Digital Commons Network^™

A Phenomenological Study Of Ged Graduates Meeting College Readiness Standards At A Community College, Kelley Mischel Jones

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

This qualitative study was designed to understand the experiences of General Educational Development (GED) graduates enrolling into a community college. Research had not been conducted to explore the experiences of GED graduates completing the 2014 version of the exam and transitioning to college. Guided by Schlossberg's college transition theory and Bandura's theory of self-efficacy, this phenomenological study included 11 participants who described their experiences through written narratives and interviews. Participants described their experiences of being an adult education student while preparing for the exam, the steps within the GED test preparation they considered important to matriculation toward college enrollment, and …

Promoting Information Literacy Through Teacher - School Library Media Specialist Collaboration, Pamela Denise Taylor

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Schools that support collaboration between teachers and school library media specialists (SLMS) outperform those that do not. Teachers at a rural Georgia middle school were not using the library media program or being trained on how to collaborate with the SLMS to promote student achievement. Guided by Bruner's socioconstructivist theory of learning, the purpose of this descriptive case study was to investigate teachers' experiences with integrating technology and information literacy into the curriculum and to examine the collaborative services the SLMS could provide to enhance integration. Eight teachers in Grades 6th through 8th comprised the sample. Data sources included teacher …

Implementing Change: How, Why, And When Teachers Change Their Classroom Practices, Diane Beth Van Bodegraven

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Teacher implementation of school reforms varies widely and often results in inconsistent student outcomes. Teachers adopt or resist change for complex reasons that are not fully understood. This qualitative study explored how veteran teachers described their experiences with school reform and changes in classroom practices that occurred over the course of their careers; it also examined factors that teachers identified as having positive and negative influences on their adoptions of change. The conceptual framework was based on Senge's systems theory as applied to learning organizations and Goleman's emotional intelligence theory. The research questions focused on: (a) How veteran teachers described …

Marketing Strategies Of Mobile Game Application Entrepreneurs, Talaya Waller

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Mobile game application entrepreneurs can offer many benefits to the U.S. economy; however, 80% of the entrepreneurs in this study stated that marketing their mobile applications was a major business challenge. Successful strategies that entrepreneurs have used to overcome their mobile game application marketing challenges may be beneficial to other entrepreneurs. Based on Schumpeter's theory of economic development and new value creation of technological innovation, the purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the strategies that entrepreneurs have used to market their mobile game application development businesses successfully. Twenty mobile game application entrepreneurs from northern California, who successfully sustained …

Investigating The Applicability Of Macro-Level Criminology Theory To Terrorism: A County-Level Analysis, Joshua D. Freilich, Amy Adamczyk, Steven M. Chernak, Katherine A. Boyd, William S. Parkin

Publications and Research

This exploratory study examines if causal mechanisms highlighted by criminology theories work in the same way to explain both ideologically motivated violence (i.e., terrorism) and regular (non-political) homicides. We study if macro-level hypotheses drawn from deprivation, backlash, and social disorganization frameworks are associated with the likelihood that a far-right extremist who committed an ideologically motivated homicide inside the contiguous US resides in a particular county. To aid in the assessment of whether criminology theories speak to both terrorism and regular violence we also apply these hypotheses to far-right homicide and regular homicide incident location and compare the results.

Ear-Phone: A Context-Aware Noise Mapping Using Smart Phones, Rajib Rana, Chun Tung Chou, Nirupama Bulusu, Salil Kanhere, Wen Hu

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

A noise map facilitates the monitoring of environmental noise pollution in urban areas. It can raise citizen awareness of noise pollution levels, and aid in the development of mitigation strategies to cope with the adverse effects. However, state-of-the-art techniques for rendering noise maps in urban areas are expensive and rarely updated (for months or even years), as they rely on population and traffic models rather than on real data. Smart phone based urban sensing can be leveraged to create an open and inexpensive platform for rendering up-to-date noise maps. In this paper, we present the design, implementation and performance evaluation …

Desiderata For A Big Data Language, David Maier

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Data management and analytics systems for big data have proliferated, including column stores, array databases, graphanalysis environments and linear-algebra packages. This burgeoning of systems has lead to a surfeit of language and APIs. It is time to consider a new framework that can span these systems and simplify the programming and maintenance of Big Data applications. There are two key goals for such a framework:

Portability: It should be relatively easy to move an application or tool developed on one platform to operate against another. As a corollary, back-end data and analytics services should be swappable in a particular …

Needed Computations Shortcutting Needed Steps, Sergio Antoy, Jacob Johannsen, Steven Libby

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

We define a compilation scheme for a constructor-based, strongly-sequential, graph rewriting system which shortcuts some needed steps. The object code is another constructor-based graph rewriting system. This system is normalizing for the original system when using an innermost strategy. Consequently, the object code can be easily implemented by eager functions in a variety of programming languages. We modify this object code in a way that avoids total or partial construction of the contracta of some needed steps of a computation. When computing normal forms in this way, both memory consumption and execution time are reduced compared to ordinary rewriting computations …

Usage Based Topology For Dcns, Qing Yi, Suresh Singh

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Many data center network topologies are designed to provide full bisection bandwidth for tens of thousands of servers in order to achieve high network throughput and server agility. However, the utilization rate of DCNs on average is below 10%, which results in a significant waste of network resources and energy. Many researchers propose consolidating network traffic flows to maximize the set of idle network equipment and switching them to low power mode to save energy. In this paper, we propose using skinnier network topologies to meet performance requirements of realistic loads thus saving not only energy but capital cost as …

A Demonstration Of The Bigdawg Polystore System, Aaron J. Elmore, Jennie Duggan, Michael Stonebraker, Magdalena Balazinska, Ugur Cetintemel, Vijay Gadepally, J. Heer, Bill Howe, Jeremy Kepner, Tim Kraska, Samuel Madden, David Maier, Timothy G. Mattson, S. Papadopoulos, J. Parkhurst, Nesime Tatbul, Manasi Vartak, Stan Zdonik

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper presents BigDAWG, a reference implementation of a new architecture for “Big Data” applications. Such applications not only call for large-scale analytics, but also for real-time streaming support, smaller analytics at interactive speeds, data visualization, and cross-storage-system queries. Guided by the principle that “one size does not fit all”, we build on top of a variety of storage engines, each designed for a specialized use case. To illustrate the promise of this approach, we demonstrate its effectiveness on a hospital application using data from an intensive care unit (ICU). This complex application serves the needs of doctors and researchers …

Query From Examples: An Iterative, Data-Driven Approach To Query Construction, Hao Li, Chee-Yong Chan, David Maier

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this paper, we propose a new approach, called Query from Examples (QFE), to help non-expert database users construct SQL queries. Our approach, which is designed for users who might be unfamiliar with SQL, only requires that the user is able to determine whether a given output table is the result of his or her intended query on a given input database. To kick-start the construction of a target query Q, the user first provides a pair of inputs: a sample database D and an output table R which is the result of Q on D. As there will be …

Demonstrating "Data Near Here": Scientific Data Search, Veronika Margaret Megler, David Maier

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Prior work proposed "Data Near Here" (DNH), a data search engine for scientific archives that is modeled on Internet search engines. DNH performs a periodic, asynchronous scan of each dataset in an archive, extracting lightweight features that are combined to form a dataset summary. During a search, DNH assesses the similarity of the search terms to the summary features and returns to the user, at interactive timescales, a ranked list of datasets for further exploration and analysis. We will demonstrate the search capabilities and ancillary metadata-browsing features for an archive of observational oceanographic data. While comparing search terms to complete …

The Simple Gospel, Vol. 2, Bishop H.C. Morrison

Heritage Material

No abstract provided.

That's Unfair! Or Is It? Big Data, Discrimination And The Ftc's Unfairness Authority, Dennis D. Hirsch

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Privacy And Health Information: The United States And The European Union, Leslie Francis

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Weight Management Counseling And Obesity Severity In Children With Special Health Care Needs, Adeola Sonaike

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Epidemiologic surveillance indicates an increased susceptibility to obesity among children with special health care needs (SHCN) in comparison to children without. The present study investigated this disparity in weight severity between both groups, with a focus on the provision of obesity management counseling by physicians. This study consisted of a retrospective medical record review that acknowledged the effect of patient-provider interactions on health behaviors and risk perceptions. An independent sample t test compared the incidence of clinician-initiated obesity management counseling received by children with SHCN to that which was received by children without SHCN. This t test revealed a statistically …

Place-Making, Mobility, And Identity: The Politics And Poetics Of Urban Mass Rapid Systems In Taiwan, Anru Lee

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Content Analysis Of Archetypal Portrayal Of Females In Picture Books Read In Preschool Classrooms, Karen Lynn Ellefsen

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Literature that depicts females in restrictive roles may limit girls' aspirations and success. Previous studies of award-winning books for young children have found gender-stereotypical role portrayal to be common. The purpose of this qualitative content analysis was to identify the archetypal roles assigned to female characters in picture books read aloud by teachers in the preschool classroom. The conceptual framework for this study was derived from feminist theory and Jungian archetypes. Data were collected in the form of teachers' logs of books they read aloud over a 2-week period. Data were analyzed by employing the 3-read method developed by Madsen, …

An Examination Of Social Support, Contentment With Life And Time Spent In An Assisted Living Setting., Rebecca Esliker

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Policies at assisted living facilities should be designed to develop high quality social relationships among older persons that could increase the contentment of the residents. Despite the broad consensus on this mission, the role of social support in the perceived contentment of assisted living facility residents has not been adequately explored. Using social network theory as the framework for this study, the purpose of this quantitative study was to determine whether (a) perceived level of social support was related to perceived level of contentment with life among assisted living facility residents, (b) the length of time spent in the facility …

Socioeconomic Challenges Faced By African American Men Entering The Information Technology Industry, Melvin Smith

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

African American men experience impediments when entering the field of Information Technology (IT), which may portend the disappearance of this ethnic group from the technology-driven work force of the future. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to investigate the socioeconomic factors faced by African American men from their own viewpoints. With this goal in mind, three research questions were studied focusing on the availably of IT resources; the quality of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) based education; and existing hiring practices within the IT industry. The conceptual framework for this study was the critical theory perspective, which provided …

Health Care Administration Faculty Perceptions On Competency Education, Graduate Preparedness, And Employer Competency Expectations, Wittney A. Jones

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Health care administration programs have transitioned to using the competency approach to better prepare graduates for workplace success. The responsibility of preparing graduates lies with the program faculty, yet little is known about faculty perceptions of the competency approach. The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to assess the perceptions of graduate-level health care administration faculty about the competency approach, the approach's effect on graduate preparedness, and employer expectations. Adult learning theory and the theory of self-efficacy were used as the theoretical foundations for the study. Faculty demographics related to personal information, workplace/teaching experience, and program information served as the …

Gentrification And Urban Public School Reforms: The Interest Divergence Dilemma, Erika K. Wilson

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Contextual Factors And Direct Exposure To Hiv: Influences On Youth Sexual Intention, Hadiza Ladidi Osuji

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Youth are having sexual intercourse at an early age and as such, are engaging in risky behaviors that are associated with adverse health outcomes, including HIV infection. Little research has been undertaken to examine the influence of contextual factors on youth intentions to delay sexual involvement. To address that gap, this study aimed to examine the influence of age, gender, race, immigration status, HIV knowledge, HIV-related stigma, concern about HIV, direct exposure to HIV/AIDS, peer pressure, and religious influence on youth intentions to delay sexual involvement. Delayed sexual involvement was conceptualized as youth attitudes towards abstaining from sex, their knowledge …

Laying The Foundation For New Approaches In Evidence-Based Sex Education Curriculum Programs: A Family Life Policy Change, Rina Marie Prosser

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The teen pregnancy rate in Henry County, Tennessee has increased over the years. The purpose of this project was to develop an evidence-based family life education policy for possible adoption by the board of education to address the persistent high teen pregnancy rate for girls aged 15-17 in the county. This present study resulted in a revised policy that was based on a comprehensive policy termed Abstinence-Centered Plus Contraception. An 18-member collaborative, organizational, and community project team, made up of community leaders, nurses, counselors, teachers, and students, assisted in the development and adoption of the policy, practice guidelines, and the …

Improving The Experiences Of Informal And Formal Alzheimer's Disease And Dementias Caregivers, Roxroy Anthony Reid

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Informal and formal caregivers of persons with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) encounter a more difficult and unique set of challenges than do caregivers of individuals with general disabilities. If adequate caregiver supports are not provided, caregivers may experience increased strain as the disease progresses, increasing the likelihood of unnecessary institutionalization of their care recipients and increasing the cost to the public. Using rational choice theory and political systems theory, the purpose of this study was to differentiate between the phenomenological experiences of formal and informal caregivers of ADRD patients. The overall research was a qualitative design that used …

Shared Trauma: A Phenomenological Investigation Of African American Teachers, Juanita Lynne White

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In the wake of increasing community disasters such as hurricanes, neighborhood violence, and terrorist attacks, schools are usually deemed places where youth can find safety and stability. Research about community trauma related to the role of teachers and schools has predominantly focused on younger populations, concerned about disturbances in their developmental processes. School teachers' responsibilities related to these community disasters have also increased and now include supporting their traumatized students. However, there has been limited attention on the direct effect of community traumas on the teachers who work and live in affected districts. The construct of shared trauma describes this …

Self Efficacy Of African American Women In Leadership Roles, Varil Deloise Williams

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Little research has focused on developing female African American leaders. A mixed methods study examined the influence of conservation of resources (COR) and locus of control (LOC) on the self-efficacy (SE) of 26 female African American leaders. It also explored the role of mentoring and spirituality in leadership development for a subset of 5 participants. Data were obtained using a demographic questionnaire, the General SE Scale, the COR Evaluation Gain scale, and the LOC Assessment, along with transcribed responses to mentoring and spirituality interview questions. Pearson correlations run between age, education, and income, as well as COR, LOC, and SE …

Student Success And Reading Comprehension, Laura Theresa Lottes-Bishop

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Nursing administrators are exploring interventions to increase student retention rates in order to decrease college costs, improve faculty effort and time developing courses, decrease administrative resources, and to continue their accreditation. The purpose of this study was to determine whether or not there was a correlation between the Test of Essential Academic Skills (TEAS) reading comprehension scores, American College Test (ACT) reading comprehension scores, Comprehensive Computer-Adaptive Testing (COMPASS) reading comprehension scores, and the cumulative college grade point average (GPA) of the first-year nursing student. The theoretical foundation for this study was Tinto's retention theory, which claims that students' past academic …

The Perceptions Of Managers Relating To Subordinate Productivity In Virtual Work Arrangements, Frank Melvin

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Some managers tend to resist virtual work and find it challenging to manage the productivity of subordinates working virtually. This phenomenological study examined managers' perceptions of subordinate productivity in virtual work arrangements. Adaptive structuration theory and McGregor's X and Y theory guided this study. The primary research questions focused on the managers' perceptions of worker productivity in virtual work arrangements and the related challenges. Data collection included semistructured interviews with 40 business managers responsible for overseeing the productivity of virtual workers. The study was conducted in the Atlanta, Georgia metropolitan area. Utilizing the Stevick'Colaizzi'Keen method of data analysis, 3 primary …

Successful Informal Partnerships Between Nonprofit Organizations And Local Governments In A Metropolitan Area, Scott Pozil

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Informal or non-contractual partnerships between nonprofit organizations (NPOs) and government entities are becoming more common in America, opening up new possibilities for NPOs to function as equal partners in the decision-making process and implementation of community services. The problem concerns the challenges that NPOs face in achieving equal partner status with their local government counterpart, a problem which has received limited attention in research. The purpose of this study was to explore the dynamics behind successful informal partnerships between NPOs and local governments, translating into effective and efficient service delivery. The theoretical framework was based on Davis's stewardship theory and …