Black Boxes : Airport Space, Liminal Mechanisms, and Systems of Autobiography

Treating the first-person experience of airport space as an ethnographic tool, this thesis examines spatial perception and its breakdown in multiple examples of imagined and real twentieth century spatial constructs. First, it considers examples of failed or redundant mechanisms which function as liminal constructs, either through their presence as physical objects or through use as tools with which to perceive liminal spaces. It emphasizes their function as points of access for narrative and delineates their status as examples of failure in relation to Bruno Latour's use of the term "black box," appropriated from the world of air crash investigation, and to Walter Benjamin's collection and juxtaposition of research in Tbe Arcades Project. Second, it explores the type and sequence of spaces encountered by a traveller in a large contemporary international airport, and those behaviours that are inscribed and prescribed upon people and mechanisms therein. It critiques Marc Auge' s ideas of the "non-place" through explorations of a distinctly airport-specific culture and possible deconstructions of airport space by passenger use and mechanical and architectural functions. Finally, it relates these to narrative space through an examination and practice of systemic approaches to autobiography in works by Georges Perec, Michel Leiris, and Raymond Queneau. It uses the first-person construction of a narrative of airport space-a first-person "silent reading" of public space-to construct a system of research through which twentieth-century liminal space may be inhabited and critiqued from within and on its own terms. Thus the constraint and potential offered by these diverse liminal spaces are deconstructed in terms of the personal narrative, and through use of airport space demonstrate an inhabiting of research through an innovative and revealing method

Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technologies

Once again, Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe offer a volume that will set the agenda in the field of computers and composition scholarship for a decade. The technology changes that scholars of composition studies face as the next century opens couldn\u27t be more dramatic or deserving of passionate study. While we have always used technologies (e.g., the pencil) to communicate with each other, the electronic technologies we now use have changed the world in ways that we have yet to identify or appreciate fully. Likewise, the study of language and literate exchange, even our understanding of terms like literacy, text, and visual, has changed beyond recognition, challenging even our capacity to articulate them.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/1118/thumbnail.jp

Iowa STEM Monitoring Project 2012-2013 Annual Report, August 11, 2015

The Iowa STEM Monitoring Project (ISMP) is a multi-faceted and collaborative effort that works in support of the Iowa Governor’s STEM Advisory Council. ISMP partners include the University of Northern Iowa (UNI) Center for Social and Behavioral Research (CSBR), the Iowa State University (ISU) Research Institute for Studies in Education (RISE), and Iowa Testing Programs (ITP) at the University of Iowa (UI). The purpose of the ISMP is to systematically observe a series of defined metrics and sources to examine changes regarding STEM education and economic development in Iowa centered on the activities of the Iowa Governor’s STEM Advisory Council. The ISMP is comprised of four components: 1) Iowa STEM Indicators System (ISIS); 2) Statewide Survey of Public Attitudes Toward STEM; 3) Statewide Student Interest Inventory; and 4) Regional Scale-Up Program Monitoring. Data for these four components come from publicly available data at the national, state, and regional levels (component 1); nearly 1,900 Iowans who participated in a statewide survey (component 2); over 21,000 student surveys from the over 100,000 students statewide who participated in a Scale-Up program (component 3 and 4), and the almost 600 Scale-Up educators who completed a teacher/leader survey (component 4)

I JUST WANT TO DO MY JOB: THE EXPERIENCE OF FEMALE FIGHTER PILOTS IN THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

Little is known about the female fighter pilot experience. As the Department of Defense recognizes the increased warfighting capability of a diverse force, it is important to understand the unique experiences of this rare group. This study uses a qualitative Phenomenology to investigate and describe the experiences of female fighter pilots in the United States Air Force. Several important findings emerged from the study including: the impact of the population’s minority status on their experience; the pervasiveness and impact of systemic sexism, institutional betrayal, sexual assault, ambivalent sexism, and pregnancy discrimination; details of utilized resiliency skills; the prevalence of burnout; descriptions of moral injury; and the impact of family on career progression and decision-making. The current study concluded that the previously mentioned findings were the most challenging aspects of the female fighter pilot experience, and that the easiest aspects of their experience was the safe and effective performance of the mission and their job. Recommendations include the achievement of critical mass through continued diversity efforts; resolution of sexism at the systemic level including altering the engineering standards of future fighter aircraft to accommodate the anthropometric specifications of the general recruitment population instead of the current military pilot population, the engineering and purchase of safe and effective flight and combat gear to fit all members of the recruitment population, and the implementation of policies that limit the inevitable career consequences of pregnancy

Enhancing Free-text Interactions in a Communication Skills Learning Environment

Learning environments frequently use gamification to enhance user interactions.Virtual characters with whom players engage in simulated conversations often employ prescripted dialogues; however, free user inputs enable deeper immersion and higher-order cognition. In our learning environment, experts developed a scripted scenario as a sequence of potential actions, and we explore possibilities for enhancing interactions by enabling users to type free inputs that are matched to the pre-scripted statements using Natural Language Processing techniques. In this paper, we introduce a clustering mechanism that provides recommendations for fine-tuning the pre-scripted answers in order to better match user inputs