Digital Commons Network^™

Undergraduate African American Males’ Narratives On The Personal Factors Influencing Retention In The Social Sciences, Dorrance Kennedy, Linda Wilson-Jones

Journal of Research Initiatives

The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions of undergraduate African American social science majors on the personal factors that influenced their retention in higher education. This was a qualitative study with 15 African American males who were enrolled in three universities in the University of North Carolina system. The data were collected using face-to-face interviews of approximately 45 minutes duration that took place on two separate occasions. They appeared eager to discuss their experiences as freshmen and the factors that influenced them to return to the university a second year. The main findings from this study were …

The Impact Of Ethics And Faith On The Leadership Styles Of Black Women In Higher Education, Emetrude Lewis

Journal of Research Initiatives

Abstract

This phenomenological study explored the connection between ethics and faith as well as the impact that such connection has on the leadership styles of Black women in institution of public education. For the sake of confidentiality, pseudonyms were used for the participants and to protect their privacy. Multiple data collection and analytical methods were utilized to document the experiences and voices of the participants. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to understand the role and impact of ethics and faith on the leadership styles of Black women in higher education. The major goals of the research are: 1) …

To Game Or Not To Game? How Using Massively Multiplayer Online Games Helped Motivation And Performance In A College Writing Course: A Mixed Methods Study, Papia Bawa, William Watson, Sunnie L. Watson

Journal of Research Initiatives

The use of Massively Multiplayer Online Games or MMOGs is receiving attention in the educational world due to increased availability of such games, a growing consumer base, and the proven benefits of video games as engagement tools. MMOGs that have been known to possess a significantly high capacity to keep users involved over sustained periods, which gives them the potential to enhance learning experiences and performances. However, most available studies on MMOGs do not discuss relationships between MMOG use and performance outcomes in Higher Education. Additionally, majority of such studies focus on examining a single MMOG, providing limited scopes of …

Using Direct Reading Instruction To Increase The Reading Achievement Of Students With Disabilities: A Case Study, Marquis Grant

Journal of Research Initiatives

Reading was one of the areas targeted by most states for assessment because it not only is a critical area in academics, but also an area where most students were not showing gains. The National Education Association (NEA, 2004) prescribed reading as the catalyst for both learning and achievement. Reading difficulties typically being in the primary grades and become more profound by the time a child reaches high school (Fisher & Frey, 2007). However, questions regarding how exactly to formulate, deliver, sustain, and manage secondary-level interventions remain to be addressed, as do issues of validation, school resources, and cost (Kamps …

The Importance Of Support Networks For At-Promise Students, Melissa Cheese, James Vines

Journal of Research Initiatives

At-promise students enter colleges and universities with various challenges including being academically underprepared and lacking those essential critical thinking skills to be successful. However, providing support mechanisms within a nurturing environment can help these students overcome academic obstacles as well as personal challenges in order to achieve academic success. This article explores the role of an educational opportunity program and its efforts to support student success.

Elucidation Of Effective Professional Development Experiences: Addressing Inclusion For Students With Autism, Jennifer Lee Suppo

Journal of Research Initiatives

Open interviews were conducted with a special education teacher and a general education teacher. The overall guiding question was to provide elucidation of what is needed in a professional development program to meet the needs of both the general and special education teachers who teach children with a diagnosis of autism in an inclusive setting. Overall, the themes of diversity, knowledge and collaboration emerged as important variables for professional development experiences. Furthermore, in-depth knowledge and flexibility arose as important qualities of the facilitator of a professional development experience. Implications are a set forth for the expansion of the study and …

Elementary Administrators' Exploring The Factors That Promote Or Inhibit Reading Achievement, Ashley Holder, Linda Wilson-Jones, Brian Phillips, Paris Jones, Jerry D. Jones

Journal of Research Initiatives

The purpose of this study was to explore the factors that promote or inhibit the reading achievement of elementary children. The participants for this study were administrators who were employed at eleven Title I schools in North Carolina. The study used a qualitative design and collected data by phone interviews with elementary administrators.

Several recurring themes and patterns surfaced from the data gathered from the eleven participants. However, the overarching themes that promoted reading achievement were (a) family support, (b) early literacy exposure, and (c) teacher effectiveness and expectations. The reoccurring themes that inhibited reading achievement were (a) lack of …

Value-Added Service To Academic Library Users In 21st Century: Using Competitive Intelligence Approach, Idiegbeyan-Ose Jerome, Christopher Nkiko, Osinulu Ifeakachuku

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Higher education in the twenty-first century globally has been characterized and driven on business ethos. The institutions are faced with stiff competition in an attempt to increase their student enrolment, attract international students and faculty, pioneer centres of excellence, show-case outstanding research output, produce astute graduates and get listed in top ranking league tables. The paper therefore examined the effects of leveraging on value-added services to academic library users through competitive intelligence as a predictor of competitive advantage among tertiary institutions. It identified value-added personnel, collection, processing of materials and dissemination of information as constituting specific target selling points to …

Courses Beyond Borders: A Case Study Of Mooc Platform Coursera, Huma Shafiq, Zahid Ashraf Wani Dr., Iram Mukhtar Mahajan, Uzma Qadri

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Purpose: The study assesses the participation of different institutions in online learning environment of Coursera. Collaborative efforts, involvement of instructors and the mode of course instruction were also looked at.

Design/Methodology: Data were harvested from the official website of Coursera. Through its various features, information pertaining to courses being offered, subject categorization, institutions and instructors involved was collected, tabulated and analyzed.

Findings: As of February 2016, 138 institutions from 28 countries offered 1765 coursers through Coursera with the aid of 1903 instructors. Institutions were mainly from high economic zone countries. Nearly 59 percent courses were from USA based institutions and …

The Misapplication Of The Lautenberg Amendment In Voisine V. United States And The Resulting Loss Of Second Amendment Protection, Cynthia M. Menta

Akron Law Review

Over the past two decades, Congress has enacted various laws aimed at protecting victims of domestic violence. One such law is 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9), also known as the Lautenberg Amendment, which prohibits any person convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence from possessing a firearm. However, because the Second Amendment has been deemed a fundamental right by the Supreme Court, such a restriction on firearms possession is only permissible if it serves a compelling government interest. Unfortunately, since the Lautenberg Amendment was enacted in 1996, the courts have struggled to interpret its ambiguous terms, which has made it …

Reconstructing The Voice Of Authority, Susie Salmon

Akron Law Review

Notwithstanding the presence of three women on the Supreme Court of the United States, in terms of gender equality, surprisingly little has changed in the legal profession over the past 20 years. This stagnation is particularly apparent in the highest paying and most prestigious sectors, such as the Supreme Court bar, the top echelons of the top law firms, the judiciary, and the general-counsel’s office. Even where objective facts suggest that female lawyers should be hired, billed out, or compensated at the same or higher rate than their male peers, subjective decisions informed, in part, by bias and stereotype drive …

Co-Creating The Dialogic: How A Participatory Action Research Project Promoted Second Language Acquisition Of Karen Youth, Daniel Gilhooly, Liaquat Channa, Charles Allen Lynn

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

The case under investigation explores how a participatory action research (PAR) project between three Karen adolescent brothers and their American tutor/co-researchers can effectively promote dialogic (Wong, 2006) second language acquisition by: (1) creating dialogic teacher-student relationships; (2) building second language confidence and; (3) providing a problem posing learning atmosphere that promotes participants’ academic literacies and personal transformations. The findings from this study suggest that learning within what Paulo Freire refers to as a problem-posing educational project can promote language acquisition as well as critical consciousness, each of which are key in contributing to immigrant adaptation to the host culture. …

Psychological Well-Being In Sport: Examining The Construct Validity Of A Modified Version Of The Scales Of Psychological Well-Being, Despina Kouali

Western Journal of Graduate Research

No abstract provided.

The Utah Statesman, November 21, 2017, Utah State University

The Utah Statesman

Weekly student newspaper of Utah State University in Logan.

The Influence Of Equitable Treatment On Latina/O High School Students’ College Aspirations, Amanda Taggart, Jaimi Paschal

Teacher Education and Leadership Faculty Publications

This study examined the influence of equitable treatment on Latina/o students’ college aspirations. Logistic regression was used to identify variables associated with Latina/o high school students’ aspirations to attend college within the context of theory concerning the college search, choice, and enrollment processes. Data were drawn from a nationally representative sample of Latina/o students in the ELS:2002 dataset. Results indicated that Latina/o students were more likely to aspire to attend college if they perceived equitable treatment for different groups of students during high school.

Modular Mechanistic Networks: On Bridging Mechanistic And Phenomenological Models With Deep Neural Networks In Natural Language Processing, Simon Dobnik, John D. Kelleher

Books/Book chapters

Natural language processing (NLP) can be done using either top-down (theory driven) and bottom-up (data driven) approaches, which we call mechanistic and phenomenological respectively. The approaches are frequently considered to stand in opposition to each other. Examining some recent approaches in deep learning we argue that deep neural networks incorporate both perspectives and, furthermore, that leveraging this aspect of deep learning may help in solving complex problems within language technology, such as modelling language and perception in the domain of spatial cognition.

Predictors Of Cognitive Function Among Cognitively Impaired Older African Americans Living In Congregate Residential Settings, Zyra Daffodil Apugan

Dissertations

The purpose of this secondary data analysis was to identify potential psychosocial predictors of cognition, including social support, depression, and functional activity, among older African Americans, ≥ 65 years, with a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease and living in congregate residential settings. Guided by the main effect model of social support, this study used existing data from the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center Uniform Data Set, an NIH-funded multicenter study. Results showed that on average, the participants (n=56) were 81.7 years of age with 13.8 years of education. All, but six, were married. Bivariate Pearson correlations indicate a moderately strong negative relationship …

Want Preschoolers To Become Successful? Allow Them To Play More, Kimberly Nassoiy

UCF Forum

I work in a field where play reigns supreme. I’m an early childhood educator.

Blazer Innovation Challenge Student Winners Announced In "Shark Tank"-Style Competition, Justin Marden

Browse All News

No abstract provided.

Intimate Partner Violence Impact Panels For Batterer Intervention: A Mixed-Methods Evaluation Of A Restorative Justice Process, Kate Louise Sackett

Dissertations and Theses

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is an extremely prevalent and concerning social issue, with limited current intervention and prevention strategies. Batterer intervention programs (BIPs) have demonstrated some small effects of programs in reducing offender recidivism, however there is a growing understanding that not all offenders respond similarly to batterer intervention and the problem of IPV persists. Restorative justice programs including impact panels may be an important addition to BIPs, but research is extremely limited on impact panel effectiveness and whether panels are appropriate for IPV or pose additional safety risks to survivors. The current study consists of a naturalistic mixed-methods evaluation …

What Is Not Where: The Challenge Of Integrating Spatial Representations Into Deep Learning Architectures, John D. Kelleher, Simon Dobnik

Books/Book chapters

This paper examines to what degree current deep learning architectures for image caption generation capture spatial lan- guage. On the basis of the evaluation of examples of generated captions from the literature we argue that systems capture what objects are in the image data but not where these objects are located: the cap- tions generated by these systems are the output of a language model conditioned on the output of an object detector that cannot capture fine-grained location information. Although language models provide useful knowledge for image captions, we argue that deep learning image captioning architectures should also model geometric …

Multicultural Competence In The Supervisory Relationship: An Inclusive Model, Carmen M. Mccallum Lmsw, Ph.D., Amy Wilson Ph.D.

NYS Child Welfare/Child Protective Services Training Institute

As the United States continues to become increasingly diverse, the number of underrepresented populations being served by child welfare agencies is also steadily increasing. Children of color comprise 33 percent of the children in the United States but represent over 55 percent of children in the child welfare system (Detlaff, 2015; Pew Commission, 2014). Therefore, in addition to being concerned about child safety, well-being and permanency, agencies must also be concerned with the cultural issues that arise when working with diverse populations (Nathaniel, Howze & Prince, 2009). Empirical evidence confirms that the race of a child and their family has …

How Do Consumers Adopt Imported Products In An Era Of Product Overcrowding?, Miguel Sahagun, Arturo Z. Vasquez-Parraga

Marketing Faculty Publications

When individuals decide to adopt imported products, they associate these products with one or more places. Thus, consumers are likely to think about the new cultures, ideas, and behaviors associated with these places. When adopting imported products some consumers seek some type of novelty without altering existing decisional and/or behavioral structures whereas other consumers seek novelty to create new consumption situations. Nonetheless, current research has failed to explain how determinant the influence of the product’s place and the process of adopting this product are on consumer’s purchase intention. Therefore, this research analyzes: 1) the influence of the product’s place market …

Introduction: Ethnography, Moral Theory, And Comparative Religious Ethics, Bharat Ranganathan

Religion Faculty Publications

Representing a spectrum of intellectual concerns and methodological commitments in religious ethics, the contributors to this focus issue consider and assess the advantages and disadvantages of the shift in recent comparative religious ethics away from a rootedness in moral theory toward a model that privileges the ethnography of moral worlds. In their own way, all of the contributors think through and emphasize the meaning, importance, and place of normativity in recent comparative religious ethics.

Effects Of Pedagogical Agent Design On Training Evaluation Measures: A Meta-Analysis, Timothy J. Quesnell

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

Pedagogical agents are, "conversational virtual characters employed in electronic learning environments to serve various instructional functions" (Veletsianos & Miller, 2008). They can take a variety of forms, and have been designed to serve various instructional roles, such as mentors, experts, motivators, and others. Given the increased availability and sophistication of technology in recent decades, these agents have become increasingly common as facilitators to training in educational settings, private institutions, and the military. Software to aid in the creation of pedagogical agents is widely available. Additionally, software use and agent creation often requires little formal training, affording nearly anyone the opportunity …

The Impact Of Social Norms On Bystander Behaviors To Prevent Campus Sexual Violence, Kelly Collins

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

High incidence rates of sexual violence (SV) on college campuses and the limited effectiveness of traditional prevention programs has created a need for innovative prevention programing. In recent decades, bystander intervention approaches that target broader campus community norms have gained popularity. These programs aim to prevent SV by equipping student bystanders with the skills to intervene before, during, and after instances with the risk of SV. Student bystanders’ ability to effectively intervene hinges on their ability to recognize SV risk situations as problematic and worthy of intervention. However, situational ambiguities and mixed social norms messages often create challenges to recognizing …

Um Launches Flagship Constellations To Tackle 'Grand Challenges', Christina Steube

University of Mississippi News

Multidisciplinary teams seek significant and innovative solutions

Individual And Contextual Factors And The Efficacy Of An Experiential Sexism Intervention, Samantha M. Smith

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy of a sexism-focused diversity training program. More specifically, this study examined the direct and indirect relationships between individual characteristics (i.e., gender, self-efficacy, and reactance), contextual factors (i.e., organizational diversity climate) and diversity training outcomes and training transfer. To test hypotheses, graduate and undergraduate students participated in a two-stage study (baseline and intervention stages), with the intervention consisting of a 90-minute sexism-focused diversity training workshop. Data from one hundred and forty participants were retained for regression analyses. Results suggest the workshop was generally effective at reducing endorsement of sexist attitudes, improving …

The Longitudinal Effects Of Violence Exposure On Delinquency And Academic Outcomes For African-American Youth, Adina Cooper

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

There are millions of violent crimes reported each year in communities across the United States, disproportionately affecting ethnic minority and low-income communities. Violence exposure has harmful effects on residents and significant implications for adolescent development. Youth who are exposed to violence are at greater risk for problem behaviors and experiences, including delinquency and low academic performance (Baskin & Sommers, 2014; Patton, Wooley, & Hong, 2012). Many of the consequences of violence exposure impact trajectories of adolescent development and can be observed well into adulthood. However, some youth overcome the challenges associated with violence exposure and successfully transition into adulthood. Resilience …

Coping Among Advocates With And Without Lived Experience Of Sexual Assault, Martina Mihelicova

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

Volunteer sexual assault survivor advocates are vital to the provision of services by rape crisis centers. Volunteer advocates are exposed to trauma by witnessing the emotional and psychological impact of sexual assault on survivors. Trauma exposure places providers at risk for experiencing negative outcomes, such as vicarious trauma or secondary traumatic stress. Additionally, advocates who are survivors of sexual assault may be at higher risk for these negative outcomes. However, trauma exposure can also be a source of positive outcomes, such as posttraumatic growth. Focusing on advocate strengths, such as coping and self-care strategies that help advocates overcome distress during …