100039 research outputs found
Sort by
Authentic Digital Writing Parameters in College Composition: Design, Implementation, And Assessment of a Culture Jam
Get PDFAs technology reshapes communication, college classrooms must adapt to prepare students for writing in a quickly changing world. This dissertation investigates how authentic writing—writing that feels meaningful, relevant, and tied to real-world purposes—can enhance student motivation, confidence, and writing skills in college composition courses.
The study introduces a multimodal assignment called a Culture Jam, where five participants critiqued and remixed media messages, such as advertisements or social media posts, to create their own critical digital compositions. Over three weeks, participants created their Culture Jams, shared feedback with peers, and reflected on their experiences. This project focused on five key elements of authentic writing: engaging tasks, meaningful choices, real audiences, clear expectations, and perceived task value.
Key findings show that authentic writing improves engagement and fosters ownership of work. Participants reported feeling more confident as writers, saw value in connecting writing to real-world contexts, and appreciated the creative freedom of the assignment. The Culture Jam also helped participants better understand their own writing processes and identities, preparing them to communicate more effectively in academic, professional, and personal settings.
This research provides practical insights for educators. By integrating multimodal assignments like the Culture Jam, instructors can bridge the gap between in-school and out-of-school writing, making composition courses more engaging and impactful. These approaches empower students to see writing as a tool for self-expression and critical thinking, rather than just a classroom requirement.
The broader goal of this study is to redefine what writing instruction can achieve in a digitally mediated world. By prioritizing authentic writing, educators can inspire students to take ownership of their voices and equip them with the skills they need to navigate complex communication challenges
Protecting the Dreams of Indigenous Psychology Trainees: Stories of Culturally Competent Supervision
Get PDFSupervision is the process through which current psychologists pass on important lessons about providing clinical services to the community. Through supervision, psychology trainees learn how to make therapy beneficial to as many people as possible, how to balance their work as therapists with their personal lives, and how to continue learning new skills throughout their careers. Because supervision is vitally important to the field of psychology and future psychologists, it is important that supervision support trainees from all cultural backgrounds. Currently, little research exists on culturally congruent supervision for Indigenous psychology trainees. This study aimed to add to the literature by holding individual storywork sessions, an Indigenous research methodology, with Indigenous supervisors and psychology trainees. These storywork sessions were analyzed and five main themes emerged. These themes included Cultural Competence, Traditional Approaches and Spirituality, Growing into Sovereignty, Connection, and Navigating the Swamps. Two foundational themes, Safety and Wholistic Health, showed what important characteristics were important throughout culturally competent Indigenous supervision. Safety refers to a trainee’s ability to be emotionally vulnerable with a supervisor, and Wholistic Health refers to the supervisor’s support of a trainee’s wholistic wellbeing. All together, these themes represent what factors are most important in supervision in supporting the clinical growth of Indigenous psychology trainees as they develop into independent psychologists
Factors Influencing Cognitive Load: Exploring Affective Elements, Motivational Constructs, and Regulatory Strategies in Learning
Get PDFThere are three separate research papers within this dissertation, each looking at specific elements of learning. The process of learning is a complex phenomenon that includes not just cognitive aspects, but also emotional and motivational aspects. During learning there is an input of information into our cognitive system (i.e., minds). When too much information is given or the information is not presented effectively, this can overload our cognitive system and negatively impact our learning. Understanding how to learn within the parameters of our cognitive system is important. However, learning is more complex than just the simple input and output of information. We experience emotions during learning that can either help or hinder our learning. Emotions like frustration and overwhelm or even boredom can impact our motivation to persist in learning. Using healthy strategies to regulate our emotions can bolster motivation and engagement, thus helping us learn more effectively. The research papers comprised in this dissertation explore these elements of learning in depth
A Multi-Method Study of Engineering Students\u27 Perspectives of Summer Industry Internships
No full textUndergraduate engineering students often seek internships to gain valuable industry experience during their education. Previous studies show that students generally have positive experiences and develop important skills during their internships. Academic mentors also see internships as opportunities for students to learn skills not typically covered in engineering coursework. However, existing research leaves some important questions unanswered. For instance, most studies focus on general experiences and learning gains, but don’t explore the specific aspects of internships contributing to these outcomes. Additionally, many studies rely solely on surveys, without in-depth interviews to provide a fuller picture. Finally, while much research on internship mentors considers the perspectives of academic mentors, there’s a lack of insight into the perspectives of industry mentors.
This dissertation study seeks to fill these gaps by using surveys and interviews with Utah State University (USU) engineering students who participated in an externally funded scholarship and internship program and their industry mentors. The research explores three key questions:
1) What are engineering students’ experiences within internships?
2) What are the reported challenges for engineering student interns?
3) How do industry internships benefit engineering students?
The survey results support previous findings, showing that students generally have positive experiences and gain valuable skills during their internships. However, the interviews revealed that many students struggle with adjusting to the unfamiliar industry environment and the greater freedom in their tasks compared to academia. Many also felt overwhelmed and turned to their mentors for guidance and structure. Despite these challenges, students identified key benefits, particularly the opportunity to continue working with the companies after their internships, either through job offers or extended internships.
Industry mentors emphasized the importance of students developing soft skills and shared valuable insights into the qualities they look for in interns. Overall, this study confirms earlier research on students’ positive perceptions of engineering internships, but offers new insights into the diverse experiences and perspectives of both students and industry mentors
Performance Evaluation of 1 U+ Module of Water Ion Thruster With 7000 Ns of Total Impulse
Get PDFWater has emerged as a promising propellant for small satellite propulsion systems due to its inherent advantages in safety, affordability, and ease of handling. Traditional chemical propellants such as hydrazine pose significant safety risks due to their toxicity and explosiveness, while electric propulsion systems often rely on high-pressure gases like xenon and krypton, which present logistical and supply chain challenges. Although water exhibits lower propulsive performance, particularly in terms of specific impulse, its practical benefits have gained attention with the rise of CubeSats and nanosatellites, where mission requirements prioritize simplicity and safety over maximum efficiency. Various water-based propulsion technologies have been proposed, including pulsed plasma thrusters (PPTs), resistojet thrusters, and electrolysis thrusters. These systems leverage water’s properties to enable safer and more accessible propulsion solutions. In particular, gridded ion thrusters using microwave-discharge plasma have been developed to mitigate electrode oxidation and eliminate the need for vulnerable hollow cathodes. Despite achieving a specific impulse of approximately 500 seconds, these systems still fall short of the performance offered by iodine-based ion thrusters and indium-based Field Emission Electric Propulsion (FEEP) systems. Recent advancements have led to the development of a compact gridded ion thruster module operating with microwave discharge. The system achieved 350 μN of thrust, 2000 seconds of specific impulse, and 7000 Ns of total impulse at 60 W power consumption, all within a 1U+ form factor. Key improvements include enhanced microwave power efficiency via F-class amplification, long-lifetime solid cathodes, and optimized water storage. This paper presents the underlying principles, system architecture, and critical technologies of the thruster, followed by results from ground-based performance and environmental testing
Rideshare on NASA Missions
Get PDFSmall spacecraft technology advancements have transformed the way NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) strategically executes science investigations. In support of this new approach, SMD established the Rideshare Office in 2020 to implement and define the SMD-wide rideshare strategy. The objective of the office is to maximize science, exploration, and technology return on investment by enabling rideshare or accommodation opportunities for small spacecraft on SMD primary mission launches, and VADR launch procurements which are managed by the NASA Launch Services Program (LSP). The SRO also enables opportunities for NASA small sats on other government agency and international space agency partner launches. The SMD Rideshare Office (SRO) serves as the single point of contact across NASA SMD for coordinating rideshare opportunities between compatible payloads and government launch opportunities. The SRO holds a leadership role across SMD and the rideshare community, which allows it to provide and manage consolidated resources for guidance for potential spacecraft teams and other stakeholders. Such resources include the NASA Rideshare Users Guide (RUG) and do-no harm management strategy, and the SMD Secondary Payload Rideshare Programmatic Framework (SPD-32).
Rideshare as a method of access to space is extremely popular amongst both the government, and especially commercial industry. The practice of integrating multiple missions on a single launch service is complex and an extremely relevant topic of discussion for the small sat community. This presentation will provide SMD’s and LSP’s unique perspective and discussion on NASA’s approach to rideshare and will provide an overview of rideshare realities and processes. It will describe technical and programmatic lessons learned from implementing different rideshare configurations and do-no-harm management approaches
3UCubed: The IMAP Student Collaboration CubeSat Progress to Flight Readiness
Get PDF3UCubed is the Student Collaboration (StC) for the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) mission. 3UCubed stands for 3 Universities; 3U CubeSat; Uplifting Undergraduate; Upwelling. The 3UCubed project is a student-focused CubeSat collaboration effort between the University of New Hampshire, Sonoma State University, and Howard University. The 3UCubed program offers hands-on experience to undergrad students at three universities through all phases of mission–design, development, assembly, design and testing. 3UCubed is manifested to launch on SpaceX’s Transporter-15 in Q4 2025 in a polar Sun Synchronous orbit (SSO) ~500 km altitude and LTDN of 10:00
Potential Epigenetic Impacts of Phytochemicals on Ruminant Health and Production: Connecting Lines of Evidence
Get PDFThe once mysterious “dark matter of nutrition”, comprising countless plant derived secondary compounds, also known as phytochemicals, is now understood to have significant and wide-ranging effects on consumers, including myriad health benefits in humans and livestock. The selective consumption of phytochemically rich and diverse plants, in appropriate doses, by ruminants represents an adaptive means of therapeutic and prophylactic self-medication. Due to their chemical structure, phytochemicals have long been recognized as antioxidants. However, the mechanisms that underlie numerous additional phytochemical-based health benefits are generally less understood. These effects (i.e., anti-inflammatory, immunomodulatory, and anticarcinogenic effects) are likely related to epigenetic processes. Evidence in humans and rodent models, as well as emerging ruminant data, has shown that phytochemicals can modulate gene expression by inhibiting or enhancing the activity of chromatin modifiers. The implication of adaptations with epigenetic mechanisms is significant as they are potentially heritable. We argue that heritable epigenetic changes, including “fetal programming”, are commonplace in ruminants under nutritional interventions. We also argue that these phenomena are significant for an industry that relies upon the efficient breeding and growth of offspring. We highlight emerging yet limited evidence and offer direction for future research. We explore interactions between the fields of plant secondary chemistry, ruminant nutrition, and molecular (epi)genetics and aim to familiarize researchers with the scope and foundational concepts of these emerging interactions
Strengthening Community Health through Dementia Listening Sessions
Get PDFThis session explores innovative strategies for strengthening community health through dementia listening sessions and engagement, equipping community partners with the knowledge to make informed decisions regarding dementia care and support. Participants will gain insights into effective partnership-building, impactful dementia education delivery, and strategies for fostering meaningful community involvement through community listening sessions and collaboration. Through a live listening session workshop, attendees will participate in interactive discussions, inform efforts in Utah communities, and acquire practical tools to drive sustainable, community-led improvements in dementia care and support
The Untapped Power of Citizen Science: A Survey of Utah Residents
Get PDFCitizen Science is an approach to involve the public in the scientific process to address locally relevant needs. A survey was conducted to explore Utahns’ relationship with citizen science. Results show a gap between respondents’ past participation and willingness to participate in citizen science, indicating an opportunity for USU Extension to strengthen its relationship with the public through citizen science