Information Retrieval (IR) is one of the most evolving research fields and has drawn extensive attention in recent years. Because of its empirical nature, the advance of the IR field is closely related to the development of various toolkits. While the traditional IR toolkit mainly provides a platform to evaluate the effectiveness of retrieval…

Technology and a variety of resources play an important role in students' educational lives. Vygotsky's (1987) theory of tool mediation suggests that cultural tools, such as computer software influence individuals' thinking and action. However, it is not completely understood how technology and other resources influence student action. Middle…

Women have been involved within the public sphere of the workforce for thousands of years. Within the United States during the 18 th and 19th Centuries, it was often with socially mandated stipulations. Once a woman was married, she usually withdrew to tend to the home front. If she became widowed, it was deemed tolerable for her to once again…

In the high tech factories of today robots can be used to perform various tasks that span a wide spectrum that encompasses the act of performing high-speed, automated assembly of cell phones, laptops and other electronic devices to the compounding, filling, packaging and distribution of life-saving pharmaceuticals. As robot usage continues to…

This work describes the design and construction of an open source, entity resolution system that enables users to assign and maintain persistent identifiers for master data items. Two key features of this system that are not available in current ER systems and that make persistent identification possible are (1) The capture and management of…

This study identified factors that influenced the use of project management in higher education research projects. Using a qualitative grounded theory approach that included in-depth interviews with assistant professors, the researcher examined how these individuals were using project management processes and tools and factors that enabled,…

This case study investigated evidence-based teaching strategies and systemic practices that support positive academic outcomes for students with disabilities. Equity in educating students with disabilities is paramount and reflected in the legislation of the past five decades. The Institute of Education Sciences in partnership with special…

For people who are currently under twenty-five years old, it is almost impossible to recall life before the Internet, as they have grown up knowing it to exist all along. For today's college students, the Internet and other new technologies are not only indispensable research tools, but a vehicle for socializing, entertainment, and even defining…

This dissertation examines the manner in which young school-age children construct quantitative mental imagery and act upon these constructions for arithmetic ends. After conducting dyadic teaching experiments with three first grade students who were participating in mathematics intervention, I found the connection between the participants'…

Today's adolescents are expected to read and write well at highly competent levels and the content area literacy skills they will acquire in adolescence are necessary for academic achievement as well as life-long learning. In the middle grades, content area literacy skills are perfected through work in various curricular areas, which are housed in…

The objective of this research was to use technology to develop an on-line orientation manual for clinical research coordinators. Many clinical research coordinators begin their careers as staff nurses and have little knowledge related to clinical research. As such, when they transition to a career in clinical research they lack the knowledge…

Demonstratives have traditionally been analyzed as "pointing words" whose primary function is to indicate relative spatial or temporal distance of a referent from speech participants. Recent research argues that the meaning of demonstratives is not limited to spatial distance and has given alternative accounts for the use of…

User experience (UX) research in the design of technology products utilizes human-centered design (HCD) methods to summarize and explain pertinent information about end users to designers. However, UX researchers cannot effectively communicate the needs and goals of users if designers do not find UX research (a) easy to integrate into design…

In this study, I investigated the effectiveness of the knowledge map (k-map) instructional strategy compared to a text-based presentation in an online environment. K-maps consist of node-link representations of concepts that together form the content of a topic or domain. The benefits of using k-maps are that concepts and ideas are represented as…

Librarians have historically been responsible for the organization and management of the stores of human knowledge, and for ensuring information literacy among researchers. In recent years, however, librarians have become disintermediated (Boyd-Byrnes & Rosenthal,2005) or, removed from, researchers and the research process for a variety of…