Development of educational methods for teaching the structural engineering content of the architectural curriculum

This thesis is concerned with some educational methods for teaching structural engineering to architectural students. After citing evidence for and against, the thesis argued that structural knowledge is essential as one of the generators in architectural design. A review of literature indicated that there is little unanimity about the content of the structural curriculum and a discussion followed on the structural knowledge and skills necessary from the architect for fruitful collaboration with the structural consultant. This part concluded with a list of general objectives for teaching structures to architects.As architectural design is closely concerned with creativity, this was examined in terms of architectural creativity and of teaching methods for structures. Modes of thinking as logic, association and bisociation of ideas and gestalt, in addition to the pyschological approach were discussed for relevancy in this context. A brief schema of the architects' process of creativity was produced. From that examination there emerges those qualities which are required for selecting and developing architectural /structural systems or relevant elements. A distinction was made between the serviceable product and the communication of feelings, perception and knowledge and the teaching methods reflect the difference found in the classification.Some teaching methods specific to structures were discussed, tested and developed for the efficiency in promoting those qualities found necessary for architectural /structural creativity. Programmed Learning was then tested and dicussed in terms of acquiring and transferring knowledge, attitude of the student, and the role of the teacher. Possible formats were suggested and tested including a comparison between using mathematics and not using mathematics to explain statically indeterminate systems

Predictors of Flexibility and the Participation of Referential Instructions in a Turn-Based Matching-to-Sample Procedure

The contemporary culturo-behavioral enterprise concerned with studying cultural events is not compatible with a molar, interbehavioral orientation toward understanding cultural interbehavior, largely due to its behavior-analytic assumptions. Not only does the enterprise not have a definition of cultural behavior, but it directs attention away from factors that may participate in cultural change, such as individual proclivities to prefer immediate over delayed rewards and the referential properties of interactions. As turn-based matching-to-sample procedures (TBMTS) are capable of isolating cultural interbehavior and changes of such, the purpose of this thesis was to (1) determine if framing instructions referentially altered shared patterns of stimulus-response functions (SRFs) observed in TBMTS, (2) predict flexible and rigid patterns of SRFs occurring in TBMTS, and (3) address limitations from Fleming and colleagues’ (2021) original TBMTS study. Results suggest that referentially framing of instructions for TBMTS is functionally related to the length of trials necessary for a shared pattern of SRFs to be established between dyad partners. While measures external to TBMTS were not predictive of flexible patterns of SRFs, delay discounting rates and typical numbers of hours allocated toward sleeping were found to be related to whether dyads established a shared pattern of SRFs, a requirement for establishing flexible patterns of SRFs in TBMTS. Major findings of Fleming and colleagues’ (2021) study were replicated, but some limitations of their study were only marginally remediated

Cultural Reaction Systems: An Orientational Unit of Analysis for Cultural Relations

The purpose of this dissertation is to begin construction of an orientational approach to studying cultural relations. Orientationalism can be considered a molar extension of J. R. Kantor’s interbehavioral psychology that considers the orientations of organisms—described in terms of reaction systems—to be the basic psychological unit of analysis instead of psychological events. The first part of this dissertation addresses the philosophy of orientationalism. The second part addresses how orientationalism orients towards experimentation on examining cultural reaction systems that is atypical in Skinnerian behavior analysis and culturo-behavior science but highly congruent with game theory. Five such experiments are described along with their implications for future research and behavior science. In doing so, it is the aim of this dissertation to demonstrate the compatibility of principles of contemporary multi-scale molar behavior analysis are with those of interbehaviorism when an integrated field logic is used to describe not discrete psychological events but interacting patterns of functional contacts composing orientations of one or more organisms

Information Assurance; Small Business and the Basics

Business is increasingly dependent on information systems to allow decision makers to gather process and disseminate information. As the information landscape becomes more interconnected, the threats to computing resources also increase. While the Internet has allowed information to flow, it has also exposed businesses to vulnerabilities. Whereas large businesses have information technology (IT) departments to support their security, small businesses are at risk because they lack personnel dedicated to addressing, controlling and evaluating their information security efforts. Further complicating this situation, most small businesses IT capabilities have evolved in an ad hoc fashion where few employees understand the scope of the network and fewer if any sat down and envisioned a secure architecture as capabilities were added. This paper examines the problem from the perspective that IT professionals struggle to bring adequate Information Assurance (IA) to smaller organizations where the tools are well known, but the organizational intent of the information security stance lacks a cohesive structure for system development and enforcement. This paper focuses on a process that will allow IT professionals to rapidly improve their organizations\u27 security stance with few changes using tools already in place or available at little or no cost. Starting with an initial risk assessment research provides the groundwork for the introduction of a secure system development life cycle (SSLDC) where continual evaluation improves the security stance and operation of a networked computer system