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Lesson 3. Sky Explorers: The Rhythm Of The Moon And My Garden, Rachel Pastrana, Madhav P. Nepal

iLEARN Teaching Resources

In this kindergarten lesson, students become "Sky Explorers" as they investigate the patterns and rhythms of the Sun, Moon, and Earth. Through storytelling, movement activities, Oreo Moon modeling, outdoor observations, and hands-on exploration, students learn how Earth's rotation creates day and night and how the Moon changes appearance through predictable phases. Students explore the Lakota concepts of Wí (Sun), Haŋwí (Moon), and Mitákuye Oyás'iŋ (We Are All Related) while making connections between natural cycles, food systems, and plant growth. Students discover how people have long observed the Moon as a natural calendar and how farmers and gardeners use seasonal patterns …

School Safety Officials’ Perceptions Of Social Media And School Violence In Rural School Districts, Dwayne Wheeler

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Bridging The Disability Inclusion Gap In Certified Professions, Daina Devereaux

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Text/Ures, Kathy Mantas

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

By entwining the voices of other co-creators, text and images, I share a brief site-specific photo-reverie of my life-long allure to trees—in this instance, by attending to the trees near my home. This offering is rooted in peripatetic aesthetic practices that embrace a slower creative approach and more spellbinding ways of living, learning and knowing. In essence, this is an invitation to have an artful encounter with text/ures of trees.

Integrating Reflection Data With Stratigraphic Analysis In Little Lake Sunapee, New Hampshire, Caleb S. Saks

Earth Sciences Undergraduate Senior Theses

Reflection events within ground penetrating radar (GPR) and CHIRP seismic data are commonly used to infer changes in stratigraphy in lake basins. My thesis provides ground truth for these data by correlating reflection events to measured changes in sediment characteristics including composition and density. My focus is Little Lake Sunapee (LLS), located in central New Hampshire, which contains sediments deposited during and after the retreat of the Laurentide Ice Sheet (LIS), during late Pleistocene and Holocene time. These sediments provide a record of post-glacial climate and environmental change.

I present detailed coverage of the LLS sub-bottom sediment stratigraphy based on …

Lindenwood Expands Its Role In The St. Louis Geospatial Ecosystem, Lindenwood University

Archived Lindenwood Press Releases

No abstract provided.

Measurement Discipline For Sustainable Industrial Transition: Frontier Productivity Evidence From Shandong And Jiangsu Manufacturing, 2013-2023, Shaopu Wu, Jianguang Hou, Danlin Yu

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Sustainable industrial transition requires productivity evidence that separates real efficiency improvement from scale expansion, capital deepening, and reporting change. This study develops a reproducible frontier-productivity diagnostic for provincial leading industry policy, using official 2013-2023 sector panels for 23 two-digit manufacturing sectors in Shandong Province and a matched 2019-2023 benchmark against Jiangsu. The framework combines input-oriented Banker-Charnes-Cooper (BCC) data envelopment analysis (DEA), Simar-Wilson bootstrap bias correction, Malmquist total factor productivity change (TFPCH) decomposition, producer price index (PPI) deflation diagnostics, scale-productivity classification, and targeted sensitivity tests. Bootstrap correction lowers mean BCC efficiency from 0.77 to 0.69 in Shandong and from 0.79 to …

Performance Arteries: From The Street To The Salon, Zoella Lin

Comparative Literature Undergraduate Senior Theses

This thesis concerns itself with navigating what it means to build community during a time of uncertainty. Specifically, it is an analysis of Charles Baudelaire’s poetry in Les Fleurs du mal and Spleen de Paris alongside his figure of the flâneur as a way to understand the aporia of the modern world (modernity) as a way to inform how instances of connection can occur. The first chapter suggests that a close reading of Baudelaire's poetry gives us insight into what it means to live in this present moment by looking at how Baudelaire’s poet-flâneur navigated the rapidly changing world of …

The Role Of Project Managers And Pmp Principles In Improving Operational Efficiency In Healthcare Organizations, Karan Thakkar

Harrisburg University Dissertations and Theses

Healthcare organizations operate in increasingly complex, regulated, and resource-constrained environments while managing a growing volume of projects tied to digital transformation, process improvement, regulatory compliance, and infrastructure development. Despite the project-intensive nature of healthcare operations, many organizations do not formally employ trained project managers or consistently apply Project Management Professional (PMP) principles; project responsibilities are frequently absorbed by clinical or administrative leaders whose primary expertise lies outside formal project management. This qualitative study examined how the project manager role and PMP principles contribute to operational efficiency in healthcare organizations. The study was conducted as a qualitative document analysis and thematic …

Acute And Inpatient Occupational Therapy Practice For People With Chronic Conditions Who Are Experiencing Homelessness, Emily K. Simpson, Anne K. Mokate, Elizabeth A. Gibbs, Nina K. Duric

Internet Journal of Allied Health Sciences and Practice

Purpose: Despite having high rates of chronic illness, people experiencing homelessness (PEH) in the United States face barriers to healthcare access that result in unmet health needs and poor health outcomes.  The objective of the study was to identify the barriers to service experienced by occupational therapy practitioners (OTPs) in acute and inpatient settings in providing services to PEH and to describe education strategies to reduce those barriers. Methods: Researchers employed a cross-sectional design with OTPs (n=292) with experience treating PEH. Results: Barriers to treatment for OTP included lack of education, need to prioritize acute concerns, and inadequate institutional resources. …

The Unexpected Gift: Using Hip-Hop And Autoethnographic Methods To Challenge The “Symbolic Death” Discourse Of A Child’S Autism Diagnosis, Adam Ellis

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

This article explores the social construction of autism through an autoethnographic account of parenting an autistic child in Canada. Drawing on Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s grief model, neurodiversity scholarship, and post-traumatic growth theory, the paper examines how parents may experience grief, uncertainty, and the collapse of imagined futures following an autism diagnosis, while also arguing that much of this distress is produced by ableist and deficit-oriented social systems rather than autism itself. Using arts-based research, including a rap song and music video, the article explores: (1) what it is like to receive an autism diagnosis as a parent; (2) the grieving process …

Designing Within Superdiversity: Encountering Forms Of Systemic Participation Through Layered Exploration Of An Immigrant Neighbourhood, Manavi Datta, Carissa Champlin

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper offers a critical account of using a layered systemic design process to surface the complexity of a superdiverse neighbourhood - Jackson Heights, Queens, New York. The approach employs systemic design practices through walking and iterative prototyping to encounter a multiplicity of experiences and forms of participation that shape place. Four methodological contributions are presented: critical vignettes from ethnographic walks framing complexity, systemic visualization from walks with residents, three prototypes of archives and across the paper, accounts of systemic participation shaping place. The layered approach is presented as a form of systemic design participation in itself. It reveals how …

“I Didn’T Choose To Write My Life”: Trauma-Informed Values In The Design Of Social Care Records, Marissa Cummings, Gemma Teal

DRS Biennial Conference Series

While there has been a recent interest in trauma-informed design approaches, there is still a need for further research on its use in participatory design (PD). This paper discusses the methodology of a values-driven, trauma-informed PD project which explored how social care records could be redesigned to meet the needs and aspirations of young people (YP). Care-experienced people have often lived through traumatic experiences closely associated with their experiences of care, resulting in a lack of trust in social care professionals. While foregrounding the views of care-experienced people, this project also engaged with professionals, revealing systemic tensions which needed to …

Interiority As A Pedagogical Approach In Interior Design Studio Education, Selin Aktan Abraham, Fulya Özbey

DRS Biennial Conference Series

As the central platform of design education, interior design studios function as dynamic learning environments that advance creativity and sensitivity to the social and spatial dimensions of design. Although the experiential qualities of space are conceptually acknowledged within studio pedagogy, the notion of ‘interiority’ remains unstudied compared to the emphasis placed on technical requirements. This paper positions interiority as a critical yet underexplored component of interior design pedagogy. Through a literature mapping and thematic synthesis, this paper defines five core dimensions of interiority as (1) spatial, (2) sensory, (3) affective, (4) identity-related, and (5) temporal, then correlates these dimensions in …

Frictions And Constraints Of Institutioning: Facilitating Equitable Participatory Design With Migrants In Municipalities, Uttishta Sreerama Varanasi, Rūta Šerpytytė, Thomas Olsson

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Applying participatory design in the public sector is both challenged and fuelled by the diversity and dynamism of changing populations, particularly with institutions looking to engage and integrate their migrant residents. We examine the capabilities of Participatory Design (PD) in a Finnish municipality, providing empirical evidence of the frictions and constraints of institutioning efforts towards equitable participation. Through the lens of institutioning, we analyse the political and social nature of institutional participatory approaches by the municipality. By engaging NGOs as civic intermediaries in between migrants and the public sector, we unpack the metacultural discourses, institutional strategies and policies that may …

Landlords' Attitudes Towards Age-Friendly Adaptations: Implications For The Well-Being Of Older Private Renters, Eva Severens, Ruth Stevens, An-Sofie Smetcoren, Ann Petermans

DRS Biennial Conference Series

A large share of private rental housing in Flanders, Belgium, is unsuitable for older people who want to age in place, which can negatively affect their well-being. Since it is often unclear what changes tenants are allowed to make, this study examines landlords’ attitudes toward age-friendly housing adaptations and their impact on the tenant’s well-being through the self-determination theory. Using student-designed adaptations, exploratory interviews were conducted with five landlords. Our findings reveal landlords' negative attitudes frequently stem from the desire to protect their own well-being by avoiding potential hassle and property damage. However, this can negatively impact tenants’ feeling of …

Modes Of Being Amid Anthropocene: Living Through The 2024 Rio Grande Do Sul Floods, Natalia Dai Prá Penteado, Guilherme Meyer

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper situates the 2024 Rio Grande do Sul climate disaster within the intertwined crises of the Anthropocene, arguing that those impacted developed situated practices to preserve identities and sustain life amidst collapse. Drawing on in-depth interviews with thirteen individuals directly affected by the floods, the research identifies Modes of Being that illuminate strategies of adaptation, care, and continuity rooted in Latin American ontologies. Through the interpretive lenses of Anna Tsing’s concepts of ghosts, monsters, and ruins, these modes reveal how to endure life in the Anthropocene and reconfigure identities and relations to persist. The study proposes a framework of …

Distributed Care Hubs: Rethinking Disability Care Policy Through Participatory Research, Christina Chi Zhang, Kyra Zimmerman, Austin Duncan, Jiin Jung

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper develops the concept of "distributed care hubs" to describe the informal, relational infrastructures through which disabled people sustain everyday life amid insufficient formal care systems. Drawing on participatory research in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania—combining community mapping, ethnographic interviews, and computational analysis—we show how community-built care emerges through ordinary social interactions, shared spaces, and reciprocal relationships. Distributed care hubs reveal that disability care and everyday sociality are inseparable; they challenge independence-centered policy frameworks by foregrounding interdependence as a universal human condition. Yet these hubs remain precarious, functioning as compensatory mechanisms shaped by systemic failures that force disabled people into informal survival …

More Than Weeds: Thickening Designer-Plant Relations In The Sonoran Desert, Andrew James Whitcomb, Marysol Ortega Pallanez

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Affective relations among humans and more-than-humans are full of shifts, subtleties, and complexities. Yet, design research often treats feelings as stable instruments to utilize for making sustainable climate futures. Through reflection-on-practice, we untangle impressions and gestures in the field during a design research project in the Sonoran Desert titled Gifts for Tempe. Our reflections focus on shifts in our attention and attachments with an ‘invasive’ plant commonly known as Stinknet. The impressions and gestures reveal designer-researchers’ thick tensions in designing for climate futures. By showing how affective relations with more-than-humans change over time, we identify that climate futuring involves learning …

Reframing Architectural Practice Through Territory And Emotion: The Atlas Of Emotions In Bajo Atrato, Colombia, Carolina Saldarriaga-Cardona

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study reframes architectural practice in Bajo Atrato, Colombia, through a relational understanding of territory and emotion, during the implementation of the Peace Agreement. Using a situated research-by-design approach, the study combines field journeys, workshops on emotional cartographies, semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and audiovisual recordings in Carmen del Darién, Marriaga Swamp, Triganá Bay, and Santa María de la Antigua del Darién. These methods consider everyday life, memory, and collective care as forms of territorial knowledge. The recognition of territories, identification of emotions, and the visibility of the Territorial Expressions of Grieving led to the creation of the Atlas of Emotions, …

Beyond Assumptions: Identity Mapping As A Tool For Inclusive Public Design Learning, Corie Seed, Chiara Del Gaudio

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Recent studies in Design Education emphasize the importance of teaching Design as a contextually situated practice, and ways for leveraging local knowledges and embracing plural epistemologies. Within this framework, it becomes crucial for designers to be able to acknowledge their own assumptions, biases, and identities and how they influence their design decisions when dealing with cultural complexity. Yet, an effective practice for cultivating this awareness, defined as critical self-reflection, remains underexplored in Design Education. This paper aims to outline key ways to foster the practice of critical self-reflection in teaching and learning Public Design. Drawing on interviews with design educators, …

Speculative Design Through Synthetic Data: Exploring How Synthetic Data Be Used To Represent Missing ‘More-Than-Human' Data, Michael Dunbar, Chris Speed

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Smart city data infrastructures largely reinforce anthropocentric paradigms, neglecting the entangled relationships that shape more-than-human worlds. This paper explores synthetic data as a transformative tool to address these omissions, offering alternative ways to represent missing non-human perspectives. Through a research-through-design approach, we present Kin Bank: a speculative interface that uses synthetic data to generate poetic, transactional representations between human and non-human actors. Adopting the metaphor of a shared bank account, the system foregrounds ecological and financial interdependencies while challenging reductionist data practices. Findings from a user study show how synthetic data can surface unseen relationships, embrace ecological complexity, and provoke …

Inclusive Co-Learning In Transnational Design Classrooms: Bridging Linguistic And Cultural Gaps Between Chinese Students And British Curricula, Linli Zhang, Jinze Hao, Yaqi Wang, Liang Xiao

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study explores inclusive co-learning strategies in transnational design education, focusing on Chinese students enrolled in a joint program jointly delivered by Beijing Jiaotong University and Lancaster University within China. These students complete their entire undergraduate studies domestically, without the opportunity to immerse themselves in an English-speaking or multicultural environment. As a result, they often rely on translation tools to overcome linguistic and cultural barriers when engaging with British pedagogy. Drawing on classroom observations, student interviews, and reflective teaching practices, the study proposes an Inclusive Co-Learning Framework that integrates linguistic scaffolding and cultural mediation to foster language development, cultural understanding, …

Unstructuring Data, Activating Dialogue: How Situated Knowledges Shape Participatory Systemic Design Practices, Asja Aulisio, Amina Pereno, Martina Spinelli

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper explores the role of data within participatory systemic design, focusing on how structured and unstructured data influence participation, sensemaking, and representation. Through three interconnected applications, the research examines how systems’ visual representations function as boundary objects that enable dialogue, trust, and shared understanding among diverse actors. Drawing on the concept of unstructuring data, the paper discusses how transforming data from fixed, expert-driven artefacts into open, evolving representations fosters inclusivity and reflexivity in design processes. The findings highlight that structured data support decision-making in well-defined contexts, whereas unstructured data stimulate exploration and collective learning in complex or fragile territories. …

Support Designer’S Wellbeing: Understanding Resilience In Design Education As A Wicked Challenge, Yilin Quan, Matthew Isherwood, Ji Han

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design students are expected to engage with wicked problems as part of their learning. Since these problems have no definitive solutions, the learning process can be challenging and may negatively affect students’ wellbeing. Cultivating resilience becomes critical. Although the conceptualisation of designer resilience has gained attention, it remains underexplored. This paper proposes a new conceptual model of resilience in design education, suggesting two capacity clusters: one emphasising short-term recovery and balance restoration, and the other focusing on long-term sustained engagement. It further frames resilience cultivation in design education as a wicked problem in itself, characterised by the inherent complexity within …

Material Agents At Work In Alternative Food Networks, Cagri G. Varli, Stefano Maffei

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Despite growing interest in sustainable food systems, their material dimension as active design agents (artefacts and infrastructures) remains largely unrecognized. This study challenges the positioning of packaging and distribution tools as passive elements, repositioning them as entities that shape the ongoing negotiation of ethics, responsibility, and co-dependence within food systems. Drawing on interviews, thing ethnography, and relational mapping across two alternative food network case studies, the study examines the roles of these material agents. The findings show that material artefacts contribute to the organization of care, responsibility, and continuity across both pragmatic and symbolic dimensions of food networks. Differences in …

Drawing In The Minor Key: An Approach For Multi-Actor Designing For Societal Transformation, Caroline Hummels

DRS Biennial Conference Series

As a society, we are confronted with polycrisis. An epistemic shift, that means shifting our way of knowing and changing our ways of looking at complex societal issues, is necessary to be able to transform our practices. Tim Ingold offers such an epistemic shift through the concept of ‘minor key’, fostering open-endedness, imagination, and experimentation. Designing for transformation in the minor key requires different forms of co-creating and communicating. In contrast to a major key, closed style of visualising, minor key drawing might fit, due to its potential for imperfection, open-endedness and imagination. In this pictorial, I’ll reflect on a …

Cianalas: How Scottish Dementia Friendly Communities Shaped Design For Wellbeing Research, Lucy Robertson, Christopher Sze Chong Lim

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper reflects on how two dementia-friendly communities (DFCs) in Scotland shaped participatory research exploring interactive textiles for wellbeing. Drawing on two practice-based studies in Scotland, study 1 which was based in the Outer Hebrides and the study 2 based in both the Outer Hebrides and East Lothian; it explores how place, geography, culture, and community influence participation and sense-making. Using Research through Design (RtD) and person-centred methods, both projects engaged participants using or making interactive textiles. Comparing the two locations shows that the remoteness of the Hebrides, the Gaelic language, the historical textile industry and the surrounding environments fostered …

Design For Coastal Futures: Rethinking Space And Time With A More-Than-Human And Transcultural Lens., Serena Pollastri, Juan Montalvan Lume, Louise Mullagh, Suzana Ilic

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Amid the intensifying challenges of climate change, there is an emerging consensus within coastal academic and practitioner networks on the importance of integrating design led-approaches that enhance resilience and foster the long-term adaptation for coastal communities. However, coastal environments present peculiar contexts for design actions, as the movement of water consistently challenges the boundaries between water and land, along with the relational interactions between human and non-human communities—both in cyclical and unpredictable ways. Drawing from the authors’ experiences in tidal coastal and estuarine areas across diverse geographies, this article proposes ways to cultivate design’s response-ability (Haraway, 2016) to the more-than-human …

A Messy Substance: Mediating The Stigma And Lived Experience Of Endometriosis Through Participatory Design, Carolina Vaz-Pires, Ricardo Melo

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Endometriosis is a chronic condition often surrounded by taboo, silence, and misunderstanding. Although diagnostic uncertainty and epistemic tensions shape endometriosis care, little is known about how design can address the communicative and relational gaps between patients and gynaecologists. This article investigates how participatory and speculative design can support communication between these groups. Using a Research through Design approach, three co-design workshops were conducted with six individuals with endometriosis and five doctors. Participants created analogue artefacts including empathy maps, body maps, clay representations, written narratives, speculative futures and collective posters that materialised embodied pain, emotional burden and clinical perspectives. The workshops …