Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Topic Development In The Freshman Engineering Paper: Finding A Focus, Edward J. Eckel

University Libraries Faculty & Staff Publications

Topic development and focus are relatively neglected areas of the student research process. This study examined how students in a freshman engineering writing class developed initial research paper topics into focused thesis statements. A mixed methods approach was used, incorporating online surveys, qualitative interviews, and a rubric to track topic development and assess thesis statement focus. The survey results and student comments indicated that participants were more competent at the mechanics of finding sources and writing than at developing appropriately scoped thesis statements. Closer collaboration between writing instructors and librarians is urged to more effectively support and scaffold topic development.

Assessing Land Deformation And Sea Encroachment In The Nile Delta, Egypt, Esayas Gebremichael

Research and Creative Activities Poster Day

Persistent scatterer interferometric analyses were conducted on a stack of 84 Envisat ASAR scenes spanning 7 years (2004 to 2010) over the entire Nile Delta of Egypt and surroundings to monitor the ongoing spatial and temporal land deformation, identify the factors controlling the deformation, and model the interplay between sea level rise and land subsidence to identify areas and populations threatened by sea encroachment by the end of the 21st century. Findings include: (1) general patterns of subsidence in the northern delta, near-steady (none) subsidence in the southern delta, separated by a previously mapped flexure zone undergoing uplift; (2) high …

Optimal Location For Bike Sharing Stations In Downtown Kalamazoo, Lizmert Lopez Gonzalez

Research and Creative Activities Poster Day

At present, emphasis is on increasing physical activities and expanding access to goods and services through non-motorized modes in order to enhance safety, social sustainability in transportation equity, environmental justice, and public health. Hence, there is an interest in developing bike sharing systems to encourage non-motorized activities in cities. This study focuses on developing a bike sharing system for city of Kalamazoo. One key parameter for a successful system is to identify optimum locations for bike sharing stations. This poster presents implementation of location-allocation models and spatial analysis tools to determine the most suitable locations for bike sharing stations within …

Implementation Of Software Community Radio Using Low Cost Resources, Amean Shareaf Ghazi Al-Safi

Research and Creative Activities Poster Day

Community radio is the third third model model of radio broadcasting besides besides the commercial and public systems systems. It aims to provide individuals with local news and information that are important to a small community. This poster presented a new method of implementing community community radio using low cost hardware and free software.The transmitter system consists of PC, USRP, and antenna while the receiver side consists of Raspberry Pi, RTL –SDR, and antenna .The main goal is to define and demonstrate a low, cost, flexible transmitter consisting of the USRP N210 and and commodity PC and a receiver consisting …

14-12 Capacity Analysis Of Pedestrian Facilities Involving Individuals With Disabilities, Mohammad Sadra Sharifi, Keith Christensen, Anthony Chen

Transportation Research Center Reports

Walking facilities are important infrastructures that must be designed to accommodate the behavior of pedestrians in order to be effective. Heterogeneity in pedestrian composition is one important factor generally overlooked in walking facility design guidelines. Particularly, individuals with disabilities are often ignored due to lack of available data on their pedestrian behaviors. A controlled, large-scaled walking experiment involving individuals with disabilities was conducted at Utah State University to observe individual pedestrian behaviors in various walking facilities; these facilities include passageway and bottleneck formations. The purpose of this report is twofold: (1) to model time headway between different individual types using …

Textual Appropriation And Attribution In Engineering Theses And Dissertations: An Exploratory Study, Edward J. Eckel

University Libraries Faculty & Staff Publications

This exploratory study seeks to build a clearer picture of the extent to which engineering graduate students use and attribute unquoted verbatim source text in the literature review sections of their theses and dissertations. In addition, it explores whether or not there are differences between master’s and doctoral engineering students in these patterns of copying and attribution and what this might indicate about their potential skill levels in source use.

The study asks the following research questions: (1) Do the literature review sections of engineering master's theses contain longer average verbatim text matches than the corresponding sections of engineering doctoral …