7 Cups Therapy

The purpose of this project is to showcase our service learning experiences from volunteering with 7 cups. 7 Cups is a therapy website that provides free emotional support and talk therapy to those who really need that help. Jasmine and I created a 7 cups listener account where we would log onto the 7 cups portal and find a member who needs help. This whole website is all anonymous in order to protect the listeners and the members identities. Jasmine and I would chat with members and figure out what seems to be troubling them and how to combat that trouble. Some of the things that we learned was to become quick problem solvers and how to build better communication skills.https://stars.library.ucf.edu/hip-2023fall/1010/thumbnail.jp

Do levels of social competence influence the perception of social affordances among students with low levels of education?:An exploratory case study of the relationship between offline and online socializing factors

In this exploratory case study we investigate the relation between off line and online factors that influence social dynamics of online, collaborative learning, that is the levels of social competence and the perception of social affordances. We argued that low educated with low social competences do not benefit from online, collaborative learning opportunities, because they would have trouble perceiving and judging social affordances like sociability and social presence. However, in our study we were not able to find a significant relation between levels of social competences and the perception of social affordances. The scores we found on the social affordances sociability and social presence were very low. It is important to further explore how at-risk students visualise their communication partner during online interaction and how this information is processed and used by them during interaction and whether expectations or preferences of low educated with regard to technology use in education influence their perception of social affordances

National Autism Indicators Report: Transition into Young Adulthood

There is very little research published concerning how people with autism do in the adult portion of their lifespans. We analyzed data from "The National Longitudinal Transition Study-2" and "The Survey of Pathways to Diagnosis and Services" to examine the service needs and life outcomes of adolescents and young adults on the autism spectrum. This report describes the prevalence of a wide variety of indicators related to transition planning, services access, unmet needs, employment, postsecondary education, living arrangements, social participation, and safety and risk

Comprehensibility and the basic structures of dialogue

The study of what makes utterances difficult or easy to understand is one of the central topics of research in comprehension. It is both theoretically attractive and useful in practice. The more we know about difficulties in understanding the more we know about understanding. And the better we grasp typical problems of understanding in certain types of discourse and for certain recipients the better we can overcome these problems and the better we can advise people whose job it is to overcome such problems. It is therefore not surprising that comprehensibility has been the object of much reflection as far back as the days of classical rhetoric and that it is a center of lively interest in several present-day scientific disciplines, ranging from artificial intelligence and educational psychology to linguistics

Multilingualism, Language Trouble, and Linguistic Infelicity in Early Modern English Writing, 1550-1642

Early modern intercultural exchange is characterized by the need to find a common language. Depictions of that exchange for an English audience tend to translate that improvised, ad hoc work in ways that downplay the uncertainty and promote the image of the triumphant English traveler or translator. Evidence of these extemporaneous exchanges nonetheless remains visible in early modern writing. In “Multilingualism, Language Trouble, and Linguistic Infelicity in Early Modern English Writing, 1550-1642,” I argue that these linguistic workarounds are linked to writers’ imaginings of their role in international exchange and the formation of an English proto-national identity. This dissertation looks at how “language trouble,” my term for how the possibility of perfect communication goes awry, is depicted in a variety of genres. Chapter 1, “Language as Travail: Language Trouble in Depictions of Early Modern Emissaries,” focuses on emissaries (unofficial ambassadors who cast themselves as advocates for England’s political interests abroad) and the ways their accounts erase the possibility of failure in multilingual communication. By comparing letters, published first-person accounts, and staged depictions of historical events, I examine how the complications of documented situations were packaged for an English public’s consumption. I argue that fictional accounts (such as If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody and The Travels of the Three English Brothers) present a fantasy of perfect communication in which English Protestant interests triumph; published narratives and private communication, instead, work to diminish the possibility of miscommunication. Chapter 2, “Language as Workaround: Multilingualism in Travel Narratives,” examines prose narratives of “merchant venturers”: traders, captains, sailors, and others who participated in transnational mercantile economies. This chapter takes up one genre of text written by many different types of authors to illustrate the variety of potential failures in linguistic workarounds, both those experienced and those avoided, with which early modern venturers were preoccupied. No one narrative emerges as the genre’s standard, indicating how situational and contingent these workarounds were. Chapter 3, “Language as Labor: Learning, Language Manuals, and Multilingual Discourse,” turns to multilingual dictionaries and language manuals to more fully address questions of imperfection and sufficiency that previous chapters raise. Early modern dictionary compositors were distinctly aware of the impossibility of creating the perfect dictionary, and developed discourses emphasizing sufficiency to assuage the readers that their product would provide a good enough framework for the level of learning at which it was advertised. Finally, Chapter 4, “Language as Performance: The Pleasures of Failure and the Role of Understanders on the English Stage,” looks at the ways in which linguistic infelicity depicted on the early modern stage indicates social or national boundary-crossing. Plays such as Jonson’s Volpone, Shakespeare’s Love’s Labours Lost, and Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside show how the humor to which that linguistic infelicity regularly gave rise demonstrates the limits of social mobility. By examining linguistic infelicity by genre as well as by subject, I argue that there is no one framework by which to examine early modern language trouble: multilingual communication is heterogenous, messy, and resistant to easy categorization.PHDEnglish Language & LiteratureUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/149974/1/eshearer_1.pd

Reaching Through the Cracks: A Guide to Implementing the Youth Violence Reduction Partnership

In 1999, the Youth Violence Reduction Partnership (YVRP) was launched by a group of key stakeholders in Philadelphia -- including the district attorney's office, adult and juvenile parole, other city agencies and community organizations. Its goal is to steer young people, ages 14 to 24 and at greatest risk of killing or being killed, away from violence and toward productive lives. To accomplish this, YVRP provides participants with a combination of strict supervision and ongoing support. Each participant is assigned to a team that includes a probation officer and a community streetworker, who maintain intensive contact with the young person to make sure that he (and less often she) not only stays out of trouble but starts on a path toward responsible adulthood.Reaching Through the Cracks draws upon lessons learned from seven years of experience in Philadelphia to describe how cities and other jurisdictions can plan and carry out an initiative like YVRP. It includes an overview of the key elements of YVRP; steps in planning the initiative; roles and training of staff who work with the participants and details about the supervision and support these staff provide; essential practices for maintaining and strengthening YVRP; and an exploration of the costs and other issues involved in making decisions about expanding the initiative

DON'T FEED THE TROLLS!: Managing troublemakers in magazines' online communities

“Trolling” and other negative behaviour on magazine websites is widespread, ranging from subtly provocative behaviour to outright abuse. Publishers have sought to develop lively online communities, with high levels of user-generated content. Methods of building sites have developed quickly, but methods of managing them have lagged behind. Some publishers have then felt overwhelmed by the size and behaviour of the communities they have created. This paper considers the reasons behind trolling and the tools digital editors have developed to manage their communities, taking up the role of Zygmunt Bauman's gardeners in what they sometimes refer to as “walled gardens” within the Internet's wild domains. Interviews were conducted with online editors at the front line of site management at Bauer, Giraffe, IPC, Natmags, RBI and the Times. This article shows how publishers are designing sites that encourage constructive posting, and taking a more active part in site management. Web 2.0 and the spread of broadband, which have made management of fast-growing communities difficult, may themselves bring positive change. As uploading material becomes technically easier, “ordinary” citizens can outnumber those who, lacking social skills or with little regard for social norms, originally made the Internet their natural habitat