An investigation of the efficacy of face-to-face versus synchronous chat in the generation and development of written drafts in the EAP class

The thesis is a study of the early stages of the writing cycle in an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) class at the University of Singapore. The study focuses on a group brainstorming activity prior to the stage of writing the first draft and on the impact of this activity on the students’ first individual drafts. In addition, the study compares two different modes of discussion: face-to-face and online synchronous chat. The comparison is concerned with the interactional patterns of the discussion in the two modes, and with the transfer of content from the discussion to the first written drafts. The use of group brainstorming at the pre-writing stage is a familiar activity in the writing class but researchers have not yet paid much attention to the way in which the ideas generated in the brainstorming activity are transferred to individual written drafts. It is this gap that this dissertation seeks to fill. A question of particular interest is the extent to which knowledge construction in the composition class is accomplished by the individual or by the group. Data were collected from four classes of first-year undergraduate students of Science taught by the researcher. The control group, with 31 members, carried out their brainstorming activity in face-to-face mode, while the experimental group, with 27 members, carried out their brainstorming using a synchronous chat facility. The primary data were the chat scripts, face-to-face transcripts and first writing drafts. Analysis of the discussion data was carried out using a genre-based content analysis model deriving from speech act theory (Sinclair and Coulthard, 1975), rhetorical structure theory (Mann & Thompson 1986, 1988), and more recent work on collaborative writing by Plowman (1993), think-aloud protocols (Smagorinsky, 1991) and collaborative computer-based communication by Garrison and Anderson (2003), among others. The model is used to count the frequency of different ideas according to their rhetorical characteristics in the two conditions (face-to-face and synchronous chat), and to determine whether the ideas were generated by individuals or through group discussion. The analysis then looks at the extent to which the ideas were subsequently reproduced in individual drafts. The frequency analyses are complemented by detailed qualitative analysis of the discussion transcripts and the essays of four students, two from each discussion mode. The results of the analysis suggest that collaborative brainstorming is productive in helping students with the generation and development of ideas for their writing. The findings also suggest that there is a strong link between ownership and use of ideas initiated in the discussion. This tendency is stronger in the chat group than in the face-to-face group. Analysis of the discussion transcripts suggests that this difference is a result of more ideas being initiated in the chat group. In addition to these group differences, the analysis shows that discussion in both modes is characterised by a tendency to seek consensus, with very little argument and negotiation of content. The implications of these findings for the use of group discussion in the writing class are discussed

2019 NSU Fact Book

The 27th edition of the Nova Southeastern University (NSU) Fact Book provides perspective on the university’s character, growth, and accomplishments. The 2019 Fact Book includes narrative, numeric, and graphic representation of the university, including history, characteristics, and development of the institution. Data are presented in both tabular and graphic formats to provide pertinent detail, and general trends are highlighted.https://nsuworks.nova.edu/nsudigital_factbook/1006/thumbnail.jp

Nova University: Organization, Programs, and Services

https://nsuworks.nova.edu/nsudigital_factbook/1011/thumbnail.jp

2022 NSU Fact Book

The 30th edition of the Nova Southeastern University (NSU) Fact Book provides perspective on the university’s character, growth, and accomplishments. The 2022 Fact Book includes narrative, numeric, and graphic representation of the university, including history, characteristics, and development of the institution. Data are presented in both tabular and graphic formats to provide pertinent detail, and general trends are highlighted. Like all previous editions of the Fact Book, this edition is a snapshot of the university during the academic year that concludes in the year of its publication. Therefore, the 2022 Fact Book represents NSU from fall 2021 through spring 2022, unless otherwise noted.https://nsuworks.nova.edu/nsudigital_factbook/1031/thumbnail.jp

On microelectronic self-learning cognitive chip systems

After a brief review of machine learning techniques and applications, this Ph.D. thesis examines several approaches for implementing machine learning architectures and algorithms into hardware within our laboratory. From this interdisciplinary background support, we have motivations for novel approaches that we intend to follow as an objective of innovative hardware implementations of dynamically self-reconfigurable logic for enhanced self-adaptive, self-(re)organizing and eventually self-assembling machine learning systems, while developing this new particular area of research. And after reviewing some relevant background of robotic control methods followed by most recent advanced cognitive controllers, this Ph.D. thesis suggests that amongst many well-known ways of designing operational technologies, the design methodologies of those leading-edge high-tech devices such as cognitive chips that may well lead to intelligent machines exhibiting conscious phenomena should crucially be restricted to extremely well defined constraints. Roboticists also need those as specifications to help decide upfront on otherwise infinitely free hardware/software design details. In addition and most importantly, we propose these specifications as methodological guidelines tightly related to ethics and the nowadays well-identified workings of the human body and of its psyche

Modernist Repositionings of Rousseau's Ideal Childhood: Place and Space in English Modernist Children's Literature and Its French Translations

It is a little-known fact that several modernists wrote for children: this project will focus on T.S. Eliot‘s Old Possum‟s Book of Practical Cats, James Joyce‘s The Cat and the Devil, Gertrude Stein‘s The World is Round and Virginia Woolf‘s Nurse Lugton‟s Curtain. While not often thought of as a modernist, I contend that Walter de la Mare‘s short stories for children, especially The Lord Fish, take part in this corpus of modernist texts for children. These children‘s stories, while scarcely represented in critical circles, have enjoyed a wide popular audience and have all been translated into French. Modernism is often considered an elitist movement, but these texts can contribute to its reassessment, as they suggest an effort towards inclusivity of audience. The translation of children‘s literature is a relatively new field of study, which builds from descriptive translation studies with what is unique to children‘s literature: its relation to pedagogy and consequent censorship or other tailoring to local knowledge; frequently, the importance of images; the dual audience that many children‘s books have in relating to the adults who will select, buy and potentially perform the texts; and what Puurtinen calls ‗readaloud- ability‘ for many texts. For these texts and their French translations, questions of children‘s relations to place and space are emphasised, and how these are complicated in translation through domestication, foreignisation and other cultural context adaptations. In particular, these modernists actively write against Rousseau‘s notion of the ―innocent‖ boy delighting in the countryside and learning from nature. I examine the international dialogue that takes place in these ideas of childhood moving between France and England, and renegotiated over the span of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This study thus seeks to contribute to British modernist studies, the growing field of the translation of children‘s literature, and children‘s geographies

State of New Hampshire. Reports, 1909-1910, volume V.- Biennial

Sometimes issued both annually and biennially; Each vol. contains the reports of various departments of the government of the state of New Hampshire; Includes attorneys general\u27s opinion

An investigation of the efficacy of face-to-face versus synchronous chat in the generation and development of written drafts in the EAP class

The thesis is a study of the early stages of the writing cycle in an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) class at the University of Singapore. The study focuses on a group brainstorming activity prior to the stage of writing the first draft and on the impact of this activity on the students’ first individual drafts. In addition, the study compares two different modes of discussion: face-to-face and online synchronous chat. The comparison is concerned with the interactional patterns of the discussion in the two modes, and with the transfer of content from the discussion to the first written drafts. The use of group brainstorming at the pre-writing stage is a familiar activity in the writing class but researchers have not yet paid much attention to the way in which the ideas generated in the brainstorming activity are transferred to individual written drafts. It is this gap that this dissertation seeks to fill. A question of particular interest is the extent to which knowledge construction in the composition class is accomplished by the individual or by the group. Data were collected from four classes of first-year undergraduate students of Science taught by the researcher. The control group, with 31 members, carried out their brainstorming activity in face-to-face mode, while the experimental group, with 27 members, carried out their brainstorming using a synchronous chat facility. The primary data were the chat scripts, face-to-face transcripts and first writing drafts. Analysis of the discussion data was carried out using a genre-based content analysis model deriving from speech act theory (Sinclair and Coulthard, 1975), rhetorical structure theory (Mann & Thompson 1986, 1988), and more recent work on collaborative writing by Plowman (1993), think-aloud protocols (Smagorinsky, 1991) and collaborative computer-based communication by Garrison and Anderson (2003), among others. The model is used to count the frequency of different ideas according to their rhetorical characteristics in the two conditions (face-to-face and synchronous chat), and to determine whether the ideas were generated by individuals or through group discussion. The analysis then looks at the extent to which the ideas were subsequently reproduced in individual drafts. The frequency analyses are complemented by detailed qualitative analysis of the discussion transcripts and the essays of four students, two from each discussion mode. The results of the analysis suggest that collaborative brainstorming is productive in helping students with the generation and development of ideas for their writing. The findings also suggest that there is a strong link between ownership and use of ideas initiated in the discussion. This tendency is stronger in the chat group than in the face-to-face group. Analysis of the discussion transcripts suggests that this difference is a result of more ideas being initiated in the chat group. In addition to these group differences, the analysis shows that discussion in both modes is characterised by a tendency to seek consensus, with very little argument and negotiation of content. The implications of these findings for the use of group discussion in the writing class are discussed.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Endogenous development: a model for the process of man-environment transaction

Iran is currently subject to a number of adverse factors affecting good development in the built environment: population explosion, oil- dependent economy, finite resources, war and natural disasters, etc. The object of the study is to research a development model appropriate to the Country's needs for a proactive system of building environment. This model is not specific to Iran and, as the case studies and the discourse of the thesis indicate, is universal. However, the author suggests that the validity of development approaches will not be determined as a result of theoretical and ideological debate but in the realm of practice. Therefore, he has explored diverse ways in which professionals in the built environment can provide an analytical survey of the problems that beset them. An attempt has been made to bring these various elements into perspective and offer a model of 'endogenous development'.The process for achieving a viable, exciting and humane built environment is very complex and calls for contributions from many individuals and small multi -disciplinary groups. Beside professionals contributions (which is accomplished by deduction inference), there is a need for people's participation in design process (which is accomplished either by deduction or by abduction inferences). This participatory approach can also help shifting the process of design towards a wider domain that of the 'production process' (which is accomplished by abduction and induction inferences). Production process is the first paradigm of the model of endogenous development and is a manifestation of a feedback mechanism and acts as an open - ended living system. The second is 'supply- demand' paradigm which shows the relationships between the components of a system or between different systems in surface- structuresThis model is directed at society's development, not just its economic growth, but it does not preclude the possibility of such growth. The reduction of the problems' effect in an endogenous development is viewed more as a way of improving the quality of life than of increasing the standard of living. Nowadays, people are passive recipients in the consumer society and are totally dependent on others for their survival. This style of living is assumed to project an image of economic development and higher productivity, but there is a confrontation of preadjusted commodities which are the products of others. That is because the process of production is not natural (i.e. a closed loop cyclic process via feedback control). It is artificial (i.e. an open -loop linear process via a feed -forward control) which may not help satisfying the user's needs and wants entirely. In the built environment, the great majority have no say in the planning and design of their homes or places of work.Accordingly, endogenous development offers a framework within which the necessity of employing the people's creative power in building their environment is explained. It is based on the assumption that each individual and society's knowledge and experiences play a central and mediating role between professionals' perceptions of the environment and a series of preferences judgements or choices they might make towards and within that environment. Indigenous knowledge and cultural attributes of traditional societies and the organizational capabilities of traditional polities are essential in qualification of the development plans, which are also evaluated and assessed by this proposed framework