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The relationship between community college academic advising and Latino student persistence, graduation, and transfer
No full textGiven the changing demographics of the Latino population in the United States, the purpose of this study is to analyze persistence, graduation and transfer among Latino students at community colleges. The research comes in response to the awareness that, despite the U.S.’s rapidly growing Latino population, Latinos have the lowest higher education attainment level compared to other ethnic groups. Through a mixed methods approach, this study focused on the relationship of community colleges academic advising and Latino students’ performance measures (persistence, graduation, and transfer)
FPGA Acceleration on Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) Neural Network for Handwritten Digit Recognition
No full textThis dissertation presents a hardware implementation of a Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) network used for the purpose of low-latency, high-accuracy digit recognition. The accuracy of various network designs was compared in Python, and the final network design was comprised of 784 input neurons, a single hidden-layer of 12 neurons, and an output layer of 10 neurons. The weights and biases of this network were then trained using the Modified National Institute of Standards and Technology (MNIST) handwritten digit data in Python using the stochastic gradient descent method. This network design was then tested in software for the digit recognition accuracy of half (16-bit), single (32-bit), and double (64-bit) precision inputs. These all gave nearly the same results of (93.26, 93.25, and 93.25%) digit recognition accuracy respectively. This design was then implemented in hardware using the Verilog Hardware Description Language (HDL). This novel design uses a custom timing structure along with single-precision, floating-point IPs from Vivado for multiplication, addition, subtraction, accumulation, exponential, and reciprocal. Results show a speedup of 40.3967 over the fastest software execution, and 127.219 over the slowest software execution. The results of the synthesis were found for the Kintex-Ultrascale FPGA, part xcku035-sfva784-1LV-I. These results showed a utilization of 44,668 Look Up Tables (LUT), 14,274 Flip Flops (FF), and 604 Digital Signal Processors (DSP), for utilization of 21.99%, 3.51%, and 35.53% respectively. Compared with related works, our proposed work provides the lowest latency for digit recognition, with a speedup of 61 and 42 over these works. Further compared to these related works, our design is between the two in accuracy and resource utilization, showing a tradeoff between design complexity and digit recognition accuracy. Conclusions of our research are that our proposed design presents a high-accuracy, low-latency digit recognition network. Our proposed design allows for further customization to fit with a future user’s needs
Development of an Effective Organizational Performance Instrument to Facilitate Post-Secondary Institutional Change: A Variation on Likert's Management Systems 1-5
No full textThis study stemmed from the need to develop an instrument for assessing the characteristics of an organization in terms of internal consistency of leadership behavior, interaction-influences between colleagues, communication processes, and employee motivation in institutions of post-secondary education. Commonly used surveys for educational environments only partially measure the characteristics of an organization in regard to human interactions and the implications of leadership behavior. The instrument is based on a survey design by Rensis Likert who justified the need for a systematic approach because internal consistency has far-reaching consequences for organizational health. Likert put forward a theory of initially four management systems and conceptualized a for its time revolutionary fifth system, which is congruent to principles of shared leadership. Although the theory proofed to be greatly beneficial in industrial work environments, there is a paucity in research as to what extent the theory is transferable to higher education. A survey was disseminated online to three post-secondary institutions. An exploratory-confirmatory factor analysis indicated five latent principles of the upgraded instruments, i.e., interaction-influence processes, leadership process, collaborative effectiveness, problem-solving, and motivational forces. The reliability measured by Cronbach's α for each factor ranges from .72 to .81, based on a total of 23 questions. As a result, a short and reliable questionnaire was successfully developed, that measures organizational/institutional performance characteristics based on Likert's theory of management Systems 1–5. The received data (N = 206) shows that employee perceptions of their work environment differ tremendously which suggests institutional inconsistencies. The question, therefore, arises as to whether this must be an inevitable condition of post-secondary educational institutions or to what extent future results of this instrument can be used to facilitate organizational and institutional change
The Impact of a School Developed STEAM Curriculum on First Grade Students’ Cognitive Development in the Mathematics, Language, and Literacy Domains
No full textSTEAM education can be defined as a transdisciplinary approach to learning that intentionally integrates concepts of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) with the arts (Gess, 2017). Students apply concepts from multiple disciplines in real-world lessons to make connections between school, community, work, and the global enterprise enabling the development of STEM literacy and with it the ability to compete in the new economy (Tsupros, Kohler, & Hallinen, 2009). STEAM education initiatives have increased exponentially in the United States. However, there is limited research on student learning outcomes as it relates to STEAM curriculum. To address this issue, this study examined the impact of a school developed STEAM curriculum on first grade students’ cognitive development in the mathematics, language, and literacy domains.
The study is a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest comparison group study. The study compared two groups from English classrooms in an elementary school located in an urban school district in southeast Texas. The first group included three classrooms consisting of 39 first grade students where a school developed STEAM curriculum was implemented. The second group consisted of three classrooms with 33 first grade students following the traditional district curriculum. The purpose of this study was to provide empirical data and add to the limited research information on the impact of a school developed STEAM curriculum on first grade students’ cognitive development in the mathematics, language, and literacy domains. The Brigance Inventory of Early Development (IED) III, The STAR Math, and district benchmark assessments were used measure the mathematics domain. Language and literacy domains were measured with the Achievement Improvement Monitoring System (AIMSweb) Test of Early Literacy (TEL) 2012 in reading and The Brigance Inventory of Early Development (IED) III. The results of the study indicate that there was no significant difference across all measures between the STEAM and non-STEAM groups on the gains made in each of the cognitive domains. A discussion of implications and potential rationales for the results is discussed.
Build a Game-Theoretic Framework for Community’s Role in Counter-Terrorism
Get PDFTerrorism poses a major challenge to the government whenever it surfaces in any nation. It degrades the economic, infrastructural and trading systems. Furthermore, it reduces international revenues from tourism and foreign investments. Most importantly, it causes socio-ethnic tension and safety concerns to the nationals. Game-theoretic models have been widely applied to study the strategic interactions between the defender and attacker. In this thesis, we build three two-player subgames, and a three-player game-theoretic model, where the government, community and terrorist are involved. The community could support either the government or the terrorists. Both sequential and simultaneous games are studied with different orders of moves. We identify conditions where the community equilibrium strategy is to support the government. This paper finds first-mover advantage confirming previous research, identifies conditions where the community would support the government at equilibrium, and studies how robust their optimal behavior is to various external and internal factors
Development and Evaluation of a Decision-Making Tool for Evaluating and Selecting Prompting Strategies
No full textAn extensive literature has demonstrated the successful application of various response prompts and prompt-fading strategies for teaching students with developmental and intellectual disabilities. However, few practical resources exist to guide special-education teachers and clinicians in the evaluation and selection of a prompting strategy for a given student and a targeted skill. Across two experiments, we used a multiple baseline across participants design to develop and evaluate a decision-making tool to train 11 special-education teachers and 5 graduate students to evaluate and select appropriate prompting strategies for a variety of students and skills. The graduate students also implemented their selected prompting strategy in brief teaching sessions. Results indicated that the self-instructional manual was effective for improving their evaluation, selection, and implementation of appropriate prompting strategies. Social validity data collected from all participants suggested that they found the manual helpful. Results contribute to the literature on the development of decision-making tools to guide teachers and clinicians in the selection of interventions to use with their students
The Impact of Teacher Perceptions About Student Socioeconomic Status on Grading Practices
Get PDFThe current study investigated if teachers’ perceptions of student socioeconomic status (SES) resulted in higher grades for high-SES students compared to low-SES students. Sixty-nine participants read one of two nearly identical information sheets that included the student’s parents’ occupations as an indicator of SES. Participants then read one of two essays that had been previously graded as a “B,” and provided an overall rating of the essay, a numeric and letter grade, and ratings of the introduction and conclusion, strength of the thesis, structure of body paragraphs and sentences, and approximate number of grammatical errors. It was hypothesized that essays from low-SES students would receive lower ratings than essays from high-SES students; however, statistical analyses resulted in nonsignificant findings for all dependent variables. Additional analyses to determine if significant differences in the essays or in the essays per condition existed yielded nonsignificant findings. While the current research failed to find significant results in the grades assigned to low- and high-SES students, a discussion of how even non-significant differences may impact various academic outcomes for low-SES students is included
How Elementary and Middle School Teachers’ Perceptions of Supportive Principals’ Behavior Impact the Overall T-Tess Evaluation Process
Get PDFThe purpose of this explanatory sequential design was to (a) investigate teachers’ perceptions of supportive principal behaviors, (b) investigate teachers’ perceptions of the overall T-TESS evaluation process, and (c) find the correlation between the two perceptions. A convenience sample of 105 elementary and middle school teachers who work in a Title I urban district responded to a 47 question survey created by using portions of the Organizational Climate Description Questionnaire (OCDQ-RE) and the Teacher Evaluation Profile (TEP), and individual interviews were conducted to collect qualitative data. The survey data analysis was used to determine teachers’ perceptions of supportive principal behaviors as well as teachers’ perceptions of the overall evaluation process. For the quantitative data, a Pearson’s correlation was run to determine if there was a significance in the relationship between the two variables while coding and concurrent triangulation was used to conclude the qualitative data. The quantitative results found that there was a significant relationship between teachers’ perceptions of supportive principal behaviors and teachers’ perceptions of the overall T-TESS evaluation process. The qualitative findings found there are six themes that revealed teachers’ perceptions of supportive principal behaviors and how those behaviors affected their overall T-TESS evaluation process. The themes discovered were (a) trustworthiness, (b) building positive relationships, (c) active listening, (d) timely responses, (e) opportunities for growth, and (f) feedback. The qualitative data further strengthened the quantitative analysis and further suggested a significant relationship between teachers’ perceptions of supportive principal behaviors and teachers’ perceptions of the overall T-TESS evaluation process
Exploring the Relationship Between Transition Planning and Employment Outcome for Students with Intellectual Disabilities
No full textThis was a sequential explanatory mixed-methods study that sought to determine parents’ perceptions regarding the extent to which districts involved them in the IEP transition plan, inclusive practices, provided opportunities in training and obtaining integrated employment, preparation for adult life after graduation, and parent satisfaction with the services they received. The study also investigated the experiences of parents with transition planning and how they perceived the school prepared their students with intellectual disability (ID) for integrated employment. Special education policymakers and community agencies have changed their views of disability and are supportive of integrated employment for people with ID. However, most special education transition teams do not develop goals aligned with this current view of disability and, therefore, do not support integrated employment. In addition, most districts have not updated their practices concerning parent involvement, as described by Epstein (2011). This study sought to determine whether parents’ participation in transition planning could be considered true involvement. This study also sought to determine whether parents’ participation had a positive impact on preparation for integrated employment for their students with intellectual disability. This was done through a survey instrument and qualitative interviews with parents of young adults with intellectual disability
Drone Based Object Tracking with Camshift Algorithm and Neural Network
Get PDFIntegration of tracking system and the drone has been a novel research topic in recent years, especially when drones are required to implement complex tasks which cannot be done easily with human control. Usually, the drone uses camera to gather full information about environments. The main processor calculates all necessary trajectories for drones. However, such tracking methodology does not apply to real-world problems mostly due to the complexity which surrounded the environment. For example, when a large number of persons gathered closely together， the tracking system is difficult to find people that you want to track down. In addition, the similar background color is also one of the main reasons the system can't track people. This thesis proposes an approach that combines camshift algorithm and neural network to track the object. This approach is more cost-efficient and environment-adaptive compare to the previous approaches which use traditional tracking algorithms. Our model altered the previous Yolo neural network, combined camshift algorithm, and neural network. Results show the new approach is faster than Yolo neural network. On the other hand, it solves the problems of occlusion, illumination, scale, and noise in camshift algorithm