Digital Commons Network^™

Using Behavioral Skills Training And In Situ Training To Teach Game-Related Social Skills, Sumeyye Erdem

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Social skills are important for individuals to be successful, therefore programs that seek to improve social skills of individuals with autism and other disabilities are important (e.g., Agran et al., 2016; Miltenberger et al., 2017). The context of playing games has been used to teach children specific skills and may be a valuable way to promote generalization of social skills (e.g., Amadi et al., 2022; Radley et al., 2014). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of behavioral skills training (BST) for teaching social skills to children and adolescents using a game format and assess whether these …

The Impact Of Visual Brand Identity On Consumer Response In Rebranding: A Case Study Of Burger King, Andressa De Ungaro Dos Santos

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This case study investigates consumer perceptions of rebranding through the lens of visual brand identity (VBI) and brand associations, focusing on Burger King’s recent rebranding. Using the Aaker Model as the theoretical framework, the study analyzes how brand awareness and associations influence consumer responses to visual identity changes. The research involves two focal areas in which comparative study will be applied by: (1) analyzing rebranding awareness by evaluating media coverage of Burger King’s new branding; (2) examining consumer-brand relationships through social media interactions to understand responses to the rebranding and to measure emotional and associative responses to visual elements. Through …

Exploring Saudi Arabian Teachers' Perceptions Of Smartboard Instruction For Students With Communication Disorders, Mohammed Alqahtani

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Using smartboards with students with communication needs in the classroom is one way to apply technology in educational settings. Research has shown the benefits of using the smartboard with students with disabilities (SWDs) and second-language learners. There is still a need to understand further teachers’ perceptions towards using the smartboard in their classrooms with students with communication needs. Therefore, I conducted an exploratory qualitative study to explore Saudi teachers' perceptions regarding the use of smartboards with students with communication needs in the classroom. I collected data via in-depth interviews, smartboard screen recordings, and audio recordings of teachers’ lessons taught using …

What On Earth Are We Doing (?): A Field-Wide Exploration Of Design Courses In Tpc, Jessica L. Griffith

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explores design related courses within the field of Technical and Professional Communication (TPC) to uncover programmatic trends in undergraduate courses at a field wide level. This applied study uses a mixed methods approach to understand the following questions: what do the range of design courses look like in the field of TPC, how are these courses taught, and what would an effective design course look like? To answer these questions, this study uses a mix of three types of data: (1) institutional data on courses, (2) interviews with faculty and administrators who have taught (or are currently teaching) …

Feasibility Of A Virtual Group Nutrition Intervention For Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Acadia W. Buro

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Background: Youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have an increased likelihood of being overweight or developing obesity. As children and adolescents with ASD exhibit problematic eating behaviors and may consume more energy-dense foods and fewer fruits and vegetables than typically developing youth, nutrition represents a modifiable obesity risk factor for adolescents with ASD, yet there is a lack of interventions to improve healthy eating and reduce the risk of obesity in this population.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of a virtual implementation of BALANCE (Bringing Adolescent Learners with Autism Nutrition …

The Influence Of Hate Speech On Tiktok On Chinese College Students, Tengyue Chen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the research is whether Chinese college students' attitudes to hate speech and hate speech censorship systems will be affected by the hate speech in TikTok. Meanwhile, the research could explore the third-person effect of hate speech on TikTok on Chinese college students. An online survey was designed for this research. 658 participants who are college students in China completed the online survey. The results showed that Chinese college students believed hate speech on TikTok would affect themselves, while others will affect less by hate speech. The results also stated that the attitude toward the censorship system affects …

Establishing Topological Data Analysis: A Comparison Of Visualization Techniques, Tanmay J. Kotha

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

When visualizing data, we would like to convey both the data and the uncertainty associated with it. There are many incentives to do this, ranging from hurricane path projection to geographical surveys. Important decision making tasks rely upon humans perceiving a clear picture of the data and having confidence in their decisions. Topological Data Analysis has the potential to visualize the data as features or hierarchies in ways that are familiar to human intuition, and thus could help us convey the variation associated with uncertainty.

In this thesis, we evaluate four visualization techniques: color maps, isocontours, Reeb graphs, and persistence …

Digital Stories Students Tell: An Exploration Of Doctoral Sla Students’ Beliefs About Storytelling And Educational Technology, Patrick Mannion

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Educational technology (ET) plays a major role in second/foreign (L2) language teaching and learning. Some factors influencing the ways in which teachers employ ET in L2 education are the teachers’ personal beliefs about how teachers and students should use ET to learn target languages. To develop a better understanding of influences on L2 teachers’ ET-related subjective positions, a need exists to explore the ET-related perceptions and beliefs of current and future teacher educators who are, or will be, responsible for the design and implementation of curricula and learning activities in teacher education programs. In these teacher education programs, future teachers …

An Analytical Approach To Information And Communication Technologies, Sahir Hismiogullari

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The twentieth century was a century of scientific and technological development. Especially the fact of information and communication technologies, beyond being a technological leap, has led to different levels of development and changes / transformations. Therefore, developments, possibilities, changes and problems emerging in the Internet and other digital contexts have attracted the attention of communication scientists, sociologists, historians and philosophers, and have become a field of research that leads to interdisciplinary studies. Along with the mass media developed for the last two centuries (from the spread of newspapers to the invention of the internet), every social development or transformation is …

9/11 Then And Now: How The Performance Of Memorial Rhetoric By Presidents Changes To Construct Heroes, Kristen M. Grafton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study is concerned with American presidential rhetoric at the cross-section of hero rhetoric and memorial address. It analyzes presidential memorialization of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. 9/11 is arguably the most significant tragedy in recent American history. The purpose of this study is to identify the type of hero each president since 9/11 has attempted to construct of himself for the public and discuss the rationale behind that hero construction. To complete this objective, I analyze the second 9/11 memorial speech from the presidencies of Bush, Obama, and Trump for hero construction. A close reading examining the …

Experiences Of Using Intelligent Virtual Assistants By Visually Impaired Students In Online Higher Education, Michele R. Forbes

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In today’s world, the attainment of higher education impacts the acquisition of competitive employment and, thus, quality of life. As a group, persons with disabilities continually fall behind others in such academic progress, requiring new efforts to support their earning of advanced credentials. Though highly beneficial for these individuals, obtaining a degree comes with elevated levels of stress. As enrollment of students with disabilities grows in all formats of higher education, those involved must understand the stress endured by these students and how to diminish it. Theories speculate that technology, such as intelligent virtual assistants, may be a viable tool …

Right-Wing, Nationalist Discourses And Counter-Discourses On Twitter During The European Migrant Crisis, Ramona Kreis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examines right-wing, nationalist-conservative discourses on Twitter. Specifically, this study explores the features of right-wing discourses and counter-discourses in the context of the European migrant crisis in 2015 and the terrorist attack in Berlin, Germany, in 2016. Informed by critical discourse analysis and multimodal discourse analysis, the analysis focuses on discursive strategies and semiotic and multimodal resources found in tweets that either endorse or challenge anti-refugee stances during the aforementioned time frames. Additionally, this study explores to what extent the platform-specific technological affordances facilitate dialogic interaction between users who express right-wing opinions and users who challenge right-wing discourses.

The …

Objectification Of Women In Bollywood Item Numbers, Zahabia Z. Slatewala

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Although sexual objectification is commonplace in media culture, music videos provide the most potent examples of it. The current investigation makes an important contribution to the relevant literature regarding the objectification of women in song lyrics while simultaneously broadening the content used to assess objectification. It reflects the ways of objectification of women in India by analyzing Bollywood rap and item songs. Based on objectification theory, one of the primary goals in the present study was to measure differences between visual and behavioral sexual objectification, drawing on theoretically derived indicators of sexual objectification. It also concentrated on measuring the change …

Curating Illustrations Of Lewis Carroll’S Alice’S Adventures In Wonderland, Lindsay Persohn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the 150 years since Lewis Carroll and John Tenniel (1865/1866) first published Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, various illustrators have found inspiration in this story to recreate its images again and again. Since Carroll and Tenniel, Wonderland has concerned itself with sociocultural ideas and the work of artists who re-illustrated this story provide ways to trace history of these ideas.

Accordingly, the purpose of this project was to examine connections and breaks with tradition in illustration that contribute to an evolution of meaning in the Wonderland story. Additionally, through this project, I worked to interpret ideas from different artists in …

Constructing Health Narratives: Patient Feedback In Online Communities, Katie Lynn Walkup

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project examines user-generated health narratives through corpus analysis of 246 reviews posted on Midwestern Hospital’s Yelp page. Understanding how different stakeholders act and interact within online health communities models a shift in new conceptions of health, and provides evidence of health ecologies’ ability to determine patient perceptions of care. Documents produced by users in these health communities represent health narratives comprised of a user’s health experience, that user’s treatment perceptions, and the community’s perceptions of the user’s experience. Author uses corpus methods to interpret user trace data and rhetorical moves embedded in health narratives. Findings suggest that users who …

From Portraits To Selfies: Family Photo-Making Rituals, Krystal M. Bresnahan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

From family-style portraits to selfies, who is photographer and/or photographed varies as families engage, stage, and interpret the visual. How families participate in photo-making changes how individual family members feel about and relate to not only their photographs, but also each other. In this dissertation, I examine photographs as visual and material objects, and include the communication processes and ritual practices of producing, consuming, curating, viewing, and circulating these photos. By framing family photo-making as ritual, I explore how families do photo-making in everyday life, and identify the patterns of choice embedded in the genre of family photography, which symbolically …

Instattack: Instagram And Visual Ad Hominem Political Arguments, Sophia Evangeline Gourgiotis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this project is to examine the visual political ad hominem arguments used on Instagram during the 2016 presidential campaign. Using Walton’s (2007) five subtypes of ad hominem arguments, this study analyzes the “attack ads” posted on Instagram from five of the 2016 presidential candidates into each subtype. This project seeks to understand how ad hominem arguments within political rhetoric function when they are visual. This study uses Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) theory of modality and Rose’s (2012) compositional interpretation to analyze compositional structure of the image and parallels this analysis with ad hominem subtypes.

Findings reveal …

Drop, Cover, And Hold On: Analyzing Fema's Risk Communication Through Visual Rhetoric, Samantha Jo Cosgrove

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project seeks to understand the relationship between visual rhetoric and power structure between FEMA’s Earthquake publications and their audience. Research shows images leave a longer impression on readers than text, causing more studies to focus on visuals rather than just text in technical communication. Author uses Critical Discourse Analysis to analyze the images in relation to text, design, and intended audience to determine what information is being privileged. It is determined that homeowners are being privileged with information over non-homeowners, established through a collection of images and image types. The lack of information for non-homeowners could result in injury …

A New Materialist Approach To Visual Rhetoric In Photoshopbattles, Jonathan Paul Ray

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this project is to examine the visual rhetoric of one online community. Drawing heavily from the work of Laurie Gries (2015), I track the evolution of an image as it circulates through a forum of photo manipulators in the group “PhotoShopBattles.” While Gries’ work traced the evolution of the iconic Obama Hope poster and its iterations in various media, this project restricts its observations to the images posted to one webpage, focusing on one evolutionary chain. By narrowing the focus to one internet forum page that evolved over the course of one week, we can observe linear …

Subtext Of Decisions: Literacy Practices In The Context Of Coding, Julia Hagge

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation I present findings from a qualitative case study of five early adolescents engaged in an online programming community. As a researcher, I was interested in how early adolescents designed digital media as they learned how to code within an online programming community known as Scratch. My research was guided by two questions: (1) What are the literacy practices and processes embedded in the design and collaboration of products created within an online programming community? (2) In what ways do participants make decisions in the design of their projects created in Scratch? The data collected for …

Application Of Spatial And Descriptive Analysis Methods To Determine Relationship Between Hardware Subsidies And The Sanitation Marketplace, Danielle Devuyst

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Sanitation marketing is an emerging approach of strengthening the local private sector to implement scalable and sustainable improved sanitation coverage in developing countries, specifically among the poor. It encourages the enhancement of sanitation market supply and demand by developing distribution infrastructure and stimulating consumer interest. Unlike interventions that provide hardware subsidies to initiate sanitation demand, financial support for sanitation marketing is used exclusively for the research and development of the market; this encourages the private sector to become independent and self-sufficient. Qualitative data suggests that while sanitation marketing projects have been successful at implementing replicable and sustainable sanitation coverage, they …

Exploratory Study Of Counseling Professionals’ Attitudes Toward Distance Clinical Supervision, Brittani Fiore Munchel

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Many forms of distance clinical supervision (DCS) have been used in the last decade, but a sparse amount of research addressing (DCS) in counselor education exists to date. The author used random and snowball sampling to survey American Counseling Association members, with a analytic sample total of 96 participants. In the sample, 54.2% of participants were licensed counseling professionals and 39.6% were student or post-masters level interns. The average participant age was 43, ranging from 23 to 74 years. Participants had a mean of 8.1 years of experience. A total of 37.5% of participants had used DCS at some point …

Generalized Conditional Matching Algorithm For Ordered And Unordered Sets, Ravikiran Krishnan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Designing generalized data-driven distance measures for both ordered and unordered set data is the core focus of the proposed work. An ordered set is a set where time-linear property is maintained when distance between pair of temporal segments. One application in the ordered set is the human gesture analysis from RGBD data. Human gestures are fast becoming the natural form of human computer interaction. This serves as a motivation to modeling, analyzing, and recognition of gestures. The large number of gesture categories such as sign language, traffic signals, everyday actions and also subtle cultural variations in gesture classes makes gesture …

Communication As Yoga, Kristen Caroline Blinne

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I am in conversation with the following questions: How can individuals and communities teach and learn to engage more peacefully, nonviolently, and compassionately with each other? Further, how can one practice a style of communication that helps at least one person suffer less each day? In asking these questions, my goal has been to imagine as well as attempt to actualize a world where individuals and communities work together to create less suffering in each other's lives by first developing compassionate awareness of our interconnectedness, then "waking up" not only to our own divinity but also to …

The Relationship Between Attitudes And Perspectives Of American Sign Language University Students Towards Deaf People, Beth Lilessie Cagle Brightman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

N/A

Understanding Involuntary Job Loss Among Former Newspaper Staff Photographers, Ryan K. Morris

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examines former newspaper photographers' experience with being laid-off from their staff positions. The purpose was to identify emerging themes within the context of involuntary job loss, job satisfaction, and occupational identity via interviews with 8 photojournalists who experienced the phenomenon of being laid-off. The newspaper industry has long been considered both the starting point for young and aspiring photojournalism careers and the most consistent and stable venue for an income. Yet recent changes in the media landscape, particularly economic stress on traditional business models and rapid adoption of digital technology sway the occupational future of photojournalism within newsrooms. …

Global Csr And Photographic Credibility: Exploring How International Companies Portray Efforts Through Photographs In Csr Reports, Janel Lynn Norton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

We are living in the age of the visual. Imagery is an important element in constructing and deriving meaning through symbols, colors, and context. Images may hold persuasive power, be used as evidence, or simply provide a moment of beauty. Organizations rely on photographs to help them convey an image to their stakeholders within annual reports. Telling an organizations' story through photographs has become an intrinsic part of their efforts to convey sustainability. We live in the age of transparency, and organizations that construct an image that is not truthful will face consequences in today's socially connected and conscious world. …

"Are We Supposed To Be The Guy On The Horse?" A Case Study On The Use Of Political Cartoons In The American History Classroom, James Manuel Duran

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recent reports on the media saturation experienced by the twenty-first century student have brought about an increased interest in focusing attention on the issue of visual literacy in today's schools. Concepts such as instructional personalization, where approaches to curriculum design and instruction are created to concentrate on the individual strengths of the learner, have been promoted by some as a path to improving overall student performance. Many believe that the content of the Social Studies classroom easily lends itself to a visually stimulating approach and as such is an ideal laboratory to test hypotheses on such an approach. This study …

Kinematic And Experimental Evaluation Of Commercial Wheelchair-Mounted Robotic Arms, John William Capille Jr.

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Commercially available wheelchair-mounted robotic arms (WMRAs) are becoming more prevalent internationally but have yet to be largely developed and approved by the Food and Drug Administration in the United States. The purpose of this study was to experimentally evaluate commercially available WMRAs in a controlled test environment. The goal was to quantitatively compare each device through a standardized testing protocol. The study produced theoretical manipulability measurements as well as efficacy ratings of each device based on Denavit-Hartenberg kinematic parameters and physical testing, respectively. Both the manipulator and control devices of WMRA systems were evaluated. The iARM WMRA system was presented …

Re-Tooling An American Metropolis, Robert Shawn Hott

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Re-tool:

v.tr. re-tooled, re-tooling, re-tools

1. To fit out (a factory, for example) with a new set of machinery and tools for making a different product.

2. To revise and reorganize, especially for the purpose of updating or improving.

The American ideals inherent in the suburbs are the promise of space, affordability, convenience, and traditional family life; conversely the public realms of the suburban typology become disconnected from each other as well as the larger city. The Generic City condition in which the periphery is no longer captivated by the center from which it was created is pervasive in the …