5063 research outputs found
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Community schools: effectiveness of addressing barriers to education in suburban communities
Get PDFOver the years, the once thought of as stable suburban community has seen a significant increase in poverty and homelessness which has impacted students in similar ways as it has students in urban area schools and has resulted in the implementation of community school programs. According to Pew Research Center in 2020, there were 37.2 million people living in poverty, 16.2 million live in the suburbs, 15.1 million reside in urban communities – and collectively 11.6 million are minors. Community school programs have grown in popularity as an intervention in urban communities to address challenges that students have encountered which create barriers to education. Commonly identified barriers are the lack of affordable housing, transportation, behavior and mental health conditions, sense of belonging, academic enhancements, along with bullying and living in unsafe neighborhoods. These programs seek to address those barriers by promoting equity within the school through the creation of an inclusive environment – a community, which ensures that students, families, and school staff have access to resources necessary to overcome barriers and develop a healthy norm in and out of the classroom. There is limited research regarding the student outcomes of community schools in suburban communities. This qualitative study helps fill the gap by examining a suburban area community school program to identify its effectiveness in addressing student outcomes by interviewing ten program constituents. The study resulted three themes: educational resources, access to resources, and social emotional learning skills
Synthesis and characterization of organometallic complexes for biological imaging
Get PDFLuminescent transition metal complexes are of interest for biological imaging applications due to their unique photophysical properties including large Stokes shift, long fluorescence lifetimes, and tunable emission. Altering ligand structure is a useful way to manipulate the charge transfer (CT) and mixed character states that give these complexes their photophysical properties. A series of organometallic complexes containing ligands with externally facing nitrogens has been prepared and synthesized. Complexes of the form Pt (II)(tbbpy)(C2-py), Re(CO)3(N^N), Ir(C^N)2(N^N), and Ir(C^N)2(N^O) have been studied for their potential application as biological imaging agents. The goal of this project is to compare the properties of these complexes to analogs where the external nitrogen has bonded to an oxygen to assess their potential as ratiometric hypoxia (low oxygen concentration) probes. Two cyclometalated iridium complexes, Ir(ppy)2(5-Me-pz-COO) and Ir(dfppy)2(5-Me-pz-COO) were synthesized along with their N-oxide congeners. It was found that the presence of an N-oxide caused a 140 mV cathodic shift in the reduction potential. For Ir(ppy)2(5Me-pz-COO), the N-oxide caused a 20 nm red-shift in emission and a significant quenching of emission intensity. These data show promising results for the ability of the N-oxide to tune the properties of the complexes. This report details the successful synthesis of several additional complexes that show potential for this application
Using Pavement Design to teach Math and Science
Get PDFStudents in high school often struggle to see connections between their in class work and real world applications. In this project we used methods and content from Pavement Design to inspire and inform a Problem Based Learning (PBL) project. Students engaged in analysis of local road distress and potential solutions. Students then design and construct and test model roadways out of chocolate and graham crackers
Creating competency based behaviorally anchored rating scales using an online sample
Get PDFThe current project takes action on Kell et al.’s (2017) call for research on non-traditional methods for developing behaviorally anchored rating scales (BARS). Typically, BARS are used when conducting structured interviews to ensure high predictive validity and reliability while minimizing biases. The traditional method of constructing BARS requires time and resources which may deter organizations from adopting such scales. Our proposed methodology will assuage these deterrents. We have designed a survey to collect critical incidents from subject matter experts (SMEs) online using ProLific, a crowdsourcing software. For the purpose of this study, participants will be filtered based on their age, position and industry. This will ensure participants are over 18 and have spent at least one year in the role of middle manager. Additionally, participants in the healthcare and education industries will be excluded per expert recommendation due to the unique nature of these fields. Through an automatic randomization process, participants will be presented with 15 questions from a bank of 25 behaviorally based interview questions. Upon completion, participants will be asked to read a debriefing form within the survey. Then, they will be prompted to submit the survey. Participants will be compensated for their time. SMEs will then be tasked with extracting and filtering behavioral statements from the critical incidents while blind to the competency they were generated for. Next, SMEs will be split into two groups. The first group of SMEs will individually sort each statement into the competency they interpret to be most representative. Agreement will be calculated and statements not reaching this predetermined threshold will be removed. The second group of SMEs will rate each behavioral statement for its relevance to all five competencies. Statements will be assigned to the highest rated competency. SMEs will then trade behavioral statements and rate each one on effectiveness. The average effectiveness rating for each critical incident will be calculated and used to determine where to place the behavioral anchors on the rating scale. Given the relevance of the current project and the rich qualitative data that will be collected, the dissemination of the data and project findings offers an exciting opportunity. The key audience for this project is other Industrial-Organizational researchers and professionals. We aim to present these findings in a way that will be more attractive to organizations and encourage the adoption of this resource-friendly and streamlined process
Home-grown in Chattanooga: 90 years of Krystal, 1932-2022
Get PDFhttps://scholar.utc.edu/exhibition-records/1005/thumbnail.jp
Assessing the damage: moral realism and the evolutionary debunking argument
Get PDFFor millennia, prominent thinkers have believed that moral sentiments were the recognition of external, objective truths, be they of divine, Platonic, or natural origin. Now the challenge is to find any objective tether at all for our evaluative judgements. The theory of evolution’s encroachment on metaethics is practically as old as Charles Darwin himself, but the more evolved version of this attack on the justification for moral realism (the position that avers the existence of objective moral truths and that we can know at least some of them) comes in the form of Evolutionary Debunking Arguments (EDAs). The (specifically, materialist) EDAs posit that because we evolved, and evolution by natural selection is an “off-track” process relative to anything except fitness, justification for our moral beliefs are rendered unjustified. In order to make these arguments, however, several unwarranted metaphysical assumptions are required for their advancement. Furthermore, the structure of the materialist EDA undermines not only moral realism, but inexorably, certainty of knowledge in all domains if maintained, including the logical truths bearing its own epistemic weight. However, due to the metaphysical similarity of axiomatic mathematics and morality, the famous Benacerraf-Field challenge trickles down to this discussion as well: it can repackage the concerns of the EDA into an argument without the chaff of an EDA, itself posing the real threat to moral realism. In this thesis, I assess the EDA’s damage to moral realism and whether or not this position can ultimately evade a Darwinian reduction
Characterization in satire: the three degrees of roundness; purpose, complexity, and credibility
Get PDFThe project will attempt to explore how courtship, marriage, family, and divorce would be perceived by characters of the Greek mythos as they attempt to assimilate to a fictional Western culture through the use of satirical conventions. How would modern cultural normalities be accepted or rejected by these mythological figures? Would humanity welcome their assimilation or retaliate with prejudice? What roles do the many variations of love play in the Olympian lives as they navigate civil coexistence
Learning Robotics Concepts with Lego Spike Essential: Data Collection 2021 with Pre-service Teachers
Get PDFThis program focused on work with Lego Spike Essential robotics, which is a kit for student use in grades 1 to 5. Each teacher self-evaluated knowledge and skills, before and after a 6-hour workshop. Though there were five workshops, each teacher completed the evaluation for only the first workshop attended.
Xia and Zhong (2018) reviewed 22 papers on teaching and learning robotics content knowledge in K-12. Among the findings was that the questionnaire was one of the commonly-used assessment tools. Kim et al. (2015) studied preservice teachers’ STEM engagement, learning, and teaching via robotics. They found improvement in STEM engagement, as measured through emotional, behavioral, and cognitive factors. Tsai et al. (2019) developed a computer programming efficacy scale which can be applied to robotics education. The five subscales included Logical Thinking, Algorithm, Debug, Control, and Cooperation.
During the fall semester of 2021, 20 teacher participants provided survey data for the efficacy scale (Tsai et al., 2019) and a Lego (2016) creativity self-report. The goal was to provide high-quality, teacher professional development to increase knowledge and instructional skills for integrating robotics into the elementary grades (1-5) classroom. The measurable objectives were the following:
1. There will be a statistically significant increase in teachers’ scores on a 16-item, computer programming efficacy survey, between administrations of the instrument. 2. There will be a statistically significant increase in teachers’ scores on the five sub-scales of the computer programming efficacy survey, between administrations of the instrument. 3. There will be a positive correlation between the post-test score on the computer programming efficacy survey and the Lego creativity self-report.
Results showed a significant increase in computer programming efficacy and significant increases in sub-scale scores. There was a medium, positive correlation between the scores on the efficacy survey and the creativity self-report
What’s your Snapscore? Correlations to Personality, Narcissism, and Anxiety
Get PDFSnapchat is a popular social media network, but considerably less researched than other more established platforms. The purpose of this study was to examine how the amount of Snapchat use is correlated to personality, narcissism, and anxiety. We hypothesized there would be positive correlations between Snapchat usage and narcissism, extroversion, and anxiety. Using data from a convenience sample of participants recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk, Pearson’s correlations and t-test analysis provided insight on these connections. There were significant positive correlations between Snapchat usage and narcissism, anxiety, and extraversion, but t-test analyses revealed that the users with low Snapscores had higher narcissism, anxiety, and extraversion
Aboutness: the lyric essay
Get PDFIn “Structure: Lifeblood of the Lyric Essay,” Lesh Karan writes: “I had discovered a prose genre where the writer leans on form… to eloquently hold the inexpressible aboutness, to let meaning dance in the spaces between its juxtaposed parts.” The lyric essay engages us in a search for an elusive truth, and attempts to give definition to things that, while hanging heavy above us, may have been unclear until put to paper. This form provides a powerful medium through which an author can explore their own conflicting perspectives, giving voice to emotions and experiences that illuminate our paradoxical and imprecise lives. Carmen Maria Machado writes: “The memoir is, at its core, an act of resurrection. Memoirists recreate the past, reconstruct dialogue. They summon meaning from events that have long been dormant. They braid the clays of memory and essay and fact and perception together, smash them into a ball, roll them flat. They manipulate time, resuscitate the dead. They put themselves, and others, into necessary context” (In the Dream House, 8). In my own work, I am interested in the complexity of perspective, how what is omitted can weigh as much as what is told, how stories can evolve through different tellings. In my original works, I explore the forms of the lyric essay, to find the ways in which different stories suit different essay styles