Digital Commons Network^™

The Impact Of Play-Based Learning In Early Education, Stefani Merchant

Masters Projects

The increasing emphasis on academic achievement in early childhood education has contributed to a decline in play-based learning. This decline has raised concerns about its impact on children’s overall development. This project examines play-based learning as a developmentally appropriate approach that supports cognitive, social-emotional, language, and self-regulation skills in preschool and kindergarten students. Supported by the theories of Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, the project explores play as a continuum consisting of free play, guided play, and playful learning. With each form of play, there are varying levels of teacher involvement. A review of current research highlights both the benefits …

A Guided Curriculum Approach To Supporting Critical Thinking And Mathematical Readiness In Ib Physics, Samantha Killeen

Masters Projects

The purpose of this project is to address the problem that many students lack the critical thinking and mathematical reasoning skills required to be successful in rigorous STEM courses like IB Physics. While students may perform well in mathematics courses, they often struggle to transfer those skills into physics contexts that require conceptual understanding and problem-solving. These challenges have been intensified by academic tracking in mathematics pathways, post-pandemic learning loss, and increased dependence on technology, which have reduced the opportunities for productive struggle in the classroom. As a result, students frequently enter IB Physics unprepared for the pace and rigor …

A Loud, Fearless Voice: Louise Thompson Patterson, Triple Exploitation, And Intersectionality, Bethany Brooke Champlin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Louise Thompson Patterson, in her life as an activist, represented an extraordinary few who found the world she existed in lacking, and spent her life trying to change it, not only to better her own life, but to focus on the lives and problems of those who were seemingly disconnected from her. By following Louise Thompson Patterson’s political development, and examining her work as an activist of class, race, and gendered issues, her own development of the idea of “triple exploitation” or “triple oppression” is clear not only in her actions but in her writing. Through her experiences in the …

The Mosaic, Georgia Southern University

George-Anne Media Group: Newsletters & Magazines

No abstract provided.

Low-Abundance And Fragmentary Helicobacter Pylori Dna Detected In Phenotypically Negative Gastric Biopsies Using Targeted Sequencing, Fabien Mbaya-Tshibangu, Alain Cimuanga-Mukanya, Evariste Tshibangu-Kabamba, Nadine Kayiba-Kalenda, Tressy Kalenga-Ngomba, Patrick Ngoma-Kisoko, Gunturu Revathi, Junko Akada, Benoît Mbiya-Mukinayi, Augustin Tshibaka Kabongo

Pathology, East Africa

Accurate detection and monitoring of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in Helicobacter pylori mainly rely on phenotypic methods and culture, which can sometimes fail when bacterial load is low or after recent treatment. We investigated whether gastric biopsies classified as H. pylori-negative by standard diagnostic techniques still contain detectable bacterial DNA, including regions linked to AMR, and assessed whether selected DNA fragments can mediate allelic exchange in vitro. Gastric biopsies from 46 dyspeptic patients in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (including 23 phenotypically positive and 23 phenotypically negative individuals) were analyzed using long-read amplicon sequencing of seven resistance-associated loci, selective whole-genome …

Characterizing Negative Academic Experiences, Danae M. Gaytan

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

According to the 2024 National College Health Assessment, roughly one in five college students experience serious psychological distress (ACHA, 2024). High levels of psychological distress among college students are well-documented (Emmerton et al., 2024; Eisenberg et al., 2013; Bewick et al., 2010), yet less is known about the specific experiences that contribute to this distress. Grounded in multiple theoretical frameworks, this study examines students’ negative academic experiences, their perceived causes, and associated outcomes. Using an online crowdsourcing platform, current higher education students (N = 215) described their most negative academic experience (NAE) and then answered questions about their reactions and …

Effect Of 50 Mg Sugammadex Syringes On Drug Utilization And Cost Savings: A Quality Improvement Study, Josue Gaona, Calandra Jones, Alisha Valdez, Lan Cao, Evan G. Pivalizza

School of Medicine Student Publications and Presentations

Background: Reversal of neuromuscular blockade by popular non-depolarizing muscle relaxants is a critical component of routine, safe anesthetic practice. Sugammadex, a modified gamma-cyclodextrin, has largely replaced acetylcholinesterase inhibitors and is recommended as the primary reversal agent by the American Society of Anesthesiologists. However, sugammadex is commonly supplied in 200 mg single-use vials, which may result in drug waste when smaller doses are required. This quality improvement project evaluated whether the introduction of 50 mg prefilled syringes at our facility could reduce drug waste and overall cost.

Methods: Following implementation of 50 mg syringes, a retrospective chart review was conducted over …

Good Life Automobility: Cultural/Rhetorical Resistance And Persistence Of Us Car Hegemony, Trinity O. Thompson

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This project takes the car as a historical signifier of a rhetorical racialization process that enables a hypermobile white, masculine, neoliberal identity that pervades conceptions of mobility in the West. I locate these overlapping social formations under a cultural logic of good life automobility (GLA) that positions cars, a quintessential form of private property, as a motivator for a contemporary “good life” citizenship identity that cultivates neoliberal subjectivities of free movement and market consumption in contempt of socialized and racialized public transit futures. The introduction chapter elaborates on the boundaries of GLA while also contextualizing the two analysis chapters through …

Use And Awareness Of Online Resources In University Libraries, Rudraksha Gouridevi

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The study of the use and awareness of online resources in university libraries. The study used a survey to collect primary data. A questionnaire was used to collect primary data from library users (undergraduate, postgraduate students, and research scholars) in selected university libraries, both public and Deemed University libraries, in Andhra Pradesh. The study covered four university libraries. Out of the total number of students and research scholars (25266) from the four universities. In this study, only 10 percent of the respondents were selected as the survey sample. The study indicated that the highest rate of users are accessing the …

An Investigation Of Data Granularity In Rag Pipelines For Personalized Medicine, Paritosh Pandey

Master's Theses

Generative AI, exemplified by large language models like the OpenAI GPT and Meta LLaMA families, can produce diverse content in response to prompts. This capability offers a promising solution to challenges in precision medicine, which seeks to tailor treatments to individual clinical profiles but often struggles with data collection, cost, and privacy concerns. By generating realistic, privacy-preserving patient data, generative AI has the potential to transform patient-centric healthcare. With such motivation, this research develops a comprehensive Generative AI pipeline emphasizing data granularity for accurate prediction of personalized treatments. The pipeline features a central Large Language Model interacting with a Machine …

Simulation Of A Buried Hydrogen Pipeline In Kansas State Soil, Sidney Hines

Master's Theses

Underground pipelines can be used to transport large amounts of pressurized hydrogen gas over several hundred kilometers. The design will be sensitive to the pipe material, diameter, and trench construction, and traffic loads above the pipe. The purpose of this paper is to conduct various geotechnical engineering analyses (seepage, stress, and slope stability) using the software program GeoStudio (version 2025.2.0) on a buried steel or FRP pipe section in a specific soil type, Harney Soil. Harney soil is of particular interest, because it is the Kansas State Soil and the analysis is for a buried gas pipe to run through …

Agentcite: Trustworthy Ai Agents For Information Verification Across Referenced Documents, Eymen Yigit

Master's Theses

This thesis presents AgentCite, a multi-agent framework for automated verification of referenced numerical data in research documents. The framework employs a hybrid design in which LLM-based agents handle document understanding and evidence retrieval, while deterministic components manage structured parsing and value comparison, improving consistency and reproducibility while reducing token consumption and execution time compared to fully agentic approaches.

AgentCite consists of three autonomous agents: a Negotiator, a Main Document Agent, and a Source Documents Agent, coordinated through a fixed tool-call pipeline. The Negotiator orchestrates verification by extracting tabular data from the main document, retrieving evidence from per-source vector stores, and …

Probing Representational Emergence In Large Language Models, Shawn Ismail

Master's Theses

This thesis investigates whether abrupt behavioral gains in large language models under scaling are accompanied by systematic changes in internal representations. It combines a behavioral screen of 65 tasks per family with targeted layerwise probing across eight decoder-only, open-weight model families. Behavioral emergence is defined for each family-task trajectory using an empirical jump detector, with segmented regression retained only as a diagnostic. The representational follow-up analyzes 27 selected MMLU subtasks shared across all families, spanning 37 checkpoints and 216 family-task units.

For each follow-up checkpoint, frozen linear probes are trained on every layer's hidden states to measure how much task-relevant …

Preserving Cherokee Culture Through Literacy And Literature: A Study Of Gendered Literacy, Rhetoric, And Cultural Continuity In The Cherokee Nation, Diana W. Baber

Master's Theses

Early explorers to what is now America, beginning with Hernando DeSoto in 1530, stole the dignity and the lands of the Indigenous peoples of America, of whom the Cherokees are only one nation. Two of the things that could not be taken was the Cherokees’ rich cultural tradition and oral histories. Stories passed orally from generation to generation to ensure that histories were preserved. They were largely preserved by the women of the tribe.

After the American Revolution, there was pressure from the new government to force the Cherokees to assimilate to the new American culture—to speak English, dress and …

Toni Morrison's New World Black Woman: Refuting, Deconstructing, And Redefining Black Women's Identity, Victoria L. Bell

Master's Theses

Abstract

Through critical analysis of media: literary works, performance, and television, this thesis explores the prejudices, silencing, dehumanizing, sexualization, and marginalization of Black women, their bodies, identity, and trauma inflicted by White-authored texts, specifically the American canon. I analyze the works of Black women authors, scholars, and activists, who counter the false representation of the patriarchy. Their literary works refute, deconstruct, and redefine the canon’s distorted, racial and gendered stereotypes, later to be named controlling images.  While narrating the Black woman’s authentic self, experience, body, and womanhood they reclaim space, authenticity, and agency.

In my research and analysis, the central …

Recruiting And Retaining Teachers In A Rural School District: A Case Study, Gerald J. Bavero

Dissertations

         This exploratory case study aimed to understand the specific strategies that rural school leaders employ to address the challenges associated with recruiting and retaining teachers in rural schools.  It sought to understand the effectiveness of these strategies within the unique economic and cultural landscape of South West County and to identify practices that could inform broader educational policy and practice in this and similar rural settings.  A qualitative case study approach utilizing semi-structured interview questions was conducted to discover what teacher recruitment and retention strategies school leaders implement and how teachers perceive these strategies.  Findings indicate both formal and informal …

A Phenomenological Study Of Teachers Who Use Oral Reading To Foster Student Reading Fluency And Engagement, Donyetta Grimes

Dissertations

The National Reading Panel (2000) recommends oral reading instruction as a means to improve overall reading fluency and reading comprehension. Oral reading fluency is a necessary foundational skill, and students who have not mastered it by the end of third grade, when students transition from learning to read to reading to learn, become struggling adolescent readers (Ming, 2018). Furthermore, there is a lack of research on reading fluency past the primary grades (Makebo et al., 2022). Additionally, research gaps exist when considering teachers’ actual practices during reading instruction (O’Sullivan et al., 2009). This gap is particularly concerning considering that teachers …

Restorying The Reader: Adolescent Narratives Of Identity, Context, And Motivation, Jennifer R. Gardner

Dissertations

This present study examined how adolescents narrate their reading experiences and what those narratives reveal about reading identity, motivation, and engagement. This study responds to a persistent problem in literacy education: adolescent reading is often framed through disengagement or reduced to isolated constructs, while students’ lived reading experiences across school, home, digital, linguistic, and social contexts remain underexamined. Guided by Self-Determination Theory, Intersectionality, and Reader Response Theory, this study centers on adolescent voices and treats these participants’ stories as the primary avenue of understanding how they experience and interpret their reading lives and selves. Data were collected through narrative interviews, …

Science For All: Utilizing Native And Everyday Language To Increase Academic Performance And Student Engagement For High School English Language Learners, Lashanda K. Whitworth

Dissertations

In public high schools across the U.S. high stakes assessments are seen as a lever to facilitate high-quality education and to gauge student learning. English Language Learners are mainstreamed into content classes and despite having low English proficiency scores are expected to perform as well as English first students and are required to take district and state mandated biology assessments. At the research site, ELLs comprise 25% of students and consistently score below the other subgroups in biology. This quasi-experimental study tested whether using disaggregate instructional strategies—incorporating ELLs’ native and everyday language—increases learning gains, academic growth, and engagement in a …

Chilling Or Galvanizing: Perceptions Of Controversial Issues In The Social Studies Classroom, Patrick Leahy

Dissertations

This study explores social studies teachers' perceptions of the use of controversial issues in their content and classrooms. Through a case study approach, it explores the decision-making process of social studies teachers in Georgia, contextualized by the current political environment, including the enactment of divisive concepts laws such as Georgia’s HB 1084, the Protect Students First Act, and increasing scrutiny over what is taught in public schools. Findings reveal that while the literature and advocates critical of divisive concepts laws tend to argue that these laws have a chilling effect on the discussion of controversial issues, the reality is more …

Federated Neuromorphic Intelligence: Advancing Robustness, Efficiency, And Continual Adaptation In Edge Environments, Manh V. Nguyen

Dissertations

This dissertation investigates how spiking neural networks (SNNs) can improve federated edge intelligence by advancing three interconnected goals: communication efficiency, adversarial robustness, and continual adaptation. As edge computing deployments expand across Internet of Things (IoT), sensing, and privacy-sensitive applications, conventional federated learning approaches built around artificial neural networks (ANNs) face growing limitations in power consumption, bandwidth demand, and resilience to real-world uncertainty. SNNs offer an alternative computational paradigm based on event-driven, sparse, and temporally structured processing that is naturally suited to constrained edge environments. However, their behavior in practical federated settings remains insufficiently understood.

To address this gap, this dissertation …

Qualitative Phenomenography: Sustaining Motivations Of Black Women Principals In Pk-5 Title I Schools, Kahliah C. Rachel

Dissertations

Black women principals remain underrepresented in educational leadership, yet they are disproportionately assigned to PK-5 Title I schools, where complex academic, social, and political demands converge. Limited research examines what sustains these leaders over time, particularly in roles marked by intersecting oppressions of race and gender. Grounded in Black feminist thought and intersectionality, this qualitative phenomenographic study explored the sustaining motivations of six Black women who currently served or had served as principals in a PK-5 Title I school in Georgia. The purpose of this study was to describe the different ways these principals understood and experienced the internal and …

Exploring Teachers’ Lived Experiences: The Impact Of Wellness On Student Engagement And Behavior In Third-Grade Classrooms, Tiffany L. Jackson

Dissertations

This qualitative phenomenological study explored teachers' lived experiences implementing student wellness initiatives in the classroom and examined their views on how these initiatives affected student engagement and behavior. In this study, participants had the opportunity to express their views on implementing wellness practices in the classroom and on how these initiatives impacted student engagement and behavior. The research was guided by theoretical frameworks related to wellness, emotional and social intelligence, and relational perspectives. Semi-structured one-on-one interviews were the primary data source, and interview notes will serve as secondary data. This study addressed three research questions: (1) What are teachers' lived …

Perceptions And Beliefs Of A High School Geometry Professional Learning Community During Initial Implementation Of Standards-Based Grading, Marcellyn E. Baker

Dissertations

Traditional grading systems in secondary schools often conflate behavior with achievement, obscure evidence of understanding, and constrain teachers’ ability to enact learning-centered beliefs. This qualitative case study examined how five experienced secondary mathematics teachers in a public high school geometry department experienced and interpreted a grassroots transition to standards-based grading (SBG) within collaborative professional learning communities (PLCs). Guided by a pragmatic and constructivist worldview, data were collected through semi-structured interviews, focus groups, field observations, and questionnaires and analyzed using iterative open and axial coding with cross-group pattern analysis. Findings indicated that SBG did not fundamentally alter teachers’ beliefs about learning; …

The Use Of Ai For Continous Risk Monitoring And Its Effect On Project Performance In Nonprofit And Community Based Projects, Janet Awodele, Primrose Zvidzai, Wadzanai Magora, Ashford Makowe

Master of Public Administration for Senior Leadership

Nonprofit and community-based organizations operate in complex and resource-limited environments where effective project performance is critical to achieving social impact, optimizing limited budgets, and offering value to the communities they serve. Despite the significance of proactive risk management, many nonprofits continue to rely on manual, periodic, and reactive risk management practices that limit their ability to identify emerging risks quickly and react effectively during project implementation. These limitations frequently contribute to schedule delays, cost overruns, inefficiencies, and reduced project outcomes.

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) present a chance to improve traditional risk management practices by permitting continuous risk monitoring, early …

Bipoc Stem Scholarship And Mentorship Initiative: A Community Based Approach To Expanding Access And Equity In Stem Education, Raymond Davis Jr.

Master of Public Administration for Senior Leadership

Across the United States, persistent inequities continue to limit access to Science,  Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education for Black, Indigenous, and  People of Color (BIPOC) students. Despite increased national attention toward diversity,  equity, and inclusion over the past decade, measurable improvements in participation,  retention, and degree completion in STEM fields have not kept pace. These disparities  remain deeply rooted in structural inequalities that influence educational access, resource  distribution, and long-term career opportunities.

The issue is frequently described as a“pipeline problem,”suggesting that students enter  STEM pathways but fail to persist through to completion. While this metaphor is useful, it  oversimplifies …

Impact Of Currency Volatility In The Automotive Import-Export Procurement, Adelaide De-Heer

Master of Public Administration for Senior Leadership

Automobile import and export trade is a global venture and thus affected by global issues including cross border issues and currency volatility. Since it is a major in the economic field, it is vital that some risks be evaded in the initial stages of this trade to ensure sustainability. As a result, this research paper aims to assess how currency volatility as a key procurement risk impacts this business and why it is important to understand these dynamics. Currency volatility significantly influences automobile import and export procurement by shaping cost structures, competitive positioning, and financial stability within the global automotive …

International Business And Sustainability: Towards An Interdisciplinary Research Agenda, Jonathan Doh, Ans Kolk, Heli Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The relationship between international business (IB) and sustainability is a complex and multifaceted one. Multinational enterprises (MNEs) both affect and are affected by the social, economic, and ecological (green environment) context in which they are embedded.1 As such, the study of how IB activity influences sustainability and the way that sustainability, in turn, impacts IB, involves incorporating a wide range of drivers, actors, processes, and outcomes. At the same time, sustainability challenges, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, resource scarcity, economic and social inequality and others, are increasingly systemic, multilevel, and intertwined with geo economic, biophysical and governance dynamics …

Research: What Message Are Your Headphones Sending Your Coworkers?, Oguz Gencay, Michael Schaerer, Trevor A. Foulk

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Walk into almost any modern office, and you will see it: earbuds in, playlists on, and heads down. For many employees, music is an essential tool for focusing, mood regulation, and stamina. For most managers, it is a non-issue as long as performance stays strong. If it helps people concentrate, let them listen to music. At worst, it is a harmless preference, such as drinking coffee or using a standing desk.

Neuropsychological Functioning And Coping Strategy Intervention Approaches In Youth With Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Kalliopi Megari, Dimitra V. Katsarou, Georgios A. Kougioumtzis, Evangelos Mantsos, Maria Sofologi, Agathi Argyriadi, Alexandros Argyriadis, Efthymia Efthymiou

All Works

Background: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in ages 3–18 is associated with disturbances in attention, working memory, processing speed, and executive control, as well as persistent difficulties in affect regulation. These neuropsychological vulnerabilities might interfere with learning, peer relationships, and the consolidation of age-appropriate developmental skills. Methods: We conducted a narrative review informed by a structured literature search in PubMed, Scopus, PsycINFO, Embase, EBSCOhost, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. English-language publications from 1990 to 2025 were considered if they examined (1) neuropsychological outcomes of trauma exposure or PTSD in youth and/or (2) interventions with potential to modify neurocognitive or affective …