Digital Commons Network^™

Predictors Of Outpatient Follow-Up Attendance And Subsequent Psychiatric Readmission, Sandra J. Beltran

Theses and Dissertations

Psychiatric readmissions remain a persistent challenge in mental health care, often reflecting gaps in continuity of treatment following discharge. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (2019) indicated that a key component in preventing inpatient readmission is adequate outpatient care following discharge. Moreover, early attendance in outpatient follow-up visits is associated with improved patient outcomes (Boston Medical Center, 2022). Various predictors are associated with engagement in outpatient services, such as age, medication compliance, and socioeconomic variables (Carson et al., 2014; Li et al., 2005; Marino et al., 2016; Stubbs et al., 2024).

The present study sought to determine whether psychiatric …

How The Billable Hour Can Survive Generative Ai, Jonah Perlin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The legal profession is rapidly adopting generative AI technology. With this shift has come an increasingly common assumption that generative AI will significantly reduce or even bring an end to hourly billing. The logic underlying this conclusion seems intuitive: if AI reduces the time lawyers spend on certain tasks while eliminating others altogether, then the total number of billable hours will fall. That decline, in turn, could threaten the financial viability of hourly billing, despite its place as the dominant law firm compensation model over the past half century.

This Article challenges this assumption. It argues instead that the billable …

Attribution As Architecture In The Digital Age, Laura A. Heymann

Faculty Publications

As technology changes, one thing remains constant: human creators seem to care about attribution, whether as creators or as audience members. Current U.S. law lacks the means for many creators to effectively address attributional interests, and experience has shown that top-down, imposed technological solutions can fail to gain the necessary buy-in and adoption. The best approach, examples suggest, is for platforms to think of attribution as part of the architecture of their systems, but to take their cues from user-developed, individualized solutions, which will not only be more responsive to user interests but also allow adaptation as interests change and …

In The Realm Of The Size Of Effect: What Advantages Do Cohen's D Or Glass's D Have?, Juan C. Lopez-Alvarenga, Isabel Omaña-Guzmán, Lucia M. Perez-Navarro

School of Medicine Publications

No abstract provided.

Supporting Young Children’S Composing Practices Through Pre- And Post-Writing Conversations, Jackie Ridley, Rebecca Rohloff, Xiao Zhang, Margaret Quinn

Journal of Response to Writing

In this teaching tip, we propose purposeful pre- and post-writing conferences as a teacher practice to support young children’s early writing practices. We share how teachers can facilitate children’s idea development through conversational moves during writing conferences and provide a model for what this could look like using a task-based composing prompt.

“What Grade Do You Feel You Earned?” Integrating Student-Led Grading With A Labor-Based Grading Framework, Megan Von Bergen

Journal of Response to Writing

This brief article discusses the advantages of using a student grade proposal within a labor-based grading framework, focusing on how the grade proposal may reinforce the equity-related aims of labor-based grading and hone students' ability to self-assess. The article discusses the learning outcomes of the grade proposal and its process, then ends with a sample grade proposal.

Academic Department Indicators: 2024-2025, Systems Intelligence And Data Analytics, University Of Nebraska At Omaha

Academic Department Indicators

The audience is the Academic Planning Council (APC), college and department heads, and faculty. The purpose is to report instructional productivity measures useful for making comparisons and observing trends. Selected departmental information in this report is submitted annually to the Delaware Study, a National Study of Instructional Costs and Productivity.

This Instructional Productivity information corresponds to the UNO state- and tuition-funded budget. The Supplemental Information at the end of the document provides counts and statistics for campus-wide programs embedded in most colleges. Only Dual Enrollment instruction is excluded from the productivity report since it is a fee-based instructional program for …

The Importance Of Self-Care To Avoid Teacher Burnout, Lindsey Brittain

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

Schools across the world are facing the increasingly significant issue of teacher burnout and the ability to retain good teachers. The problem is teachers are experiencing heightened levels of stress, emotional exhaustion, and a lack of motivation in the classroom. Not only is this detrimental to their well-being but it also affects their students. Research has shown that self-care practices can help prevent burnout, but many teachers find it hard to implement these consistently for various reasons. This study aimed to find out how teachers experience burnout and the self-care practices they use to manage stress by using a mixed-methods …

Attachment Styles Connection To Teacher Burnout, Erica Jaeschke

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

Teacher burnout has become a concern, as teachers are leaving the classroom more frequently than in the past. A teacher's attachment may be associated with the development and persistence of teacher burnout. The problem with this topic is that teachers are leaving the classroom at alarming rates, which is problematic because schools will not have the support they need to educate future generations. This study aims to determine whether teacher burnouts are associated with specific attachment theories. A quantitative method was employed through voluntary survey questions, and 18 teachers participated.

Employing Local Partnerships To Cultivate Student-Centered Business Curriculum, Emily A. Blok

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

Students sitting in high school business classes are often distracted, dissatisfied, and bored with the curriculum that teachers are expected to teach. There is a lack of resources and time when it comes to truly engaging students and preparing them for their futures, but research has shown that many students often pursue degrees or some element of business in their post-secondary education, not to mention the skills and capacities developed in business classes make their way into every student’s daily life. This study aims to identify the curriculum that would be best for high school students to engage in, so …

Impact Of Brain Breaks On Student Engagement In An Elementary Classroom, Kailey Hunt

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

This capstone research project examines the relationship between scheduled brain breaks and student engagement in a third-grade classroom in Bondurant, Iowa. Since the return to in-person learning, classrooms have experienced notable declines in student engagement and motivation. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether incorporating structured brain breaks could provide students with opportunities to reset and reengage during instructional time. Using daily field notes and weekly student surveys, the researcher implemented two brain breaks per day, four days a week, over a four-week period, with 22 students. Findings indicate that short, structured breaks positively influenced student engagement, and …

The Impact Of Play-Based Learning On Preschool Engagement And Goal Progress, Jennifer Martin

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

This capstone research project explored the impact of play-based learning on preschool student engagement and progress toward individualized learning goals. Data points were collected using both quantitative and qualitative methods, including observational charts and anecdotal notes. Findings indicated that structured play opportunities increased peer interaction, persistence, and sustained engagement for students’ who initially demonstrated low participation with activities and with peers. The results suggest that intentional play-based learning environments provide natural opportunities for children to make measurable progress toward their developmental goals. Implications for practice, limitations of the study, and recommendations for future research are discussed.

Cooperative Learning And The Impact On Student Engagement, Erin Pint

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

Cooperative learning is an essential instructional approach that supports student engagement. There is limited implementation of this learning method in the classroom which leads to students lacking motivation and opportunities to collaborate with their peers. Research has shown that when teachers incorporate cooperative learning experiences, students demonstrate increased participation which leads to deeper understanding of the content. This inquiry-based research study aims to determine whether cooperative learning can improve student engagement. The study utilized a qualitative approach, using both student and educator surveys as well as field notes. Findings revealed that most students prefer learning alongside at least one peer …

The Impact Of Themes On Students’ Historical Consciousness And Relevance, Madeline Rainey Lincoln

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

Many students have long perceived history as boring and irrelevant to their lives beyond the classroom. Although recent shifts towards skills-based instruction have attempted to address these issues, students still struggle to recognize the purpose of learning history. This study examined the effectiveness of thematic instructional pedagogy in enhancing 9th-grade students’ historical consciousness and perceptions of relevance in a World History course at a suburban high school in Minnesota. A pre- and post-survey measured students’ views of historical consciousness, thematic learning, and the purpose of learning history before and after a unit of thematic instruction was implemented. Student artifacts, along …

Improving The Use Of Evidence To Support Historical Arguments In A Secondary Classroom, Dylan Vandyke

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

The study of history is too often relegated to the basic skills of memorization and summarization. Teaching students history, however, should not be just memorization. Research has shown that the ability of students to take multiple perspectives, analyze cause and effect, and make well-reasons assertions is much more valuable than basic memorization. Tying all these skills together is the concept of being able to present an argument with specific supporting evidence that helps to prove the point. Many freshmen in entry-level high school history courses struggle to use this skill well. This inquiry-based research study aims to help understand why …

Effective Strategies For Creating Inclusive Ell Curricula In Multicultural Classrooms., Katie Struck

Master's Theses & Capstone Projects

This inquiry-based capstone project examines effective strategies for creating inclusive curricula for English Language Learners (ELLs) in multicultural classrooms, with a focus on leveraging students' first languages (L1) to reduce language barriers and promote motivation, cultural representation, and equitable academic outcomes. Amid the rapid growth of ELL populations in U.S. schools—from 8% to nearly 10% of public enrollment between 2000 and 2016—educators in regions like northwest Iowa face challenges in meeting diverse social and academic needs. A literature review synthesizes recent studies on supporting ELL demographics, preparing school staff, addressing barriers, and implementing evidence-based programs and practices. Conducted in a …

Digital Commons Statistics For October 2025, Liberty University

Digital Commons Statistics

No abstract provided.

Look Before You Decide: Prompting Active Deduction Of Mllms For Assumptive Reasoning, Yian Li, Wentao Tian, Yang Jiao, Jingjing Chen, Tianwen Qian, Bin Zhu, Na Zhao, Yu‑Gang Jiang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Recently, Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) have achieved significant success across multiple disciplines due to their exceptional instruction-following capabilities and extensive world knowledge. However, whether these MLLMs possess human-like compositional reasoning abilities remains an open problem. To unveil their reasoning behaviors, we first curate a Multimodal Assumptive Reasoning Benchmark (MARS-Bench) in this paper. Interestingly, we find that most prevalent MLLMs can be easily fooled by the introduction of a presupposition into the question, whereas such presuppositions appear naive to human reasoning. Besides, we also propose a simple yet effective method, Active Deduction (AD), a novel reinforcement learning paradigm to encourage …

Memory-Efficient 4-Bit Preconditioned Stochastic Optimization, Jingyang Li, Kuangyu Ding, Kim-Chuan Toh, Pan Zhou

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Preconditioned stochastic optimization algorithms, exemplified by Shampoo, outperform first-order optimizers by offering theoretical convergence benefits and practical gains in large-scale neural network training. However, they incur substantial memory overhead due to the storage demands of non-diagonal preconditioning matrices. To address this, we introduce 4-bit quantization for Shampoo’s preconditioners. We introduce two key methods: First, we apply Cholesky decomposition followed by quantization of the Cholesky factors, reducing memory usage by leveraging their lower triangular structure while better preserving spectral properties to minimize information loss. To our knowledge, this is the first quantization approach applied to Cholesky factors of preconditioners. Second, we …

What Students Really Think: Unpacking Ai Ethics In Educational Assessments Through A Triadic Framework, Lim Ming Soon Tristan, Gottipati Swapna, Michelle L. F. Cheong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The rise of AI in educational assessments has significantly enhanced efficiency and accuracy. However, it also introduces critical ethical challenges, including bias in grading, data privacy risks, and accountability gaps. These issues can undermine trust in AI-driven assessments and compromise educational fairness, making a structured ethical framework essential. To address these challenges, this study empirically validates an existing triadic ethical framework for AI-assisted educational assessments, originally proposed by Lim, Gottipati and Cheong (In: Keengwe (ed) Creative AI tools and ethical implications in teaching and learning, IGI Global, 2023), grounded in student perceptions. The framework encompasses three ethical domains—physical, cognitive, and …

Rethinking Teaching Evaluation Reports: Designing Ai-Transformed Student Feedback For Instructor Engagement, Ruoxi Shang, Keri Mallari, Au Wei Bin Yeong, Ken Yasuhara, Anthony Tang, Gary Hsieh

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Student feedback is critical for improving teaching, yet instructors often avoid reading evaluations due to emotional burden and information overload. We present a systematic exploration of how language models can distill and transform student evaluations into adaptive, actionable insights. Through a systematic design space exploration combining 4 feedback strategies (removing harmful content, paraphrasing criticism, sandwiching negatives, adding constructive suggestions) with 4 presentation formats (themes, cards, letters, chatbots), we created six AI-augmented prototypes of teaching evaluations. Interviews with 16 post-secondary instructors revealed that effective use of AI in feedback processing should: (1) support action formation through focused views and divergent thinking, …

Conditional Attribute-Based Pre: Definition And Construction From Lwe, Lisha Yao, Jian Weng, Pengfei Wu, Guofeng Tang, Guomin Yang, Haiyang Xue, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Attribute-based proxy re-encryption (AB-PRE) is a crucial variant of proxy re-encryption. It allows a proxy with a re-encryption key to transform a delegator’s ciphertext associated with an access policy into another ciphertext associated with a new access policy, enabling delegatees with matching attributes to decrypt the transformed ciphertext. However, a key limitation of AB-PRE is that the delegator cannot control which ciphertexts are transformed. As a result, the proxy, once given the re-encryption key, indiscriminately transforms all ciphertexts, effectively switching their underlying policies—an issue known as the all-or-nothing problem. It limits the system’s flexibility and practicality in real-world use cases.In …

Fcad: Feature-Coupled Anisotropic Diffusion For Continuous Graph Learning, Amitoz Azad, Zhiyuan Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this work, we propose a novel continuous graph neural network called FCAD (Feature-Coupled Anisotropic Diffusion) for the task of node classification on graphs. Our approach is motivated by the success of feature-coupled anisotropic diffusion PDEs in multivalued image restoration. Our method introduces a total variation regularization-inspired anisotropic term to control diffusion between nodes and incorporates a learnable parameterization for feature coupling during the diffusion process. Our model performs competitively against several GNN baselines for both heterophilous and homophilous graphs, demonstrating notable benefits for heterophilous graphs due to the learnable feature coupling.

Lsfdnet: A Single-Stage Fusion And Detection Network For Ships Using Swir And Lwir, Yanyin Guo, Runxuan An, Junwei Li, Zhiyuan Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Traditional ship detection methods primarily rely on single-modal approaches, such as visible or infrared images, which limit their application in complex scenarios involving varying lighting conditions and heavy fog. To address this issue, we explore the advantages of short-wave infrared (SWIR) and long-wave infrared (LWIR) in ship detection and propose a novel single-stage image fusion detection algorithm called LSFDNet. This algorithm leverages feature interaction between the image fusion and object detection subtask networks, achieving remarkable detection performance and generating visually impressive fused images. To further improve the saliency of objects in the fused images and improve the performance of the …

Tactile Data Comics: Combining Step-By-Step Presentation Of Tactile Graphics With Verbal Narration For The Blind And Visually Impaired, Yang Jiao, Ruoting Sun, Rong Luo, Xiwen Yao, Xinran She, Kotaro Hara, Yuewen Zhang, Xinyi Fu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Tactile graphics on a refreshable display have proven effective in enabling visually impaired people to comprehend pictorial content. To further evaluate the effectiveness of refreshable tactile displays in blind education, we designed tactile data comics, a method that combines step-by-step presentation of tactile graphics with verbal narration. We conducted a user study with sixteen visually impaired students to compare tactile data comics against verbal-only and static tactile graphics. Our findings show that tactile data comics significantly improve participants’ comprehension and engagement during the learning experience. These empirical results suggest that the integration of refreshable tactile displays and tactile data comics …

Language-Driven 3d Human Pose Estimation In Multi-Person Scenarios: A New Dataset And Approach, Tingrui Shen, Bangzhen Liu, Zhirun Fan, Shiting Zhang, Weifeng Pan, Sun Fan, Dan Cao, Shengfeng He

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In an NBA game scenario, consider the challenge of locating and analyzing the 3D poses of players performing a user-specified action, such as attempting a shot. Traditional 3D human pose estimation (3DHPE) methods often fall short in such complex, multi-person scenes due to their lack of semantic integration and reliance on isolated pose data. To address these limitations, we introduce Language-Driven 3D Human Pose Estimation (L3DHPE), a novel approach that extends 3DHPE to general multi-person contexts by incorporating detailed language descriptions. We present Panoptic-L3D, the first dataset designed for L3DHPE, featuring 3,838 linguistic annotations for 1,476 individuals across 588 videos, …

Information-Bottleneck Driven Binary Neural Network For Change Detection, Kaijie Yin, Zhiyuan Zhang, Shu Kong, Tian Gao, Cheng-Zhong Xu, Hui Kong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we propose Binarized Change Detection (BiCD), the first binary neural network (BNN) designed specifically for change detection. Conventional network binarization approaches, which directly quantize both weights and activations in change detection models, severely limit the network's ability to represent input data and distinguish between changed and unchanged regions. This results in significantly lower detection accuracy compared to real-valued networks. To overcome these challenges, BiCD enhances both the representational power and feature separability of BNNs, improving detection performance. Specifically, we introduce an auxiliary objective based on the Information Bottleneck (IB) principle, guiding the encoder to retain essential input …

Developing A Strong Cps Defender: An Evolutionary Approach, Qingyuan Hu, Christopher M. Poskitt, Jun Sun, Yuqi Chen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) are used extensively in critical infrastructure, underscoring the need for anomaly detection systems that are able to catch even the most motivated attackers. Traditional anomaly detection techniques typically do `one-off' training on datasets crafted by experts or generated by fuzzers, potentially limiting their ability to generalize to unseen and more subtle attack strategies. Stopping at this point misses a key opportunity: a defender can actively challenge the attacker to find more nuanced attacks, which in turn can lead to more effective detection capabilities. Building on this concept, we propose Evo-Defender, an evolutionary framework that iteratively strengthens CPS …

Undifferentiated Embryonal Sarcoma Of Liver In A Child : A Case Report, Neha Devendra Bhongale, Sumeet Baheti, Poonam Wade, Omkar Khandkar, Meenakshi Balasbramanian

Digital Journal of Clinical Medicine

Background: Undifferentiated Embryonal Sarcoma of liver (UESL) is a rare malignancy of liver originating from primary mesenchymal tissue with overall poor prognosis. Around 220 pediatric cases of UESL have been reported in the literature. The lack of characteristic clinical manifestations, laboratory tests and imaging studies pose a diagnostic challenge and the preoperative misdiagnosis rate is high. Historically, treatment was limited to surgical resection with poor survival rate. In recent times, combination of chemotherapy and surgical resection has improved survival.

Case Presentation: We report a case of undifferentiated embryonal sarcoma of liver in a 6 years old boy who presented …

Early Signs The Eu Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism Is Reshaping Eu-India Steel Trade, Gian Luca Vriz, Theodor Florian Cojoianu, Carolyn Fischer, Luca Taschini

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This study examines early signals of the EU CBAM's impact on iron and steel exporters from India by integrating firm-level export data with third-party estimates of manufacturers' emissions and production. Changes in trade flows and pricing during the CBAM reporting phase indicate that high-emission-intensity firms have decreased both their average unit prices and shipment sizes to the EU, while low-emission-intensity firms have not changed shipment behavior and may have benefited from increasing prices. Such supply chain adjustments are in line with EU policy intentions, creating opportunities for low-emission producers while reducing reliance on high-emission suppliers to the EU.