where the faults cross the Earthy-Slick Rock Member interface, deformation band faults in the Slick Rock Member become opening-mode fractures in the Earthy …

Phosphorus Rate Effects With And Without Avail® On Dryland Winter Wheat In An Eroded Calcareous Soil, Ryan C. Hodges

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Soluble phosphorus fertilizer is bound in the soil rapidly after application in soils high in calcium. A fertilizer additive known as AVAIL® (J.R. Simplot Company) is purported to keep applied phosphorus fertilizer more available to plants by binding to soil minerals such as calcium, magnesium, and iron, thereby reducing phosphorus binding. This could prove useful due to the attraction of AVAIL® with cations such as Ca²⁺, but is fairly unstudied for dryland wheat production on alkaline, calcium-rich soils. The objective of this study is to evaluate the effect of low-rate fertilizer treatments with AVAIL® on dryland small grain …

Elevating Outdoor Recreation Together: Opportunities For Collaboration Between State Offices Of Outdoor Recreation And Federal Land Management Agencies, Brooke A. Sausser

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Outdoor recreation is a robust pillar of local, state, and national economies as well as a critical component of residents’ quality of life. Recognition of the economic power of the outdoor industry, fused with the growing desire for greater outdoor recreation opportunities, has inspired more than 11 states to establish state offices of outdoor recreation. The organizational structure and mission of each office is tailored to each state, varying from temporary task forces, councils, and commissions to more permanent offices or advisory positions. These offices, though embedded within various sectors of state government, often coordinate across or blend the functions …

Mountain-Block Recharge To The Cache Valley Principal Aquifer And Geochemical Controls On Groundwater Movement In Alpine Karst, Skyler J. Sorsby

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Groundwater is documented to flow through solution-widened fractures and bedding planes in limestone and dolostone units in low-relief topography. This enhancement, or karstification, is much harder to study in alpine environments like the Bear River Range of northern Utah. This is problematic, due to the fact that the Bear River Range karst aquifer system supplies the City of Logan with a large quantity of water at Dewitt Spring. Furthermore, the karst aquifer sustains the Logan River for much of the year, and may allow groundwater to flow directly in the subsurface to the Cache Valley principal aquifer system.

Flow measurements …

Ediacaran Depositional Age And Subsequent Fluid-Rock Interactions In The Mutual And Browns Hole Formations Of Northern Utah, Ashley W. Provow

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Constraining the depositional age of Neoproterozoic stratigraphy in western North America has implications for correlating global glaciation and tectonic events. The depositional ages of the Neoproterozoic Mutual and Browns Hole formations of northern Utah are controlled by two conflicting datapoints. However, new U-Pb geochronological data from 95 detrital apatite grains refines the maximum depositional age of the volcanic member of the Browns Hole Formation to 613 ± 12 Ma (2σ). This places new restrictions on the time available for the deposition of underlying units. Due to debate regarding the age models for underlying stratigraphy, two scenarios for sediment accumulation rates …

Structural Control Of Thermal Fluid Circulation And Geochemistry In A Flat-Slab Subduction Zone, Peru, Brandt E. Scott

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Hot spring geochemistry from the Peruvian Andes provide insight on how faults, or fractures in the Earth's crust, are capable of influencing fluid circulation. Faults can either promote or inhibit fluid flow and the goal of this study is test the role of a major fault, such as the Cordillera Blanca detachment, as a channel for transporting deep fluids to the surface. Hot springs are abundant in the Cordillera Blanca and Huayhuash ranges in Peru, and several springs issue along the Cordillera Blanca detachment, making this region an ideal setting for our study. To test the role of the Cordillera …

Evaluating Michigan's Food, Agriculture, And Resources In Motion (Farm) Science Lab As A Modality For Agricultural Literacy, Amelia J. Miller

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Michigan’s Food, Agriculture, and Resources in Motion (FARM) Science Lab is a 40-foot mobile classroom outfitted with 10 learning stations including scientific equipment and iPads. This quasi-experimental study analyzed preexisting data provided by Michigan Agriculture in the Classroom to evaluate the effectiveness of the FARM Science Lab mobile classroom as a method of teaching agriculture-themed, standards-based lessons to third- through fifth-grade students in order to increase their understanding of agriculture. From January through June 2018, more than 1,258 students participated in these lessons and completed the pretest and posttest and 72 teachers completed the post survey. Research questions not only …