Listening and Learning from Students: Interviewing Students about the Intersections of Research, Writing and Technology

As professional educators, the experience of a novice writer and researcher is often lost, and librarians and teaching faculty alike struggle to bridge the gap between inexperience and expertise. In this interactive session, participants will have the opportunity to practice skills for interviewing students as a strategy to gain a depth of perspective not readily available through other methods. In particular, we will explore how digital technologies impact students’ academic research and writing, and the ways in which technologies might either enhance student work, create barriers to, or even transform the research and writing process. Attendees will be invited to reflect on their own experience with technology and then to participate in role-playing as interviewers and student interviewees. Finally, the presenters will share preliminary findings from interviews with students and will facilitate audience discussion about the role of technology in the writing and research process. The session is based upon a collaboration between two librarians and an English composition instructor who is also the coordinator of the university writing center

Parallel Resistance: Protestors and Delegates at the 1968 Democratic Convention

Kyler Hudson is a junior at IPFW, majoring in history and political science. His historical interests include WWI, presidential politics, and the Supreme Court. He plans on completing his undergraduate degrees next spring and is currently contemplating law school. He hopes to remain in the Fort Wayne area, ideally finding a position at a law office or local television station

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Haecceity 3.30.0

23 and 7/8\u22 x 27 and ¾\u22. Diapositives, paper, Plexiglas, hex bolts with washers, and cap screws mounted on Gatorfoam. German silver frame.http://opus.ipfw.edu/haecceities_facgallery/1086/thumbnail.jp

Modeling the Spread of Influence in Social Networks

Social networks play an important role in connecting people and facilitating human social interaction. Influence can spread through a social network. “Word-of-mouth” and “viral marketing” effects have been widely exploited to promote new products and technological innovations. For example, when an individual adopts a new product and finds it useful, she or he would recommend it to her or his friends and colleagues. One of this individual’s friends takes the advice, and may also feel excited about the product and spread the words about it to her or his own friends. In such a way, social influence can help diffuse new products or ideas. Modeling the spread of influence in social networks is valuable to computer science because of its relevance to digital networks (e.g., online social networks), but this research also holds importance in other fields, such as epidemiology, physics, and social sciences. The goal of this work is to derive a mathematical model that can accurately predict the influence of individuals in social networks. Such an accurate model can help computer scientists in designing new network protocols, structures, and policies to facilitate the spread of influence or information. Previous works on modeling the spread of influence assume the status of a single node in the network is independent of the status of other nodes in the network. In social networks, this is not true. For example, two friends in a social network tend to both either favor a product or reject it, meaning that the two individuals are spatially related to each other. In our work, we investigate the spread of influence in social networks using a Markov model, which assumes that neighboring nodes are spatially dependent on each other. To simulate the spread of influence in a social network, we use several generated network topologies and a real co-authorship network of scientists working on network theory, where the relationship between nodes is that author X wrote a joint work with author Y. We develop simulation tools in C++ to replicate influence diffusion through these networks. Our results show that our proposed Markov model predicts the spread of influence in a social network better than previously proposed models. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt in studying the spatial dependence among nodes to describe influence dissemination.http://opus.ipfw.edu/stu_symp2017/1042/thumbnail.jp

“Surviving” the Rwandan Genocide: The Impact of the Genocide on Survivors’ Later Mental Health

During the Rwandan genocide, over 800,000 Rwandans lost their lives over the course of just 100 days. From early April to early July 1994, the Rwandan government, headed by extremist Hutu military leaders, ordered the extermination of Rwandan Tutsis along with moderate Hutus. In addition to mass extermination, the government ordered a campaign of terror and violence; victims faced unimaginable atrocities such as torture, rape, and witnessing the deaths of people they knew. Only after the Rwandan Patriotic Front seized control of Rwanda did the genocide stop. Despite its short duration, the genocide continued to affect the survivors, even after many years had passed. Organizations such as the United Nations conducted interviews of the survivors in the years following the genocide. Numerous survivors had their interviews recorded in order to have a more complete perspective of what transpired during the Rwandan Genocide, in the hope of seeing perpetrators brought to justice. The experiences repeatedly recounted in the testimonies--seeing the murders of fellow Rwandans, the uncertainty regarding the murders, exposure to other violent acts, such as genocidal rape caused survivors excruciating psychological trauma. Research conducted found that survivors’ mental health was negatively affected by the genocide. In particular, gender played a role in survivors’ mental health; female survivors had a higher probability of developing depression and post-traumatic stress disorder than male survivors. In the testimonies, survivors of both genders referenced the negative impact mass violence and rape had on women. But while female survivors described their experiences during the genocide, such as genocidal rape, male survivors lamented on witnessing the effects of the genocide on their female family members. Female survivors have suffered the greatest long term physical and psychological trauma, that until recently has not been looked at. This finding potentially impacts the way that survivors of a genocide receive treatment.http://opus.ipfw.edu/stu_symp2017/1003/thumbnail.jp

Do Attachments Predict How You Describe Your Romantic Partner?

In the child developmental literature, parental mind-mindedness (or parents\u27 tendency to represent their child in terms of their mental processes) has been found to predict differences in attachment security (e.g., Laranjo, Bernier \u26 Meins, 2008; Lundy, 2003). Secure infant attachment relationships appear to be associated with their parents\u27 ability to consider their child\u27s mental processes. Research looking at adults use of mind-mindedness in relation to their attachment representations of their significant other has not yet been conducted. It is plausible that, secure attachment representations in adults may be similarly linked to their ability to describe their significant others in terms of mental characteristics (compared to behavioral or physical characteristics). The present research examines the relationship between adults\u27 attachment representations and the use of mental attributes to describe their current romantic partner. We hypothesized that individuals with secure attachments would provide more mental descriptors of their current romantic partners, while those with insecure representations were expected to use fewer mental (and more physical and behavioral) descriptors. We found a significant association between secure representations and the use of mental attributes to describe participant’s current romantic partner. Adults with fearful and preoccupied representations provided fewer mental comments and more behavioral descriptors. Adults\u27 descriptions of romantic partners (mental versus behavioral or physical attributes) are significantly associated with attachment representations. This study suggests that mind-mindedness, interpreting the behavior of one’s significant other in terms of their mental states, is related to attachment representations. The findings suggest that adults\u27 ability to connect with their romantic partner\u27s mental processes may facilitate or be facilitated by their attachment representations.http://opus.ipfw.edu/stu_symp2017/1010/thumbnail.jp