Matching Items (2)
Filtering by

Clear all filters

153666-Thumbnail Image.png
Description
As people age, the desire to grow old independently and in place becomes larger and takes greater importance in their lives. Successful aging involves the physical, mental and social well-being of an individual. To enable successful aging of older adults, it is necessary for them to perform both activities of

As people age, the desire to grow old independently and in place becomes larger and takes greater importance in their lives. Successful aging involves the physical, mental and social well-being of an individual. To enable successful aging of older adults, it is necessary for them to perform both activities of daily living (ADL) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADL). Embedded assessment has made it possible to assess an individual's functional ability in-place, however the success of any technology depends largely on the user than the technology itself. Previous researches in in-situ functional assessment systems have heavily focused on the technology rather than on the user. This dissertation takes a user-centric approach to this problem by trying to identify the design and technical challenges of deploying and using a functional assessment system in the real world.

To investigate this line of research, a case study was conducted with 4 older adults in their homes, interviews were conducted with 8 caregivers and a controlled lab experiment was conducted with 8 young healthy adults at ASU, to test the sensors. This methodology provides a significant opportunity to advance the scientific field by expanding the present focus on IADL task performance to an integrated assessment of ADL and IADL task performance. Doing so would not only be more effective in identifying functional decline but could also provide a more comprehensive assessment of individuals' functional abilities with independence and also providing the caregivers with much needed respite.

The controlled lab study tested the sensors embedded into daily objects and found them to be reliable, and efficient. Short term exploratory case studies with healthy older adults revealed the challenges associated with design and technical aspects of the current system, while inductive analysis performed on interviews with caregivers helped to generate central themes on which future functional assessment systems need to be designed and built. The key central themes were a) focus on design / user experience, b) consider user's characteristics, personality, behavior and functional ability, c) provide support for independence, and d) adapt to individual user's needs.
ContributorsRavishankar, Vijay Kumar (Author) / Burleson, Winslow (Thesis advisor) / Coon, David (Committee member) / Mahoney, Diane (Committee member) / Walker, Erin (Committee member) / Li, Baoxin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
156279-Thumbnail Image.png
Description
Multimedia educational technologies have increased their presence in traditional and online classrooms over the course of the previous decade. These tools hold value and can promote positive learning outcomes but are reliant on students’ degree of cognitive engagement and self-regulation. When students are not cognitively engaged or have low self-regulation

Multimedia educational technologies have increased their presence in traditional and online classrooms over the course of the previous decade. These tools hold value and can promote positive learning outcomes but are reliant on students’ degree of cognitive engagement and self-regulation. When students are not cognitively engaged or have low self-regulation capabilities, their interaction with the technology becomes less impactful because of decreased learning outcomes. Building or altering technologies to cognitively engage students is costly and timely; the present study investigates if introducing higher agency roles, to change the role of the student, increases learning outcomes. Specifically, this study investigates if higher agency roles of a designer or teacher enhances cognitive engagement and improves learning when compared to the conventional role of a learner. Improved learning outcomes were observed from the pretest to posttest for the learner, designer, and teacher role. Participants engaged with higher agency roles did not demonstrate more growth from pretest to posttest when compared to the control group, but participants in the teacher role outperformed those in the designer role. Additionally, reading ability did not impact learning gains across groups. While students who engaged with higher agency roles did not achieve greater learning outcomes than students in the control group, results indicate a learning effect across groups. Results of this study suggest that it was underpowered. Further research is needed to determine the extent of the impact that higher agency roles have on learning outcomes.
ContributorsNovak, Kyrsten (Author) / Roscoe, Rod (Thesis advisor) / Branaghan, Russell (Committee member) / Craig, Scotty (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018