Chat Communication in a Command and Control Environment: How Does It Help?

Military command and control (C2) teams are often faced with difficult, complex, and distributed operations amidst the fog and friction of war. To deal with this uncertainty, teams rely on clear and effective communication to coordinate their actions; two current conduits for communication in distributed military teams include voice and chat. Chat communication is regarded by many in the C2 world as the premier method of communicating with the power to lessen some of the traffic and disturbances of current voice communication, and its usage continues to exponentially increase. Despite this operational view, countless laboratory studies have demonstrated detrimental effects of chat communication relative to voice communication. The current study investigates the gap between laboratory research results and usage in complex environments, and empirically tests the effect that chat communication has on tactical C2 performance through an air battle management synthetic task environment. Results demonstrate that participants performed better on time-critical, emergent events with voice communication and better on preplanned missions when they had access to archival information. Voice communication is a valuable, high bandwidth channel that is essential for coordination in highly complex situations, while chat communication is a nonintrusive form of communication that allows the operator flexibility in prioritizing the information flow through the use of archival information. The challenge in operational settings with overcrowded radio channels, however, is to protect the voice channel to ensure it is available when the situation demands it. With careful implementation, voice and chat communication can be complementary technologies to facilitate complex work

Complicating the Phenomenological Conversation of Basketball as an En-gendered Life Course

This hermeneutic phenomenological study explores the lived experience of basketball in the lives of collegiate women who claim to be scholar-athletes. The scholar-athletes were invited to unpack their scholastic and athletic life stories, not just as a mode of relevance for communicating with others, but more significantly, as a way of transacting what is embedded within their memories via the written narrative form. Through the corporeal, temporal, spatial, and relational moments in basketball the meaning of the lived experience is illuminated. The question that compels my study is: What is the lived experience of basketball in the lives of collegiate women who claim to be scholar-athletes? The philosophic works of Heidegger, Gadamer, and Merleau-Ponty provide the foundation for this lived experience study. The "grounding" that each of these philosophers impart is used to penetrate the hermeneutic nature of basketball as "play" via autobiographical application. Furthermore, van Manen's phenomenological process provides a platform of engagement and writing through the reflective practice of Pinar's currere method as a mode for slowing down the lived experience of play. A group of eight former women basketball players who identified themselves as scholar-athletes were the participants in this study through a 15-week course entitled EDPS 488B: Complicating the Conversation of Basketball as a Life Course. By analyzing their lived accounts of basketball through a variety of literary means, each scholar-athlete was able to gradually build her own autobiographical written narrative of basketball in relation to the social, political, and intellectual contexts of curriculum as lived. In this process, I develop a philosophical approach to examining the significance of sport though a revalidation of seasoned becoming, a transformation of athletic feat into scholarly thought, a deliberation of unrehearsed narrative, and a recognition of never-ending sanctity. Setting a scholarly life course into athletic motion suggests themes encompassing the challenge of bringing the body and mind into an even playing field, the return to a moment when identities were merely playful and time simply stood still, the value of the sporting space on the athlete's sense of community development, and the enlightenment of the self through the other via the discipline of heart and mind. Drawing from the insights I gained from my participants, I suggest that the praxis of sports as a life course is reliant upon curricular transformation and not the isolation of academics from athletics. The notion of irrelevance has trapped our mindset into the anxiety of wanting to be accepted. For scholar-athletes and a multitude of other hyphenated forms of human existence, anxiety hovers over an ever-changing becoming, almost fooling the being out of existence and into an artificial realm of acceptance. Scholar-athletes can serve as powerful role models within society, and hence, their lived experience is consistently challenged by their actions. The currere process not only tells the scholarly story of athletic lives, but it allows others in the broader community to engage in the practice of complicated conversations from a variety of perspectives, both within and beyond the boundaries of the sporting space

This is exactly why we sweep things under the rug: A Polite approach to ABC\u27s Modern Family

The sitcom has remained a popular choice for television viewers since its inception. They have evolved in their methods of entertaining their audiences, often depicting unlikeable characters engaging in antisocial behaviors. This study examines one such sitcom, Modern Family, through the lens of Brown and Levinson\u27s politeness theory, and related concepts contributed by other theorists. These theorists maintain that a primary motive behind any interaction is the presentation and maintenance of a chosen identity or face. Those actions that fail to maintain face, for either participant are called face-threatening acts. This study attempts to determine if the characters behave in ways consistent with the assumptions of these theories. The researcher examined the complete first season of Modern Family and found that half of the main characters freely and frequently commit politeness violations. The ramifications of such a narrative are discussed, as well as limitation of the current study. Finally possible avenues of future related research are provided

Stepping toward Collective Mindsets: An Investigation of Group- and Leader-based Synchrony in Work Teams

The keys to creating effective team performance have long been under investigation by researchers. Past research identifies social cohesion as an important precursor, but how to achieve social cohesion is lesser understood. This dissertation proposes that at the core of an effective team is synchrony--the act of moving together as one--which has been shown to predict a variety of psychological and social outcomes. The question of whether--and if so, how--synchrony's benefits extend to the domain of team performance, however, remains untested. This multilevel study consists of two studies examining real undergraduate student teams working together over an academic semester. First, Study 1 tests for construct validity of a synchrony-based relational leadership skill, called synchrony detection, hypothesized to be related to unlocking greater team synchrony. Synchrony detection is proposed to be comprised of two latent factors: pattern recognition style and emotional competency, each with three and four measures, respectively. In addition, I developed a novel measure for this dissertation called AccuSync, which aims to gauge an individual's synchrony detection ability. Results of a confirmatory factor analysis in Study 1 indicate that the battery of measures used here do not support synchrony detection as a construct. AccuSync also demonstrates low scale reliability. Taken together, results of Study 1 warrant more construct validity studies, including development of more refined synchrony detection measures. Future considerations, promising exploratory correlations, and significance of synchrony detection are discussed in light of the null results. Second, Study 2 tests a series of predictive links between synchrony, entitativity, and cohesion as team-level characteristics and their relationship to team performance. Results of structural equation models in Study 2 reveal that synchrony unlocks team performance, as measured by instructor-assigned project grades. Specifically, synchrony enables a social process of greater team entitativity and cohesion to emerge within teams, in turn predicting better team performance. In light of significant Study 2 results, analytical alternatives for considering team-level emergent processes are provided, along with implications for leaders, managers, and educators wishing to extract the benefits of synchrony to build cohesive, yet effective, teams.Doctor of Philosoph

Indirect Communication as a Teaching Method for Developing Transference and Capability in Taiwanese College Students

The capacity of a student to apply knowledge in new contexts involves the ability to transfer memorized knowledge to meaning, in real-world situations. However, there are conflicting views and an overall lack of research regarding how (the process) students in higher education, in Taiwan, transfer that knowledge. This is especially apparent in highly dynamic environments where knowledge is rapidly and continuously evolving, such as in the current technology arena and business industry. This research aims to explore indirect communication as a method for teachers to assist Taiwanese college students to transfer memorized facts, and thus develop capability in new contexts. Research has been done on related topics, particularly in the area of direct communication; however, the use of indirect communication, as a tool for transference, in higher education, remains largely unexplored. This paper will introduce the study by first discussing the background, trends, and current state, followed by an exploration of the literature surrounding Søren Kierkegaard’s theory of indirect communication, as it applies to education, as a method for Taiwanese students transfer to move from memorized facts, to developing capability

Playing the Games: Diasporic Identity, Athletic Entrepreneurialism, and Elodie Li Yuk Lo's Journey to the Olympics.

Ph.D. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2018

Identity and Language Socialization of Asian Transnational Adolescents across Communities of Practice: A Critical Narrative Study

A large percentage of the international secondary students in the United States come from Asian countries. Their enrollments are closely connected to the cultural, curricular, and extracurricular diversity of their American schools. Despite their contribution, stereotypical depictions of these students and deficit-informed research still abound in educational settings, leaving serious consequences for the social and academic well-being of the students. These problematic educational framings about Asian international students and the majoritarian narratives about them are mutually informative. Therefore, to counter the dominant discourses, this multimodal critical narrative study set out to recruit stories from a group of Asian transnational adolescent students to illustrate an alternative reality. Specifically, five transnational youths attending high schools in Maine shared their perspectives and experiences of identity construction and transformation as well as language learning and use in the context of navigating across their communities of practice (CoPs), i.e., the social, academic, and extracurricular communities they belonged to. With narrative inquiry guided by methodological pluralism, I collected a series of found and produced narrative artifacts as data from the five core informants and analyzed the data set through the following approaches: narrative positioning analysis, Labovian analysis, visual/multimodal analysis, portrait analysis, and thematic analysis. The outcome of these analyses are findings presented as a series of positioning profiles and thematic connections. Overall, the findings indicate a connection between these adolescent students’ social networks, CoP participation, and personal transformations. They position themselves as multifaceted, dynamic, dilemmatic, and oftentimes, in relation to the other members in their CoPs. In terms of language socialization, there is a shared understanding of communicative competence as multimodal and situated, and of CoP participation as conducive to the acquisition of the symbolic capital of English. When examined in context, these findings, though not meant to be one-size-fits-all, yield significant implications for educational research and practice targeted at this student population. Specifically, educators need to acknowledge the unequal access to participation and learning among students with different identity configurations. They will also benefit from tapping into the students’ CoP practice as well as transnational funds of knowledge as symbolic resources. This will allow them to develop a more diverse conception of competence, which in turn helps them provide affirming educational experiences to the transnational adolescents. Despite some limitations and barriers resulting from COVID-related circumstances during the data collection phase, this study is significant because the processes of the adolescent students’ storytelling in different modalities added complexity to the stories told by them and ended up being as important as the stories themselves when it came to illustrating an alternative reality of Asian transnational adolescent students’ identities and language socialization

Returning Year after Year: The Motivation and Retention of Coaches at Madawaska Volleyball Camp

As the popularity of attending summer camps continues to rise, it is important that Camp Directors understand what motivates employees to choose to work at camp each summer. In this study, I implemented a qualitative approach using interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) to examine the motivational factors that keep coaches at Madawaska Volleyball Camp (MVC) coming back each summer. Eight participants shared their unique experiences at Madwaska Volleyball Camp (MVC) through semi-structured interviews. Four themes emerged that solidified their motivations to return to work at camp each year: alignment, tradition, opportunities for reflection and personal growth, and the surrounding environment

A Study of Leadership\u27s Role in Building Relationships Among Virtual Team Members

This research study focused on leadership\u27s role in building relationships among virtual team members. A qualitative case study, the research focused on organizations in the medical device industry within the Charlotte Metropolitan region of North Carolina. The research was formed using 15 open ended questions in an interview of 20 leaders of virtual teams. Each leader was interviewed individually and allowed to elaborate on their answers to help the researcher to thoroughly understand the approach used to help the relationships form among their virtual team members. During the interview, the discussion between the researcher and the leader being interviewed covered many topics that helped to identify the emerging themes for this research. After the interviews were completed, the responses were transcribed and coded. There were three themes which emerged during the data analysis process. These themes were (1) the importance of collaboration, (2) the need of sufficient tools for communication, and (3) the importance of face-to-face interaction to build relationships. The results of these emerging themes illustrates the importance for leaders of virtual teams to create opportunities for the team members to collaborate and develop a level of trust among their colleagues. This development of trust helps to ensure the team members will look to their colleagues for input on topics that may be difficult to resolve, as well as building relationships and often having conversations and resolving issues without input from leadership