Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
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- Creators: Kashiwagi, Jacob
Description
Throughout my experience in college, I learned many different techniques to communicate effectively. Most professors emphasized the importance of speaking clearly, and the ability to influence others. Dr. Kashiwagi piqued my interest when he explained his thoughts on how he wanted us to communicate to him. The criteria were simple, speak to him in a way that he could easily understand, without having to think. If thinking took place for him in the conversation, he determined that the person spoke too complexly and that his understanding of the student was low. After hearing this in class, I thought back to past conversations with my managers. I then wondered if I explained things clearer or simplified my wording, would things have gone better? I was also curious about simplicity in communication through writing, and how different presentations of information affected understanding. To further analyze these issues, I explored multiple research reports on verbal communication. Furthermore, I set up an experiment to test two common types of visual communication. The research concludes that Dr. Kashiwagi's theory was indeed correct, simplicity in conversation reduces miscommunication. The effectiveness of simplicity in written communication was partially proven by the survey results. The results indicated that the time required to fully understand a given topic dropped significantly if the information was depicted in a simplified format (list format). The more complex paragraph (textbook format) did have a higher level of understanding. However, the participants rated the textbook format job objectives as more complex, and stressful. After gathering the research, and running the experiment it can be concluded that by simplifying verbal communication, there are negligible differences in understanding of the topic, but the time of understanding decreases significantly.
ContributorsWilliams, Matthew Scott (Author) / Kashiwagi, Jacob (Thesis director) / Abraham, Seth (Committee member) / Department of Supply Chain Management (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
The Performance Based Studies Research Group (PBSRG) uses a leading model that helps people and procurement projects alike minimize risk while maximizing productivity. While there are a multitude of factors that propel this model, Information Measurement Theory (IMT) is the main element of the Best Value approach the group takes. I wanted to take the dominant information elements of IMT that helped me find my true self and increase my level of efficiency, and use them to find what it takes to become a successful veterinarian. In order to do this, the Kashiwagi Solution Model (KSM) within IMT was the perfect way to distinguish more successful, higher performing veterinarians from the less successful, lower performing veterinarians. In order to do this, a number of KSM-designed questions were created to score each veterinarian's level of perception. These, along with other background and performance questions, were put into a short survey and sent out. Once this was done, other elements of the veterinarians' lives could be compared side by side to their perception level. The results, of which 970 surveys were returned, found that the more expert a veterinarian is, the lower number of animals they will see per day and the better they know their customer satisfaction rating. These are both then theorized to work in conjunction to form the final correlation that the more perceptive the veterinarian, the higher their performance, aka their clinic's rating. In addition to this, no correlation was found between a veterinarian's level of thinking and their GPA from graduate school. It was concluded that though these correlations are found, I would recommend another project to be done in which all veterinarians of each surveyed clinic could be analyzed in order to gain more insight into any trends that exist between a veterinarian's level of thinking and their performance.
ContributorsBoon, Kurtis Ventry (Author) / Kashiwagi, Jacob (Thesis director) / Finney, Gina Lee (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12