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Teacher attrition and the migration between schools and districts can have a negative impact on quality of education and teacher performance. Novice teachers leave the profession because they are overwhelmed by the workload and responsibilities of the job. In a previous action research cycle, I found that novice teachers' perceptions

Teacher attrition and the migration between schools and districts can have a negative impact on quality of education and teacher performance. Novice teachers leave the profession because they are overwhelmed by the workload and responsibilities of the job. In a previous action research cycle, I found that novice teachers' perceptions of isolation and lack of opportunities to share experiences had a negative effect on teacher perceptions of efficacy. This action research project examines the effect of leveraging social media and professional learning communities to provide opportunities for a group of novice teachers to share experiences and seek advice. By addressing the challenges that novice teachers face and providing solutions for common problems, it is the hope of this researcher that highly effective teachers will remain in the classroom. The results of the study indicate that the combined use of Twitter and YouTube in collaboration with professional learning communities will improve teacher perceptions of efficacy. Teachers who participated in the social media based professional learning communities are also more likely to remain in the classroom.
ContributorsBostick, Bradley Alan (Author) / Zambo, Ronald (Thesis advisor) / Heck, Thomas (Committee member) / Isai, Shelley (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
The increasing popularity of Twitter renders improved trustworthiness and relevance assessment of tweets much more important for search. However, given the limitations on the size of tweets, it is hard to extract measures for ranking from the tweet's content alone. I propose a method of ranking tweets by generating a

The increasing popularity of Twitter renders improved trustworthiness and relevance assessment of tweets much more important for search. However, given the limitations on the size of tweets, it is hard to extract measures for ranking from the tweet's content alone. I propose a method of ranking tweets by generating a reputation score for each tweet that is based not just on content, but also additional information from the Twitter ecosystem that consists of users, tweets, and the web pages that tweets link to. This information is obtained by modeling the Twitter ecosystem as a three-layer graph. The reputation score is used to power two novel methods of ranking tweets by propagating the reputation over an agreement graph based on tweets' content similarity. Additionally, I show how the agreement graph helps counter tweet spam. An evaluation of my method on 16~million tweets from the TREC 2011 Microblog Dataset shows that it doubles the precision over baseline Twitter Search and achieves higher precision than current state of the art method. I present a detailed internal empirical evaluation of RAProp in comparison to several alternative approaches proposed by me, as well as external evaluation in comparison to the current state of the art method.
ContributorsRavikumar, Srijith (Author) / Kambhampati, Subbarao (Thesis advisor) / Davulcu, Hasan (Committee member) / Liu, Huan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
This project sheds light on trombonist Andy Martin's improvisation and provides tools for further learning. A biographical sketch gives background on Martin, establishing him as a newer jazz master. Through the transcription and analysis of nine improvised solos, Martin's improvisational voice and vocabulary is deciphered and presented as a series

This project sheds light on trombonist Andy Martin's improvisation and provides tools for further learning. A biographical sketch gives background on Martin, establishing him as a newer jazz master. Through the transcription and analysis of nine improvised solos, Martin's improvisational voice and vocabulary is deciphered and presented as a series of seven thematic hooks. These patterns, rhythms, and gestures are described, analyzed, and presented as examples of how each is used in the solos. The hooks are also set as application exercises for learning jazz style and improvisation. These exercises demonstrate how to use Martin's hooks as a means for furthering one's own improvisation. A full method for successful transcription is also presented, along with the printed transcriptions and their accompanying information sheets.
ContributorsWilkinson, Michael Scott (Author) / Ericson, John (Thesis advisor) / Kocour, Michael (Committee member) / Solis, Theodore (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
En el siglo XXI nuestra vida se está cruzando constantemente con la tecnología, tanto que algunos declaran que nuestro mundo se ha hecho posthumano, ya que no se puede separar al ser humano de la máquina. Aunque algunos se sientan amenazados por estas tecnologías, otros están abrazando la Red Mundial,

En el siglo XXI nuestra vida se está cruzando constantemente con la tecnología, tanto que algunos declaran que nuestro mundo se ha hecho posthumano, ya que no se puede separar al ser humano de la máquina. Aunque algunos se sientan amenazados por estas tecnologías, otros están abrazando la Red Mundial, aprovechándose de las infinitas oportunidades que ofrece. Uno de estos elementos fundamentales que internet posibilita es la capacidad de comunicarse directamente con otras personas. El blog por ejemplo, o bitácora en español, permite que los usuarios se proyecten a sí mismos o a sus pseudo-identidades, sus pensamientos e ideas a través del texto que escriben en internet. También sus lectores pueden responder a estos autores inmediatamente. Los posts publicados--entradas en una página web--, aunque aparecen cronológicamente, son episodios fragmentados. Pero el blog no se limita a la producción de un texto sino que el autor puede también "jugar" con el cuerpo del texto para añadir hipervínculos y multimedia. Esta forma de escribir está cambiando lo que se considera "válido" como texto, incluso lo que se considera literatura. El objetivo de este trabajo no es estudiar la literatura digital en su totalidad, sino específicamente en algunas obras escritas por mujeres en internet. Si se considera la escritura digital como una forma de arte marginalizada, se podría decir que la escritura realizada por mujeres en internet experimenta una doble-marginalidad debido al hecho de que la literatura de mujeres siempre ha sido marginal al canon. Este estudio tomará un punto de vista transatlántico, incluyendo en el mismo a varias escritoras hispanohablantes de diferentes edades, experiencias y con variados motivos en su trabajo que publican sus obras en internet. Estas autoras incluyen las blogueras Almudena Montero (española) yMaría Amelia López Soliño (española); la periodista ciudadana Yoanis Sánchez (cubana); y la poeta digital/crítica Belén Gache (española-argentina). En esta tesis he explorado y considerado la noción de que el internet sirve como un medio de democratización puesto que, hasta cierto punto, las fronteras de género y nacionalidad desaparecen. Por esta razón, este trabajo va a considerar varias teorías tales como el postmodernismo, las teorías sobre la escritura de mujeres y teorías sobre la democratización de la tecnología para analizar la literatura que se encuentra en la red. Aunque las escritoras analizadas en este proyecto son distintas, y usan la tecnología de maneras diferentes, tienen una misma meta: expresarse libremente y comunicarse directamente con sus lectores al conectarse a internet. Mi hipótesis de trabajo consiste en que estas mujeres escriben de una manera particular--es decir, que no escriben igual a los hombres que escriben en internet--y que la red ofrece una plataforma única a las mujeres: en este espacio ellas son más activas--en oposición a la literatura tradicional-- en cuanto a compartir y publicar su propio trabajo e ideas.
ContributorsByron, Jennifer E. (Author) / Urioste-Azcorra, Carmen (Thesis advisor) / Tompkins, Cynthia (Committee member) / García-Fernández, Carlos Javier (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
Social media offers a powerful platform for the independent digital content producer community to develop, disperse, and maintain their brands. In terms of information systems research, the broad majority of the work has not examined hedonic consumption on Social Media Sites (SMS). The focus has mostly been on the organizational

Social media offers a powerful platform for the independent digital content producer community to develop, disperse, and maintain their brands. In terms of information systems research, the broad majority of the work has not examined hedonic consumption on Social Media Sites (SMS). The focus has mostly been on the organizational perspectives and utilitarian gains from these services. Unlike through traditional commerce channels, including e-commerce retailers, consumption enhancing hedonic utility is experienced differently in the context of a social media site; consequently, the dynamic of the decision-making process shifts when it is made in a social context. Previous research assumed a limited influence of a small, immediate group of peers. But the rules change when the network of peers expands exponentially. The assertion is that, while there are individual differences in the level of susceptibility to influence coming from others, these are not the most important pieces of the analysis--unlike research centered completely on influence. Rather, the context of the consumption can play an important role in the way social influence factors affect consumer behavior on Social Media Sites. Over the course of three studies, this dissertation will examine factors that influence consumer decision-making and the brand personalities created and interpreted in these SMS. Study one examines the role of different types of peer influence on consumer decision-making on Facebook. Study two observes the impact of different types of producer message posts with the different types of influence on decision-making on Twitter. Study three will conclude this work with an exploratory empirical investigation of actual twitter postings of a set of musicians. These studies contribute to the body of IS literature by evaluating the specific behavioral changes related to consumption in the context of digital social media: (a) the power of social influencers in contrast to personal preferences on SMS, (b) the effect on consumers of producer message types and content on SMS at both the profile level and the individual message level.
ContributorsSopha, Matthew (Author) / Santanam, Raghu T (Thesis advisor) / Goul, Kenneth M (Committee member) / Gu, Bin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
Jazz continues, into its second century, as one of the most important musics taught in public middle and high schools. Even so, research related to how students learn, especially in their earliest interactions with jazz culture, is limited. Weaving together interviews and observations of junior and senior high school jazz

Jazz continues, into its second century, as one of the most important musics taught in public middle and high schools. Even so, research related to how students learn, especially in their earliest interactions with jazz culture, is limited. Weaving together interviews and observations of junior and senior high school jazz players and teachers, private studio instructors, current university students majoring in jazz, and university and college jazz faculty, I developed a composite sketch of a secondary school student learning to play jazz. Using arts-based educational research methods, including the use of narrative inquiry and literary non-fiction, the status of current jazz education and the experiences by novice jazz learners is explored. What emerges is a complex story of students and teachers negotiating the landscape of jazz in and out of early twenty-first century public schools. Suggestions for enhancing jazz experiences for all stakeholders follow, focusing on access and the preparation of future jazz teachers.
ContributorsKelly, Keith B (Author) / Stauffer, Sandra (Thesis advisor) / Tobias, Evan (Committee member) / Kocour, Michael (Committee member) / Sullivan, Jill (Committee member) / Schmidt, Margaret (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
Concerto for Piano and Chamber Orchestra was conceived in February of 2013, and conceptually it is my attempt to fuse personal expressions of jazz and classical music into one fully realized statement. It is a three movement work (fast, slow, fast) for 2 fl., 2 ob., 2 cl., bsn., 2

Concerto for Piano and Chamber Orchestra was conceived in February of 2013, and conceptually it is my attempt to fuse personal expressions of jazz and classical music into one fully realized statement. It is a three movement work (fast, slow, fast) for 2 fl., 2 ob., 2 cl., bsn., 2 hrn., 2 tpt., tbn., pno., perc., str. (6,4,2,2,1). The work is approximately 27 minutes in duration. The first movement of the Concerto is written in a fluid sonata form. A fugato begins where the second theme would normally appear, and the second theme does not fully appear until near the end of the solo piano section. The result is that the second theme when finally revealed is so reminiscent of the history of jazz and classical synthesis that it does not sound completely new, and in fact is a return of something that was heard before, but only hinted at in this piece. The second movement is a kind of deconstructive set of variations, with a specific theme and harmonic pattern implied throughout the movement. However, the full theme is not disclosed until the final variation. The variations are interrupted by moments of pure rhythmic music, containing harmony made up of major chords with an added fourth, defying resolution, and dissolving each time back into a new variation. The third movement is in rondo form, using rhythmic and harmonic influences from jazz. The percussion plays a substantial role in this movement, acting as a counterpoint to the piano part throughout. This movement and the piece concludes with an extended coda, inspired indirectly by the simple complexities of an improvisational piano solo, building in complexity as the concerto draws to a close.
ContributorsSneider, Elliot (Author) / Rogers, Rodney (Thesis advisor) / DeMars, James (Committee member) / Hackbarth, Glenn (Committee member) / Solis, Theodore (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
Social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and blogs have emerged as valuable

- in fact, the de facto - virtual town halls for people to discover, report, share and

communicate with others about various types of events. These events range from

widely-known events such as the U.S Presidential debate to smaller scale,

Social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and blogs have emerged as valuable

- in fact, the de facto - virtual town halls for people to discover, report, share and

communicate with others about various types of events. These events range from

widely-known events such as the U.S Presidential debate to smaller scale, local events

such as a local Halloween block party. During these events, we often witness a large

amount of commentary contributed by crowds on social media. This burst of social

media responses surges with the "second-screen" behavior and greatly enriches the

user experience when interacting with the event and people's awareness of an event.

Monitoring and analyzing this rich and continuous flow of user-generated content can

yield unprecedentedly valuable information about the event, since these responses

usually offer far more rich and powerful views about the event that mainstream news

simply could not achieve. Despite these benefits, social media also tends to be noisy,

chaotic, and overwhelming, posing challenges to users in seeking and distilling high

quality content from that noise.

In this dissertation, I explore ways to leverage social media as a source of information and analyze events based on their social media responses collectively. I develop, implement and evaluate EventRadar, an event analysis toolbox which is able to identify, enrich, and characterize events using the massive amounts of social media responses. EventRadar contains three automated, scalable tools to handle three core event analysis tasks: Event Characterization, Event Recognition, and Event Enrichment. More specifically, I develop ET-LDA, a Bayesian model and SocSent, a matrix factorization framework for handling the Event Characterization task, i.e., modeling characterizing an event in terms of its topics and its audience's response behavior (via ET-LDA), and the sentiments regarding its topics (via SocSent). I also develop DeMa, an unsupervised event detection algorithm for handling the Event Recognition task, i.e., detecting trending events from a stream of noisy social media posts. Last, I develop CrowdX, a spatial crowdsourcing system for handling the Event Enrichment task, i.e., gathering additional first hand information (e.g., photos) from the field to enrich the given event's context.

Enabled by EventRadar, it is more feasible to uncover patterns that have not been

explored previously and re-validating existing social theories with new evidence. As a

result, I am able to gain deep insights into how people respond to the event that they

are engaged in. The results reveal several key insights into people's various responding

behavior over the event's timeline such the topical context of people's tweets does not

always correlate with the timeline of the event. In addition, I also explore the factors

that affect a person's engagement with real-world events on Twitter and find that

people engage in an event because they are interested in the topics pertaining to

that event; and while engaging, their engagement is largely affected by their friends'

behavior.
ContributorsHu, Yuheng (Author) / Kambhampati, Subbarao (Thesis advisor) / Horvitz, Eric (Committee member) / Krumm, John (Committee member) / Liu, Huan (Committee member) / Sundaram, Hari (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
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Description
This multiple-case study addresses the nature of the out-of-school musical engagements of four undergraduate students who were enrolled as jazz studies majors in a large school of music in the U.S. southwest. It concerns what they did musically when they were outside of school, why they did what they did,

This multiple-case study addresses the nature of the out-of-school musical engagements of four undergraduate students who were enrolled as jazz studies majors in a large school of music in the U.S. southwest. It concerns what they did musically when they were outside of school, why they did what they did, what experiences they said they learned from, and how their out-of-school engagements related to their in-school curriculum. Research on jazz education, informal learning practices in music, and the in-school and out-of-school experiences of students informed this study. Data were generated through observation, interviews, video blogs (vlogs), and SMS text messages.

Analysis of data revealed that participants engaged with music when outside of school by practicing, teaching, gigging, recording, playing music with others, attending live musical performances, socializing with other musicians, listening, and engaging with non-jazz musical styles (aside from listening). They engaged with music because of: 1) the love of music, 2) the desire for musical excellence, 3) financial considerations, 4) the aspiration to affect others positively with music, and 5) the connection with other musicians. Participants indicated that they learned by practicing, listening to recordings, attending live performances, playing paid engagements, socializing, teaching, and reading. In-school and out-of-school experience and learning had substantial but not complete overlap.

The study implies that a balance between in-school and out-of-school musical experience may help undergraduate jazz studies students to maximize their overall musical learning. It also suggests that at least some jazz studies majors are fluent in a wide variety of music learning practices that make them versatile, flexible, and employable musicians. Further implications are provided for undergraduate jazz students as well as collegiate jazz educators, the music education profession, and schools of music. Additional implications concern future research and the characterization of jazz study in academia.
ContributorsLibman, Jeffrey B (Author) / Tobias, Evan (Thesis advisor) / Kocour, Michael (Committee member) / Schmidt, Margaret (Committee member) / Solis, Theodore (Committee member) / Stauffer, Sandra (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
The study of artist transcriptions is an effective vehicle for assimilating the language and style of jazz. Pairing transcriptions with historical context provides further insight into the back story of the artists' life and method. Innovators are often the subject of published studies of this kind, but transcriptions of plunger-mute

The study of artist transcriptions is an effective vehicle for assimilating the language and style of jazz. Pairing transcriptions with historical context provides further insight into the back story of the artists' life and method. Innovators are often the subject of published studies of this kind, but transcriptions of plunger-mute master Al Grey have been overlooked. This document fills that void, combining historical context with thirteen transcriptions of Grey's trombone features and improvisations. Selection of transcribed materials was based on an examination of historically significant solos in Al Grey's fifty-five-year career. The results are a series of open-horn and plunger solos that showcase Grey's sound, technical brilliance, and wide range of dynamics and articulation. This collection includes performances from a mix of widely available and obscure recordings, the majority coming from engagements with the Count Basie Orchestra. Methods learned from the study of Al Grey's book Plunger Techniques were vital in the realization of his work. The digital transcription software Amazing Slow Downer by Roni Music aided in deciphering some of Grey's more complicated passages and, with octave displacement, helped bring previously inaudible moments to the foreground.
ContributorsHopkins, Charles E (Author) / Pilafian, Sam (Thesis advisor) / Stauffer, Sandra (Committee member) / Solís, Ted (Committee member) / Ericson, John (Committee member) / Kocour, Michael (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011