Digital Commons Network^™

The Effect Of Stereoscopic Three-Dimensional Images On Recall Of Second Language Vocabulary, Regina Kaplan-Rakowski

Dissertations

The purpose of this experimental study was to investigate the effect of stereoscopic three-dimensional (S3D) images on productive and receptive recall of foreign language vocabulary. S3D images are highly-realistic and differ from non-stereoscopic three-dimensional (NS3D) images in that they provide the impression of the added third dimension of depth. This within-subject study exposed the participants (N = 82) in a controlled setting to a series of carefully designed and randomly distributed NS3D and S3D images. The subjects were then given immediate productive and receptive tests of foreign language vocabulary items that were represented by NS3D and S3D images. Quantitative data …

Context-Aware Collaborative Storage And Programming For Mobile Users, Mohammad A. Khan

Dissertations

Since people generate and access most digital content from mobile devices, novel innovative mobile apps and services are possible. Most people are interested in sharing this content with communities defined by friendship, similar interests, or geography in exchange for valuable services from these innovative apps. At the same time, they want to own and control their content. Collaborative mobile computing is an ideal choice for this situation. However, due to the distributed nature of this computing environment and the limited resources on mobile devices, maintaining content availability and storage fairness as well as providing efficient programming frameworks are challenging.

This …

Birth Of A Powerhouse: How One University Reimagined, Restructured, And Revived Outreach, Slone H. Cansler

Dissertations

Today’s modern higher education landscape presents myriad challenges to higher education leaders and administrators. Among those challenges is how universities respond to demands for accountability, growth of alternative models of postsecondary education delivery, the need to serve and increasingly diverse society, and reduced state and federal appropriations. Research suggests that the biggest changes for American higher education are imminent and will necessitate new business models, new forms of collaboration and partnerships, and innovative about the enterprise of higher education. This study sought to gain understanding about the development process and structural framework that allows a university’s outreach unit to be …

A Metaevaluation Of The Commission On Fire Accreditation International Accreditation Process, Stacy A. French

Dissertations

Fire and emergency services throughout the country are being required by local governmental authorities to provide efficient and effective services. In 1996, the International City-County Management Association (ICMA) and the International Association of Fire Chief (IAFC) executed a master trust agreement that established the Commission on Fire Accreditation International (CFAI) to award accreditation to those fire and emergency services that demonstrated efficiency and effectiveness in the services provided. As of this study, no documented research had been published that challenged the current CFAI Accreditation process to ensure the highest level of accountability and usefulness for both the public and fire …

Guided Educational Tourism As Informal Science Education: An Empirical Study, Joseph Martin Lane

Dissertations

The scientific research and education communities have long had the goal of advancing the publics’ understanding of science. Informal science education is a powerful mechanism for shaping human conduct, enhancing quality of life, and advancing the publics’ understandings and values regarding science. Guided educational tours (that present science content) provide visitors with unique opportunities to observe and discuss scientific phenomena in the field. Available empirical research related to learning science from guided educational tours is, at best, limited. Research leading to the development of effective guided educational tours that present and interpret scientific information is of interest to both non-profit …

Investigation Into The Predictive Capability Of Macro-Economic Features In Modelling Credit Risk For Small Medium Enterprises, Kevin Mctiernan

Dissertations

This research project investigates the predictive capability of macro-economic features in modelling credit risk for small medium enterprises (SME/SMEs). There have been indications that there is strong correlation between economic growth and the size of the SME sector in an economy. However, since the financial crisis and consequent policies and regulations, SMEs have been hampered in attempts to access credit. It has also been noted that while there is a substantial amount of credit risk literature, there is little research on how macro-economic factors affect credit risk. Being able to improve credit scoring by even a small amount can have …

Preferential Trade Agreements And Quality Of Government In Sub-Saharan Africa, Sharon Camara

Dissertations

Objectives. Sub-Saharan African (SSA) nations have made concerted attempts at economic integration and openness with use of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) beginning in the latter half of the 1990s. These changes could result in increases in trade and growth. The World Bank’s Good Governance indicators are designed to assess the quality of institutions in a given country. The objective is to assess the impact of PTAs and Good Governance indicators on trade in SSA nations. Methods. Data on trade y was generated based on exports defined by the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Direction of Trade statistics, and both OLS and …

Globalized Backlash: Women Against Feminism’S New Media Matrix Of (Anti) Feminist Testimony, Margarethe Mapes

Dissertations

Feminisms are oftentimes confronted with dissonance, resistance, and backlash. Invested in criticizing the cultural and institutional emergence of patriarchy and calls to re-order structures of inequality make feminism threatening to status quo power dynamics. “Women Against Feminism”—a social media phenomenon and space for women to post anti-feminist messages—began gaining notoriety in 2013. By 2015, “Women Against Feminism” expanded to multiple social media platforms, gained thousands of anti-feminist submissions, and received ample support and criticism across news outlets. This study explores “Women Against Feminism” as a potential site of 21st feminist backlash, noting nuanced rhetorical strategies that rely on fearing feminism, …

The Impact Of Educational Backgrounds On Academic Success At A Private Work College In The Midwest, Abbey Nicole Vogt

Dissertations

More families in the United States are beginning to choose private or homeschool education for children instead of a public school education (Hanna, 2011); therefore, college administrators must begin to evaluate each student’s educational background in order to help all students achieve academic success at the college level. The purpose of this study was to determine differences in multi-year college academic performance among public, private, and homeschool graduates who attended a private work college in the Midwest. The variables analyzed consisted of students’ final high school GPAs and ACT test scores, college cumulative GPAs and work point average (WPA) scores, …

Changes In Health And Behavior During The Business Cycle, Mohammad Sediq Sameem

Dissertations

This dissertation considers to what extent changes in the unemployment rate – a proxy for the business cycle – drives changes in mortality and crime. I use a panel of U.S. counties from 1990 to 2013. I allow changes in the unemployment rate to have different effects upon mortality / crime in large versus small counties as well as between increases versus decreases in the unemployment rate. My results show great nuance along both these dimensions, suggesting that the effects of the business cycle are more subtle than what previous studies report. These results also give one greater insight into …

Material Matters, Thomas George Holmes

Dissertations

Material Matters is a collection of original poems written by Thomas G. Holmes, while a doctoral student at The University of Southern Mississippi. The poems explore the materiality of writing.

Mathematical Teachers’ Perception: Mobile Learning And Constructing 21st Century Collaborative Cloud-Computing Environments In Elementary Public Schools In The State Of Kuwait, Nadeyah Alqallaf

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine Kuwaiti mathematical elementary teachers’ perceptions about their ability to integrate M-learning (mobile learning) into their current teaching practices and the major barriers hindering teachers’ ability to create an M-learning environment. Furthermore, this study sought to understand teachers’ perceptions about their ability to create a collaborative cloud-computing learning environment that corresponds with the 21st century skills and possibly explain their readiness for future reformation of education in Kuwait. Using an Internet-based format to this study quantitative and qualitative data, the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) and barriers survey gleaned quantitative information about how …

Remittances As Contributor To Risk Management And Poverty Reduction In Grenada, Dianne Jntl Rosemary Forte

Dissertations

A Small Island Development States (SIDS) viewpoint is underrepresented in the existing migration literature. That perspective is necessary because SIDS geography creates a unique set of social and economic circumstances that predisposes small states to high vulnerability to external shocks from environmental events and influences emigration decision making. Like other SIDS, Grenada is characterized by small land mass, small population, limited opportunities for productive labor, and limited resources to efficiently support all the requirements of modern institutions. This has resulted in high levels of emigration and a pattern of circularity as Grenadian households make rational decisions to manage risk and …

An Annotated Bibliography And Performance Commentary Of The Works For Concert Band And Wind Orchestra By Composers Awarded The Pulitzer Prize In Music 1993-2015, And A List Of Their Works For Chamber Wind Ensemble, Stephen Andrew Hunter

Dissertations

The purpose of this document is to assemble into one resource the concert band, wind orchestra, and chamber wind ensemble compositions of the 23 composers who were awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music between 1993 and 2015. The Pulitzer Prize in Music is given annually to an American composer in recognition of distinguished achievement in composition of a work that received its premiere during the previous year. Timothy Mahr completed this study on composers who received the Prize from 1943 to 1992. This is a continuation and replication of that study, following Mahr’s procedures.

A brief biographical sketch will be …

A Qualitative Study To Discover And Describe Conflict Strategies Used By Exemplar Community College Presidents To Proactively Transform And Resolve Conflict As They Attempt To Shape The Future, Karen J. Bolton

Dissertations

The purpose of this thematic, qualitative phenomenological study was to discover and describe the lived experiences of exemplar community college presidents in the use of the six domains of conflict transformation behaviors and the impact these domains have on achieving common ground (collaboration, communication, emotional intelligence, ethics, problem-solving, and process) to achieve breakthrough results and transform conflict. This study considered the experiences, perceptions, and interpretations of exemplar leaders. To know and understand how successful community college presidents operated in their environment was both practical and significant. The need to research and study these leaders included understanding how they work through …

Emotional Intelligence: A Leader's Impact On Productivity In A Distribution Environment, Herbert Callahan

Dissertations

ABSTRACT Emotional Intelligence: A Leader’s Impact on Productivity in a Distribution Environment by Herbert Callahan Purpose: The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore and describe the impact of a supervisor’s Emotional Intelligence on the performance of the associates that work for them within a distribution environment. The research design will include assessing a supervisor’s levels of emotional intelligence through the administration of the Emotional Intelligence Appraisal®–Me Edition and will include the gathering of data through semi-structured interviews from identified associates that work with them. Methodology: Convenience purposeful sampling was used to identify supervisors within a distribution environment. A …

Going From Breakdown To Breakthrough: Human Resource Professional's Perspective Of Conflict In K-12 Public Education, Denise E. Larue

Dissertations

This study was conducted independently, but in collaboration with a team of peer-researchers who came together to study the lived experience of exemplar leaders in diverse organizations as they transformed conflict to reach common ground. This study contributed to the collective work by looking at K-12 Human Resource Officers (HROs) as the population of interest. HROs are often at the center of resolving conflict, yet only a few emerge as exemplar leaders. These exemplar leaders were the target population situated in the phenomena under investigations. The team selected a qualitative phenomenological approach, in an attempt to uncover what strategies exemplar …

Subjective Selves: Visual Metaphor And The Figure Of The Artist In Contemporary Comics, Catherine Kyle

Dissertations

Sarah Oleksyk’s Ivy, I. Merey’s a+e 4ever, David Small’s Stitches, Craig Thompson’s Blankets, and Ellen Forney’s Marbles are five contemporary U.S. long-form comics that demonstrate what I call branched metaphoric monstration—the presence of illustrations that represent at least two narrative positions that contain visual metaphor. Given that all five of these texts are also semi autobiographical stories and memoirs that focus on the maturation of emerging visual artists, branched metaphoric monstration serves, in each of them, to comment on the developing cognition of young creators. The insights these texts provide individually and collectively shed light on some of …

Seventh-Day Adventists And ‘Race’ Relations In The U.S.: The Case Of Black-White Structural Segregation, Cleran Hollancid

Dissertations

A worldwide Christian denomination of some eighteen million in global membership, and with a presence in over 200 countries and territories (i.e., in just about every country on the globe), the Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) Church is one with a distinctive arrangement in the U.S., insofar as it concerns its racial segregation practice. The SDA Church professes and preaches unity in the pulpit, as in all members being equal and one in the faith, yet the actual practice says otherwise. Such is the case since it is officially segregated along black-white lines.

The segregation arrangement, essentially a black-white schism, falls …

Paris Burn, Iliana Rocha

Dissertations

First and foremost, Paris Burn- interrogates language as a rebel heteroglot in its relation to power and to identity, focusing on liminality and marginality. The speakers in these poems constantly (re)enact, generate, disassemble, and revise their lyric selves, either reaffirming or challenging dominant discourses and ideologies. Drag queens figure prominently throughout the manuscript because they are the physical embodiment of constructs that challenge an essential identity—race, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender. The title, an abbreviated form of Paris is Burning, an influential 1980s documentary profiling drag culture in New York City, invokes a physical body that figures in metaphorical relation to …

A Qualitative Study On How Washington State Mayors Transform Conflict, Darin Hand

Dissertations

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to discover and describe how exemplary Washington State mayors establish common ground and produce breakthrough results by utilizing the six domains of conflict transformation behaviors: collaboration, communication, emotional intelligence, ethics, processes, and problem solving. This study was conducted in collaboration with peer researchers studying other exemplary leaders representing a variety of industries. For this study, three methods of data collection (interviews, observations, and artifacts) were used to study the lived experiences of exemplary Washington State mayors and to present shared practices and patterns that demonstrate finding common ground and producing breakthrough results. The …

A Qualitative Study To Discover And Describe Common Ground Strategies Used By Exemplar Law Enforcement Leaders To Proactively Transform And Resolve Conflict As They Attempt To Shape The Future, Christopher M. Fuzie

Dissertations

The purpose of this thematic, qualitative, phenomenological study was to discover and describe the lived experiences of exemplar Municipal Police Chiefs in the use of six domains of conflict transformation; collaboration, communication, emotional intelligence, ethics, process, and problem solving, in order to find breakthrough results and transform conflict. This study was accomplished through the lived experiences, perceptions and interpretations of exemplar Municipal Police Chiefs, and through these experiences, put forward the commonalities, patterns of behavior, or repetitive themes that are used to find common ground and produce breakthrough results. The findings from this research illustrate how exemplar municipal police chiefs …

The Perceived Community Engagement Survey: Structure, Reliability, And Validity Of A Community-Based Organization Measure Of Engagement With The Broader Community, Rafael Rivera

Dissertations

For more than 40 years government funding for community non-profit organizations has grown more than in previous decades. This dramatic increase has led to a proliferation of organizations that claim the status of community-based organizations. Community-based Organizations (CBOs) have become the service delivery providers of communities, particularly underrepresented communities. There has been very little research within the community psychology and other literature exploring if CBOs represent the interest of communities.

As funding entities have lately increased their interest in community representation, there has not been a corresponding research base to identify levels of community engagement. This study attempted to address …

The Impact Of Secondary Career And Technical Education On Postsecondary Career And Educational Placement, Roy Allen Moss

Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to provide evidence of the impact career and technical education courses have on students after graduation. Numbers of Career and Technical Education (CTE) completers have continually dropped at the participating schools for the past five years. Five categories of placement after graduation were studied including the following: college, employment, postsecondary vocational training, military, and no placement. Archival data were gathered from postgraduate surveys conducted by high schools as required by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Data were collected for graduates in 2011, 2012, and 2013 from four area high schools that …

Restoring Trust: A Grounded Theory Study Of Cyberbullying Among Young Women, Nancy H. Camp

Dissertations

Cyberbullying is a global and national public health issue with the potential to affect the healthy social and emotional development of adolescents and young adults. There has been an 80% increase in social media use in 18-29 year olds between 2004 and 2014 (Gahagen, Vaterlaus, & Frost, 2016). In a study of 14-24 year olds (MTV/AP, 2011), 76% identified cyberbullying as a serious problem, with more than 56% reporting they have experienced cyberbullying. Cyberbullying research has been conducted predominantly with adolescents (ages 11-18 years), however scant research has been conducted with older adolescents and young adults (ages 18-30 years). This …

Using Tops For Identification Of Gifted Hispanic Students, Barbara Martin

Dissertations

USING TOPS FOR IDENTIFICATION OF GIFTED HISPANIC STUDENTS

Researchers have noted an underrepresentation of Hispanic ELL students in gifted education. A literature review revealed several problems encountered when assessing and identifying gifted Hispanics and have also suggested a variety of solutions including use of non-standardized alternative assessments. In this project, the researcher explored the attitudes of educators regarding the addition of a non-standardized tool. The TOPS is a non-standardized tool used to systematically gather and document qualitative observational data within the context of instruction (Harradine, Coleman, & Winn, 2014). The researcher used both a survey questionnaire and a semi-structured interview …

An Analysis Of Adventist Mission Methods In Brazil In Relationship To A Christian Movement Ethos, Marcelo Eduardo Da Costa Dias

Dissertations

In a little over 100 years, the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Brazil has grown to a membership of 1,447,470 (December 2013), becoming the country with the second highest total number of Adventists in the world. Very little academic research has been done to study or analyze the growth and development of the Adventist church in Brazil. In terms of its mission methods, what is the Christian movement ethos that fostered this development in Brazil? How can it continue to foster Adventist church growth in Brazil in spite of contextual changes?

As a missiological study that reflects typical interdisciplinarity crossing traditional …

The Digital Divide Through The Lens Of Critical Race Theory: The Digitally Denied, Stacy Gee Hollins

Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative research study was to examine African American community college students’ availability to technological resources and how that availability affects their success. In this study, technological resources include access to the internet, software, hardware, technology training, technology support, and community resources. This study included six community college professors and six African American community college students enrolled in a Midwest community college. A major tenet of Critical Race Theory, storytelling, was used to give voice to students who lack sufficient access to technological resources referred to as the digitally denied. Data from this study can create an …

Arthur L. Washington, Twentieth Century Educator And Change Agent At Sumner High School, Herman Leo Harris

Dissertations

In the history of the United States, the Midwest, in general, and Missouri, in particular, has had a complex role concerning issues of race. For example, St. Louis was the site for the 1857 Dred Scott Case, which determined those of African ancestry could never become citizens. Fast forward to the 1940s and ‘50s and Missouri, as well as the rest of the United States, is still divided by race and largely segregated. As an African American man, Arthur L. Washington, would not be satisfied with the culture of the day. Born December 14, 1917, Washington envisioned the world with …

Building Within Our Borders: Black Women Reformers In The South From 1890 To 1920, Tonya D. Blair

Dissertations

This dissertation examines the reform work of four unsung black women reformers in Virginia from the post-Reconstruction period into the early twentieth century. The four women all spearheaded social reformist institutions and organizations such as industrial training schools, a settlement house, an orphanage, a home for the elderly, a girl’s reformatory/industrial school and a state federation of black women’s clubs. One of the selected women includes Jennie Dean, a former slave from northern Virginia, who founded an industrial training school for African-Americans in post-Civil War Manassas. Dean’s industrial school resulted from her tenacious drive to imbue former slaves with literacy …