Digital Commons Network^™

Perceptual Ratings Of Pronunciation For L2 Learners Of English As A Function Of Task Type, Word Position, And Listener Expertise, Shawn L. Nissen, Rachel Kemmey, K. James Hartshorn

Faculty Publications

Abstract Second language (L2) learners of English must learn to pro-duce English phonemes, words, and sentences. These L2learners make many errors when learning English; they may change the place or manner of articulation, insert vowels, or delete consonants. Obstruent sounds, such as fricatives, affricates, and stops, can be especially difficult for L2 learners. This study analyzed native English speakers’ perception of the quality of obstruents produced by native Mandarin Chinese and Korean speakers. Target words containing obstruents had been produced in three different tasks: in a carrier phrase, in a paragraph, and in a spontaneous speechsample. Obstruents were produced in …

Evaluation Of A Complexity-Based Morphosyntactic Treatment For Children With Language Disorders Of Mixed Etiologies, Kirsten M. Russell

Faculty Publications

Language disorder is characterized by difficulty with the comprehension and production of different aspects of language. School-aged children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and school-aged children with Down syndrome (DS) demonstrate similar deficits in the area of morphosyntax, which often creates barriers during social interactions and for academic learning. Although affected children may receive intervention, progress can be slow. Selecting appropriate treatment targets is critical for effective intervention. Traditional approaches for selecting treatment targets are based on developmental readiness (i.e., developmental) or functional need (i.e., remedial). However, intervention utilizing targets selected by these methods produce only modest results, despite a …

Fostering Spatial Ability Development In And For Authentic Stem Learning, Caiwei Zhu, Chloe Oi-Ying Leung, Eleni Lagoudaki, Mariana Velho, Natalia Segura-Caballero, Dietsje Jolles, Gavin Duffy, Gunter Maresch, Marianna Pagkratidou, Remke Klapwijk

Articles

Empirical interdisciplinary research has explored the role of spatial ability in STEM learning and achievement. While most of this research indicates that fostering spatial thinking in educational contexts has the potential to positively impact students’ enrollment and performance in STEM subjects, there is less agreement on the best approach to do so. This article provides an overview of various types of effective spatial interventions and practices in formal or informal educational contexts, including targeted training of STEM-relevant spatial skills, spatialized curricula embedded in schools, integrated STEM practices addressing students’ use of spatial skills, and spatial activities in informal STEM education. …

Managers’ Use Of Humor On Public Earnings Conference Calls, Andrew C. Call, Rachel W> Flam, Joshua A. Lee, Nathan Y. Sharp

Faculty Publications

Despite the prevalence and importance of humor in interpersonal communication, the disclosure literature is silent on the use of humor in the context of corporate communication. Using a sophisticated machine learning algorithm, we identify managers’ successful uses of humor during public earnings conference calls. When managers use humor on an earnings call, stock market returns and analyst forecast revisions following the call are more positive, primarily because of a muted response to negative earnings news. Consistent with managers’ successful use of humor being a favorable signal of future firm performance, we find no evidence of a return reversal over the …

Medical Concept Mention Identification In Social Media Posts Using A Small Number Of Sample References, Vasudevan Nedumpozhimana, Sneha Rautmare, Meegan Gower, Maja Popovic, Nishtha Jain, Patricia Buffini, John Kelleher

Conference papers

Identification of mentions of medical concepts in social media text can provide useful information for caseload prediction of diseases like Covid-19 and Measles. We propose a simple model for the automatic identification of the medical concept mentions in the social media text. We validate the effectiveness of the proposed model on Twitter, Reddit, and News/Media datasets.

Life Cycle Assessment Research Trends And Implications: A Bibliometric Analysis, Badr Moutik, John Summerscales, Jasper Graham-Jones, Richard Pemberton

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

Acknowledging the importance of sustainability and implementing measures to achieve the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 represent a holistic approach to promoting peace and prosperity for the planet and its inhabitants. LCA is a valuable tool for organisations to enhance sustainability and reduce environmental impact. There has been a notable increase in LCA research subjects, indicating a recognition of its significance in promoting sustainability. The field has experienced a significant expansion in the past decade, with a 30% annual percent growth rate in LCA publications since 2010. In the most recent 4 years alone, 47% of all …

The ‘People’S War On Terror’ In Xinjiang: A Model For China?, Hannah Theaker

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

“I Am Not A Good Woman?” Exploring The Views And Challenges Of Nurses When Discussing Hpv Testing And Associated Cervical Screening With Women In Iraq, Suhailah M. Ali, Rebecca Lawes, Ayla Khedher Ghalib

School of Nursing and Midwifery

Introduction: Cervical cancer is mostly caused by high-risk Human papillomavirus HPV, with an estimation prevalence of HPV of 99.7% worldwide. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved an HPV test for primary cervical screening in 2014. An HPV-DNA test, which provides higher protection against invasive cervical carcinomas, is replacing the long-standing Pap smear as the primary method of cervical cancer screening. Objective: To explore nurses’ experience and knowledge of HPV DNA testing and how screening impacts on women's health through increasing awareness and proposing actions for health education strategies. Method: A qualitative exploratory study was conducted on a purposeful …

Exploring Zero-Shot And Joint Training Cross-Lingual Strategies For Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis Based On Contextualized Multilingual Language Models, Dang Van Thin, Hung Quoc Ngo, Duong Ngoc Hao, Ngan Luu-Thuy-Nguyen

Articles

Aspect-based sentiment analysis (ABSA) has attracted many researchers’ attention in recent years. However, the lack of benchmark datasets for specific languages is a common challenge because of the prohibitive cost of manual annotation. The zero-shot cross-lingual strategy can be applied to solve this gap in research. Moreover, previous works mainly focus on improving the performance of supervised ABSA with pre-trained languages. Therefore, there are few to no systematic comparisons of the benefits of multilingual models in zero-shot and joint training cross-lingual for the ABSA task. In this paper, we focus on the zero-shot and joint training cross-lingual transfer task for …

Contingency As A Barrier To Decolonial Engagement: Listening To Multilingual Writers, Grace Lee-Amuzie

The Writing Center Journal

Based on the concept of transformative listening by García (2017) that views listening as a form of decolonial work that must take place in writing centers, the article examines colonial thinking and contingency as toxic preexisting conditions of writing center ecology that hinder our ability to listen to marginalized multilingual voices. Recognizing the commonality between multilingualism and contingency, both as ignored marginalized intersecting identities in the hierarchy of the racialized and corporatized university system, the article describes the complexity of engaging contingent workers in decolonial work and listening. Further, it argues that contingency creates significant barriers to the type of …

Writing Tutor Alumni Takeaways: Pros And Cons Of Contingency, Glenn Hutchinson, Xuan Jiang, Mario Avalos

The Writing Center Journal

This essay aims to build upon the Peer Writing Tutor Alumni Research Project (PWTARP), designed by Bradley Hughes, Paula Gillespie, and Harvey Kail (2010), which focuses on what tutors learn about themselves as writers and students. However, the PWTARP survey, like much of writing center scholarship, focuses on student workers attending PWIs (Predominately White Institutions). To help fill the diversity gap in the existing literature, the current study uses the PWTARP survey as a frame of reference to investigate what tutors learned about themselves as writers and students at a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI). Based on feedback from a team of …

Spoken Language To Irish Sign Language Machine Translation: A Linguistically Informed Approach, Jesus Aguilar Lopez, Irene Murtagh, Sheila Castilho

Academic Posters Collection

Many deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals rely on sign language (SL) on a daily basis as a preferred language. Although nowadays there are significant advances on spoken language research, current approaches are often neither linguistically motivated nor tailored to the unique features of SLs. Further research and development are necessary to enhance Sign Language Machine Translation (SLMT) and bring it to a similar level as spoken language MT. This research will endeavour to improve the accuracy and efficiency of SLMT systems, making them more accessible to the Deaf community and empowering deaf and hard of hearing individuals to communicate more effectively …

Towards Accommodating Gerunds Within The Sign Language Lexicon, Zaid Mohammed, Irene Murtagh

Academic Posters Collection

This work is part of ongoing research work that focuses on the linguistic analysis and computational description of five different Sign Languages (SLs) namely Irish Sign Language (ISL), Flemish Sign Language (VGT), Dutch Sign Language (NGT), Spanish Sign Language (LSE), and British Sign Language (BSL) as part of the SignON project. This work will be leveraged to inform the development of SL lexicon entries for a Sign Language Machine Translation (SLMT) system. In particular, this research focuses on ISL. We investigate the existence of constructions similar to or equivalent in functionality to gerunds in spoken language, in particular, English. The …

Equity, Inclusion And Feminist Pedagogies: Supplement No. 14, Barbara Knežević, Michelle Malone

Articles

This paper describes and expands on the contributions the research team at Technological University Dublin have made to the DICO Digital Career Stories Erasmus+ project from March 2021 through February 2023. This paper examines the TU Dublin presentation of specific Fine Art research methods and technical and practical tools, as a unique way to open these discussions around ethical teaching with regards to access, technology, gender, class, ethnic and racial diversity. This paper looks at some of the specific tools and methods common to fine art education and practice in the points of sharing sessions to ask how lecturing staff …

Screw Loose Toolbox, Anton Schaefer

Practice Papers

Blue Engineering is a student-driven course on the environmental and social responsibility of engineers. It has been developed by student initiatives at two German universities since 2010. By 2023, there are more than 15 courses at universities in Germany and in the Netherlands using the open source course design. In assessing the learning outcomes of the participants, the need to promote the skill of transfer of learning of the students became clear. This practice paper presents the current approach: 24 metaphorical tools have been developed, each of which functions like a special lens, allowing to recognise certain patterns of action, …

Acceptability, Feasibility And Preliminary Efficacy Of Low-Moderate Intensity Constraint Induced Aphasia Therapy And Multi-Modality Aphasia Therapy In Chronic Aphasia After Stroke, John E. E. Pierce, Robyn Ohalloran, Leanne Togher, Lyndsey Nickels, David Copland, Erin Godecke, Marcus Meinzer, Tapan Rai, Dominique A. Cadilhac, Joosup Kim, Melanie Hurley, Abby Foster, Marcella Carragher, Cassie Wilcox, Gillian Steel, Miranda L. Rose

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Background: High-intensity Constraint-Induced Aphasia Therapy Plus (CIAT-Plus) and Multi-Modality Aphasia Therapy (M-MAT) are effective interventions for chronic post-stroke aphasia but challenging to provide in clinical practice. Providing these interventions may be more feasible at lower intensities, but comparative evidence is lacking. We therefore explored feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of the treatments at a lower intensity. Methods: A multisite, single-blinded, randomized Phase II trial was conducted within the Phase III COMPARE trial. Groups of participants with chronic aphasia from the usual care arm of the COMPARE trial were randomized to M-MAT or CIAT-Plus, delivered at the same dose as the …

Detection Of Truthful, Semi-Truthful, False And Other News With Arbitrary Topics Using Bert-Based Models, Elena Shushkevich, John Cardiff, Anna Boldyreva

Conference Papers

Easy and uncontrolled access to the Internet provokes the wide propagation of false information, which freely circulates in the Internet. Researchers usually solve the problem of fake news detection (FND) in the framework of a known topic and binary classification. In this paper we study possibilities of BERT-based models to detect fake news in news flow with unknown topics and four categories: true, semi-true, false and other. The object of consideration is the dataset CheckThat! Lab proposed for the conference CLEF-2022. The subjects of consideration are the models SBERT, RoBERTa, and mBERT. To improve the quality of classification we use …

Show, Prefer And Tell: Incorporating User Preferences Into Image Captioning, Annika Lindh, Robert J. Ross, John Kelleher

Conference papers

Image Captioning (IC) is the task of generating natural language descriptions for images. Models encode the image using a convolutional neural network (CNN) and generate the caption via a recurrent model or a multi-modal transformer. Success is measured by the similarity between generated captions and human-written “ground-truth” captions, using the CIDEr [14], SPICE [1] and METEOR [2] metrics. While incremental gains have been made on these metrics, there is a lack of focus on end-user opinions on the amount of content in captions. Studies with blind and low-vision participants have found that lack of detail is a problem [6, 13, …

Elara Conference - Techniques And Technologies To Support Sustainable Education In The Academic Sphere Year I Book 1, European Common Laboratory For Pedagogical Action-Research And Student-Centred Learning (Elara)

Publications

This research event seeks to encourage a critical dialogue between students, academics and researchers. We aim to promote the student voice within the context of sustainability with a student-centered approach. We also intend to popularise, inspire and share best practices with the purpose of questioning and exploring how to further enhance the learning, teaching and research experience of academics, researchers and students in a digital environment. The event aims to offer a creative space vibrant with participants’ voices debating over innovation and change, thus building a bridge between past achievements, knowledge and expertise, on the one hand, and further investigation, …

Circular Pedagogy To Advance The Integration Of Learning Technologies: Supporting Technological Universities Cultural Transformation, Nadia Barkoczi, Iulia Stefan, Ivaylo Peev, Todor Todorov, Lia Pop, Claudia Marian, Cristina Campian, Sonia Munteanu, Patrick Flynn, Jon-Hans Coetzer, Lucia Morales

Working Papers

European countries need active and proactive educational systems assisted by models that can drive a cultural transformation that supports sustainable socio-economic and environmental development. In this paper, we reflect on the future of European education. We offer some insights on how the foundations of a new educational model (ANEM) could be cemented and solidly supported by pillars that acknowledge our societies' rich and diverse cultures. Furthermore, the European University of Technology's (EUt+) future educational model is taken as a case study to enable us to reflect and analyse the need for novel pedagogies that drive change for a more sustainable …

How Online Discourse Networks Fields Of Practice: The Discursive Negotiation Of Autonomy On Art Organisation About Pages, Tommie Soro

Articles

This article examines how the online discourse of art organisations forges relationships between the artworld and the fields of politics and economy. Combining elements of Pierre Bourdieu’s field analysis and Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis, the article analyses an elite art magazine, e-flux, and an elite art museum, IMMA, and the activities of discourses, genres, and utterances on their about pages. Its results suggest that the about pages of these organisations forge links between the artworld and the fields of politics and economy by mobilising discourse in these fields and by incorporating discourse practices from these fields. The ideological tension …

Non-Traditional Learning In Stem: How Students Autonomy And The Impact Of Teacher Delivery Develops Deeper Conceptual Understanding At The Middle School Level, Sarah Kelly

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Non-traditional forms of curriculum development and delivery have shown particular promise in supporting the autonomy of students particularly in relation to science. Programs such as OPENSCIED are inquiry based- learning that promotes problem solving skills and cross curricular development supported by the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). This mixed method research study sought to illuminate how these types of curricular programs influence student autonomy and learning, especially with the implementation of OpenSciEd within Des Moines Public Schools. The study utilizes student state testing (ISASP)data alongside teacher surveys, interviews and observations to investigate the strengths or potential deficits of inquiry based …

Physical Education And Covid-19: What Have We Learned?, Valeria Varea, Ana Riccetti, Gustavo González-Calvo, Marcela Siracusa, Alfonso García-Monge

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

The aim of this paper is to explore what we have learned during the COVID-19 pandemic in the field of Physical Education in three different countries: Argentina, Spain and Sweden. Data were generated through semi-structured interviews, and the concept of field agency is used to make sense of the data. Differences were found among the three countries, regarding the content of the classes, the use of resources, the emotions of teachers, and the use of physical contact. This was also a result of the regulations and resources in place. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that the nature of the field …

Just-In-Time Obsolete Comment Detection And Update, Zhongxin Liu, Xin Xia, David Lo, Meng Yan, Shangping Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Comments are valuable resources for the development, comprehension and maintenance of software. However, while changing code, developers sometimes neglect the evolution of the corresponding comments, resulting in obsolete comments. Such obsolete comments can mislead developers and introduce bugs in the future, and are therefore detrimental. We notice that by detecting and updating obsolete comments in time with code changes, obsolete comments can be effectively reduced and even avoided. We refer to this task as Just-In-Time (JIT) Obsolete Comment Detection and Update. In this work, we propose a two-stage framework named CUP2 (Two-stage Comment UPdater) to automate this task. CUP2 consists …

Seven Pillars For The Future Of Artificial Intelligence, Erik Cambria, Rui Mao, Melvin Chen, Zhaoxia Wang, Seng-Beng Ho

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In recent years, AI research has showcased tremendous potential to impact positively humanity and society. Although AI frequently outperforms humans in tasks related to classification and pattern recognition, it continues to face challenges when dealing with complex tasks such as intuitive decision-making, sense disambiguation, sarcasm detection, and narrative understanding, as these require advanced kinds of reasoning, e.g., commonsense reasoning and causal reasoning, which have not been emulated satisfactorily yet. To address these shortcomings, we propose seven pillars that we believe represent the key hallmark features for the future of AI, namely: Multidisciplinarity, Task Decomposition, Parallel Analogy, Symbol Grounding, Similarity Measure, …

Final Report June 2023: Research Impact Evidence Scheme - Research Impact: Dr. Helen Adam, Maria Enriquez-Watt, Helen Adam

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

This research addressed the question: What is the impact of the research of Dr. Helen Adam into the culturally responsive use of diverse literature on practitioners, school communities, policy makers and the wider community?

Key Findings:

• The primary beneficiaries of Adam’s work include policy makers, educational professionals & consultants, academics, teacher trainers, and librarians.
• The secondary beneficiaries of Adam’s research include school children and their families, school communities and the wider community.
• Adam’s research is of pervasive and profound significance in educational sectors and is rapidly becoming of global significance.
• Adam’s research is transformative and impacts on the lives of …

Dementia Care For People From Culturally And Linguistically Diverse Backgrounds: Qualitative Secondary Analysis Of The Aged Care Australian Royal Commission Data, Pelden Chejor, Patricia Cain, Bridget Laging, Davina Porock

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Objective:

Understanding the concerns and experiences of people living with dementia from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds is critical to ensure culturally appropriate care is delivered. This study aimed to describe the current experiences and concerns of older people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds using the publicly available evidence from the Australian Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety.

Methods:

This was a qualitative secondary analysis of the Australian Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety data to explore new and nuanced insights about care for culturally and linguistically diverse people living with dementia. Using the keywords …

Director Training: A Mine Field Or Brave New World?, Gabrielle Metcalf, Andrew Lewis

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

The relative paucity of research on directing reflects the way in which the practice of directing occurs–behind closed-doors (Trousdell 1992). Despite the power afforded to directors, the literature is often comparatively silent on how a director leads a production. Whilst delineating the role of the director can be problematic, the training of directors is a minefield. Unlike actor training where a myriad of theories and methods guide us, the dearth of pedagogical frameworks for teaching directors has resulted in an ad hoc approach at best. Two case studies, conducted by the authors, within the context of conservatoire actor training, formed …

Reading Group As Method For Feminist Environmental Humanities, James Gardiner, Hayley Singer, Jennifer Hamilton, Astrida Neimanis, Mindy Blaise

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

This article argues that reading groups are a collective field building and research method in Feminist Environmental Humanities, an interdisciplinary scholarly area at the intersections of feminist social justice and environmental concerns. We begin by historicising three Australian Feminist Environmental reading groups (COMPOSTING Feminisms, Eco Feminist Fridays, The Ediths) within a longer feminist tradition, then demonstrate how they respond to declining research funding in the neoliberal university and accelerating ecological crisis. Drawing on survey data, we first thematically code and analyse the results to categorise the groups’ functions and impacts. Departing from more traditional data analysis, we then develop a …

The Role Of Negative Affects As Mediators In The Relationship Between Stress And Mental Health In Ecuadorian Adolescents, Rodrigo Moreta-Herrera, Doris Zumba-Tello, Jaisalmer De Frutos-Lucas, Stefanía Llerena-Freire, Alexandra Salinas-Palma, Almudena Trucharte-Martínez

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Background: Stress and negative emotions have adverse consequences for the mental health of adolescents, an area that deserves further examination. These attributes are associated with each other and regularly interact in different ways. The way they exert an influence can be both direct and indirect, so the general objective is to elucidate the potential mediating effect of negative affects in the relationship between stress and mental health in Ecuadorian adolescents. Participants and procedure: An explanatory and mediation design based on structural equation modeling (SEM) was applied with 1154 high school students from Ecuador (67.7% women) aged 14 to 19 years …