Digital Commons Network^™

A Virtual Reality Based Powered Wheelchair Simulator, Yuliia Sergeeva

Masters Theses

Power wheelchairs provide great assistance for people with locomotion disabilities. However, for those who have tremor, operation of the wheelchair can be challenging and result in a chance to get into an accident. The focus of this research project is to create a semi-virtual reality power wheelchair driving simulator that can be used for testing a notch filter for tremors in a safe laboratory environment and obtain data on human operator movements for future mathematical modeling. The simulator incorporates a realistic and immersive virtual environment and power wheelchair movement into it. For the experiment, a physical PWC joystick was connected …

Characterization Of Γ-Butyrolactone Rings: A Computational And Toxicological Study, Donald C. Kidd

Masters Theses

Given the declining state of the natural environment, identifying green methodologies in synthetic chemistry is becoming paramount. An under explored area of green chemistry, is the use of catalytic systems in green solvents. One interesting concept in green chemistry is the use of N-Heterocyclic Carbenes (NHCs) as organocatalysts.

Thiamine or vitamin B1 was one of the first NHCs recognized. Thiamine is required for carbohydrate metabolism and helps the cell produce adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Over the last 20 years NHCs have been found to be efficient catalysts in carbon-carbon bond forming reactions.

But to date, little research has been done exploring …

Optimization And Experimental Application Of Current Stimuli To Leech Pressure-Sensitive Mechanosensory Cells, Alexandra C. Ferguson

Masters Theses

The WMU Neurobiology Engineering Lab has previously utilized a "Reduced Energy Input Stimulus Discovery Method" to compute reduced energy stimuli which evoke desired neuron responses. This approach is based on applying an optimal control method to conductance-based neuron models. Initial experimental feasibility of using the discovered optimal currents has been previously demonstrated using leech pressure-sensitive mechanosensory neurons. This work validates and analyzes experimental application of this method. Based on this analysis, an `informed' neuron model is developed by adjusting parameters to minimize error between results from the informed model and experimental data. The informed model is used to find optimal …

Investigation Of Measured Cane Vibrations For Prediction Of Blind Pedestrian Performance In Surface Preview Tasks, Aaron Dean

Masters Theses

The white cane is the primary navigation tool used by many blind pedestrians, but the basic design of the cane has not changed since the 1940s. A greater understanding of the factors affecting cane performance is essential in improving the design and performance of these canes. One aspect of performance is surface texture discrimination. A study is performed to determine the effect of cane rigidity and cane swipe speed on the ability of a user to select the rougher of two surfaces with different textures. Two methods are developed to select the rougher surface using only the measured cane vibration. …

The Application Of Eastern Band Of Cherokee Powwow Music In Music Education, Glenda Motley

Masters Theses

The Virginia education curriculum for fourth grade social studies requires the study of American Indian history and culture. Motivated by research questions, this project proposes a music education curriculum that enhances these social studies lessons through the inclusion of American Indian music. The music of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians located in Cherokee, North Carolina is appropriate for teaching students about this culture. The literature reviewed covers early American Indian history followed by the history of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. Resources on the role of women are also explored in society and music. Literature examined on the …

Shifting Focus: The Role Of Visual Literacy In The Twenty-First Century English Classroom, Bryanna Tester

Masters Theses

Ultimately, the English language arts classroom seeks to help make students “literate” members of society. Due to the dominance of images in twenty-first century communication, the term “literate” has also slowly shifted to include an individual’s ability to effectively and accurately communicate with verbal text as well as with visual images and symbols. Although students are native image-viewers, they are not able to be image-readers without instruction and training on how to critically “read” images. Therefore, an English teacher’s literary curriculum is not strictly bound to the written and spoken word. Instruction in reading and writing written texts are vital …

Tools Of Change: Equipping Nonprofits With The Tools To Inspire Change, Nicole Irons

Masters Theses

Whether I am working for a small nonprofit in Indiana or at an elephant sanctuary in Cambodia I have seen consistent areas of struggle and shortcomings in nonprofit organizations. After years of working in different organizations the struggles nonprofits consistently face are a lack of resources in three main areas. These main areas of struggle are: visibility, funding, and people. The idea then occurred to me of why? And while these resources seem to appear unconnected, what if they all stem from one problem? Could we create a tool (or set of tools) to help alleviate these main struggles? Is …

Play Is Everything : Materials + Play = Learning, Adeline Diamond

Masters Theses

This model making based research project looks at how various materials—produce, board games, toys and curriculums—create opportunities for learning through play. Play creates intimate relationships that are generated between the spaces we inhabit and the objects and people that surround us, focusing on cognitive responses. This paper aims to further awareness of one’s perception of play and how all forms of play create meaningful relationships and improve cognitive development, material awareness and critical thinking skills. Play provides students with opportunities to learn and allow unlimited variations on the learning environment.

This research explores various forms of play through farming, interviewing, …

Art-Integrated Pedagogy For English And Chinese Language Learners, Regina J. Kuo

Masters Theses

The purpose of this research is to identify how art-integrated teaching methodology might help learners to absorb contents more effectively than the traditional teaching methodology. There are many schools in the U.S. started to use art-integration multimodal approach in school curriculum on different academic subjects. This research focuses on the art-integrated pedagogy in linguistic language, especially for English language learners and Chinese language learners. The researcher approaches the subject with illustrating a collection of personal cases about art-integrated pedagogy used in teaching and learning environment. This art-based research produces two teaching materials designed to answer the questions that were frequently …

The Creative Process : Gathering For Meaning, Charity Appell Mcnabb

Masters Theses

The creative process of visual artists is not a well-understood methodology for intellectual inquiry. In particular, there are amorphous and individual aspects of it that defy narrow categorization. These aspects, like the gathering and associating labors, which vary from artist to artist, are nonetheless fundamental to our practices. The author investigates how the creative process has been defined and how the creative process is being used outside the traditional artistic context. Artists exist in a space where categories and definitions can be abandoned, where thought is advanced through the act of making, where worldviews can be imagined, where apparent contradictions …

I / You / They, Yolanda Lam

Masters Theses

This thesis is a journal of conversations.

Similarity In A Distance, Ran Zhuo

Masters Theses

I grew up in an interesting yet contradictory environment. As both of my parents were busy with their jobs, I was raised by my grandparents and I believe that’s where the contradiction aspect of my personality came. My grandfather was a professor of physics in a university and my grandmother was a professor of violin. Unconsciously, I was influenced by them and developed a keen interest in cross-disciplinary and cross-media subjects. The two subjects of music and physics represented art and science, emotion and reason, abstraction and concreteness, and invisible and visible to me.

My work is primarily engaged with …

In The Marketplace, Anina Major

Masters Theses

The decision to voluntarily establish a home contrary to the location in which I was born and raised (The Bahamas) motivates me to investigate the relationship between self and place. To further explore my own migration and the emotional complexities that surface, with a desire to fabricate terms of cultural integrity and its defining influence. To express poetically the kindred ideals that resonate from home and intertwine those values to cultivate moments of reflection and acceptance. To promote encounters between past, present and future by weaving the memories of my own background and experiences, consequently unveiling a rich culture composed …

Wielding Daggers : The Female Uncanny, Stephanie E. Hanes

Masters Theses

This thesis document is a compilation of personal essays that analyze aspects of visual culture and philosophy. I am greatly interested in how this analysis is related to women bodies; the nude in western art has a long history of being constructed for the male gaze. This significance of the identification of women with the body exposes women in our culture to learn their own particulars for self surveillance. By looking into the mirror, what is reflected back? With these essays, I am opening myself to the unknown and the unknowable, revealing the paradox of feminist and philosophical scholarship. When …

Sometimes The Sh*T Stays Messy : Critical Frameworks For Arts-Based Researchers & Educators, Zoe Schein

Masters Theses

The standards by which we assess the legitimacy of knowledge production are deeply biased: resting ideologically, systemically, and formally on processes that are deeply rooted in systems of oppression. Consequently, our current body of “legitimate” or scholarly knowledge presents only a partial, partisan picture of what it is possible—and worthwhile—to know. This thesis addresses how hegemonic institutions (like the academy) rely on two central notions: (1) that their methods are “objective,” “value-neutral,” or otherwise impartial (2) that these methods are the best—if not the only—ones through which “real” knowledge may be accessed and communicated. As this paper demonstrates, each of …

Researching + Observing + Reflecting Of Chinese And American Landscape Architecture Pedagogy : Focusing On Department Of Landscape Architecture In Risd And Bfu, Change Gao

Masters Theses

This thesis focuses on the Chinese and American landscape architecture education, typically in Beijing Forestry University (China) and Rhode Island School of Design (USA). By relecting back to author’s graduate and undergraduate study in landscape architecture in these two schools, this thesis provides a view of an observer and outsider instead of an experiencer and insider to look through the teaching and learning in landscape architecture. Through the voice from students and academia in both schools, this thesis functions as a platform sharing the learning and teaching experience, providing a cross-culture access to other people’s experience and as a chatbox …

A Normal Novel Collection, Xiaopeng Qi

Masters Theses

This thesis is a game novel collection.

Which is an experimental attempt that I use the playable texts as a way to document daily clues. While reading the thesis, the readers will have an experience of the game-like sense of substitution and view switching. Through the narrative of texts, I try to express that in the future, making games which under structural wraps is a living strategy way to self-expression and communicate to outside in this hyper-normal spectacular society.

Light On : The Value Of Art & Art Education, Juri Rhyu

Masters Theses

As an international student, I have had the chance to view art education through the lenses of both the United States and Korean education systems. While Korea’s education system leans more on authoritarian institutions, rote memorization, and grades, art education in the US is equally as restrictive and teaches technical skill rather than fostering creativity. Technical skill does not an artist make. Because of my self-assumed lack of creativity, I began to go to museums and sketch masterworks in an effort to self direct creative learning. This experience ultimately led me to consider a future career as a teacher as …

Let's Get Hairy : Women, Body Hair And Stigma In Arts Education, Chaitra Bangalore

Masters Theses

A woman who is visibly hairy might be viewed as masculine, dirty, unprofessional, or as a radical feminist. There are variations on what it means to be a woman; feminine does not have to be synonymous with “hairless”. Body hair is a stigma because it is a physical characteristic that is undesirable and shamed when exposed.

Body hair as stigma can be explored in terms of creativity and pedagogy. How can creativity work to dismantle stigma? Talking about stigma gives one the chance to express themselves in a way that is exploratory, sparking new ways of understanding. Arts education already …

What Makes A Good Teacher? : The Artist's Engagement In Public Art Education, Wenjing Fan

Masters Theses

This thesis is written in a language other than the author’s own, so its content as she developed an understanding of ideas in English may reveal both inaccuracies of grammar and indeed some misunderstanding of context and concept. This being said, the author uses the thesis investigation to reflect on her art education in China and also to report on encounters with teachers she has met in Providence, Rhode Island. So, the thesis has been opportunity to wonder about the significant role that various types of teacher (First Teacher to Fourth Teacher) play in cultivating students’ artistic ability. The author …

Traversing Ambiguities : Rebuilding Perspectives Through Designed Visual Education, Mudita Pasari

Masters Theses

We perceive the world largely through categorizations and associations. We distill people, objects and entities into extremes. ‘Normal’ becomes a measure of acceptable. Reductionist definitions, force anything ambiguous or uncertain to be rejected. Acknowledging our biases towards these misinterpreted, shunned or ignored entities, has long been overdue. In todays world we cannot possibly continue being blind to complexity.

Can designed visual education reinterpret ambiguity and embrace multiplicity? How can a designer’s perspective help scaffold these educational systems? Can we do so by looking deep within our own practice as designers, artists, scholars and educators?

The thesis explores these various questions …

Anchored In Place : Locational Identity + New Genre Public Art, Stephanie Benenson

Masters Theses

Since its inception in the 1970s when Joseph Beuys proclaimed, “Jeder Mensch is ein Kunstler” or “Everyone is an Artist”, public art that focuses on social engagement (otherwise known as new genre public art) has been tested in a variety of formats and places. Today, the breadth of work in this category is vast and the resulting aesthetics vary based on the artist’s intentions and goals. While measuring the success of these projects remains a challenge, an examination of recent history provides us with insights that can become a tool kit for artists commencing on social projects. Once examined, specific …

The Artist, The Object And The Meaning Between : An Exploration Of The Joys Of Incorporating Meaningful Objects Into Art Practice And Teaching Pedagogy, Sarah Leis

Masters Theses

The Artist, the Object and the Meaning Between begins by exploring the human motivation and delight in keeping physical ephemera, tokens, specimen, souvenirs, relics, etc. Material things can be tools to understand and interact with the world around us; a name for this is “Object-based Learning”. I use Qualitative and Arts-based research to make the case for object-based learning as a complement to digital resources. Though anyone may benefit from these practices, the focus of the thesis is the teaching artist and her opportunity to encourage in her students a rich experience of the three-dimensional in a world that seems …

Intrigues And Priorities : Critical Thinking And Contemporary Art In Visual Arts Education, Connor Phillips

Masters Theses

This thesis looks at how arts education can respond to the context of the 21st century by focusing on critical thinking and contemporary art in visual arts education. I argue that art as a subject has the potential to educate youth beyond mere aesthetic, formal art skills. Its inherent flexibility to encompass all interests, cultures, and backgrounds makes it a truly inclusive subject and the multiplicity that follows provides students with opportunities for cross-associative and critical thinking. If utilized in an education context, it can be the necessary conduit for engaging students, respecting their intrigues, and offering a space to …

Habitually, Sunha Joo

Masters Theses

This book is a journal of the conscious looking into my most unconscious behaviors. I documented and observed my unconscious habits, and tracked where they originally came from. Observing myself was both the process and the result of the work. I played a triple role throughout the process. I was an object, an observer, and a conduit. I wrote and became a subject of the writing. I used various forms, styles and voices in this book to align the work experience of these constantly changing roles with the writing experience and to embody different perspectives.

As a result, this book …

Expressionism In Furniture, Zihan Zhang

Masters Theses

In the first 25 years of my life, I always thought I was a free man, I followed my passion to choose art and design as my career, and strived to enter the best design school. However, until I moving to Providence, and fished on a beach over the midnight, I finally realized, actually I am the victim in dilemma who is always paralyzed by the standards we created. In that midnight, I realized time is not only a number, it can be the track of galaxy or the fluctuation of tide. And I introspected myself why my schools are …

Familiar Strangers, Rebecca Li

Masters Theses

I am interested in dialogues of connection – from our ongoing internal ramblings, to the moments where strangers do not feel like strangers, to the conversations that wander late into the night. Our connections are the foundations of the human experience; they give weight to the every-day and ground us in time and place.

Today, our digital devices have become invaluable tools for bringing people together. No matter where we ind our physical selves, we have the ability to tap into our digital worlds and access our most intimate social circles. But our seemingly insatiable desire for constant communication often …

Transformation Through Drawing And Gesture, Mckenzie Gibson

Masters Theses

Drawing is a unique human invention that reveals an individual’s thoughts, knowledge, and expression of “being;” it is the manifestation of human activity and energy; it represents thought (relating to the mind) and physicality (as executed by the hand and the body) through the manipulation of materials (the world around me).

Process is the embodiment of human passion, energy, expression, conceptualization from idea to form, and the connection of hand and mind. It is a succession of verbs realized in the practice of making. I joke that every piece of work I’ve made “has my blood, sweat, and tears in …

Lighting : An Atrium Core To Reconnect With The Sun, Quan Lei

Masters Theses

At the Rhode Island School of Design, students work so much that they treat their studio as home; the majority stay in studio past midnight, which leads to lack of sleep. How to improve students’ physical and mental health is a question demanding immediate investigation, particularly as relates to rest. According to the scientists at the Lighting Research Center (LRC) in Troy, N.Y, engagement with daylight environments increase occupant productivity and comfort, and provide the mental and visual stimulation necessary to regulate circadian rhythms, encouraging more restful sleep. Students cannot function healthily because their busy schedules remove them from the …

Content-Aware : Investigating Tools, Character & User Behavior, Llewellyn Hensley

Masters Theses

Content—Aware serves as a platform for investigating structure, corruption, and visual interference in the context of present-day technologies. I use fragmentation, movement, repetition, and abstraction to interrogate current methods and tools for engaging with the built environment, here broadly conceived as the material, spatial, and cultural products of human labor.

Physical and graphic spaces become grounds for testing visual hypotheses. By testing images and usurping image-making technologies, I challenge the fidelity of vision and representation. Rooted in active curiosity and a willingness to fully engage, I collaborate with digital tools, play with their edges, and build perceptual portholes. Through documentation …