Digital Commons Network^™

Comparison Of The Conceptual Understanding Of Newton's Laws In An Online And Traditional Introductory Physical Science Course, Rex Robert Moak

Dissertations

The purposes of this study were to (a) determine if taking the Physical Science Survey I course in face-to-face (F2F) and online format statistically significantly improves Newtonian conceptual comprehension as measured by the FCI; (b) determine which course format, if any, has statistically significantly higher FCI post-means; and (c) determine if students’ satisfaction with learning is statistically significantly different in the two course formats.

Data for this study was collected from students and faculty in various course formats during the Fall semester of 2012 and the Spring semester of 2013. The researcher used two research tools: the Force Concepts Inventory …

A Beacon Of Light: Tougaloo During The Presidency Of Dr. Adam Daniel Beittel (1960-1964), John Gregory Speed

Dissertations

This study examines leadership efforts that supported the civil rights movements that came from administrators and professors, students and staff at Tougaloo College between 1960 and 1964. A review of literature reveals that little has been written about the college‘s role in the Civil Rights Movement during this time. Thus, one goal of this study is to fill a gap in the historical record.

A second purpose of this study is to examine the challenges of progressive leadership at a historically Black college in Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement when a White president was at the helm.

When Dr. …

Teachers' Self-Efficacy In Mathematics And Teaching Mathematics, Instructional Practices, And The Mississippi Curriculum Test, Second Edition For Mathematics In Grades 3-5, Tracy Hardwell Yates

Dissertations

The purpose of this correlational study was to examine the relationship among the mathematical self-efficacies, mathematical teaching self-efficacies, and instructional practices of elementary teachers. This study was also designed to determine how these variables influence an individual teacher’s QDI in relation to MCT2 math scores in grades 3-5. The study included 117 third, fourth, and fifth grade elementary teachers who taught mathematics during the 2012-2013 school year. These teachers completed the Mathematics Teaching and Mathematics Self-Efficacy (MTMSE) survey and the Patterns of Adaptive Learning Scales (PALS) survey. A descriptive analysis was conducted on the data collected. The results of the …

Effectiveness Of Reading And Writing Across The Curriculum On Middle School Reading Comprehension And Preparation For Common Core State Standards, Paula J. Wuebbels

Dissertations

This research study was conducted to determine the impact of determine the perception of classroom teachers and building principals as to the effectiveness of required Reading and Writing Across the Curriculum in both core and non-core subject areas. Both core and non-core classes are presently required within the study school district to incorporate reading and writing strategies in their content areas. The researcher wanted to study the process to prepare administrators and teachers to work successfully with the advent of required common core standards for curriculum development. Strategies used in the study will help gather information to inform the preparation …

Mathematics Teachers' Models Of Quantitative Reasoning, David Matthew Glassmeyer

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Generalized Method Of Moments Approach For Spatial-Temporal Binary Data, Kimberly Ann Kaufeld

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Building Bridges: Connecting Collegiate Athletic And Mathematics Cultures, Lee Forrest Roberson

Dissertations

Student-athletes serve as ambassadors of their respective universities through both their academic and athletic experiences. These experiences distinguish student-athletes from their non-athlete counterparts, and has given rise to the current distinct student-athlete culture that exists within colleges and universities nationwide. This phenomenological study served as initial exploratory research investigating the nature of the culture of collegiate student-athletes in relationship to the culture of mathematics at a Division I public university in the western United States having an approximate enrollment of 13,000 students. The sample involved 10 student-athletes, four members of the mathematics faculty, four members of the athletic department staff, …

Facilitating Comprehension And Motivation By Engaging Adolescents As Ipad Readers, Virginia M. Bauman Edd

Dissertations

Technologies continue to transform the many ways that we read, write, and communicate, redefining what it means to be literate in the 21st century. For example, the explosive growth in tablet computers over the last few years has seemingly everyone embracing the new digital literacies without any real knowledge of the skills, strategies, and dispositions required to comprehend digital text. Given the newness of this technology, it's hardly surprising that little empirical research has been conducted to examine the extent to which e-books can actually improve comprehension as well as the motivation to read among students. To help solve this …

Biogeochemistry Of Trace Elements In The Mixing Zone Of The Mississippi And Atchafalaya Rivers And Chemical Distributions As Affected By The Deepwater Horizon Blowout, Dongjoo Joung

Dissertations

Selected trace elements (TEs), dissolved organic carbon, and nutrients were studied in Louisiana Shelf waters including the Mississippi (MR) and Atchafalaya (AR) River plumes during periods of high, intermediate, and low river discharges. Seasonal variations in TEs were observed at low salinity, reflecting seasonal changes in the river water endmembers. Shelf surface water dissolved Mo, Cs, U, Ni, and Cu showed conservative behavior with minor scattering in some high salinity waters. Based on associated mixing experiments, nutrient and chlorophyll distributions, as well as surface-bottom concentration contrasts, the non-conservative behavior of TEs was variously related to colloidal flocculation (Fe, Cr), biological …

Elementary Teachers' Perceptions Of Response To Intervention And Teacher Support Team Effectiveness Within A Mississippi Gulf Coast School District, Shanta Dannette Rhodes

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine elementary teachers’ perceptions of the effectiveness of Response to Intervention (RTI) and Teacher Support Team (TST) within a Mississippi Gulf Coast school district. RTI models have gained popularity within the national education system. Schools are encouraged to implement RTI in efforts to improve the learning and achievement of all students, while meeting the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) and the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act of 2004 (IDEIA). With the change of educational policy, the role and function of teachers have changed. Understanding perceptions teachers might …

Relationship Between Leadership Styles Of High School Teachers, Principals, And Assistant Principals And Their Attitudes Toward School Wide Positive Behavior And Support Implementation, Geneva Cosweller Lampton-Holmes

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine if seventh through twelfth grade educators’ attitudes towards School-Wide Positive Behavior Support (SWPBS) are affected based on their gender, years of experience, school discipline policy, leadership style, and knowledge of SWPBS.

Through an online survey, an analysis of the leadership style and knowledge of SWPBS of Mississippi teachers and administrators was conducted. Other variables included the school discipline policy and participants’ gender and years of experience. The study found that knowledge of SWPBS and school discipline policy had a significant impact on the educators’ attitudes towards SWPBS. Leadership style, gender, and years …

Natural Radioactivity In Groundwater, Rocks And Sediments From Some Areas In The Uae: Distribution, Sources And Environmental Impact, Dalal Matar Al Shamsi

Dissertations

Groundwater contains a certain amount of natural radioactivity that generally results from the decay of uranium, thorium and ⁴⁰K isotopes. Knowledge of concentration levels, spatial distribution and sources of these isotopes in groundwater is crucial for environmentally safe and sustainable groundwater resources in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This dissertation focuses on investigating the distribution, environmental impact and sources of ²³⁵U, ²³⁸U, ²³²Th, as well as the activity of gross β and α in groundwater in some locations in the UAE. Additionally, groundwater samples from Oman and selected aquifer rocks and sediments from the UAE were …

Resource Allocation For Wireless Relay Networks, Hanan Hassan Al-Tous

Dissertations

In this thesis, we propose several resource allocation strategies for relay networks in the context of joint power and bandwidth allocation and relay selection, and joint power allocation and subchannel assignment for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems. Sharing the two best ordered relays with equal power between the two users over Rayleigh flat fading channels is proposed to establish full diversity order for both users. Closed form expressions for the outage probability, and bit error probability (BEP) performance measures for both amplify and forward (AF) and decode and forward (DF) cooperative communication …

Community Detection And Influence Maximization In Online Social Networks, Kanna Gharib Al-Falahi

Dissertations

The detecting and clustering of data and users into communities on the social web are important and complex issues in order to develop smart marketing models in changing and evolving social ecosystems. These marketing models are created by individual decision to purchase a product and are influenced by friends and acquaintances. This leads to novel marketing models, which view users as members of online social network communities, rather than the traditional view of marketing to individuals. This thesis starts by examining models that detect communities in online social networks. Then an enhanced approach to detect community which clusters similar nodes …

Development Of An Integrated Incident And Transit Priority Management Control System, Faisal Ahmed

Dissertations

The aim of this thesis is to develop a distributed adaptive control system which can work standalone for a single intersection to handle various boundary conditions of recurrent, non-recurrent congestion, transit signal priority and downstream blockage to improve the overall network in terms of productivity and efficiency. The control system uses link detectors’ data to determine the boundary conditions of all incoming and exit links. Four processes or modules are deployed. The traffic regime state module estimates the congestion status of the link. The incident status module determines the likelihood of an incident on the link. The transit priority module …

Using Online Education To Transition Teaching Assistants To Teacher Certification: Examining The Differences Among Teacher Education Programs, Billie Jean Tingle

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to compare The University of Southern Mississippi elementary education teacher candidates that completed the online or traditional route to determine if there was a significant difference in professional knowledge and skills using Praxis II test scores. The participants included 60 Teacher Assistant Program (TAP) online teacher candidates and 564 traditional face-to-face teacher candidates. This study also compared the two groups’ perceptions of self-efficacy. The instrument used in this part of the research study was the Teacher Education Preparation Program Exit Survey (Appendix A). A selection of the participants that completed their teacher internship during …

Relationship Between Teacher Perception Of Positive Behavior Interventions Support And The Implementation Process, Janice Marie Hansen

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine whether a relationship existed between teacher perception of a school’s behavior management program and the implementation process. This study explored perceptions of teachers from three aspects of the Positive Behavior Intervention Support model as they relate to the implementation processes for PBIS. This design is intended to provide strategies for behavior modification to improve and transform inappropriate behaviors through reinforcement of positive behaviors in lieu of punitive strategies to correct disruptive behaviors. The framework for a positive behavior reinforcement system is data driven, identifying specific behaviors that impede learning and formulating an …

A Conducting Student's Guide To The Solving And Execution Of Major Gestural Issues In Beethoven's First Eight Symphonies, Nathanael Thomas Lambert

Dissertations

This work is a reference guide for the solving of major conducting gestural issues in Beethoven’s first eight symphonies. The most common major gestural issues encountered in conducting Beethoven’s symphonies include tempo modulations, fermati, hypermetric conducting, and cueing in rapid succession. The methods and criteria used for solving each of these issues are addressed in separate chapters devoted to each of these major gestural issues. A following chapter is devoted to the solving of less complicated issues including starting movements, gradual tempo changes, nonmodulatory sudden tempo changes, and showing dynamics and sforzandi.

Each symphony is given its own chapter where …

Mentoring: The College Freshman Female Perspective, Catrice L. Reese

Dissertations

Grant-Vallone, Reid, Umali, and Pohlert (2004) outlined how students who regularly take advantage of student support services, mentoring, or academic support programing opportunities are more likely to accomplish their academic goals. Postsecondary institutions are responsible for providing innovative educational experiences to students. Proactively identifying key delimiting factors that inhibit student achievement can increase the persistence and retention rates of critical populations. Mentoring relationships are especially crucial to the academic achievement and successful matriculation of first-year freshman students. Approximately one out of three freshmen does not successfully matriculate to the second year of the collegiate endeavor (U.S. News & World Report, …

Effect Of Structure In Problem Based Learning On Science Teaching Efficacy Beliefs And Science Content Knowledge Of Elementary Preservice Teachers, Selena K. Sasser

Dissertations

This study examined the effects of differing amounts of structure within the problem based learning instructional model on elementary preservice teachers' science teaching efficacy beliefs, including personal science teaching efficacy and science teaching outcome expectancy, and content knowledge acquisition. This study involved sixty (60) undergraduate elementary preservice teachers enrolled in three sections of elementary science methods classes at a large Midwestern research university. This study used a quasi-experimental nonequivalent design to collect and analyze both quantitative and qualitative data. Participants completed instruments designed to assess science teaching efficacy beliefs, science background, and demographic data. Quantitative data from pre and posttests …

Ars Rhetorica Et Sacrae Litterae: St. Patrick And The Art Of Rhetoric In Early Medieval Briton And Ireland, Brian James Stone

Dissertations

This dissertation is the first intensive rhetorical analysis of the writings of St. Patrick. This analysis, informed by interdisciplinary perspectives and methodologies, contributes to our understanding of the rhetorical nature of St. Patrick's writings, as well as the nature of rhetorical education in early medieval Britain and Ireland The literary significance of Patrick's extant writings, Epistola ad milites Corotici and Confessio, beyond their apparent historical value, has regularly been disputed by prominent scholars. Questions of the level of education Patrick received before being assigned to the bishopric in Ireland have informed debates over the quality and importance of his contribution …

Atomistic Modeling Of Phonon Bandstructure And Transport For Optimal Thermal Management In Nanoscale Devices, Sasi Sekaran Sundaresan

Dissertations

Monte Carlo based statistical approach to solve Boltzmann Transport Equation (BTE) has become a norm to investigate heat transport in semiconductors at sub-micron regime, owing mainly to its ability to characterize realistically sized device geometries qualitatively. One of the primary issues with this technique is that the approach predominantly uses empirically fitted phonon dispersion relations as input to determine the properties of phonons so as to predict the thermal conductivity of specified material geometry. The empirically fitted dispersion relations assume harmonic approximation thereby failing to account for thermal expansion, interaction of lattice waves, effect of strain on spring stiffness, and …

Open Quantum System Dynamics For Describing State Transfer, Nayeli Zuniga-Hansen

Dissertations

In principle a quantum system could be used to simulate another quantum system. The purpose of such a simulation would be to obtain information about problems which are difficult to simulate on a classical computer due to the exponential increase of the Hilbert space with the size of the system, and which cannot be readily measured or controlled in an experiment. A quantum simulator is, however, an open quantum system that will interact with the surrounding environment, which in this case are other particles in the system, and will be implemented using imperfect controls, making it subject to noise. It …

Dynamics Of Phase Locking In Neuronal Networks In The Presence Of Synaptic Plasticity, Zeynep Akcay

Dissertations

The behavior generated by neuronal networks depends on the phase relationships of its individual neurons. Observed phases result from the combined effects of individual cells and synaptic connections whose properties change dynamically. The properties of individual cells and synapses can often be characterized by driving the cell or synapse with inputs that arrive at different phases or frequencies, thus producing a feed-forward description of these properties. In this study, a recurrent network of two oscillatory neurons that are coupled with reciprocal synapses is considered. Feed-forward descriptions of the phase response curves of the neurons and the short-term synaptic plasticity properties …

Processing And Characterization Of Innovative Magnesium Alloys For Biodegradable Orthopaedic Implants, Christopher E. Smith

Dissertations

There is a need for innovation in medical implant devices through novel biomaterials that will improve the quality of life. The first step in the creation of a foundation of knowledge and technology to improve these implant devices is through the creation of new alloys with the capabilities of biodegradation and bioabsorption without a toxic effect that will pass through FDA regulatory procedures. In this study, unique heat treatment processing techniques coupled with innovation in elemental alloying produced distinctive magnesium (Mg) based alloy systems. The MgZnCa system was used as the underpinning system where four groups of novel alloys were …

District Mandated Changes In Technology And Inquiry-Based Instruction, Mulonge Musa Kalumbula

Dissertations

Federal and state mandates aimed at improving the American K-12 school system abound (Spillane, 2004). Federal legislation of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB, 2002), and state-mandated curriculum are aimed at improving teaching and learning thus ultimately improving student achievement. The purpose of this phenomenology study was to examine the experiences of 7 middle and high school social studies teachers through district-mandated changes in inquiry-based instruction and technology-integrated lessons. By capturing how individual teachers experience mandated changes, this research aimed to discover the existence of policy coherence within a district as it translated federal and state policy …

The Logistics Of Implementing A Field-Based Comprehensive School Reform Initiative, Dawn E. Reeves

Dissertations

This research is a qualitative, reflective case study regarding a cohort in the form of a district-university partnership between the Oak Park Schools in Oak Park, Michigan and the College of Education at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The initiators of the program envisioned a more successful urban school district by offering training beyond the traditional professional development to district teachers with an incentive of a Master’s Degree. The criteria of this particular initiative mandated that the program be field-based where all courses met in district buildings and be non-traditional, where all content was focused on the needs of …

Investigation Of The American Recovery And Reinvestment Act Of 2009: The Role Of Stimulus Funding On Development Of A Three-Tiered Intervention, Laura Grayson

Dissertations

The purpose of this research study was to investigate how school districts, in the state of Missouri, dispersed funds from the American Recovery Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 to help drive educational reform, with respect to reading achievement and Response to Intervention strategies. The difference between the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and other pieces of legislation aimed at educational accountability was that states were only given two years to spend the monies associated with this legislation. This quantitative research study examined 60 school districts in the state of Missouri to determine if there was a relationship between the stimulus …

Investigation Of The Influence Of The Socratic Method On Leadership Skills Among Jrotc Cadet Leaders At A Military Boarding School, Francesco G. Giuseffi

Dissertations

The purpose of this action research study was twofold: 1) to investigate the role the Socratic Method of teaching had (if any) on the leadership skills of Junior Reserve Officer Training Cadet (JROTC) leaders at a military boarding school in the Midwest, United States, and 2) to determine if there was any change in the researcher’s teaching while implementing the Socratic Method to his JROTC Cadet leaders in his Western Intellectual History class. The researcher defined leadership based on the Five Leadership Practices derived from the Student Leadership Practices Inventory. These practices consisted of Model the Way, Inspire a Shared …

Investigating Practices Of Research-Proven Multidimensional Teacher Evaluation Systems In Michigan Schools, George A. Aramath

Dissertations

Traditional teacher evaluation systems have little to no impact on changing teacher behavior or improving student achievement. Subsequently, studies and reports show the lack of and need for multidimensional teacher evaluation system. This deficiency and need is especially evident in Michigan due to the state's recent legislative mandate that their evaluation system must include multiple data as measures of educator effectiveness.

The purpose of this study is to investigate and describe how two Michigan public schools are attempting to build a multidimensional teacher evaluation system that includes the new Michigan mandate to incorporate evidence of student learning as a significant …