Digital Commons Network^™

Arab Citizens’ Contributions To Investigative Reporting: An Examination Of Arabs' Awareness, Willingness, And Satisfaction Toward Citizen Investigative Reporting, Ahmed Makharesh

Dissertations

This dissertation aims to measure Arabs' understanding of investigative reporting and willingness to engage in investigative reporting practices through a survey of 421 Arab citizens from countries that include the Eastern African, Northern African, Arabian Peninsula, and Fertile Crescent regions. It also aims to measure Arabs' understanding of gatekeeping and their willingness to serve as gatekeepers. Further, this dissertation emphasizes various hypotheses, including that increased investigative reporting would benefit the region's citizens and increase the quality of journalistic work. The gatekeeping theory fits into this dissertation because of the significant development of the news delivery process on social media in …

The Lived Experiences Of Transition-Age Youth With Usher Syndrome Preparing For Postsecondary Education: A Retrospective Study, Tara Mae Brown-Ogilvie

Dissertations

Youth with Usher syndrome (USH) can experience unique challenges in postsecondary preparation. Currently, there is a paucity of research addressing the postsecondary preparation experiences of youth with USH. The purpose of this study was to learn from college students with USH about their lived experiences of preparing for postsecondary education; specifically, exploring K-12 educational supports, transition planning, and support systems that helped youth with USH prepare for postsecondary education. Due to the unique nature of this microcosm of deafblindness, qualitative and phenomenological methods were best suited for this study to garner first-hand accounts of those who have experienced this phenomenon …

Implicit Bias Toward Students With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder And The Influential Role Of Teacher Self-Efficacy, Laurie Claire Landrieu

Dissertations

The current study observed the presence of implicit bias toward students with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in the classroom and the influential role of teacher self-efficacy. Teachers report a lack of readiness to work with students with diverse learning needs. Students with alternative learning needs, such as those with ADHD, report less social competency with adults and peers, and lower self-concept. The purpose of the study is to provide further information about the implicit biases held toward students with ADHD within the classroom and the influential role of teacher self-efficacy. Forty general education teachers were recruited. A paired samples t-test was …

Facilitating Language Development In Late-Talking Toddlers: A Study Of Caregiver Training And Intervention Effectiveness, Kelly Meadows

Dissertations

The prevalence of late language emergence (LLE) in young children is high, comprising 10 to 20% of toddlers. Late language emergence refers to children who do not use at least 50 single words and 2-word phrases at the age of two. Current best practices for the under-three population with or at risk of having disabilities include the use of family-centered services in early intervention. One method of EI for LLE is caregiver-implemented interventions, where the caregiver learns techniques or strategies to help support their child’s expressive language development. This service delivery model prioritizes building the family’s capacity to support their …

Utilizing Morphology Instruction To Improve Students’ Reading Proficiency, Michelle Marie Sweigart

Masters Projects

Many adolescent learners face difficulties with reading comprehension as grades progress. Research suggests that this is due to a variety of contributing factors, including deficits in decoding, fluency, and vocabulary, in addition to content-area vocabulary becoming increasingly challenging. While research has shown the vast benefits of utilizing morphology instruction across grade levels to improve vocabulary, especially in secondary education, it is a largely underutilized area for intervention. This project explores the potential benefits of offering adolescents a morphological intervention to make grade-level vocabulary across content areas more accessible. Through the use of explicitly-taught strategies to systematically break down and employ …

Vengeance As Piety: The Heroic And Elegiac Devil Of Genesis B, Alisa Heskin

Masters Theses

In Christian theology, the fall of Lucifer and his fellow rebel angels details the origins of angelic sin and prefigures the fall of humanity. The narrative had a strong literary tradition in early medieval England, appearing frequently in both poetry and prose. The Junius manuscript, one of four codices preserving the majority of Old English poetry, contains three accounts of the fall of the angels, with the most extensive versions being found in the poems known by scholars as Genesis B and Christ and Satan. Much of the scholarly attention Genesis B receives pertains to its interpolation into the longer …

Giant Asset Managers, The Big Three, And Index Investing, Dorothy S. Lund, Adriana Z. Robertson

Faculty Scholarship

A robust literature describes the incentives and stewardship practices of the “Big Three” asset managers (BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street Global Advisors), often referring to these asset managers as “passive.” This is so common that the “Big Three,” “index fund,” and “passive manager” are used almost interchangeably by both academics and practitioners. This shorthand emerged in the foundational scholarship in this area, and while it may remain useful in certain contexts, its casual use obscures important features of the market and contributes to misperceptions. In this chapter, we demonstrate that it is a mistake to equate passive investing with index …

Standardizing Attention Process Training-Iii For A Multisite Clinical Trial Of Neuromodulation, Jessica D. Richardson, Honey Isabel Hubbard, Sarah Grace Dalton, Sloan Davidson, Tiana Maple, Tyler B. Smith, Mo Chen, Rebecca Hiltner, Thomas Jones, Andrew R. Mayer, Orrin Myers, Cassandra Nelson, Sarah Pirio-Richardson, Cidney Robertson-Benta, Scott R. Sponheim, Joel Upston, Lindsay Worth, Nicholas Davenport, Davin K. Quinn

Speech Pathology and Audiology Faculty Research and Publications

Introduction

The Control Network Neuromodulation to Enhance Cognitive Training in Complex Traumatic Brain Injury (CONNECT-TBI) study is an ongoing randomized, double-blinded, sham-controlled multisite clinical trial to determine the enhancing effects of noninvasive neuromodulation when paired with cognitive training in military participants (Veterans and active duty) with mild TBI. Attention Process Training-III (APT-III) was selected for its strong evidence base, manualized procedures, and computerized program. However, many aspects of APT-III that make it ideal for personalization make it less ideal for reliable implementation across participants, clinicians/technicians, and sites. The purpose of this feature article is to highlight APT-III procedures that require …

Language Ideologies And Use Among Latine Children In A Dual Language Program In Southern California: A Qualitative Approach, Xochitl Morales

Education (PhD) Dissertations

Through a critical race and LatCrit framework, this research examined the language ideologies of young Latine children enrolled in Spanish dual-language programs. Specifically, I examined how and why the children chose to speak English and Spanish at home and school. A qualitative approach was used to understand the participants in their natural environment. The participants were five third-grade students (two males and three females), and their parents, five females and one male, and a the student’s third-grade teacher. The data collected included participant observations at home and at school as well as both formal interviews and informal conversations with students, …

Measuring Language Change In The Welsh Linguistic Landscape, Miriam Whiting

BYU Research Development Office Research Networking Conference

Areas of Interest: Language Policy and Planning, Linguistic Landscape, Language and Identity, Language Narratives

An Exploration Of The Lived Experiences And Decision-Making Processes Of Alternative Education Teachers Using An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis, Ashley Irene Zehner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Students with behavioral challenges and mental health concerns have unique academic, behavioral, and emotional needs. Due to high student to teacher ratio and lack of mental health and behavioral resources, some students may not have their needs met in a public school general education setting. An option that can be a better solution for these students due to lower student to teacher ratio, mental health resources, and behavioral support is schooling in alternative schools. This study explored the daily routines and the decision-making process of alternative educators as they work to meet the multifaceted needs of their students. Using an …

Relationship Between School Counselor Multicultural Counseling Competence And School Counselor Consultation, Tamia H. Randolph-Alvarez

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Professional counseling, as represented by associations responsible for setting standards and best practices in the profession, indicates that school counselors need to be prepared to engage in practices that result in systems-wide change. According to the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision [ACES] (2023), these practices include systems-based practices, multicultural competence, and consultation. However, research reveals that school counselors are not being prepared to utilize multicultural consultation (Chowela et al., 2020), defined as a systems-based practice (Hoffman et al., 2006) in this study. The Council for the Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (2023) suggests that counseling graduate programs’ …

Japan’S “Big Lie": The Negation Of Oral Testimony Of Sexual Violence, Robert O'Mochain, Yuki Ueno

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

In recent years, powerful actors in Japan’s political elite have consistently denied the oral testimony of so-called “comfort women.” The denial of this and related historical crimes is made in the service of a claim we denote here as the “big lie.” This is the erroneous assertion that the Asia-Pacific War was a straightforward war of liberation by the Japanese Imperial Army, inspired by a blameless Emperor and carried out by morally exemplary military forces. This denial of historical realities, especially those related to “comfort women,” has constituted a contributory factor for a pattern of denial regarding all historical crimes. …

Summer 2024, Georgia Library Quarterly

Georgia Library Quarterly

No abstract provided.

A Theory Of Host Country Sentiments: An Illustration In Cross-Border Acquisitions, Daphne W. Yiu, William P. Wan, Xiaocong Tian, Kelly Xing Chen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Capitalizing on massive sentiment diffusion and mobilization aided by mass media and social media nowadays, we introduce a general theory of host country sentiments to illuminate the granular, context-situated, and time dynamic power of social sentiments. We posit that host country is a value-laden context wherein a foreign entity’s strategic action stimulates host country stakeholders’ social sentiments and engagement in systems of discourses (“sentiment arousal”), mobilizes social sentiments toward the foreign entity (“sentiment competence”), and legitimizes social sentiments and the strategic action of the foreign entity (“sentiment resonance”). To test our theory, we employ a context of inward acquisitions by …

Tools Or Fools: Are We Educating Managers Or Creating Tool-Dependent Robots?, Steven J. Hyde, Antoine Busby, Robert L. Bonner

Boise State University Publications and Presentations

This essay examines strategies for thoughtfully integrating generative AI (Gen-AI) into management curricula to enhance student learning while mitigating risks like overreliance. We make the case that outright resistance is counterproductive; instead, management educators should embrace Gen-AI’s potential to create more engaging, experiential learning aligned with andragogical principles. We provide a conceptual framework mapping nine Gen-AI objectives to the principles of andragogy. A semester-long course example illustrates this framework in action through AI activities fostering autonomy, competence, and real-world application. Student surveys revealed overwhelmingly positive perceptions of Gen-AI integration and improved exam scores. However, dependence risks remain. The essay discusses …

Animating Feminism, Angella Burgess

Postgraduate

Animation mirrors society, reflecting its values, beliefs and challenges, becoming a tool to enable cultural improvement by recognising diversity and critiquing socio-political issues. Inspired by traditional Eastern European animation, renowned for its surrealism and socio-political narratives, this research aims to expand the medium’s potential. Directors like Jan Svankmajer and Jiri Trnka created masterpieces based on folklore, mythology and political commentary. This research aims to intertwine and shape animated works' content and context by honouring this tradition.

The research explores the multifaceted role of contemporary animation, which embeds Eastern European stylistic techniques to disrupt popular story structures and shape social discourse. …

Razorblade Swing: Sympathy For The Dead, Game Design Document, Matthew Sparksman

Postgraduate

Sydney of the late 20s was a world of dark, crisp shadows and flashing blades. The war has recently ended, and there is a hunger, a mania, to forget and bury the ghosts and spirits. But the dead, and things inhuman, do not like to be forgotten.

Razorblade Swing is a tabletop roleplaying game that seeks to explore this world through the eyes of street-level, everyday, vulnerable people, particularly women. The main conceit is that the Razor Wars were the product of the ghosts and spirits of war. Those who come back often deal with this through addiction, vice and …

Style: Improving Domain Transferability Of Asking Clarification Questions In Large Language Model Powered Conversational Agents, Yue Chen, Chen Huang, Yang Deng, Wenqiang Lei, Dingnan Jin, Jia Liu, Tat-Seng Chua

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Equipping a conversational search engine with strategies regarding when to ask clarification questions is becoming increasingly important across various domains. Attributing to the context understanding capability of LLMs and their access to domain-specific sources of knowledge, LLM-based clarification strategies feature rapid transfer to various domains in a posthoc manner. However, they still struggle to deliver promising performance on unseen domains, struggling to achieve effective domain transferability. We take the first step to investigate this issue and existing methods tend to produce one-size-fits-all strategies across diverse domains, limiting their search effectiveness. In response, we introduce a novel method, called STYLE, to …

Chain-Of-Exemplar: Enhancing Distractor Generation For Multimodal Educational Question Generation, Haohao Luo, Yang Deng, Ying Shen, See-Kiong Ng, Tat-Seng Chua

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Multiple-choice questions (MCQs) are important in enhancing concept learning and student engagement for educational purposes. Despite the multimodal nature of educational content, current methods focus mainly on text-based inputs and often neglect the integration of visual information. In this work, we study the problem of multimodal educational question generation, which aims at generating subject-specific educational questions with plausible yet incorrect distractors based on multimodal educational content. To tackle this problem, we introduce a novel framework, named Chain-of-Exemplar (CoE), which utilizes multimodal large language models (MLLMs) with Chain-of-Thought reasoning to improve the generation of challenging distractors. Furthermore, CoE leverages three-stage contextualized …

Self-Chats From Large Language Models Make Small Emotional Support Chatbot Better, Zhonghua Zheng, Lizi Liao, Yang Deng, Libo Qin, Liqiang Nie

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown strong generalization abilities to excel in various tasks, including emotion support conversations. However, deploying such LLMs like GPT-3 (175B parameters) is resource-intensive and challenging at scale. In this study, we utilize LLMs as “Counseling Teacher” to enhance smaller models’ emotion support response abilities, significantly reducing the necessity of scaling up model size. To this end, we first introduce an iterative expansion framework, aiming to prompt the large teacher model to curate an expansive emotion support dialogue dataset. This curated dataset, termed ExTES, encompasses a broad spectrum of scenarios and is crafted with meticulous strategies …

Ee-Lce: An Event Extraction Framework Based On Llm-Generated Cot Explanation, Yanhua Yu, Yuanlong Wang, Yunshan Ma, Jie Li, Kangkang Lu, Zhiyong Huang, Tat-Seng Chua

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Generative models have been widely used in event extraction. However, the interpretability of event extraction has not been fully investigated. In this paper, we propose an Event Extraction framework based on LLM-generated CoT Explanation EE-LCE, which can generate chain-of-thought-style (CoT-style) explanations for events. To this end, we provide each sample of event datasets with an explanation of the reasoning process using a large language model (LLM) GPT-3.5, and fine-tune the Flan-T5 lightweight language model (LM) supervised by the augmented dataset, enhancing both interpretability and performance of the event extraction. Moreover, we use a prefix tree (trie) to normalize the decoding …

Urban Principals’ Leadership Practices Needed To Implement Culturally Responsive Curricula And Instruction, Dr. Shervon Thompson-Slappy

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The problem addressed in this study is that the number of historically marginalized and diverse students in U.S. classrooms is rapidly increasing and schools are not prepared to address the need for culturally responsive curriculum and instruction. This study is important because K-12 principals are challenged to address equity, inclusion, and academic and behavioral barriers for this student population. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore twelve K-12 principals' leadership experiences implementing culturally responsive curricula and instruction in their urban schools. Principals, who attended a district-level CRSL professional development, were purposefully selected to participate in semistructured interviews. …

Human Rights Violations Against Legal Immigrants In Minnesota, John Ewu

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Despite legal entitlements to protections under the International Bill of Human Rights, legal immigrants in Minnesota face human rights violations, including discrimination, harassment, and denial of essential services. These violations hinder their well-being, social integration, and economic stability, exacerbate existing disparities, and their ability to provide for their families and secure legal representation. The purpose of this study was to provide information that could be used in considering policy reforms to improve the treatment of immigrants in Minnesota. This was achieved by exploring how Mexican, Somali, and Hmong legal immigrants experienced human rights violations in Minnesota as a vulnerable population …

Watme: Towards Lossless Watermarking Through Lexical Redundancy, Liang Chen, Yatao Bian, Yang Deng, Deng Cai, Shuaiyi Li, Peilin Zhao, Kam-Fai Wong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Text watermarking has emerged as a pivotal technique for identifying machine-generated text. However, existing methods often rely on arbitrary vocabulary partitioning during decoding to embed watermarks, which compromises the availability of suitable tokens and significantly degrades the quality of responses. This study assesses the impact of watermarking on different capabilities of large language models (LLMs) from a cognitive science lens. Our finding highlights a significant disparity; knowledge recall and logical reasoning are more adversely affected than language generation. These results suggest a more profound effect of watermarking on LLMs than previously understood. To address these challenges, we introduce Watermarking with …

Impact Of Teacher Support Systems On Advanced Placement Achievement Outcomes, Yolanda Gomez

Education Theses and Dissertations

In the realm of Advanced Placement (AP) education, a persistent achievement gap exists, with low-socioeconomic students consistently underperforming compared to their affluent peers. This disparity is particularly notable in AP English Language and Composition, where 93% of students fail to achieve a score of three or higher, the score for earning college credit. This study hypothesizes that this gap is partly due to inadequate support for AP teachers, particularly the lack of collaborative planning time. In most high schools, AP English Language and Composition teachers have no dedicated time for collaboration, instead focusing on other areas like End of Course …

The Confessional Side Of Lennon: Comparing The Lyrics Of John Lennon To The School Of Confessional Poetry, Brandon H. Job

English Theses

Abstract of Thesis

The Confessional Side of Lennon: Comparing the Lyrics of John Lennon to the School of Confessional Poetry

It has been noted by avid listeners, critics, and scholars of Beatles material that John Lennon’s lyrical voice differed from his bandmates. Words such as “somber,” “autobiographical,” “introspective,” “angry,” “dark,” and so on, have all been used to describe his lyrical voice. However, their evaluation ends there without further investigation into his song lyrics’ uniqueness. My study aims to extend the research done on Lennon in order to define the unique voice he used throughout his songwriting career by arguing …

Understanding The Emergence Of Self-Determination In Children With Disabilities Through Family Experiences In Early Childhood: A Qualitative Study, Karen K. Lange

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Abstract A person’s ability to be self-determined begins to develop through the earliest interactions in life within the context of the family and caregiving environments. This qualitative phenomenological study of the experiences of eight parents representing seven families of young children explored how families promote their children’s early development of the skills, abilities, and attitudes of self-determination. The critical importance of the family context for the promotion of self-determination in young children is seen in the four themes that emerged from the experiences shared by these families. (1) The family context is transformed by a child with a disability, changing …

Smartphone Gaming And International Students: Exploring The Experiences Of Hypercasual Gameplay For Practicing English Vocabulary And Learning About The United States Culture In Mediated Action, Se He Hwang

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The use of smartphones in everyday settings is widespread, and people around the world use smartphones not only for making phone calls and sending text messages but also as a tool for searching for information and playing smartphone games during their free time. Since people around the world have easy access to smartphones regardless of their physical locations, smartphones can function as a tool for learning purposes, and playing games for learning purposes also supports the students to learn information in less stressful settings since playing games is predominantly for entertainment. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study in mediated …

Removing The Deficit Lens: Determining Support For Hispanic Newcomer Families In Public School Based On Their Unique Needs And Experiences, Shauna Schubiger

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this mixed methods study is to better understand the diverse needs of Latine newcomer families relocating to the United States and enrolling in a southeastern elementary school. Specifically, this study gathered and analyzed the unique experiences of these families immigrating into the U.S. to fully comprehend what they have been through to arrive here and how schools can help their families become involved in their children’s education. In K-12 education, there is a void which exists regarding who these families are and the need to humanize their journeys. This lack of research can be exacerbated by the …