Digital Commons Network^™

Cultivating Asian Students' Willingness To Communicate In American Classrooms Using An Online Video-Based Pre-Arrival Course, Hui-Ching Kayla Hsu

Open Access Dissertations

The purpose of this mixed methods study was: 1) to document the design and implementation process of an online video-based pre-arrival course that was intended to cultivate Asian students’ willingness to communicate in American Classrooms; 2) to assess the effectiveness of the course by measuring students’ oral proficiency and willingness to communicate; and 3) to investigate their first-year classroom participation as well as their experiences with the pre-arrival course. This research inquiry was guided by two research questions: 1) How does completing an online pre-arrival course influence Asian students’ speaking abilities, willingness to communicate, and verbal participation in their first-year …

A Web-Based Intervention With Culturally Tailored Messages To Improve Mental Health Among Asian International Students With Mild-To-Moderate Depression: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial, Lan Jin

Open Access Dissertations

The study aims to: 1) design, develop, and test culturally tailored messages to address the mental health needs of Asian international students (AIS); and 2) assess the potential and acceptability of a web-based intervention (myCompass program) with culturally tailored messages to reduce depressive symptoms and improve related mental health outcomes among AIS with mild-to-moderate depression. The culturally tailored messages were designed, developed and tested through three focus groups (N=15), thirteen individual interviews (N=13), and an online survey (N=85) with AIS. Data was analyzed using the constant comparative method. The final cultural message themes used in the intervention arm included: 1) …

Household Decision Making Under Stress: Three Essays On Agricultural Production In Southern Africa, Anna Leigh Josephson

Open Access Dissertations

Rural households in Southern Africa face numerous economic challenges, arising from a range of idiosyncratic and covariate risks. This research seeks to understand strategies employed by households to cope with different types of shocks, in the context of Zimbabwe and Malawi. I focus on several techniques used to cope with risk and shocks in an uncertain environment, including intra-household resource, land, and crop, as well as labor allocations. To provide insight on household decision making, I expand and adapt theoretical models. This helps me to better understand household decision making in the complex and risky environments in which they reside …

Exploring Transformative Learning Pedagogies To Teach Human-Centered Design: A Collaborative Action Research Approach, Cole Hatfield Joslyn

Open Access Dissertations

In this research, I present the problem that a culture of disengagement endemic in engineering and engineering education (see Cech, 2014) is exacerbated by deeply rooted habits of mind and their underlying assumptions that are at odds with social justice ideals and resistant to change, thus, perpetuating the status quo (see Riley, 2008). Furthermore, current engineering education curricula focusing primarily on mathematics, science, and engineering sciences (see Sheppard, Macatangay, Colby, & Sullivan, 2009) further entrench this culture along with these habits of mind and assumptions. In an attempt to address the culture of disengagement, I propose a framework for humanizing …

Engineering Play: Exploring Associations With Executive Function, Mathematical Ability, And Spatial Ability In Preschool, Zachary Samuel Gold

Open Access Dissertations

Engineering play is a new perspective on preschool education that views constructive play as an engineering design process that parallels the way engineers think and work when they develop engineered solutions to human problems (Bairaktarova, Evangelou, Bagiati, & Brophy, 2011). Early research from this perspective supports its use in framing play as a key learning context. However, no research to date has examined associations between engineering play and other factors linked with early school success, such as executive function, mathematical ability, and spatial ability. Additionally, more research is needed to further validate a new engineering play observational measure. This study …

Reciprocal Relationships Between Parental Psychological Aggression And Adolescent Behavioral Problems, Yoonyoung Kwak

Open Access Dissertations

An extensive body of research has shown that parents’ harsh parenting and children’s behavioral problems are bidirectionally associated. These findings are in line with the transactional process theoretical model. Parental psychological aggression (PPA) is a nonphysical type of harsh parenting that is more prevalent among adolescents than corporal punishment and has rarely been tested for bidirectional relationships with diverse behavioral problems. This dissertation includes an investigation of the bidirectional relationship between PPA and four adolescent behavioral problems (delinquency, alcohol use, smoking, and running away) separately using samples from two different cultural contexts. The first sample is 591 adolescents who had …

Probabilistic-Based Modeling Of Human Perceptual-Motor Behaviors With Application To Wheelchair Targeting Locomotion, Chih-Wei Li

Open Access Dissertations

The objective of this thesis is to develop an empirically-based probabilistic model of the perception-action behaviors of human wheelchair locomotion and navigation over short distance ranges relevant for small space scenarios. More specifically, a probabilistic description and model is sought for the visual perception of distance and orientation with respect to objects, and for wheelchair locomotion based upon straight line and turning behaviors. Further, the specific behavior of manual wheelchair users boarding a small platform area, relevant for lifts and small elevators, is studied experimentally and in a probabilistic-based simulation. The approach taken consists of two parts. First, human subject …

Developing And Testing A K-12 Engineering Epistemic Frame To Uncover Engineering In The Interactions Of A High School Summer Session, Tamecia Raishuan Jones

Open Access Dissertations

Educational reform has expanded K-12 standards to include engineering. Not only will K-12 teachers have to be trained to teach engineering concepts, but assessments must evolve to reflect the various aspects of engineering. Engineering as a profession is expressed via multiple dimensions of an epistemic frame, such as skills, knowledge, identity, values, and epistemology, but many of these elements are not measured in K-12 formal and informal spaces. In a summer session of a college preparatory program, a research project revealed that although students had design journals, storyboards, and traditional assessments, the in situ video recordings captured decisions, evolution of …

An Investigation Of The Neural Circuitry Of Cued Alcohol Behaviors In P And Wistar Rats., Aqilah Maryam Mccane

Open Access Dissertations

Alcohol-paired cues invigorate alcohol-seeking and drinking behaviors in both rodents and individuals with alcohol use disorder (AUD). Additionally, genetic susceptibility plays a key role in alcohol addiction behaviors. Alcohol preferring (P) rats model both genetic vulnerability and symptoms of AUD. The basolateral amygdala (BLA), prefrontal cortex (PFC), hippocampus (HC) and nucleus accumbens (NA) are important brain regions involved in cued alcohol seeking. These regions are interconnected and their functional connections are hypothesized to be critical in the expression of motivated behaviors. Electrophysiological recordings in these four regions were collected in P rats engaged in a cued alcohol task. Data were …

Exploring The Relationship Between Childhood Maltreatment And Adolescent Substance Use: Mediating Effects Of Family And Peer Relationships, Alexandra C. Marin

Open Access Dissertations

Child maltreatment is a key risk factor for maladaptive behaviors throughout the life course, including substance use. Although the effects of maltreatment on several domains of functioning have been thoroughly documented in past literature, the social mechanisms through which maltreatment affects individual trajectories have received considerably less attention, especially in relation to the contribution of different maltreatment dimensions (such as subtype, timing, and severity). Examining these dimensions and social mechanisms could hold the key to answering the question of why some maltreated children experience long-spanning negative developmental outcomes, while others maintain resiliency and are seemingly unaffected by these experiences. In …

Effect Of Feed Additive Enzymes On Growth Performance And Immunological Response In Growing Pigs And Poultry, Emily R. Otto-Tice

Open Access Dissertations

As demand for oilseeds and grains increase for uses beyond livestock feeds, swine and poultry producers are continually challenged to source alternative feed ingredients or co-products that are traditionally fed to ruminant animals. Many of these alternative feed ingredients have characteristics, such as higher fiber content or inherent antinutritional factors, that may reduce the feeding value for swine and poultry. To help improve the nutrient availability as well as understanding the positive affect that feeding fiber can have on gut health, biotech companies have developed novel enzymes to help breakdown these complex carbohydrate structures to release additional energy or reduce …

Active Learning For Designing Detectors For Infrequently Occurring Objects In Wide-Area Satellite Imagery, Tanmay Prakash

Open Access Dissertations

For designing detectors for infrequently occurring objects in wide-area satellite imagery, we are faced with the challenge that such objects are difficult to find for the purpose of generating the needed training data. As a result, a human agent must expend an inordinate length of time in order to produce a sufficient number of labeled training data. In this dissertation, we reduce this annotation burden by drawing upon the research that has been carried out recently in the area of active learning, whereby the machine searches for human annotation those unlabeled samples that can actually improve the detector. The search …

A Closer Look: How Middle School Principals' Perceptions About Teacher Mindset Impact Instructional Coaching, Jayson P. Snyder

Open Access Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine how a middle school principal’s perception about a teacher’s mindset affects how he provides that teacher with coaching and feedback as an instructional leader. The research took an in-depth look at two middle school principals with experience as teacher evaluators and instructional leaders. The theoretical framework for this qualitative study was phenomenology. All data came from interviews conducted with middle school principals. Interviews were audio recorded, transcribed, and confirmed prior to individual and team coding and data analysis. The study was designed to shed light on how a middle school principal’s …

Prone To Drone: Unmanned Aircraft Systems' Effects On Public Support For The Use Of Military Force, William Shelby

Open Access Dissertations

Unmanned aircraft systems (drones) have seen widespread use by the United States in the “War on Terror.” Drones keep soldiers out of harm’s way and they reduce the financial cost of military operations, all while maintaining high levels of precision like regular soldiers. Because they provide the benefits of using force without the risks, drones could make the public more willing to support the use of force. If true, the public may be more prone to support using force rather than seek out other alternatives to solve a foreign policy crisis because they perceive less risk involved in using force. …

Generalized Plot Matrices, Automatic Cognostics, And Efficient Data Exploration, Barret Schloerke

Open Access Dissertations

Statistical visualization of large-scale data has become an increasingly essential task in the era of big data. In particular, exploratory data analysis and visualization is the first step towards any in-depth statistical modeling and analysis. Being able to rapidly specify and generate visualizations regardless of data-scale is crucial. Trellis-cope handles data visualization at scale by attaching cognostics (univariate metrics) to each panel aiding in the organization of panels of interest. While Trelliscope provides a general framework for visualizing data at scale, there are several aspects that can be improved to help users generate displays more rapidly (such as cognostics, axis …

A Closer Look: How High School Principals' Perceptions About Teacher Mindset Impact Instructional Coaching, Heather T. Short

Open Access Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative study is to examine how high school principals’ perceptions about the teacher mindset affects how principals provide teachers with coaching and feedback. The research was conducted using the theoretical framework of phenomenology. Data was derived from interviews with two high school principals who have extensive experience in teacher evaluations and coaching. These interviews were recorded, transcribed, and confirmed prior to the coding process and data analysis. The study found a link between principals’ perceptions of teacher mindset and the coaching that ensued. This study pointed to that when principals’ perception increases, coaching effectiveness can increase. …

Using Gifted Student Perceptions Of Motivational Techniques To Inform Teacher Reflection, Kristen K. Seward

Open Access Dissertations

This mixed methods research investigated the relationship between student and teacher perceptions of five motivational components of instruction—appeal, challenge, choice, meaningfulness, and academic self-efficacy—and how teachers’ knowledge of their students’ perceptions informed their reflection on the quality of instruction. The Student Perceptions of Classroom Quality (SPOCQ; Gentry & Owen, 2004) and Teacher Perceptions of Classroom Quality (T-POCQ; Seward, 2016) survey results of students with gifts and talents (n = 306 for a total of 518 administrations of the SPOCQ) and teachers (n = 23 for a total of 39 administrations of the T-POCQ) who participated in a summer academic enrichment …

The Political Economy Of Tobacco In The Seventeenth Century English Atlantic, Ruth Savidge Turpin

Open Access Dissertations

This thesis examines the political economy of tobacco in England and the Chesapeake in the seventeenth century, including production and labor, distribution and shipping, markets, taxes, and consumers. Because of James I’s struggles with Parliament, tobacco achieved a special tax status and thus a special relationship to the English Crown. That relationship persisted through the reign of Charles I, across the Interregnum, and into the Restoration. Tobacco was grown as a cash crop in both England and the Chesapeake. In England, production was exclusively by independent landowners hungry for a cash crop. English tobacco growing was outlawed in 1619, but …

Roles Of Time Perception And Expected Action Effects In Selecting Delayed Outcomes From Description And Experience, Aiping Xiong

Open Access Dissertations

In everyday life, many action outcomes and the information associated with them (e.g., the receiving time or probability) can be learned through description or experience. Experimental studies of choice behavior document distinct, and sometimes contradictory, deviations from maximization. For example, when people make decisions from described probabilities, they tend to overweight rare events. In contrast, when people make decisions from experienced outcomes, they tend to exhibit the opposite bias. People’s experience is always sequential and extended in time, whereas one-shot descriptions are not. Typically, the chance of something happening relies on individuals’ sampling from the past experience, indicating a probabilistic …

Using Multiple Ways To Investigate Cognitive Load Theory In The Context Of Physics Instruction, Tianlong Zu

Open Access Dissertations

Cognitive load theory (CLT) (Sweller 1988, 1998, 2010) provides us a guiding framework for designing instructional materials. CLT differentiates three subtypes of cognitive load: intrinsic, extraneous, and germane cognitive load. The three cognitive loads are theorized based on the number of simultaneously processed elements in working memory. Intrinsic cognitive load depends upon the number of interacting elements in the instructional material that are related to the learning objective. Extraneous cognitive load is the mental resources allocated to processing unnecessary information which does not contribute to learning as caused by non-optimal instructional procedure. It is determined by the number of interacting …

Formative Research On An Instructional Design Theory For Fostering Self-Efficacy Through Gamification, Stacey Zurek

Open Access Dissertations

The merits of gamification as a learner-centered pedagogy that positively influences learner engagement and motivation are widely established in the literature; yet, few studies have ventured beyond motivation to consider the impact gamification has on self-efficacy. Moreover, guidance for the effective design and development of gamified instruction is lacking. This study describes formative research conducted on the Gamification for Enhancing Learner Self-Efficacy (GELSE) instructional design theory, which was developed to guide the design of gamification aimed at fostering self-efficacy. The goal of formative research is to identify improvements for an instructional design theory based on a designed instance of the …

Revisiting The Rationality Assumption Of Disclosure Laws: An Empirical Analysis, Uri Benoliel, Jenny Buchan, Tony Gutentag

Hofstra Law Review

Disclosure laws are based on one central assumption: that disclosees are, by their very nature, rational actors. This article questions the validity of this theoretical assumption. The article empirically shows that franchisees, who are considered sophisticated disclosees, are unrealistically optimistic about disclosed risks. In this empirical study, franchisees (N = 205) completed an online research questionnaire, in which they compared their own chances of experiencing disclosed risks with the chances of their colleagues. It was found that franchisees were optimistically biased. Franchisees believed that the chances that their franchisor might opportunistically terminate their franchise are significantly lower than that of …

Siu Alumni, Siu Alumni Association

SIU Alumni Magazine

No abstract provided.

Development Of Evidence-Based Rapid Response Team Protocols For Treatment Of Deteriorating Adult Medical-Surgical Patients, Laura Pitts Darby

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Translational and Clinical Research Projects

Acute care hospitals in the United States and across the world are experiencing substantial increases in acutely ill patient populations requiring multifaceted medical treatments and care. This increase in number of seriously ill patients is resulting in crowded critical care units and more acutely ill patients on general medical-surgical units. Several decades ago, Rapid Response Systems were introduced to help reduce the risk of adverse outcomes in patients presenting signs and symptoms of clinical deterioration on medical-surgical units. In patients displaying symptoms of rapid clinical deterioration, members of the Rapid Response Team are often required to begin immediate intervention and …

The English Legacy Of The Second Amendment - History And Myth, Allen R. Kamp

Hofstra Law Review

According to the majority opinion of Justice Scalia in District of Columbia v. Heller, pre-Second Amendment adoption English history informs the Amendment’s meaning. The majority opinion discusses the historical background after analyzing the language of the Amendment: “Putting all of these textual elements together, we find that they guarantee the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation. This meaning is strongly confirmed by the historical background of the Second Amendment. We look to this because it has always been widely understood that the Second Amendment, like the First and Fourth Amendments, codified a pre-existing right.”

My …

The Declining Presbyterian Church, Joshua A. Edwards

Religious Studies

In this thesis I will discuss how the Presbyterian Church has been declining in membership and in the number of people attending weekly services. Within this study, I use my own church, Niagara Presbyterian Church in Niagara Falls, NY as a case study to further prove what is happening within the Presbyterian Church. Though the trend of declining church attendance can be seen across most denominations, I will show how the Presbyterian Church specifically is struggling and show why it is unique in its situation along with other characteristics of the decline that have happened across the denominations. I close …

El Leñador, December 2017, El Leñador Staff

El Leñador Newspaper

El Leñador is an English and Spanish newspaper produced by Humboldt State University students. Our staff cover and provide news to Latinx and other diverse communities on campus and in Humboldt County. We are committed to providing relevant news and expanding the representations and stories told about people of color and other marginalized groups. Our work helps create more social, political and cultural diversity in local media.

El Leñador es un periodico en español y inglés producido por estudiantes de la Universidad Estatal de Humboldt. Nuestro personal cubre y provee noticias a la comunidad Latinx y otras comunidades diversas en …

Influence Of Social And Economic Factors On Elementary Student Health In Northwest Arkansas, Megan Marks

The Eleanor Mann School of Nursing Undergraduate Honors Theses

A child’s wellbeing is influenced by many factors related to the environment they are raised in. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between a child’s social and economic factors and his or her health. A convenience sample of 588 2nd and 4th grade children was taken from three elementary schools in Springdale Independent School District. Health status was represented by calculations of each child’s body mass index (BMI) and number of days counted absent from school. Socioeconomic and demographic factors examined include the child’s grade level, gender, ethnicity, number of parents over the household, number of …

Modifiable Factors Impeding Nurses’ Willingness To Report In A Disaster, Kate Hutchison

The Eleanor Mann School of Nursing Undergraduate Honors Theses

This research project investigates what modifiable factors impede nurses’ willingness to report to work during a disaster. The survey sample were nurses in the United States. Survey methodology was a snowball sampling initiated among nurses attending a PhD Program at the University of Texas at Tyler as well as the utilization of Facebook to recruit participants. The survey instrument determined likelihood of nurses reporting to work in various types of disasters and factors that may impede them from responding to such disasters. The online survey asked thirty-five “select all that apply” type questions and the results will be used to …

The Value Of Choice: An Exploratory Case Study On The Intrinsic Motivation Of Dance Students Within The Creative Process, Jenna M. Gonsalves

Master's Theses

This exploratory case study was designed to analyze the impact choice making has on the intrinsic motivation of middle school dance students including self determination theory’s basic needs of competence, relatedness, and autonomy. Data were collected using multiple sources including observation rubrics and semi-structured pre- and post- group interviews. Two groups of students ages 11-14 created dances for performance. One group participated in a collaborative approach to the creative process and had the opportunity to make choices. The other group participated in a teacher-led creative process and did not have the opportunity to make choices. A thematic content analysis of …