Digital Commons Network^™

The Relationship Between Executive Coaching And Organizational Performance Of Female Executives As A Predictor For Organizational Success, Lily Benavides

Doctoral Dissertations

unavailable

Educators As Adult Learners Creating Sustainable Community Development Through Solicitude And Care For The Other : Critical Inquiry In Northern California And North East Thailand, Patricia G. Perez

Doctoral Dissertations

unavailable

Creating And Living Authentic Lives : Finding Ourselves In The Midst Of Everydayness, John Jong Ho Lee

Doctoral Dissertations

unavailable

Memory, Promise, And Imagination In Iraqi Kurdistan : Leadership In Education Policy Development, Jessica Lynn Jastad

Doctoral Dissertations

unavailable

The Effect Of Instruction In Orthographic Conventions And Morphological Features On The Reading Fluency And Comprehension Skills Of High-School Freshmen, Alicia Roberts Frank

Doctoral Dissertations

unavailable

The Effect Of Responsiveness To Intervention Tier 2 On Underachieving Students In Vocabulary Development At The Secondary Level, Elizabeth Gail Kirby

Doctoral Dissertations

unavailable

The Impact Of The “Universal Voyager Literacy” Reading Program On Reading Achievement And Instructional Practices In An Urban School District, Shanika L. Hope

Theses and Dissertations in Urban Studies

Founded in 1994, Voyager Expanded Learning is a provider of K-3 in-school reading programs, as well as K-8 reading intervention programs for school districts throughout the United States. Voyager Universal Literacy's systematic, precise framework fully addresses the five elements of reading instruction, through an explicit succession of ability growth. Voyager Universal Literacy was developed to be a comprehensive program encompassing the subsequent requisites: in-school broad reading program, progress monitoring methods, extensive-day and summer activities, home learning syllabus, implementation monitoring, and on-going professional development. Voyager Universal Literacy Program activities are organized to provide a thorough range and progression for reading instruction. …

Japanese Students' Autonomy In Learning English As A Foreign Language In Out-Of-School Settings, Kimiyoshi Inomata

Doctoral Dissertations

unavailable

A Truism With Attitude: The Tenth Amendment In Constitutional Context, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

The Tenth Amendment is caught in a crossfire hurricane. From one direction, it is dismissed as "but a truism"' with no significant constitutional function. From another direction, its unassuming language- "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people" 2-has inspired Byzantine doctrines concerning such matters as federal commandeering of state institutions,3 conditions on federal spending programs implemented by states,4 and federal regulation of state governmental institutions. 5 The Tenth Amendment thus appears to be either the constitutional equivalent of a …

Object Detection And Classification With Applications To Skin Cancer Screening, Jonathan Blackledge, Dmitryi Dubovitskiy

Articles

This paper discusses a new approach to the processes of object detection, recognition and classification in a digital image. The classification method is based on the application of a set of features which include fractal parameters such as the Lacunarity and Fractal Dimension. Thus, the approach used, incorporates the characterisation of an object in terms of its texture.

The principal issues associated with object recognition are presented which includes two novel fast segmentation algorithms for which C++ code is provided. The self-learning procedure for designing a decision making engine using fuzzy logic and membership function theory is also presented and …

Trips Down Memory Lane: Recall Direction Affects The Subjective Distance Of Past Events, Kent C.H. Lam

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The subjective temporal distance of a past event—how close or far away it feels—is influenced by numerous factors apart from actual time. The present studies extend research on subjective distance by exploring the experience of remembering autobiographical events as part of a stream of related events. It is proposed that a key determinant of subjective distance is the temporal direction in which events are recalled. Five experiments supported the hypothesis that people feel closer to a target event when they recall a stream of related events in a backward direction (i.e., a reverse-chronological order ending with the target event) rather …

Harding University Graduate School Of Religion 2008-2009 Catalog, Harding University

Harding Academic Catalogs

Academic catalog for the graduate program in Bible and religion.

Social And Cultural Diversity In Distance Education, Charlotte Nirmalani Gunawardena, Deborah Lapointe

University Libraries & Learning Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

With the expansion of global telecommunication networks and the worldwide demand for higher education, distance education has the potential to reach out internationally to enhance learning for diverse learners and increase intercultural awareness and communication. By definition, distance education is borderless (Latchem, 2005), although differences in sociocultural contexts, values and expectations of diverse educational systems and learners may prove to be its greatest challenge (Hanna, 2000). While distance education programs proclaim an international focus with international content and learners, instructional design and methods frequently carry Eurocentric Western bias. Distance educators need to be sensitive to social, cultural and educational differences, …

Preparing Instructors Of Adult Learners To Address The Needs Of Minority Students, Travell Unique Brock

Graduate Research Papers

In predominately Caucasian educational systems, diversity in the classroom is becoming a fast-growing phenomenon. With this new phenomenon, adult instructors now have a new challenge of facilitating learning in an environment where the learners not only have different learning capabilities, but also language and cultural differences. The reviewer answers the following questions: what are the important considerations for instructors to prepare diverse adult learners for corporate work environments, higher education, and K-12 professional development? And what are the appropriate cultural specific media and literature resources to include in training?

The literature collected focused on resources related to teaching adult minority …

Enhancing Special Educators' Knowledge And Understanding Of Hiv/Aids, Mary Anne Prater, Nancy M. Sileo, Thomas W. Sileo

Faculty Publications

HIV/AIDS continues to spread among children, youth, and young adults across all racial, ethnic, and cultural populations, including those with disabilities. This article considers information on HIV/AIDS such as individuals' health-risk behaviors, environmental circumstances, and perceptions that may contribute to HIV-infection; how disability characteristics, and cultural traits and values impact school-based HIV/AIDS prevention programs; and, culturally competent instructional considerations that acknowledge these variables.

Danish Language And The Church, Robert A. Olsen

The Bridge

The first documented account of a Danish language church service on American soil were those conducted by the Rev. Rasmus Jensen, a Danish Pastor who was part of the Jens Munk led expedition of 1619-1620 to find the Northwest Passage to the Orient. Munk's diary states "We celebrated the Holy Christmas Day solemnly, as is a Christian's duty, with a goodly sermon and a mass. After the sermon we gave the priest an offering .... "1 Unfortunately only Munk and two of his 64 men who embarked on this journey survived the winter and returned home, thus resulting in no …

Aging Effects On The Transcription Of Differentially Impaired Dysarthric Speech, Molly Anne Duggan

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Thirty participants transcribed 60 words and 30 sentences spoken by persons with dysarthria. Participants, all aged 65 and older were divided into three age groups: Young-Old, Middle-Old, and Old-Old. Each group was comprised of 10 participants. Stimuli were recorded by two male speakers with differing severity levels of dysarthria. Results suggested age did affect the transcription scores, as the Young-Old participants were able to transcribe words and sentences with greater accuracy than the Old-Old participants. The severity of the dysarthric speaker also affected the accuracy of participants in transcribing their words and sentences. Utterances produced by the speaker with mild …

Child–Adult Differences In Second-Language Phonological Learning: The Role Of Cross-Language Similarity, Wendy Baker-Smemoe, Pavel Trofimovich, James E. Flege, Molly Mack, Randall Halter

Faculty Publications

This study evaluated whether age effects on second language (L2) speech learning derive from changes in how the native language (L1) and L2 sound systems interact. According to the “interaction hypothesis” (IH), the older the L2 learner, the less likely the learner is able to establish new vowel categories needed for accurate L2 vowel production and perception because, with age, L1 vowel categories become more likely to perceptually encompass neighboring L2 vowels. These IH predictions were evaluated in two experiments involving 64 native Korean- and English-speaking children and adults. Experiment 1 determined, as predicted, that the Korean children were less …

Word Recognition Materials For Native Speakers Of Taiwan Mandarin, Shawn L. Nissen, Richard W. Harris, Alycia Dukes

Faculty Publications

Purpose: To select, digitally record, evaluate, and psychometrically equate word recognition materials that can be used to measure the speech perception abilities of native speakers of Taiwan Mandarin in quiet. Method: Frequently used bisyllabic words produced by male and female talkers of Taiwan Mandarin were digitally recorded and subsequently evaluated using 20 native listeners with normal hearing at 10 intensity levels (–5 to 40 dB HL) in increments of 5 dB. Results: Using logistic regression, 200 words with the steepest psychometric slopes were divided into 4 lists and 8 half-lists that were relatively equivalent in psychometric function slope. To increase …

Acoustic Characteristics Of English Lexical Stress Produced By Native Mandarin Speakers, Shawn L. Nissen, Yanhong Zhang, Alexander L. Francis

Faculty Publications

Native speakers of Mandarin Chinese have difficulty producing native-like English stress contrasts. Acoustically, English lexical stress is multidimensional, involving manipulation of fundamental frequency F0, duration, intensity and vowel quality. Errors in any or all of these correlates could interfere with perception of the stress contrast, but it is unknown which correlates are most problematic for Mandarin speakers. This study compares the use of these correlates in the production of lexical stress contrasts by 10 Mandarin and 10 native English speakers. Results showed that Mandarin speakers produced significantly less native-like stress patterns, although they did use all four acoustic correlates to …

Artefacts, Technicity And Humanisation Industrial Design And The Problem Of Anoetic Technologies, Stephen James Thompson

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

This thesis concerns the intellectual heritage and autonomy of West European and American industrial design as a discourse community at a moment when biotechnological developments are challenging the certainty of what it means to be human. Proceeding from the assumption that industrial design is an autonomous intellectual engagement played out through the interpretation of technology as an artefact, the thesis identifies how this is a critical moment for industrial designers, who appear to be unable to respond to a problem of the apparent disconnection and the progressive displacement of the human in reference to technology. The thesis identifies the cause …

Multi-Modal Task Instructions To Robots By Naive Users, Joerg Christian Wolf

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

This thesis presents a theoretical framework for the design of user-programmable robots. The objective of the work is to investigate multi-modal unconstrained natural instructions given to robots in order to design a learning robot. A corpus-centred approach is used to design an agent that can reason, learn and interact with a human in a natural unconstrained way. The corpus-centred design approach is formalised and developed in detail. It requires the developer to record a human during interaction and analyse the recordings to find instruction primitives. These are then implemented into a robot. The focus of this work has been on …

Linguatag: An Emotional Speech Analysis Application, Charlie Cullen, Brian Vaughan, Spyros Kousidis

Conference papers

The analysis of speech, particularly for emotional content, is an open area of current research. Ongoing work has developed an emotional speech corpus for analysis, and defined a vowel stress method by which this analysis may be performed. This paper documents the development of LinguaTag, an open source speech analysis software application which implements this vowel stress emotional speech analysis method developed as part of research into the acoustic and linguistic correlates of emotional speech. The analysis output is contained within a file format combining SMIL and SSML markup tags, to facilitate search and retrieval methods within an emotional speech …

C-Saw---Contextual Semantic Alignment Of Ontologies: Using Negative Semantic Reinforcement, Brendan Tierney, Mike Jackson

Conference papers

Understanding the meaning of each term in an ontology is essential for successfully integrating and aligning ontologies. Much ontology integration research to date is focused on syntactic, structural and semantic matching where the actual meaning of the concepts is disregarded. The C-SAW approach to ontology alignment is based on the Contextualizing the concepts by using a set of Semantic Alignment Words (C-SAW). The C-SAW approach is enhanced by Negative Semantic Reinforcement (NSR), where additional semantic meaning can be added to the set of Semantic Alignment Words, by considering words which are unrelated to the concept.

Modeling Motor Pattern Generation In The Development Of Infant Speech Production, Is Howard, P Messum

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

We previously proposed a non-imitative account of learning to pronounce, implemented computationally using discovery and mirrored interaction with a caregiver. Our model used an infant vocal tract synthesizer and its articulators were driven by a simple motor system. During an initial phase, motor patterns develop that represent potentially useful speech sounds. To increase the realism of this model we now include some of the constraints imposed by speech breathing. We also implement a more sophisticated motor system. Firstly, this can independently control articulator movement over different timescales, which is necessary to effectively control respiration as well as prosody. Secondly, we …

Comparing The Effects Of Sung Versus Spoken Lyrics On Speech And Language Acquisition In Late-Talking Toddlers, Chelsea Ki Sook Clock Bell

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The purpose of this study was to explore the use of two intervention approaches with children who are delayed in their development of expressive language (i.e. "late talkers"). Identification and intervention for late talkers is often controversial. This study examined whether music therapy has an equal or greater effect on speech and language acquisition in two toddlers with late-developing speech and expressive language when compared to a literacy-based intervention involving storybook reading. The use of storybook reading in speech and language therapy has been examined and found successful when used with children with communication disorders. However additional research is needed …

Give ‘Em Hill: The Fighter Persona In Hillary Clinton’S 2008 Presidential Campaign, Rebecca Diane Buel

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Hillary Clinton announced her intentions to form a presidential exploratory committee on January 20, 2007. The campaign that followed this announcement was complicated by the many existing images created by Hillary Clinton's many years in the public eye. Throughout these many years, Hillary Clinton struggled to establish voter identification, and was frequently the subject of public criticism, rendering many existing images negative. Furthermore, she served in a variety of roles: governor's wife, first lady, senator, and most recently presidential candidate. Because of the conflicting data resulting from Hillary Clinton's negative publicity and her many roles, her presidential campaign faced a …

Respiratory Kinematics Of Adult Males During Graded Listening Tasks, Laura Lerette Gingrich

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Covert speech movements have been observed to increase with linguistic complexity during listening tasks. This study investigated the presence of covert respiratory movements during listening tasks of increasing complexity to answer the following research questions: 1. Do normal adult male listeners aged fifty and above without central nervous system injury change from rest breathing patterns to speech breathing patterns while listening to passages of increasing complexity; 2. Is there a greater shift towards speech breathing while listening to passages of greater complexity? Chest wall kinematics often male participants were obtained and analyzed for significant changes from rest breathing during four …

Western Images In African Media: A Semiotic Investigation Of Three Nigerian-Made Films, Terence Ebi Ekiseh

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This study makes a critical analysis of the portrayal of Western images in African-made films as represented in three selected Nigerian home-made movies. In other words, the study seeks to find out how images of Western European and North American cultures are portrayed in African films. The three films selected for the study are Spirit cf Love, Market Seller, and One Dollar. The films were selected on the basis of their popularity among Nigerian film audiences. They were also selected because they are recent, and are produced by renowned Nigerian filmmakers. The study utilized qualitative method to achieve its objective. …

Web-Based Service Exchange System For Agents And Humans Alike, Evens Jean, Machigar Ongtang, A. R. Hurson

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Semantic Web research aims at bridging the gap between how humans and agents process information readily available on the Internet. One of the great challenges to this goal lies in the fact that humans, contrary to agents, can extract the meaning of words based on its context. This work introduces a service exchange system for the Web that allows agents to intelligently process information, as would humans. This is achieved by the use of thesauri to help agents resolve semantic heterogeneity in the information being processed. The framework for the exchange system has been realized under the aglet platform on …