Digital Commons Network^™

How Helpful Do Novice Programmers Find The Feedback Of An Automated Repair Tool?, Oka Kurniawan, Christopher M. Poskitt, Ismam Al Hoque, Norman Tiong Seng Lee, Cyrille Jégourel, Nachamma Sockalingam

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Immediate feedback has been shown to improve student learning. In programming courses, immediate, automated feedback is typically provided in the form of pre-defined test cases run by a submission platform. While these are excellent for highlighting the presence of logical errors, they do not provide novice programmers enough scaffolding to help them identify where an error is or how to fix it. To address this, several tools have been developed that provide richer feedback in the form of program repairs. Studies of such tools, however, tend to focus more on whether correct repairs can be generated, rather than how novices …

Class Participation: Using Technology To Enhance Efficiency And Fairness, Benjamin Gan, Eng Lieh Ouh

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Class participation can be considered as contribution to discussion, attendance, presentations, unsolicited responses, questions, comments, etc. What counts may vary across individual teachers. The more students participate, the less memorization they do, and the more they engage in higher levels of thinking, including interpretation, analysis, and synthesis. However, only a handful of students in many classrooms participate regularly, a phenomenon dubbed as "consolidation of responsibility". This study provides a literature review of inclass participation, as well as pedagogies and technologies that enhance participation. Pedagogies such as active learning, group learning, project-based learning and flipped classroom. Technologies to automate attendance taking, …

Sustainability Projects With A Community Partner: A Social Norm Nudging Effort, Benjamin Gan, Thomas Menkhoff, Eng Lieh Ouh

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Singapore students from two inter-disciplinary courses worked with stakeholders of a local business association community partner on a series of sustainability topics to learn about climate change, its effects, and actions to mitigate them. They empathized with the association stakeholders, proposed a digital technology solution, tested their prototypes, and presented the final action plans. After the projects were completed, we found climate proficient (83%), motivated (83%), engaged (97%), and satisfied (70%) students; and two influencing predictors: interest/enjoyment and emotional engagement. The study results suggest that getting students interested and emotionally engaged in sustainability projects is an important first step towards …

Vision Paper: Advancing Of Ai Explainability For The Use Of Chatgpt In Government Agencies: Proposal Of A 4-Step Framework, Hui Shan Lee, Shankararaman, Venky, Eng Lieh Ouh

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper explores ChatGPT’s potential in aiding government agencies, drawing from a case study based on a government agency in Singapore. While ChatGPT’s text generation abilities offer promise, it brings inherent challenges, including data opacity, potential misinformation, and occasional errors. These issues are especially critical in government decision-making.Public administration’s core values of transparency and accountability magnify these concerns. Ensuring AI alignment with these principles is imperative, given the potential repercussions on policy outcomes and citizen trust.AI explainability plays a central role in ChatGPT’s adoption within government agencies. To address these concerns, we propose strategies like prompt engineering, data governance, and …

Just Adjust One Prompt: Enhancing In-Context Dialogue Scoring Via Constructing The Optimal Subgraph Of Demonstrations And Prompts, Jiashu Pu, Ling Cheng, Lu Fan, Tangjie Lv, Rongsheng Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The use of modern Large Language Models (LLMs) as chatbots still has some problems such as hallucinations and lack of empathy. Identifying these issues can help improve chatbot performance. The community has been continually iterating on reference-free dialogue evaluation methods based on large language models (LLMs) that can be readily applied. However, many of these LLM-based metrics require selecting specific datasets and developing specialized training tasks for different evaluation dimensions (e.g., coherence, informative). The developing step can be time-consuming and may need to be repeated for new evaluation dimensions. To enable efficient and flexible adaptation to diverse needs of dialogue …

Affordances Of Mobile Technology To Facilitate Learning In Undergraduate Thermal-Fluid Sciences, Maeve Raphael Bakic

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, the pandemic has affected learning at all levels, in particular higher education, where higher levels of independence and self-motivation are required during distance learning. In engineering in particular, distance learning adds another degree of difficulty to an already complex field. Comprehension in engineering requires the repeated use of diagrams, high-level charts, and practice problems. Mobile devices, combined with a technology-enhanced curriculum, provide an excellent platform for learning in engineering as it allows for clear illustration and the transfer of complex ideas at any time and place. In alignment with the social-constructivist framework, these facets of mobile technology …

Cyber-Informed Engineering Of Industrial Control Systems By Prioritization Of High Consequence Events, Conflict Clause Learning Technique, And Autotuning Mechanisms For The Real-Time Monitoring Of Critical Processes, Chidi Ugo Agbo

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are systems employed to supervise, regulate, and control industrial processes and critical infrastructure. These critical systems require robust measures to protect them against potential safety and security violations. Ensuring the safety and security of ICS is a significant challenge facing nations and states today, necessitating the development of robust, dependable, and resilient ICS. Traditional cybersecurity and engineering practices continue to adopt an inefficient approach that treats security as an add-on element during the system design and development. In response, this dissertation builds on a novel theoretical approach known as Cyber-Informed Engineering (CIE) that leverages safety and …

Social Network Analysis Of A Biomedical Research Co-Authorship Network, Amrina Ferdous

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

A social network analysis (SNA) is a graph-based method for visualizing social networks. Our study uses the SNA to analyze co-authorship patterns in National Institutes of Health (NIH) - Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE), Idaho Institutional Development Award (IDeA), Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE), and Biomedical Research Infrastructure Network (BRIN) grants between 2001 and 2022. It is of interest to us to analyze the growth and expansion of research over time to look at the social networks of research Hubs, the social networks of potential research Hubs in the near future, and the social networks of potential leaders …

Automated Materials Spectroscopy And Topology Optimizations Using Genetic Algorithms, Miu Lun Lau

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation will focus on the implementation and development of genetic algorithm software for increasing the productivity and analysis rate for spectrum analysis, topology optimization, and others. The software artifacts generated have resulted in a basic software framework called Neo. The framework has been further developed into different software for specific spectra methods such as EXAFS, Astrophysics, Nano-Indentation, and many more.

For GA implementation that relates to EXAFS, we have demonstrated the usage of GA to correctly identify chemical species presented, for Copper metal species, Technetium compounds, and in-situ of SnS2 batteries. The software artifact was able to generate accurate …

Improving Security Of Order-Preserving Encryption And Its Applications In Data Outsourcing, Ning Shen

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Encryption is an important tool to protect data confidentiality and privacy. One important practice of computation primitives is encrypting data with Order-Preserving Encryption (OPE). Order-Preserving Encryption is an encryption algorithm that allows the ciphertexts to preserve the same order of plaintext and it is very useful for range queries in databases and other applications. However, OPE has certain security vulnerabilities, such as it may leak sensitive information other than the ordering. Currently, the application of OPE is also limited, which is primarily used in the encryption of outsourced databases.

Due to the OPE’s security concern and limited usage, this dissertation …

Students' Opportunity To Struggle In Middle Grades Mathematics Lessons, Ramey Uriarte

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Mathematics education researchers suggest that providing the opportunity to struggle with important mathematics (SOS) is a necessary component of lessons in order for students to conceptually understand mathematics. There are many ways to promote and support SOS, yet very few lessons demonstrate SOS in today’s middle grades classrooms. This study illuminates 12 lessons found to demonstrate high levels of SOS in four middle grades classrooms. It specifically examines the way lessons are structured and the teaching practices used within lessons containing high levels of SOS. It seeks to answer the questions: What lesson structures were implemented in middle grades mathematics …

On Hierarchical Clustering-Based Approach For Rddbs Design, Hassan I. Abdalla, Ali A. Amer, Sri Devi Ravana

All Works

Distributed database system (DDBS) design is still an open challenge even after decades of research, especially in a dynamic network setting. Hence, to meet the demands of high-speed data gathering and for the management and preservation of huge systems, it is important to construct a distributed database for real-time data storage. Incidentally, some fragmentation schemes, such as horizontal, vertical, and hybrid, are widely used for DDBS design. At the same time, data allocation could not be done without first physically fragmenting the data because the fragmentation process is the foundation of the DDBS design. Extensive research have been conducted to …

A Critical Comparison Of Answering Behavior Threshold Determination Methods As An Indicator Of Engagement On The 2015 Pisa Science Items, Lauri Elizabeth Mackelburg-Davis

Dissertations

The validity of low-stakes achievement tests is questionable when disengaged answering (i.e., rapid-guessing and rapid-omitting) is present in even moderate amounts. Thus, identifying these disengaged test-takers is important so that statistical or behavior mediation practices can be put into place. The first step in identifying disengaged examinees is to determine the divide between the engaged examinees and those that are disengaged. Many methods for discriminating between disengaged from engaged answering behavior on computer generated assessments exist. Many methods require expertise in statistical methods, while others require little to no mathematics knowledge. However, these simpler methods are routinely used with little …

Software Jimenae Allows Efficient Dynamic Simulations Of Boolean Networks, Centrality And System State Analysis, Martin Kaltdorf, Tim Breitenbach, Stefan Karl, Maximilian Fuchs, David Komla Kessie, Eric Psota, Martina Prelog, Edita Sarukhanyan, Regina Ebert, Franz Jakob, Gudrun Dandekar, Muhammad Naseem, Chunguang Liang, Thomas Dandekar

All Works

The signal modelling framework JimenaE simulates dynamically Boolean networks. In contrast to SQUAD, there is systematic and not just heuristic calculation of all system states. These specific features are not present in CellNetAnalyzer and BoolNet. JimenaE is an expert extension of Jimena, with new optimized code, network conversion into different formats, rapid convergence both for system state calculation as well as for all three network centralities. It allows higher accuracy in determining network states and allows to dissect networks and identification of network control type and amount for each protein with high accuracy. Biological examples demonstrate this: (i) High plasticity …

The Private Pilot Check Ride: Applying The Spacing Effect Theory To Predict Time To Proficiency For The Practical Test, Michael Scott Harwin

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the relationship between a set of targeted factors and the total flight time students needed to become ready to take the private pilot check ride. The study was grounded in Ebbinghaus’s (1885/1913/2013) forgetting curve theory and spacing effect, and Ausubel’s (1963) theory of meaningful learning. The research factors included (a) training time to proficiency, which represented the number of training days needed to become check-ride ready; (b) flight training program (Part 61 vs. Part 141); (c) organization offering the training program (2- or 4-year college/university vs. FBO); (d) scheduling policy (mandated vs. student-driven); and demographical variables, which …

Optimization Of High-Order Statistical Moment Combinations To Best Represent Spray Flow Particle Probability Density Functions, Amanda Lynn Myers

Theses and Dissertations

Characterizing spray flows has been an issue of interest for years, particularly in regards to fuel injection in engines. Droplet velocity and diameter, among other characteristics, are crucial to understanding spray flows. One approach for determining these quantities in a spray is using a statistical approach that solves for the moments of droplet characteristics as they evolve in space and time. A theoretical probability density function (PDF) can be formulated using various combinations of moments which evolve according to derived moment transport equations (thus evolving the PDF), using the principle of maximum entropy as closure to the system. Building upon …

Security Analysis Of Holystone Drones: Examining Attack Vectors And Data Extraction Techniques, Sandesh Ambadas More

Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, the surge in popularity of small-scale Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), especially Holy Stone models, has raised significant security concerns. This study examines specific Holy Stone drone models, including the HS 175D, HS 430, HS 360S, and HS720, focusing on sub-250g drones exempt from FAA registration and those requiring registration and Remote ID. Despite advancements in drone technology, our research reveals persistent vulnerabilities that could be exploited by malicious actors for illicit purposes, posing a substantial security risk. Our comprehensive analysis involved simulated attacks in identifying and exploiting these vulnerabilities, leading to the successful acquisition of flight logs, …

Twitter Policing, Hemanth Kumar Medisetty

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Police departments are frequently utilizing social media platforms to actively interact with the public. Social media offers an opportunity to share information, facilitate communication, and foster stronger connections between police departments and the communities they serve. In this context sentiment analysis of social media data has become a tool, for identifying sentiments and tracking emerging trends.

This project utilizes sentiment analysis to examine the social media interactions with particular data obtained from the Twitter (X). Initially, the project gathers social media data, from twitter mentioned accounts on Twitter utilizing web scraping techniques. Afterwards, we perform a thorough sentiment analysis using …

Building Efficacy In Special Educators: An Examination Of Basic Readiness Factors, Clarice Wright Edwards

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This phenomenological study examined the perceptions of self-efficacy of elementary special education teachers (SETs) providing services for students with disabilities (SWD) in the general education classroom setting. Additionally, this study explored the effect of job-embedded supports and the skill sets deemed essential to meet the needs of SWDs. Understanding methods that can enhance the skill sets and pedagogical knowledge of SETs beyond teacher preparation can provide schools and school districts with opportunities to build highly efficacious teachers and improve student outcomes. Participants were asked about the perceived impact of teacher preparation programs on the self-efficacy of practicing SETs and about …

A Mathematical App For The Conceptual Understanding Of Area And Perimeter, Jumela F. Sarmiento, Debbie Marie B. Verzosa, Maria Alva Q. Aberin, Ma. Louise Antonette De Las Penas, Agnes D. Garciano, Juan Carlo F. Mallari, Mark Anthony C. Tolentino

Mathematics Faculty Publications

This paper discusses an app that was developed to build a strong understanding of the concepts of area and perimeter in students. An important feature of the app is the three-component feature which highlights progressive learning: Explore, designed for the learning of the conceptual understanding of area and perimeter; Apply, where area and perimeter concepts are applied; and Create intended for constructing representations to develop higher order thinking skills. The pedagogical basis for the creation of the app, the game design elements employed in the app as well as the integration of the app in the classroom will be presented.

Technological Tools For The Teaching And Learning Of Statistics, Mark Anthony C. Tolentino, Juan Carlo F. Mallari, Maria Alva Q. Aberin, Ma. Louise Antonette De Las Penas, Agnes D. Garciano, Jumela F. Sarmiento, Debbie Marie B. Verzosa

Mathematics Faculty Publications

Statistics and its applications form an integral part of STEM education. In the literature, it is shown that technology is valuable in supporting the teaching and learning of statistics. This paper discusses some technological tools that have been developed to support statistics education in the grade school, junior high school, and senior high school levels. It describes the design and pedagogical basis of these tools, and how these may be integrated in the classroom.

A Visualization App On Proving Geometric Concepts, Ma. Louise Antonette N. De Las Peñas, Debbie Marie B. Verzosa, Maria Alva Q. Aberin, Agnes D. Garciano, Jumela F. Sarmiento, Mark Anthony C. Tolentino, Juan Carlo F. Mallari

Mathematics Faculty Publications

This paper discusses the description, design and pedagogical basis of a mathematical app called Two Column Proof which provides students a framework for writing proofs of geometric statements. The app focuses on proving concepts on: properties of parallelograms, conditions that determine when a quadrilateral is a parallelogram, properties on trapezoids and kites for high school mathematics. It employs visual representations for students to understand the statement or reason of each given line in the proof, strengthening their logical and mathematical knowledge needed in the proof construction.

Design Of A Mobile App To Promote Understanding And Fluency In Finding The Equation Of A Line, Agnes D. Garciano, Maria Alva Q. Aberin, Ma Louise Antonette N. Delaspeñas, Juan Carlo F. Mallari, Jumela F. Sarmiento, Mark Anthony C. Tolentino, Debbie Marie B. Verzosa

Mathematics Faculty Publications

This paper focuses on the design of a mobile app called Pick or Fish that fosters comprehension and mastery of the concepts of slopes, y-intercepts and equations of lines. The app's pedagogical value lies in its potential to help students understand and become proficient in these concepts. The app is suitable for use on low-cost mobile devices. It functions within an engaging game-like setting featuring visual elements that enable students to see the effect of parameter changes on the direction of a line. The beginner and advanced levels of the app have scaffolding features that gradually introduce the students to …

A Multi-Channel Search For Signatures Of Ev2-Scale Sterile Neutrinos In Icecube, Benjamin Randolph Smithers

Physics Dissertations - Archive

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a cubic-kilometer-scale neutrino observatory built using a gigaton of instrumented ice near the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica; it measures the Cherenkov light emitted by the daughter particles of deep inelastic scattering interactions occurring inside and around the detector from neutrinos of both astrophysical and atmospheric origin. For eV2-scale sterile neutrino models, matter-effects can yield resonant muon antineutrino to sterile oscillations for TeV-scale up-going neutrinos. For certain combinations of mixing angles, this is expected to yield resonant muon antineutrino to tau antineutrino oscillations at the same energies and angles as the muon neutrino disappearance. …

Measurement, Modeling, And Analysis Of The Energy Spectra Of Electrons And Annihilation Gammas Resulting From Low Energy Positron Irradiation Of Clean And Adsorbate Covered Surfaces, Sima Lotfimarangloo

Physics Dissertations - Archive

This dissertation presents measurements and theoretical modeling demonstrating the capability of Doppler Broadened annihilation gamma Spectroscopy (DBS) to provide element-specific information from the topmost atomic layer of surfaces that are either clean or covered with adsorbates or thin films. Our measurements show that the energy spectra of Doppler-shifted annihilation gamma photons emitted following the annihilation of positrons from the topmost atomic layers of clean gold (Au) and copper (Cu) differ significantly. With the aid of the positron annihilation-induced Auger electron spectroscopy (PAES) performed simultaneously with DBS, we show that measurable differences between the Doppler broadened gamma spectra from Au and …

Growth Rates, Morphology, And Potential For Mariculture Of The Southern Population Of Crassostrea Virginica In The Lower Laguna Madre, Texas, Jerad Lee Fuelling

Theses and Dissertations

The Eastern Oyster also known as Crassostrea virginica, is an important resource here in the United States. Historically, this species has been overfished, poorly managed, and plagued by disease. Oyster mariculture is a growing industry here in the United States and is a sustainable solution to producing oysters. Texas has become the last coastal state to legalize oyster mariculture which means there is now a vast coastline with many unique bay systems that are open to this industry. One bay system that is particularly unique is the Lower Laguna Madre which is a hypersaline lagoon. Little is known about …

Thin Film Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting Nanostructured Materials: Tailoring Size, Porosity, Morphology Of Zinc Stannate Perovskites (Abx3), Christopher Munoz

Theses and Dissertations

Three dimensional (3D) piezoelectric zinc stannate (ZnSnO3) nanoweb arrays are synthesized using a combination of treatment methods deposited in PDMS thin films for electrochemical analysis of its piezoelectric response. Advantages of hydrothermal, molten salt, and solvothermal synthesis methods were leveraged to facilitate several chemical and surface engineering techniques. The combination of these treatments reduce the size of zinc stannate to approximately ~40nm-80nm weblike networks, much smaller than previously reported ZnSnO3 sub-micro cubes. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) analysis reveal a mesoporous protonated tristannate (H2Sn3O7) nanoweb template with connecting wirelike strands having diameters ranging from 12-27nm across and …

Electrolysis Degradation Of Cyanuric Acid In Wastewater At Cu/Go Cathodes, Chioma Chinwe Nwakanobi

Theses and Dissertations

This work evaluates the development of electrochemical processes for the oxidative degradation of persistent organic chemicals in waste waters, specifically the oxidation of cyanuric acid in the presence of NaCl at Cu/GO cathodes and Ti anodes. The experiment used a graphene oxide doped copper mesh cathode to examine different concentrations of cyanuric acid (30 mg/L, 40 mg/L, and 50 mg/L) and various concentrations of NaCl electrolyte (0.007mol/L, 0.03mol/L, 0.07mol/L, 0.1mol/L, and 0.2mol/L). In addition, the effect of pH (2, 4, 6, and 8), and applied current (0.200A, 0.150A and 0.100A) were studied. The Cu/GO electrode played a central role in …

Enhancing Time Series Hashing Performance Via Deep Orthogonal Hashing, Mahmudul Hasan Robin

Theses and Dissertations

Deep hashing has been widely used for efficient retrieval and classification of high-dimensional data like images and text. However, its application to time series data is still challenging due to the data’s temporal nature. To tackle this issue, a new deep hashing method has been proposed that generates efficient hash codes and enhances the time series hashing performance using a ResNet model with Orthohash (Cosine Similarity Loss). The proposed method uses one loss architecture while using ResNet model for efficient hashing. It uses the Character Trajectories dataset to extract discriminative features from the time series data. These features are then …

Robust Uncertainty Estimation Framework In Deep Reinforcement Learning For Active Slam, Bryan Joseph Pedraza

Theses and Dissertations

Autonomous mobile robots are essential in various domains such as industry, manufacturing and healthcare. Navigating autonomously and avoiding obstacles are crucial tasks that involve localizing the robot to explore and map unknown environments without prior knowledge. Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) present significant challenges. In this study, we introduce a new approach to address robust navigation and mapping of robot actions using Bayesian Actor-Critic (A2C) reinforcement learning. The A2C framework combines policy-based and value-based learning by dividing the model into two components: (1) the policy model (Actor) determines the actions based on the state, and (2) the value model (Critic) …