Digital Commons Network^™

Predicting College Success: An Analysis Of Graduating Students At The University Of Texas-Pan American, Esther G. Herrera

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Using inferential statistics, this thesis examines whether college experiences, pre-college experiences, and the institutional factors affect college success at the University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg, Texas. Secondary data were used from the Graduating Student Survey administered by the Office of Institutional Research and Effectiveness at the University of Texas-Pan American for the years 2008-2009, 2009-2010, and 2010-2011. The findings indicate that college experiences do have an effect on college success (significant at .05 p-value); job after graduation serves as a better predictor of college success than competency; institutional factors also have a significant effect on college success, especially in …

Remediation In Mathematics: A Factor In The Retention Of Entering Freshmen At A Hispanic Serving Institution, Rolinda May Pena-Park

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Many institutions of higher education face a common challenge - retaining students in a time when higher education is of most importance as students must be prepared to compete in today's fast growing global market. Students are dropping out of college at an alarming rate due to the lack of academic readiness. The main area of academic deficiency is in the area of mathematics (National Center for Education Statistics, 2006). The purposes of this qualitative multiple case study were to explore the effectiveness of remediation courses in mathematics and identify the factors that influence success or failure of Hispanic students …

Effective Use Of Interactive Learning Modules In Classroom Study For Computer Science Education, Goldee Jamwal

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is spending substantial resources to improve science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education in the United States. The ultimate goal of these programs is to produce students with a better knowledge of math and science and who are more likely to pursue careers in STEM fields. Interactive learning modules can be used in the classroom environment for effective learning.

This study examines the learning preferences of Logan High School (located in Logan, Utah) students and evaluates the impacts of using interactive learning modules with classroom lectures compared to other traditional methods of teaching.

Behavioral Life-Cycle Models Under Alternative Demographic Regimes, Timothy F. Harris

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Social security in the United States will encounter financial strains due to an aging population. The decreasing worker to retiree ratio will reduce retirement benefits relative to today’s benefits so long as the tax rate and eligibility age are not altered. Policy makers assume that they should make policies to maintain the current benefit levels.

In contrast to this assumption, this paper does not presume that policy makers should preserve current benefits. An analysis of the required tax rate to maintain lifetime utility across the current and future demographic regimes is undertaken rather than just a calculation of the tax …

Winter 2012 E-Certi Newsletter, Center For Educational Research And Teaching Innovation

CAFE Faculty Newsletters

Hello S&T instructors: Another semester has rushed by at nano speed! Don’t forget to take a moment to enjoy what you have accomplished, as well as the accomplishments of some of your colleagues, which are highlighted in this issue. Also check out tips for handling interruptions and increasing class participation in discussion, as well as a feature on Dr. Martin Bohner.

Incentive Based Approach To Find Selfish Nodes In Mobile P2p Networks, Hemanth Meka, Sanjay K. Madria, Mark Linderman

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

In a Mobile P2P (M-P2P) network, selfish nodes can drop packets to affect the efficiency of the whole network. Therefore, we propose a simple and efficient mechanism using virtual currency to identify selfish nodes in the network. Each node issues a receipt to its broker to prove that it has provided a forwarding service. based on receipts received each broker provides well-behaved nodes some virtual currency whereas selfish nodes are punished on dropping packets to make the network more efficient. When compared to other known approaches, our scheme provides real-time detection of selfish nodes and does not require/assume the presence …

Exploring Compile Time Caching Of Explicit Queries In Programming Codes, Venkata Krishna Suhas Nerella, Sanjay Madria, Thomas Weigert

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Object oriented programming languages raised the level of abstraction by incorporating first class query constructs explicitly in the program codes. These query constructs allow programmers to express operations over collections as object queries and also provide optimal query execution utilizing query optimization strategies from domain of databases. However, when a query is repeated in the program, it is executed afresh. This paper presents an approach to reduce the run time execution of programs involving explicit queries by caching the results of repeated queries and incrementally maintaining the cached results. We propose determination of cache entries at compile time by performing …

Decentralized Synergetic Control Of Power Systems, Taoridi Ademoye

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The objective of this dissertation is to design decentralized controllers to enhance the transient stability of power systems. Due to the nonlinearities and complexities of the system, nonlinear control design techniques are required to improve its dynamic performance. In this dissertation a synergetic control technique is being proposed to design supplementary controller that is added to the exciter of the generation unit of the system. Although this method has been previously applied to a Single Infinite Machine Bus (SMIB) system with high degree of success, it has not been employed to systems with multi machine. Also, the method has good …

Social Media Marketing - A Consumer's Perspective On What Works And What Does Not, Rakesh Tennamthotam

Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Impact Of Stress-Field Changes Induced By Hydraulic Fracturing On Subsurface Fault Stability, Qian Gao

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Hydraulic fracturing is essential for economically producing hydrocarbons from shale reservoirs, and thus has been extensively used in completion of shale gas wells. However, fracturing formations can change in-situ stresses in the surrounding areas. There are concerns that hydraulic fracturing may potentially reactivate the subsurface faults nearby the treatment wells. The reactivated faults could cause many problems, such as early aborting/failure of fracturing treatment, fluid leakage along the fault and even seismicity events.;3D numerical models are developed based on finite element method. The comparison between analytical and numerical solutions indicates an excellent agreement has been achieved, which certificates the applicability …

Civic Education In West Virginia: Guidelines And State Standards In A Case Study, Carolyn Jackson Brejwo

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Civic teachers are members of their community and are responsible for preparing their students to be future citizens. West Virginia is one of nine states that requires students to pass a class whose title includes the word "civic." All 12th grade students in the state must take a year long civic education course. The goal for the course is offered by the state in published documents. The documents lay out a course that is guided in part by the definition of civic education offered by the National Council for Social Studies (NCSS). West Virginia offers a much broader and deeper …

Evaluation Of Methods For Measuring Aggregate Specific Gravity, Rajasekhar Bikya

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The current American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) procedures for determining the aggregate specific gravities and absorption values are time consuming and hence are not appropriate for quality control processes. These methods are not repeatable too which is another issue with the standard test methods. The standard AASHTO method for fine aggregates has problems with angular and absorptive materials. Due to this problem several agencies have developed alternative methods. Correct measurement of the specific gravity and absorption play a crucial role in the design of hot mix asphalt (HMA) mixtures. Improper measurements can lead to poor asphalt …

Flexibility And Transient Dynamic Analysis Of A Slider-Crank Deployment Mechanism, Andres Cavezza

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

High Speed Deployment Mechanisms (HSDM) have become essential and indispensable for specific applications in industrial and aerospace sectors. However, the field of High Speed Deployment Mechanisms is still not completely explored in many areas; the holistic analysis of HSDM reveals a lack of information about its, classification, analysis and design considerations. A research was conducted to generate a systematic approach addressing the issues mentioned above. In the beginning of this research, a methodology is presented to perform the kinematic and dynamic analyses of a Slider-Crank Deployment Mechanism; this method is based on the Lagrange Multipliers approach. The analyses of position, …

Influence Of Teacher Qualifications, Experience, Instructional Methods, And Professional Development On Student Achievement On The Mississippi Writing Assessment In Grades Four And Seven, Stacy Kihneman Garcia

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine if teacher qualifications, experience, instructional methods, and professional development influenced student achievement on the Mississippi Writing Assessment in grades four and seven. The study was conducted in the three coastal counties of southern Mississippi. Participants were fourth or seventh grade teachers who taught in one of the eight school districts that were included in the study.

Participants were asked to provide information regarding their qualifications, amount of classroom experience, preferred instructional methods, and feelings on professional development. Also requested from each teacher was his/her classroom average on the Mississippi Writing Assessment from …

Is There A Relationship Between Ninth Grade Transitional Programs And At-Risk Student Achievement?, Susan Marie Stoddard

Dissertations

Transition into the ninth grade has long been a critical juncture for students as they make the move to a larger environment with less personal support and a more rigorous academic challenge. In an effort to help make the move from middle-to-high-school transition as smooth as possible, school districts are using Ninth Grade Academies, or innovative transitional strategies designed to address the key factors contributing to students dropping out: poor academic achievement, disengagement, and poor attendance. The purpose of the study was to determine if a statistically significant relationship existed between the type of ninth grade transitional program and at-risk …

Microstructure, Vacancies And Voids In Hydrogenated Amorphous Silicon, Rajendra Timilsina

Dissertations

This dissertation presents a theoretical and computational study of microstructure, vacancies and voids in hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H). The microstructure consists of all possible silicon-hydrogen bonding configurations such as SiH, SiH₂, SiH₃ and SiH₄. However, it is highly dominated (approximately 75% or even more) by monohydride (SiH) configurations. Furthermore, the hydrogen atoms locate in both clustered and diluted phases; as a result, the distribution becomes highly inhomogeneous. Approximately 5% of hydrogen atoms reside in a form of isolated monohydrides at the lower (7 at.%) concentration whereas such configurations do not appear at the higher concentrations …

Seeing The Chemistry Around Me – Helping Students Identify The Relevance Of Chemistry To Everyday Life, Tracy Lynn Moore

Dissertations

The study attempted to determine whether the use of a series of reading and response assignments decreased students’ perceptions of chemistry difficulty and enhanced students’ perceptions of the relevance of chemistry in their everyday lives. Informed consent volunteer students enrolled in General Chemistry II at a community college in the southeastern United States during the Spring 2012 semester participated in this study. Students were assigned to read a series of short articles that connect chemistry to a specific aspect of everyday life and then answer a series of questions for each article. Open-response research instruments (initial questionnaire and final questionnaire) …

A Time Series Analysis Method Using Hidden Variables For Gene Network Reconstruction, Xi Wu

Dissertations

The DNA microarray technology can be applied to obtain time series data which contains thousands of genes and tens of time points. When confront the great amount of data points a fast and effective method must be constructed to extract useful information. The assumption that the interactions between genes are static in the time series data is made. After made the assumption how to reconstruct those interactions becomes a difficulty problem. Since the underlying interactions between genes are complicated, which involve transcription, translation and protein-protein interaction, to construct a model from physicochemistry is almost impossible/effortless. The popular methods constructed from …

First Choice For A Second Chance: Factors Supporting Temporary Dropouts Who Re-Enroll In High School, Ralph Costen

Dissertations

The purpose was to identify what factors supported students reengaging in high school by correcting patterns of chronic absenteeism or re-enrolling in order to achieve the status of high school graduate. To identify these factors, the researcher relied on the qualitative approach of Grounded Theory as a guide to evaluate the results of the study. Nineteen students attending a traditional high school, a digital academy, or an adult education program were randomly selected from a pool of selected students who met the criteria for participation in the study. The selected students were interviewed by the researcher with questions focusing on …

Reification: A Process To Configure Java Realtime Processors, John Huddleston Heath

Dissertations

Real-time systems require stringent requirements both on the processor and the software application. The primary concern is speed and the predictability of execution times. In all real-time applications the developer must identify and calculate the worst case execution times (WCET) of their software. In almost all cases the processor design complexity impacts the analysis when calculating the WCET. Design features which impact this analysis include cache and instruction pipelining. With both cache and pipelining the time taken for a particular instruction can vary depending on cache and pipeline contents. When calculating the WCET the developer must ignore the speed advantages …

Professional Learning Communities, Self Efficacy, And Collaborative Learning In The Elementary School, Diana Provancha Sweigart

Dissertations

The United States of America used to have the best high school graduation rate in the world. However, by 2006, the U. S. was ranked 18 out of 26 among industrialized nations (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2010) with three out of every ten public school students failing to complete high school with a diploma (DuFour and Marzano, 2011). This urgent, pressing issue warrants continuing research to discover what does and does not work in educating our children. Numerous empirical and scientifically-based research studies continue to show the validity of several teaching methods; one such strategy is cooperative learning, …

An Analysis Of The Impact Of Continuous Progress Curriculum On Student Achievement, Jessica Larae Ladner Taylor

Dissertations

There has been an emphasis on educators to improve student achievement, particularly in low socioeconomic schools. The latest research encourages educators to use student data to drive instruction. The purpose of this study was to determine if using data to arrange students by academic performance improves academic achievement. A middle school in Mississippi has implemented Continuous Progress Curriculum to group students based on multiple data points. Throughout the school year, data from tests and assignments are analyzed by teachers and administrators. Based on the data, students are moved to the most appropriate performance level that will address the skills and …

Preschool Curriculum: Choices That Promote Learning, Renee Curet Criddle

Dissertations

Ongoing research has shown that preschool is beneficial not only to early childhood success, but also in providing long-term benefits (Wong, Cook, Barnett, & Jung, 2008). With standards for early childhood being generated at the national level with the announcement of the common core standards nationwide and at the state level through state-mandated early learning guidelines and benchmarks, preschools are turning to specified curriculum content and mandated outcomes for early education programs. Effects of preschool programs vary (Barnett et al., 2008) due to differences in program curriculum and method of delivery. As the knowledge and understanding of how young children …

The Effects Of Teacher Praise On Engagement And Work Completion Of Students Of Typical Development, Brandon Joseph Richard

Dissertations

The current study investigated the effects of teacher praise on engagement and work completion of students of typical development. Four students (grades two through four) and their teachers served as participants during the study. Teachers provided specific labeled praise or general praise if students met the engagement criteria while completing math worksheets. A nonconcurrent multiple baseline across participants design with a crossover element served to evaluate the differential effects of specific labeled praise or general praise for one pair of students. A concurrent multiple baseline across participants design with a crossover element was used for the remaining pair. A 10-second …

Extended Techniques And Electronic Enhancements: A Study Of Works By Ian Clarke, Christopher Leigh Davis

Dissertations

British flutist Ian Clarke is a leading performer and composer in the flute world. His works have been performed internationally and have been used in competitions given by the National Flute Association and the British Flute Society. Clarke’s compositions are also referenced in the Peters Edition of the Edexcel GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) Anthology of Music as examples of extended techniques.

The significance of Clarke’s works lies in his unique compositional style. His music features sounds and styles that one would not expect to hear from a flute and have elements that appeal to performers and broader audiences …

Mi2Β Is Required For Γ-Globin Gene Silencing: Temporal Assembly Of A Gata-1-Fog-1-Mi2 Repressor Complex In Β-Yac Transgenic Mice, Flávia C. Costa, Halyna Fedosyuk, Allen M. Chazelle, Renee Y. Neades, Kenneth R. Peterson

Faculty and Staff Publications

Activation of γ-globin gene expression in adults is known to be therapeutic for sickle cell disease. Thus, it follows that the converse, alleviation of repression, would be equally effective, since the net result would be the same: an increase in fetal hemoglobin. A GATA-1-FOG-1-Mi2 repressor complex was recently demonstrated to be recruited to the -566 GATA motif of the Aγ-globin gene. We show that Mi2β is essential for γ-globin gene silencing using Mi2β conditional knockout β-YAC transgenic mice. In addition, increased expression of Aγ-globin was detected in adult blood from β-YAC transgenic mice containing a T>G HPFH point mutation …

Identifying Causes Of Student End Of Year Transfers As Experienced At Private All-Male Military Boarding Schools: A Multiple Case Study, Frank Martin

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This study examined and helped identify causes for end-of-year transfers from private all-male military boarding schools to a non-military school. The purposes of this study were twofold. The first purpose was to identify the reasons why parents chose to transfer their sons from the all-male military private boarding school of their choice to another school from the 2009-2010 school year to the 2010-2011 school year. A secondary purpose was to identify any commonalities amongst the military schools involved in the study regarding why students returned to either their previous school or chose another school, whether public or private. The researcher …

The Impact Of Macro Socio-Economic Drivers And Fiscal Policy On Expenditure Allocation And Attribute Preferences, Anirban Mukherjee, Andre Bonfrer

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Our article investigates the effect of macro socio-economic drivers on Australian households’ allocation of expenditure in a category (household appliances) and conditional on the allocated category expenditure, preferences for products (clothes washers) within the category. At the category-level, we quantify the effect of changes in social mobility, disposable income, housing prices and the 2009 stimulus payments on purchase propensity and expenditure. At the product-level, we investigate how households trade off between price, energy efficiency and loading capacity conditional on allocated category expenditure, measuring nonhomotheticity in preferences. We use the model to study a number of hypothetical scenarios, where we simulate …

Prospect Theory Does Not Describe The Feedback-Related Negativity Value Function., Thomas D. Sambrook, Matthew Roser, Jeremy Goslin

School of Psychology

Humans handle uncertainty poorly. Prospect theory accounts for this with a value function in which possible losses are overweighted compared to possible gains, and the marginal utility of rewards decreases with size. fMRI studies have explored the neural basis of this value function. A separate body of research claims that prediction errors are calculated by midbrain dopamine neurons. We investigated whether the prospect theoretic effects shown in behavioral and fMRI studies were present in midbrain prediction error coding by using the feedback-related negativity, an ERP component believed to reflect midbrain prediction errors. Participants' stated satisfaction with outcomes followed prospect theory …

Use Of Pile Driving Analysis For Assessment Of Axial Load Capacity Of Piles, Rodrigo Salgado, Yanbei Zhang

JTRP Technical Reports

Driven piles are commonly used in foundation engineering. Pile driving formulae, which directly relate the pile set per blow to the capacity of the pile, are commonly used to decide whether an installed pile will have the designed capacity. However, existing formulae have been proposed based on empirical observations and have not been validated scientifically, so some might over-predict pile capacity, while others may be too conservative. In this report, a more advanced and realistic model developed at Purdue University for dynamic pile driving analysis was used to develop more accurate pile driving formulae. These formulae are derived for piles …