Digital Commons Network^™

International Aid Evaluation: An Analysis And Policy Proposals, Thomaz Kauark Chianca

Dissertations

Evaluation has been intertwined with international aid work since its inception in the late 40's-early 50's, but it is still an area with considerable room for improvement. If, as is often alleged, evaluations of international development efforts are methodologically weak they are misleading international agencies about the real impact of the sizable amount of resources being spent. A recent study by Chianca, described in this thesis, with a sample of 50 US-based international non-profit organizations (INGOs) illustrates the serious situation of the structure and practice of evaluation in those agencies.

A number of efforts to improve this situation have been …

Legislative Program Evaluation Conducted By State Legislatures In The United States, John S. Risley

Dissertations

This study examines how U.S. state legislative staffs conduct evaluations. The study addresses the ubiquity of state legislative program evaluation (LPE) units, the standards those units follow, the recommendations that LPE reports proffer, and the quality of the reports on several criteria. The study also addresses the feasibility of using metaevaluation to evaluate a large number of reports using solely the information contained in the reports.

The study uses metaevaluation criteria developed by combining aspects of, primarily, the Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards (GAGAS) for performance audits, the Joint Committee's Program Evaluation Standards (PES), and, secondarily, Scriven's Key Evaluation Checklist. …

Supervision Experiences And Needs Of New-Entrant Professional School Counselors: A Qualitative Study, Shawn Allan Allan Bultsma

Dissertations

Although the field of professional school counseling has recognized the positive impact that supervision offers, discussion of its use with new-entrant school counseling professionals has been limited. This study responds to the limited discussion of supervision with new-entrant professional school counselors by describing the supervision experiences and perceived needs of 15 new-entrant professional school counselors.

Participants of this study described advantages and disadvantages of receiving supervision. When discussing supervision activities as new-entrant professionals, participants frequently confused the process of supervision with mentoring and evaluation. Supervision quality was described as deficient, and the structure of supervision varied among participants. Participants described …

A Proof Of Concept For Oppnets And Its Resource Utilization Techniques With Qos Constraints, Zill-E-Huma Kamal

Dissertations

The increased number of embedded devices/systems in our environment and the evolution of the internet as a service oriented network connote two things: the demand for ubiquitous computing, and, the abstraction of users as consumers and applications as services, as in Service Oriented Computing (SOC) and Web Service domains.

This Thesis studies Class 2 Opportunistic Networks, Oppnets--in short. Oppnets propagate dynamic interconnection of heterogeneous devices/networks/systems and the integration of their resources or services-such as computation, communication, sensing, actuation, and storage -irrespective of the discrepancies in hardware, software, protocols, or standards employed, to enable ubiquitous computing. The novelty of Oppnets …

Interactive Visual Exploration Of Large Relation, Mustafa Sanver

Dissertations

As data become ubiquitous and immense in many activities from business decision making to scientific analysis, effective analysis of such data becomes an important research area. Data analysis requires active involvement of human beings and visualization is a powerful tool to capture profound insights from data. However, interactive visual exploration of massive data poses fundamental technical challenges to both data visualization and database management systems. Millions of billions of data records clutter the screen and existing database management systems are inadequate for overview-and-drill-down data access for interactive data exploration.

We have proposed a density-based methodology to address the above challenge. …

New Teachers' Perceptions On Their Preparation, Rosemary Cleveland

Dissertations

In this study, I inquired into new public school teachers' perceptions of how well prepared they were during their first year of teaching to handle a range of classroom and discipline situations by examining what percentages of new teachers felt that they were well prepared in classroom management. I also investigated whether there were possible variations in those percentages based on teacher gender, teacher level, and the percentage of minority students enrolled in school. Furthermore, I examined the relationship between new teachers' perceptions on their preparation in classroom management and their job satisfaction as well as their commitment to the …

Critical Components To Improve Literacy Learning For All Students, Marcia Harriet Kaye

Dissertations

The purpose of this multiple case study was to understand the critical components to improve literacy learning for all students. The central focus of the study involved looking at principles for classroom instruction in reading and writing that are essential for students to become good readers and writers. According to Allington and Cunningham, the following principles are critical: (a) the amount of time students spend on reading and writing each day, (b) the explicit teaching of comprehension strategies, (c) modeling writing and reading daily, (d) student engagement in thoughtful literacy learning, and (e) literate rich classroom environments.

Six classrooms were …

A Study Of The Effectiveness Of A School District's Mentoring / Professional Development Plan For Beginning Teachers, Henry William St. Pierre

Dissertations

The purpose of the study of the mentoring/ professional development program within the teaching profession was to determine the extent and perceived value of the existing formal mentoring program in the Fort Zumwalt School District. The study found that the district's mentoring and professional development program for new teachers is effective as perceived by both beginning teachers and their administrators. The instrument used in this study was a survey designed by the District and distributed to beginning teachers who finished their first year of teaching and the formal mentor program during the 2002-2003 through the 2006-2007 school years. Surveys were …

Transitioning Between The Requirements Of Accrediting Bodies In Athletic Training Education Programs: What Might It Take?, Jennifer O'Donoghue

Dissertations

Athletic training education accreditation recently transitioned from the Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs (CAAHEP) to the newly established independent accrediting agency: the Commission on Accreditation of Athletic Training Education (CAATE).

The purpose of this case study was to utilize Western Michigan University's Undergraduate Athletic Training Education Program (WMU-ATEP), as an illustrative case, to examine and evaluate the effort and structural, curricular, human, and financial resources necessary to satisfy the requirements of the 2005 CAATE Standards for the Accreditation of Entry-Level Athletic Training Education Programs and Comprehensive Review for Accreditation Process when it transitioned from the 2001 CAAHEP …

The Impact Of Instructional Delivery Methods On Retention Of Bsn-C Students, Cynthia Susan Billman

Dissertations

Education and nursing are changing. Registered Nurses (RNs) who have the greatest impact on the health of consumers are those who have attained a Baccalaureate degree or higher (Aiken, Clark, Cheung, Sloan, & Silber, 2002). Yet nurses remain the least educated of all health care professionals. RNs who return to school to pursue a bachelor's degree face many challenges including scheduling full-time work and family responsibilities (Jeffreys, 2004). Instructional delivery alternatives may increase the likelihood of graduation with a baccalaureate degree for RNs whose initial nursing education was either the associate or diploma degree (Shelton, 2004). Retention is integral in …

Prospective Faculty Developing Understanding Of Teaching And Learning Processes In Science, Jose I. Pareja

Dissertations

Historically, teaching has been considered a burden by many academics at institutions of higher education, particularly research scientists. Furthermore, university faculty and prospective faculty often have limited exposure to issues associated with effective teaching and learning. As a result, a series of ineffective teaching and learning strategies are pervasive in university classrooms. This exploratory case study focuses on four biology graduate teaching fellows (BGF) who participated in a National Science Foundation (NSF) GK-12 Program. Such programs were introduced by NSF to enhance the preparation of prospective faculty for their future professional responsibilities. In this particular program, BGF were paired with …

Creating The Path Together: A Case Study Of A Mathematics Professional Development Program For Teachers Of English Language Learners, Alison Marie Whittington

Dissertations

The purpose of this case study was to describe and analyze the Mathematics Access for Language Learners (MALL) professional development project. This project’s primary goal has been to provide teachers with the knowledge, strategies, tools, and materials to help make mathematics content accessible to their English Language Learner students. This study used case study methodology. Data was collected from archival records, participant observations, and interviews with project participants, facilitators, and the project director. The results and analysis of this study are provided through the framework of Bernice McCarthy’s 4MAT instructional model. The project is then analyzed to determine if it …

Abstraction, Extension And Structural Auditing With The Umls Semantic Network, Yan Chen

Dissertations

The Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) is a two-level biomedical terminological knowledge base, consisting of the Metathesaurus (META) and the Semantic Network (SN), which is an upper-level ontology of broad categories called semantic types (STs). The two levels are related via assignments of one or more STs to each concept of the META.

Although the SN provides a high-level abstraction for the META, it is not compact enough. Various metaschemas, which are compact higher-level abstraction networks of the SN, have been derived. A methodology is presented to evaluate and compare two given metaschemas, based on their structural properties. A consolidation …

Ontology Learning For The Semantic Deep Web, Yoo Jung An

Dissertations

Ontologies could play an important role in assisting users in their search for Web pages. This dissertation considers the problem of constructing natural ontologies that support users in their Web search efforts and increase the number of relevant Web pages that are returned. To achieve this goal, this thesis suggests combining the Deep Web information, which consists of dynamically generated Web pages and cannot be indexed by the existing automated Web crawlers, with ontologies, resulting in the Semantic Deep Web. The Deep Web information is exploited in three different ways: extracting attributes from the Deep Web data sources automatically, generating …

Mechanisms Of Ionic Current Changes Underlying Rhythmic Activity Recovery After Decentralization, Olga E. Khorkova Sherman

Dissertations

Neuronal networks capableof generating rhythmic output in the absence of patterned sensory or central inputs are widely represented in the nervous system where they support a variety of functions, from learning and memory to rhythmic motor activity such as breathing. To perfectly function in a living organism, rhythm-generating networks have to combine the capability of producing a stable output with the plasticity needed to adapt to the changing demands of the organism and environment. This dissertation used the pyloric network of the crab Cancer borealis to identify potential mechanisms that ensure stability and adaptation of rhythm generation by neuronal networks …

The Development And Evaluation Of Software To Foster Professional Development In Educational Assessment, Morgan C. Benton

Dissertations

This dissertation sought to answer the question: Is it possible to build a software tool that will allow teachers to write better multiple-choice questions? The thesis proceeded from the finding that the quality of teaching is very influential in the amount that students learn. A basic premise of this research, then, is that improving teachers will improve learning. With this foundation, the next question became what area of teaching to improve. The literature on educational assessment indicated that teachers lack competence at effective assessment, particularly in the area of multiple-choice question generation. It is likely that improvement in this area …

Design And Analysis Of Scalable Scheduling Schemes For High-Speed Input-Queued Packet Switches, Chuan-Bi Lin

Dissertations

Single-stage input-queued (IQ) switches are attractive for implementation of high performance routers because they require no speedup in the used memory. It has been shown that IQ switches can provide 100% throughput under admissible traffic when using either maximum-weight matching schemes or iterative maximal-weight matching schemes with a significant speedup. These different approaches require either high computation complexity or high memory costs that can make them infeasible. Therefore, there is a need for low-complexity and fast matching schemes that provide high throughput under several admissible traffic patterns, without recurring to speedup nor multiple iterations. In this thesis. the concept of …

Architecture Design And Performance Analysis Of Practical Buffered-Crossbar Packet Switches, Ziqian Dong

Dissertations

Combined input crosspoint buffered (CICB) packet switches were introduced to relax inputoutput arbitration timing and provide high throughput under admissible traffic. However, the amount of memory required in the crossbar of an N x N switch is N²x k x L, where k is the crosspoint buffer size and needs to be of size RTT in cells, L is the packet size. RTT is the round-trip time which is defined by the distance between line cards and switch fabric. When the switch size is large or RTT is not negligible, the memory amount required makes the implementation …

Propagation And Scattering Of Beam Waves In Vegetation Using Scalar Transport Theory, Michael Yu-Chi Wu

Dissertations

Vegetation is a very complex propagation medium, and multiple scattering effects play a significant role in the propagation of microwave and millimeter (mm)-wave signals through foliage. At frequencies above 1 GHz,both the coherent and incoherent field components have to be taken into account and vegetation has to be modeled as a random medium of discrete scatterers having a wide variety of sizes and shapes. Multiscattering can be studied effectively by using transport theory. In prior studies, theories have been developed for microwave and mm-wave propagation in vegetation using transport theory for continuous wave and pulsed signals. In this study, the …

Some Combinational Optimization Problems On Radio Network Communication And Machine Scheduling, Xin Wang

Dissertations

The combinatorial optimization problems coming from two areas are studied in this dissertation: network communication and machine scheduling.

In the network communication area, the complexity of distributed broadcasting and distributed gossiping is studied in the setting of random networks. Two different models are considered: one is random geometric networks, the main model used to study properties of sensor and ad-hoc networks, where ri points are randomly placed in a unit square and two points are connected by an edge if they are at most a certain fixed distance r from each other. The other model is the so-called line-of-sight networks, …

User Evaluation Of The Performance Of Information Systems, Edward Mahinda

Dissertations

Information technologies (IT) are considered the primary survival factor for many organizations and the most critical success factor in businesses today. To justify the necessary investment in IT, user evaluation of information systems' performance in organizations is a key consideration. This research investigated a comprehensive and convenient means for end users to assess this performance.

Among the existing theories and models on the evaluation of information system performance based on intrinsic technological properties, the Web of System Performance (WOSP) model provides the most comprehensive basis for information system evaluation, and therefore merited further investigation. The research question was how well …

Complex Adaptive Systems Based Data Integration : Theory And Applications, Eliahu Rohn

Dissertations

Data Definition Languages (DDLs) have been created and used to represent data in programming languages and in database dictionaries. This representation includes descriptions in the form of data fields and relations in the form of a hierarchy, with the common exception of relational databases where relations are flat. Network computing created an environment that enables relatively easy and inexpensive exchange of data. What followed was the creation of new DDLs claiming better support for automatic data integration. It is uncertain from the literature if any real progress has been made toward achieving an ideal state or limit condition of automatic …

Leader Delegation And Trust In Global Software Teams, Suling Zhang

Dissertations

Virtual teams are an important work structure in global software development. The distributed team structure enables access to a diverse set of expertise which is often not available in one location, to a cheaper labor force, and to a potentially accelerated development process that uses a twenty-four hour work structure.

Many software teams are partially distributed, that is, part of the team is colocated. Such partially distributed global software teams are an important work structure in software development projects. However, little is known about what affects or improves team members’ motivation and job satisfaction in the partially distributed environment. This …

Automatic Prediction Of Solar Flares And Super Geomagnetic Storms, Hui Song

Dissertations

Space weather is the response of our space environment to the constantly changing Sun. As the new technology advances, mankind has become more and more dependent on space system, satellite-based services. A geomagnetic storm, a disturbance in Earth's magnetosphere, may produce many harmful effects on Earth. Solar flares and Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) are believed to be the major causes of geomagnetic storms. Thus, establishing a real time forecasting method for them is very important in space weather study.

The topics covered in this dissertation are: the relationship between magnetic gradient and magnetic shear of solar active regions; the relationship …

Taux : A System For Evaluating Sound Feedback In Navigational Tasks, Robert J. Lutz

Dissertations

This thesis presents the design and development of an evaluation system for generating audio displays that provide feedback to persons performing navigation tasks. It first develops the need for such a system by describing existing wayfinding solutions, investigating new electronic location-based methods that have the potential of changing these solutions and examining research conducted on relevant audio information representation techniques. An evaluation system that supports the manipulation of two basic classes of audio display is then described. Based on prior work on wayfinding with audio display, research questions are developed that investigate the viability of different audio displays. These are …

A Comparison Of Perinatal Care Providers' Use Of The National Institute Of Child Health And Human Development Standardized Terminology In Documentation Of Intrapartal Fetal Heart Rate Patterns, Faye M. Sigman

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine if perinatal team members; nurses (RN) and primary care providers (PCP), were using the NICHD standardized terminology to document Fetal Heart Rate patterns during labor. Agreement in documentation of FHR and agreement in concept between the RN and PCP was also studied. A descriptive, comparative research design was used. Cohen?s Kappa statistics measured agreement in documentation of FHR patterns and Chi square measured agreement in concept, p< 0.05 for each. A retrospective medical records chart review was performed on 400 charts, meeting inclusion criteria, from three community hospitals. There were three data collection points and four criteria reviewed. This study found the use of NICHD terminology to document FHR alarmingly low (RN=51%; PCP=13%). It was used most often for decelerations (81%) RN, (22%) PCP, and least often for variability (19%) RN, (3%) PCP. Incomplete documentation was extremely high for the PCP (69%) and 81 charts (20%) had no FHR documentation. Agreement in documentation varied between the RN and PCP. They agreed most often on accelerations (81.4%) and least often on baseline rate (41.5%). When looking at all there points in time the RN and PCP agreed in documentation 59% but agreed in concept 78%. There were four areas where the RN and PCP agreed in their use of NICHD terminology: Accelerations on admission n=151, Kappa=0.091, p=0.007; variability during labor n=68, Kappa=0.27, p=0.015; variability prior to delivery n=33 Kappa=0.33, p=0.010, and decelerations during labor n=103, Kappa=0.16, p=0.018. Data from this study supports expanding this research, to identifying barriers to documentation. It also appears that education in use of NICHD terminology is needed.

Development Of A Knowledge Management Strategy For Academic Staff, Leslie Whyte

Dissertations

We are living in a knowledge society. Knowing what we know and managing it better to know more is considered the key enabler to sustainable economic growth. 70 to 80 percent of economic growth is directly attributed to new or better knowledge. With information communication technologies (ICT) readily facilitating the globalisation of economic activity, the key competitive advantage of this era is the ability to create, use and disseminate knowledge effectively. Although traditionally creators, guardians and disseminators of knowledge, universities and institutions need to also adapt to the challenges the knowledge society can bring and evolve their roles in education, …

A Synthesised Knowledge Mapping Framework To Embed A Km Strategy Using Topic Maps And Wikis: The Tao Of Wiki, Colman A.J. Mcmahon

Dissertations

Just getting started with knowledge management can be difficult enough for many organisations, however the real challenge is actually how to embed the new practices. The expression "Success is a journey, not a destination" is particularly apt for KM. This research presents findings from stakeholder analyses carried out in an Irish government agency. The agency has been on its KM journey for nearly four years and has attempted to implement a comprehensive and full-scale strategy. The findings indicate that KM practices have not yet become fully embedded in the organisation. This research uncovers some of the reasons why not. In …

Academic Performance As A Predictor Of Student Growth In Achievement And Mental Motivation During An Engineering Design Challenge In Engineering And Technology Education, Nathan James Mentzer

Dissertations

The purpose of this correlational research study was to determine if students’ academic success was correlated with: (a) the student change in achievement during an engineering design challenge; and (b) student change in mental motivation toward solving problems and critical thinking during an engineering design challenge. Multiple experimental studies have shown engineering design challenges increase student achievement and attitude toward learning, but conflicting evidence surrounded the impact on higher and lower academically achieving students.

A high school classroom was chosen in which elements of engineering design were purposefully taught. Eleventh-grade student participants represented a diverse set of academic backgrounds (measured …

Perceptions Of Creativity In Art, Music And Technology Education, David Russell Stricker

Dissertations

This study was conducted to examine the perceptions of art, music, and technology education teachers with regard to creativity in their respective fields. The survey used in this study was designed around the themes borne out of creativity literature generally and creativity specific to the fields of art, music, and technology and engineering education. As a result the themes of creative process, products, personal traits, and environment shaped the items contained in the survey.

Although participants from all three subjects perceived the creative process as important to creative work generally, technology education teachers were less interested in the importance of …