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Description
With changes in federal legislation and the proposed reauthorization of The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, school administrators are held to high standards in an attempt to improve achievement for all students. They no longer just manage their schools but must now be instructional leaders charged with observing and conferencing with teachers, leading professional development aligned to data, and measuring results. Classroom walkthroughs have become a way of assisting with these tasks while supporting the mission of each school. The purpose of this research was to describe how walkthroughs operate in practice and how they were experienced by school administration, teacher leaders, and teachers at two schools within the same suburban district. Interviews illustrated that experiences were varied using the classroom walkthrough protocol. Continued professional development needed to occur with administrators and teachers. Participants shared their thoughts on implementation and usage, as well as made recommendations to schools and/or districts considering implementing classroom walkthroughs. Results also indicated a great deal of attention paid to the collection of data within the schools but there was less consensus on the analysis and use of the collected data. There was also confusion with teachers as to the vision, purpose, and goals of using classroom walkthroughs. Changes in leadership during the five years since implementation and young administrators, who were relatively new in their positions, helped shape school experiences. Recommendations to schools and/or districts considering implementation focused on support from the district office, a need for help with data collection and analysis, and a clear vision for the use of the protocol. Interviewees mentioned it would benefit districts and schools to develop a shared vocabulary for instructional engagement, alignment, and rigor, as well as a focus for professional development. They also shared the view that calibration conferences and conversations, centered on instruction, provided a focus for teaching and learning within a school and/or district.
ContributorsCunningham, Alexa Renee (Author) / Danzig, Arnold (Thesis advisor) / Harris, Connie (Committee member) / Hurley, Beverly (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Over 2 billion people are using online social network services, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Users update their status, post their photos, share their information, and chat with others in these social network sites every day; however, not everyone shares the same amount of information. This thesis explores methods of linking publicly available data sources as a means of extrapolating missing information of Facebook. An application named "Visual Friends Income Map" has been created on Facebook to collect social network data and explore geodemographic properties to link publicly available data, such as the US census data. Multiple predictors are implemented to link data sets and extrapolate missing information from Facebook with accurate predictions. The location based predictor matches Facebook users' locations with census data at the city level for income and demographic predictions. Age and relationship based predictors are created to improve the accuracy of the proposed location based predictor utilizing social network link information. In the case where a user does not share any location information on their Facebook profile, a kernel density estimation location predictor is created. This predictor utilizes publicly available telephone record information of all people with the same surname of this user in the US to create a likelihood distribution of the user's location. This is combined with the user's IP level information in order to narrow the probability estimation down to a local regional constraint.
ContributorsMao, Jingxian (Author) / Maciejewski, Ross (Thesis advisor) / Farin, Gerald (Committee member) / Wang, Yalin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
With the rapid development of mobile sensing technologies like GPS, RFID, sensors in smartphones, etc., capturing position data in the form of trajectories has become easy. Moving object trajectory analysis is a growing area of interest these days owing to its applications in various domains such as marketing, security, traffic monitoring and management, etc. To better understand movement behaviors from the raw mobility data, this doctoral work provides analytic models for analyzing trajectory data. As a first contribution, a model is developed to detect changes in trajectories with time. If the taxis moving in a city are viewed as sensors that provide real time information of the traffic in the city, a change in these trajectories with time can reveal that the road network has changed. To detect changes, trajectories are modeled with a Hidden Markov Model (HMM). A modified training algorithm, for parameter estimation in HMM, called m-BaumWelch, is used to develop likelihood estimates under assumed changes and used to detect changes in trajectory data with time. Data from vehicles are used to test the method for change detection. Secondly, sequential pattern mining is used to develop a model to detect changes in frequent patterns occurring in trajectory data. The aim is to answer two questions: Are the frequent patterns still frequent in the new data? If they are frequent, has the time interval distribution in the pattern changed? Two different approaches are considered for change detection, frequency-based approach and distribution-based approach. The methods are illustrated with vehicle trajectory data. Finally, a model is developed for clustering and outlier detection in semantic trajectories. A challenge with clustering semantic trajectories is that both numeric and categorical attributes are present. Another problem to be addressed while clustering is that trajectories can be of different lengths and also have missing values. A tree-based ensemble is used to address these problems. The approach is extended to outlier detection in semantic trajectories.
ContributorsKondaveeti, Anirudh (Author) / Runger, George C. (Thesis advisor) / Mirchandani, Pitu (Committee member) / Pan, Rong (Committee member) / Maciejewski, Ross (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
The purpose of the research study was to explore the perceptions of Navajo mothers and Navajo fathers in the development and childrearing practices of their children and to what extent each parent was involved in their children by gender and age. The objective of the interviews was to capture the perceptions of each parent as to child development and childrearing practices as well as the beliefs that they have on parental involvement. In the current study, the interviews provided information regarding attitudes and perceptions of parental involvement from the Navajo mothers and the Navajo fathers who participated in the study. By using probing questions, deeper insights into the understanding and perceptions of parental involvement were obtained.
ContributorsTsosie, Berdina (Author) / Appleton, Nicholas A (Thesis advisor) / Spencer, Dee A (Committee member) / Duplissis, Mark (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Ultimately, the examples and foundation provided at home will impact the child as a student and lifelong learner. In Navajo society, there are some families who continue to instill the importance of heritage language and culture. And then there are those who choose not to, or who are not capable of doing so due to the lack of knowledge to share such teachings. Diné language and culture are vital elements of who we are as Diné. They are what identify us as a people. Our language and culture separate us from the western society. As parents and educators, our attitudes affect our homes, schools, and children. Our way of thinking may inhibit or perpetuate cultural teachings. However, no one knows how parents' attitudes affect cultural integration at an immersion school. This quantitative study examined parents' attitudes toward cultural integration in a Navajo language immersion school (Ts4hootsoo7 Diné Bi')lta' with the Window Rock Unified School District #8 in Fort Defiance, Arizona). Surveys were used to examine parents' attitudes about language and cultural integration. The survey asked about Navajo language and culture, about the extent to which it was practiced at home, and their opinions about how Navajo language and culture was being taught at school. The data were reported in basic descriptive statistics for the total group of respondents and then disaggregated by age, place of birth (on the reservation or off), gender, marital status, and highest grade completed in school. The data has shown that overall parents are supportive of Navajo language and culture. Their attitudes may vary based on age, place of birth, gender, marital status, and education. In spite of this, Navajo language and culture are in the home. However, the degree to which it is spoken or practiced is not measured. Parents are supportive of the school teaching Navajo language and culture.
ContributorsPlatero, Audra J (Author) / Spencer, Dee Ann (Thesis advisor) / Appleton, Nicholas A. (Committee member) / Gilmore, Treva (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
In this study, the Arizona State University Mathematics and Science Teaching Fellows 2010 program was analyzed qualitatively from start to finish to determine the impact of the research experience on teachers in the classroom. The sample for the study was the 2010 cohort of eight high school science teachers. Erickson's (1986) interpretive, participant observational fieldwork method was used to report data by means of detailed descriptions of the research experience and classroom implementation. Data was collected from teacher documents, interviews, and observations. The findings revealed various factors that were responsible for an ineffective implementation of the research experience in the classroom such as research experience, curriculum support, availability of resources, and school curriculum. Implications and recommendations for future programs are discussed in the study.
ContributorsSen, Tapati (Author) / Baker, Dale (Thesis advisor) / Culbertson, Robert (Committee member) / Margolis, Eric (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
The focus of this document is the examination of a new robot simulator developed to aid students in learning robotics programming and provide the ability to test their programs in a simulated world. The simulator, accessed via a website, provides a simulated environment, programming interface, and the ability to control a simulated robot. The simulated environment consists of a user-customizable maze and a robot, which can be controlled manually, via Web service, or by utilizing the Web programming interface. The Web programming interface provides dropdown boxes from which the users may select various options to program their implementations. It is designed to aid new students in the learning of basic skills and thought processes used to program robots. Data was collected and analyzed to determine how effective this system is in helping students learn. This included how quickly students were able to program the algorithms assigned to them and how many lines of code were used to implement them. Students' performance was also monitored to determine how well they were able to use the program and if there were any significant problems. The students also completed surveys to communicate how well the website helped them learn and understand various concepts. The data collected shows that the website was a helpful learning tool for the students and that they were able to use the programming interface quickly and effectively.
ContributorsDrown, Garrett (Author) / Tsai, Wei-Tek (Thesis advisor) / Chen, Yinong (Thesis advisor) / Claveau, David (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This dissertation presents the Temporal Event Query Language (TEQL), a new language for querying event streams. Event Stream Processing enables online querying of streams of events to extract relevant data in a timely manner. TEQL enables querying of interval-based event streams using temporal database operators. Temporal databases and temporal query languages have been a subject of research for more than 30 years and are a natural fit for expressing queries that involve a temporal dimension. However, operators developed in this context cannot be directly applied to event streams. The research extends a preexisting relational framework for event stream processing to support temporal queries. The language features and formal semantic extensions to extend the relational framework are identified. The extended framework supports continuous, step-wise evaluation of temporal queries. The incremental evaluation of TEQL operators is formalized to avoid re-computation of previous results. The research includes the development of a prototype that supports the integrated event and temporal query processing framework, with support for incremental evaluation and materialization of intermediate results. TEQL enables reporting temporal data in the output, direct specification of conditions over timestamps, and specification of temporal relational operators. Through the integration of temporal database operators with event languages, a new class of temporal queries is made possible for querying event streams. New features include semantic aggregation, extraction of temporal patterns using set operators, and a more accurate specification of event co-occurrence.
ContributorsShiva, Foruhar Ali (Author) / Urban, Susan D (Thesis advisor) / Chen, Yi (Thesis advisor) / Davulcu, Hasan (Committee member) / Sarjoughian, Hessam S. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Laboratory automation systems have seen a lot of technological advances in recent times. As a result, the software that is written for them are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Existing software architectures and standards are targeted to a wider domain of software development and need to be customized in order to use them for developing software for laboratory automation systems. This thesis proposes an architecture that is based on existing software architectural paradigms and is specifically tailored to developing software for a laboratory automation system. The architecture is based on fairly autonomous software components that can be distributed across multiple computers. The components in the architecture make use of asynchronous communication methodologies that are facilitated by passing messages between one another. The architecture can be used to develop software that is distributed, responsive and thread-safe. The thesis also proposes a framework that has been developed to implement the ideas proposed by the architecture. The framework is used to develop software that is scalable, distributed, responsive and thread-safe. The framework currently has components to control very commonly used laboratory automation devices such as mechanical stages, cameras, and also to do common laboratory automation functionalities such as imaging.
ContributorsKuppuswamy, Venkataramanan (Author) / Meldrum, Deirdre (Thesis advisor) / Collofello, James (Thesis advisor) / Sarjoughian, Hessam S. (Committee member) / Johnson, Roger (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Motion capture using cost-effective sensing technology is challenging and the huge success of Microsoft Kinect has been attracting researchers to uncover the potential of using this technology into computer vision applications. In this thesis, an upper-body motion analysis in a home-based system for stroke rehabilitation using novel RGB-D camera - Kinect is presented. We address this problem by first conducting a systematic analysis of the usability of Kinect for motion analysis in stroke rehabilitation. Then a hybrid upper body tracking approach is proposed which combines off-the-shelf skeleton tracking with a novel depth-fused mean shift tracking method. We proposed several kinematic features reliably extracted from the proposed inexpensive and portable motion capture system and classifiers that correlate torso movement to clinical measures of unimpaired and impaired. Experiment results show that the proposed sensing and analysis works reliably on measuring torso movement quality and is promising for end-point tracking. The system is currently being deployed for large-scale evaluations.
ContributorsDu, Tingfang (Author) / Turaga, Pavan (Thesis advisor) / Spanias, Andreas (Committee member) / Rikakis, Thanassis (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012