Matching Items (498)
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- All Subjects: Communication
- All Subjects: Educational leadership
- Genre: Academic theses
- Creators: Arizona State University
Description
Virtual Patient Simulations (VPS) are web-based exercises involving simulated patients in virtual environments. This study investigates the utility of VPS for increasing medical student clinical reasoning skills, collaboration, and engagement. Many studies indicate that VPS provide medical students with essential practice in clinical decision making before they encounter real life patients. The utility of a recursive, inductive VPS for increasing clinical decision-making skills, collaboration, or engagement is unknown. Following a design-based methodology, VPS were implemented in two phases with two different cohorts of first year medical students: spring and fall of 2013. Participants were 108 medical students and six of their clinical faculty tutors. Students collaborated in teams of three to complete a series of virtual patient cases, submitting a ballpark diagnosis at the conclusion of each session. Student participants subsequently completed an electronic, 28-item Exit Survey. Finally, students participated in a randomized controlled trial comparing traditional (tutor-led) and VPS case instruction methods. This sequence of activities rendered quantitative and qualitative data that were triangulated during data analysis to increase the validity of findings. After practicing through four VPS cases, student triad teams selected accurate ballpark diagnosis 92 percent of the time. Pre-post test results revealed that PPT was significantly more effective than VPS after 20 minutes of instruction. PPT instruction resulted in significantly higher learning gains, but both modalities supported significant learning gains in clinical reasoning. Students collaborated well and held rich clinical discussions; the central phenomenon that emerged was "synthesizing evidence inductively to make clinical decisions." Using an inductive process, student teams collaborated to analyze patient data, and in nearly all instances successfully solved the case, while remaining cognitively engaged. This is the first design-based study regarding virtual patient simulation, reporting iterative phases of implementation and design improvement, culminating in local theories (petite generalizations) about VPS design. A thick, rich description of environment, process, and findings may benefit other researchers and institutions in designing and implementing effective VPS.
ContributorsMcCoy, Lise (Author) / Wetzel, Keith (Thesis advisor) / Ewbank, Ann (Thesis advisor) / Simon, Harvey (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
ABSTRACT Current federal and state education mandates were developed to make schools accountable for student performance with the rationale that schools, teachers, and students will improve through the administration of high-stakes tests. Public schools are mandated to adhere to three accountability systems: national, state, and local. Additional elements include the recent implementation of the Common Core standards and newly devised state accountability systems that are granted through waivers as an alternative to the accountability mandates in the No Child Left Behind Act NCLB of 2001. Teachers' voices have been noticeably absent from the accountability debates, but as studies show, as primary recipients of accountability sanctions, many teachers withdraw, "burn out," or leave the profession altogether. The present study is based on the premise that teachers are vital to student achievement, and that their perspectives and understandings are therefore a resource for educational reform especially in light of the accountability mandates under NCLB. With that premise as a starting point, this dissertation examines practicing urban teachers' experiences of accountability in culturally and linguistically diverse schools. To fulfill these goals, this qualitative study used individual and focus group interviews and observations with veteran elementary school teachers in an urban Southwestern public school district, to ascertain practices they perceive to be effective. The study's significance lies in informing stakeholders, researchers, and policymakers of practicing teachers' input on accountability mandates in diverse urban schools.
ContributorsGishey, Rhiannon L (Author) / Mccarty, Teresa L (Thesis advisor) / Fischman, Gustavo E (Committee member) / Ikeler, Susan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Family caregivers are a quickly growing population in American society and are potentially vulnerable to a number of risks to well-being. High stress and little support can combine to cause difficulties in personal and professional relationships, physical health, and emotional health. Siblings are, however, a possible source of protection for the at-risk caregiver. This study examines the relational and health outcomes of gratitude exchange between caregivers and their siblings as they attend to the issue of caring for aging parents. Dyadic data was collected through an online survey and was analyzed using a series of Actor-Partner Interdependence Models. Intimacy and care conflict both closely relate to gratitude exchange, but the most significant variable influencing gratitude was role. Specifically, caregivers are neither experiencing nor expressing gratitude on the same level as their siblings. Expressed gratitude did not relate strongly or consistently to well-being variables, though it did relate to diminished negative affect. Implications for theory, the caregiver, the sibling, the elder, the practitioner, and the researcher are addressed in the discussion.
ContributorsAmaro, Lauren M (Author) / Miller, Katherine I. (Thesis advisor) / Alberts, Janet K. (Thesis advisor) / Updegraff, Kimberly (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Public demands for accountability and educational change are at an all-time high. No Child Left Behind set the stage for public accountability of educators and the recently created Race to the Top grant raised the stakes of public school accountability even more with the creation of national standards and assessments as well as public accountability of individual teacher performance based on student test scores. This high-stakes context has placed pressure on local schools to change their instructional practices rapidly to ensure students are learning what they need to in order to perform well on looming Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) exams. The purpose of this mixed methods action research study was to explore a shared leadership model and discover the impact of a change facilitation team using the Concerns Based Adoption Model tools on the speed and quality of innovation diffusion at a Title One elementary school. The nine-member change facilitation team received support for 20 weeks in the form of professional development and ongoing team coaching as a means to empower teacher-leaders to more effectively take on the challenges of change. Eight of those members participated in this research. This approach draws on the research on change, learning organizations, and coaching. Quantitative results from the Change Facilitator Stages of Concern Questionnaire were triangulated with qualitative data from interviews, field notes, and Innovation Configuration Maps. Results show the impact on instructional innovation when teacher-leadership is leveraged to support change. Further, there is an important role for change coaches when leading change initiatives. Implications from this study can be used to support other site leaders grappling with instructional innovation and calls for additional research.
ContributorsCruz, Jennifer (Author) / Zambo, Debby (Thesis advisor) / Foulger, Teresa (Committee member) / Tseunis, Paula (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new method of dividing wireless communication (such as the 802.11a/b/g
and cellular UMTS MAC protocols) across multiple unreliable communication links (such as Ethernet). The purpose is to introduce the appropriate hardware, software, and system architecture required to provide the basis for a wireless system (using a 802.11a/b/g
and cellular protocols as a model) that can scale to support thousands of users simultaneously (say in a large office building, super chain store, etc.) or in a small, but very dense communication RF region. Elements of communication between a base station and a Mobile Station will be analyzed statistically to demonstrate higher throughput, fewer collisions and lower bit error rates (BER) with the given bandwidth defined by the 802.11n wireless specification (use of MIMO channels will be evaluated). A new network nodal paradigm will be presented. Alternative link layer communication techniques will be recommended and analyzed for the affect on mobile devices. The analysis will describe how the algorithms used by state machines implemented on Mobile Stations and Wi-Fi client devices will be influenced by new base station transmission behavior. New hardware design techniques that can be used to optimize this architecture as well as hardware design principles in regard to the minimal hardware functional blocks required to support such a system design will be described. Hardware design and verification simulation techniques to prove the hardware design will accommodate an acceptable level of performance to meet the strict timing as it relates to this new system architecture.
and cellular UMTS MAC protocols) across multiple unreliable communication links (such as Ethernet). The purpose is to introduce the appropriate hardware, software, and system architecture required to provide the basis for a wireless system (using a 802.11a/b/g
and cellular protocols as a model) that can scale to support thousands of users simultaneously (say in a large office building, super chain store, etc.) or in a small, but very dense communication RF region. Elements of communication between a base station and a Mobile Station will be analyzed statistically to demonstrate higher throughput, fewer collisions and lower bit error rates (BER) with the given bandwidth defined by the 802.11n wireless specification (use of MIMO channels will be evaluated). A new network nodal paradigm will be presented. Alternative link layer communication techniques will be recommended and analyzed for the affect on mobile devices. The analysis will describe how the algorithms used by state machines implemented on Mobile Stations and Wi-Fi client devices will be influenced by new base station transmission behavior. New hardware design techniques that can be used to optimize this architecture as well as hardware design principles in regard to the minimal hardware functional blocks required to support such a system design will be described. Hardware design and verification simulation techniques to prove the hardware design will accommodate an acceptable level of performance to meet the strict timing as it relates to this new system architecture.
ContributorsJames, Frank (Author) / Reisslein, Martin (Thesis advisor) / Ying, Lei (Committee member) / Zhang, Yanchao (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
The &ldquoMormon; Colonies” in Chihuahua, northern Mexico, boast a sizable population of women originally from the United States who have immigrated to these small Mexican towns. This ethnographic study of the immigrant women in the area focuses on questions of citizenship and belonging, and bolsters the scholarship on U.S. American immigrants in Mexico. Using data from 15 unstructured interviews, the women&rsquos; experiences of migration provide a portrait of U.S. American immigrants in a Mexican religious community. Analysis of this data using grounded theory has revealed that these U.S. American women have created a third social space for themselves, to a large degree retaining their original culture, language, and political loyalty. Their stories contribute to the literature on transnational migration, providing an account of the way migrants of privilege interact with their society of settlement.
ContributorsNielsen, Vanessa (Author) / Mean, Lindsey (Thesis advisor) / Téllez, Michelle (Committee member) / Gruber, Diane (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Newer communication technologies (CTs) will always vie with more mature technologies for the attention of time-constrained legislators. As continual advances in CT make new methods of communication available to legislators, it is important to understand how newly introduced CTs influence novel and changing legislator behaviors. The mixed-method research presented in this study provides deep insights into the relationships between legislators and the CTs they use. This study offers many contributions, among them: it effectively bridges a gap between existing Internet Enabled CT (IECT) behavioral studies on non-legislators by expanding them to include legislator behavior; it expands existing narrowly focused research into the use of CT by legislators by including both IECT and mature CTs such as face-to-face meetings and telephone; it provides a fresh perspective on the factors that make CTs important to legislators, and it uncovers legislator behaviors that are both useful, and potentially harmful, to the process of democracy in the United States. In addition, this study confirms and extends existing research in areas such as minority party constituent communication frequency, and extends the topic of legislator CT behavior into some unanticipated areas such as constituent selective behaviors and the use of text messaging during floor debates which effectively enable lobbyists and paid consultants to participate real-time in floor debates in the Arizona House and Senate.
ContributorsWest, Joe, 1959- (Author) / Corley, Elizabeth A (Thesis advisor) / Johnston, Erik W., 1977- (Committee member) / Svara, James H. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
In the countries of Eastern Europe, the recent history of the communist regimes creates a context rich in various and often times contradictory remembering practices. While normative discourses of memory enacted in official forms of memory such as museums, memorials, monuments, or commemorative rituals attempt to castigate the communism in definite terms, remembering practices enacted in everyday life are more ambiguous and more tolerant of various interpretations of the communist past. This study offers a case study of the ways in which people remember communism in everyday life in Romania. While various inquiries into Eastern Europe's and also Romania's official and intentional forms of memorializing communism abound, few works address remembering practices in their entanglements with everyday life. From a methodological point of view, this study integrates a grounded methodology approach with a rhetorical sensitivity to explore the discourses, objects, events, and practices of remembering communism in Bucharest, the capital city of Romania. In doing so, this inquiry attends not only to the aspects of the present that animate the remembering of communism, but also and more specifically to the set of practices by which the remembering process is performed. The qualitative analysis revealed a number of conceptual categories that clustered around three major themes that describe the entanglements of remembering activities with everyday life. Relating the present to the past, sustaining the past in the present, and pursuing the communist past constitute the ways in which people in Romania live their relationships with the communist past in a way that reveals the complex interplay between private and public forms of memory, but also between the political, social, and cultural aspects of the remembering process. These themes also facilitate a holistic understanding of the rhetorical environment of remembering communism in Romania.
ContributorsPaulesc, Marie-Louise (Author) / de la Garza, Sarah Amira (Thesis advisor) / Brouwer, Dan (Thesis advisor) / Gereboff, Joel (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
The aim of this study is to test the feasibility of building a storytelling system for older adults to tell and share their life stories based on email. It is measured by the level of participation and people's acceptance of the system. The central goals were to empower people over 60 years old by providing a platform for them to share their wonderful life experience and perspectives on life and lead social services into the digital age by bridging traditional roundtable interaction and modern digital communication. A prototype was built to test the level of participation of the system and follow-up interviews were conducted in order to deeply understand people's acceptance. Content analysis was used to analyze the stories to ascertain what common themes were present. Key design considerations and key factors that affect the feasibility of storytelling system were discussed. This research expands on current research and implementation of Internet-based storytelling system and shed light on the future of combining storytelling with older adults' existing Internet knowledge. Key findings of this research are :(1) Frequency of reminiscence trigger and the number of active participants affect the level of participation collectively. Frequency is considered to be a key determinant. High frequency indicates high level of participation. (2) Categories of topics do not affect the level of participation significantly but serve as key attractions that enhance people's acceptance of the system. (3) Older adults highly accept and get involved in the new email storytelling system. This storytelling program helps them recall their memories and have a profound effect on their own introspection.
ContributorsLi, Yuanyi (Author) / Giard, Jacques R (Thesis advisor) / Margolis, Eric (Committee member) / Larkin, Kyle (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Recently, a student in a Maricopa County, Arizona area school district drowned during a physical education class, resulting in a heightened awareness of school aquatics safety guidelines. The goal of this study was to use Wenger's idea of nurturing a Community of Practice (CoP) with the existing physical education CoP at GFJRHS (school pseudonym), to examine the current curriculum and enhance the program and safety standards. The study duration was a five-week period; the participants were 7th grade males. This action research addressed the following questions: 1.)To what extent does the new swim curriculum increase students' (a) self-efficacy for swimming, (b) self-efficacy for water safety, (c) perception of swim skills, and (d) perception of water safety skills? 2.) How, and to what extent, do students value different observational learning techniques presented during the swim unit? 3.) To what extent does the new swim curriculum increase students' swimming capabilities? 4.) How does working as a Community of Practice influence implementing an enhanced swim curriculum? 5.) What challenges and improvements do participants report during the enhanced curriculum? A triangulation mixed methods design was used to determine whether observational learning techniques and mini aquatics safety lessons incorporated into the curriculum improved students' swimming ability, self-efficacy, and safety knowledge. Pre-and post-test swim assessments, pre- and post-test surveys, focus group interviews and researcher journal observations provided data for the study. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected to integrate the strengths of the varied forms of research. Cronbach's coefficient α was computed for the reliability of the survey and a multivariate repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to determine whether the new swim curriculum increased students' self-efficacy for swimming, self-efficacy for water safety, perception of swim skills, perception of water safety skills, and swimming capabilities. Results of this study indicated students' self-efficacy and perception of water safety skills increased, students' ability and perception of swimming skills increased, students valued all observational learning techniques, and teachers felt that functioning as a CoP was crucial to the process.
ContributorsJonaitis, Sean (Author) / Wetzel, Keith A (Thesis advisor) / Ewbank, Ann D (Thesis advisor) / Darst, Paul W. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014