EXAMINING CLIENT MOTIVATION AND COUNSELING OUTCOME

University mental health clinics have experienced a marked increase in demand for services without an increase in resources to meet the rising demand. Consequently, university mental health centers need strategies to determine the best allocation of their limited resources. Transtheoretical Model, based on client motivation, may offer valuable insight into whether a university student is likely to benefit from campus mental health counseling. The subjects included 331 university students at a liberal arts, public university in the Southeastern part of the United States. The subjects consisted of all students over age 18 who visited the research site campus mental health clinic 3 - 7 times during academic years 2007/2008 and 2008/2009. The majority of subjects were female (n = 229, 69.2%). Caucasians comprised 79.5% of subjects (n = 263). The next largest group was Asian Americans (n = 24, 7.3%), followed by African American students (n = 14, 4.2%), and Hispanic Americans (n = 5, 1.5%). The greatest percentage of subjects (55.6%) received counseling from a supervised graduate intern (n = 184), while 44.4% received counseling from professional staff (n = 147). The investigator conducted a quantitative study that employed a five-group, pre-test-post-test design. The study included data from intake questionnaires gathered in the course of treatment at the research site. The study had one independent variable, client motivation as measured by a yet unstudied \u27five-item stages of change scale\u27. The investigator measured the primary dependent variable, counseling outcome, by determining the difference in scores from pre- and post-test administrations of the Outcome Questionnaire 45.2 (OQ45.2). As assigned by the \u27five-item stages of change scale\u27, the five motivation groups differed significantly (p = .004.) for counseling outcome. The groups also differed significantly (p \u3c001) for incidences of students attending compulsory counseling. The groups did not differ for percentage of appointments attended or having received treatment by a supervised intern. The \u27five-item stages of change scale\u27 may be a useful indicator of initial client motivation. With further study, the instrument may prove to be a useful strategy for allocating limited counseling sessions

Supporting Mastery Learning Through a Multiple-Submission Policy for Assignments in a Purely Online Programming Class

The Learning Edge Momentum (LEM) theory suggests that once students fall behind, it gets more difficult to catch up with the course material. It then becomes increasingly more difficult to connect new, higher-level concepts to those solid edges of knowledge with mastery of basic concepts. Learning for Mastery (LFM) acknowledges that students learn at different paces by allowing students unable to master tests the first time to catch up eventually. This paper describes how an online introductory Python programming course offered to business students followed a multiple-submission policy for assignments to support LFM. The multiple submission policy contributed to the students’ mastery by encouraging individual practice and experimentation while also increasing the students’ comfort level and confidence. The research attempts to find relationships between taking advantage of the multiple-submit policy and results of summative assessments. Qualitative data on students’ self-reported progress per week is cross-referenced with quantitative data from the results of a regression analysis performed on LMS logs related to students’ engagement with course material. Performance on summative assessments is used as the regression’s dependent variable, and engagement with formative assessments in terms of the number of attempts and performance per attempt is used as the explanatory variable

Learning to love diligent trolls: Accounting for rater effects in the dialogue safety task

Chatbots have the risk of generating offensive utterances, which must be avoided. Post-deployment, one way for a chatbot to continuously improve is to source utterance/label pairs from feedback by live users. However, among users are trolls, who provide training examples with incorrect labels. To de-troll training data, previous work removed training examples that have high user-aggregated cross-validation (CV) error. However, CV is expensive; and in a coordinated attack, CV may be overwhelmed by trolls in number and in consistency among themselves. In the present work, I address both limitations by proposing a solution inspired by methodology in automated essay scoring (AES): have multiple users rate each utterance, then perform latent class analysis (LCA) to infer correct labels. As it does not require GPU computations, LCA is inexpensive. In experiments, I found that the AES-like solution can infer training labels with high accuracy when trolls are consistent, even when trolls are the majority.Comment: Accept-Findings at EMNLP 202

GENDER MAINSTREAMING IN A HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTION (HEI)

The study assessed the implementation of gender mainstreaming in government owned higher education institution in Eastern Visayas, Leyte, Philippines. It examined the level of awareness of school administrators and faculty members on gender mainstreaming initiatives and how they perceived about the extent of gender mainstreaming implementation in the areas of instruction, research, extension and production. The association between administrators and faculty attributes in terms of their awareness on the university’s fourfold functions was also examined. The study was implemented through a descriptive and correlational survey research design utilizing a researcher made questionnaire which was pilot tested and standardized prior to actual conduct of the survey data gathering. Findings revealed that faculty members and administrators were moderately aware of the gender mainstreaming efforts of the university, but with significantly differences in their levels of awareness. By extent of implementation, gender mainstreaming was less implemented in the area of research, moderately implemented in the areas instruction, extension and production. Significant relationship was noted between designation and the level of awareness on gender mainstreaming, no statistical association was revealed among sex, age, academic rank and educational qualification. Meanwhile, age, academic rank and educational qualification were significantly related to instruction but not to research, both age and academic rank were significantly associated with extension and production.  Article visualizations

Internet regulations and independent news organizations in Indonesia, the Philippines and South Korea

Professional project report submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in Journalism from the School of Journalism, University of Missouri--Columbia

The extent to which remittances affect the economic development of the Philippines

This report will investigate the relationship between remittances and economic growth in the Philippines, both theoretically and empirically using GDP per capita and Remittance data. This is an important topic because global remittance flows have been rising exponentially, from US$339m in 1977 to US$228bn in 2014 1, triple that of foreign aid inflows. The Philippines in particularly is the case study for this report because of the increasing diaspora of Filipinos, which currently stands at ten million2 and the large volumes of remittance inflows, which constitute 9.8% of the country’s GDP

Overcoming transactional distance when conducting online classes on programming for business students: a COVID-19 experience

Studies have shown that transactional distance negatively impacts student learning. In the context of learning, distance pertains to the geographic, pedagogical, and psychological gap between instructors and students. This perception of distance is magnified in online learning because instructors and students do not meet face to face. The gaps involve not only the geographic aspect. Another gap is pedagogical, which depends on the online course\u27s design and structure flexibility and how these align with the students\u27 level of autonomy. Still, another gap is psychological, which relates to how students perceive how much the teacher is accessible or disengaged (level of dialogue) and with students\u27 academic self-efficacy assessments. This paper describes how we could reduce the transactional distance between instructor and students by deliberately designing and conducting mostly asynchronous classes on programming for business students but with the right blend of non-lecture synchronous activities during tight lockdown due to COVID-19. We explain what used to work well before the pandemic where classes were onsite and face-to-face and what mechanisms we used to overcome the lockdown-related gaps. The course was held during Intersession and only had less than six weeks. Based on students\u27 grades and general sentiments, the results were in line with expected learning outcomes, and miscellaneous feedback and comments from students were positive

Programmable Vibration Table Retrofit with Eagle Medical

This project aimed to repair and upgrade a vibration table used for package testing for the sponsor, Eagle Medical - a medical packaging and sterilization company based in Paso Robles, California. The current vibration table is not programmable and lacks circuit diagrams, making it difficult to repair. In addition, it is not functional due to internal circuitry issues and power requirements. To address these issues, the team will implement several upgrades to improve the product and allow for better random cyclic vibration testing. A full assessment of the existing vibration table will be conducted to ensure the viability of these proposed modifications for a successful outcome. The document provides information on the project\u27s background, objectives, and project management, including the design process, project timeline, and Gantt chart. Additionally, the document will provide information regarding our morphology, conceptual designs/evaluation, and failure analysis. This document also includes the detailed design, manufacturing plans, testing plans, and testing data/analysis, and instructions for use. We followed a 5-phase design process typically employed in industry: product discovery, project planning, product definition, conceptual design, and product development. During the Winter Quarter, we went through the first 4 phases, and all of Spring Quarter was spent in product development. In product discovery, we identified the needs of Eagle Medical and investigated other vibration tables on the market. During project planning, we mapped out our key deadlines using a Gantt chart. In product definition, we created the scope of the project and began creating our engineering specifications. In conceptual design, we took those specifications and started evaluating possible concepts using morphology. During product development, we built our prototype and tested it against our engineering specifications. The key customer requirements were that the new vibration table vibrates according to given standards, outputs frequency data, has vibration schedules, uses microcontrollers, has easily accessible data, updated/reliable electronics, and has a human-machine interface. The customer additionally wanted a circuit diagram, an easily serviceable table, and asked that we salvaged as much of the old table as possible. Our test plan revealed key results. The aesthetic satisfaction scored a 10. The vibration table achieved our max vibration goal of 18 m/s^2. We showed that the vibration table does have accurate control of the rotations per minute. We also showed that the motor wire temperature did not change, indicating that our wires are properly specified. We showed that the power supply had very little variance, so our electronics should be safe from voltage spikes. We showed that it takes approximately 5.2 seconds to upload a vibration test. We also showed that the emergency stop works with 100% certainty. Finally, we performed GUI unit testing and all units passed

Chitosan Curcumin Film As A Sensor For Detection of O-Nitrophenol and Fluoride Ion Using Fluoresce Quenching Technique

Curcumin was immobilized in chitosan films fabricated by solvent casting method. The amount of curcumin immobilization was more when methanol was used as a solvent to dissolve curcumin than the butanol solvent. The maximum amount of curcumin immobilized per gram of chitosan film was 0.023 g. Immobilized curcumin was not released back in water even after prolong contact of the films with water. Fluorescence intensity of the films got quenched when these films were in contact with an aqueous solution of o-nitrophenol (ONP) and sodium fluoride (NaF). The extent of quenching depended on the concentration of these attributes. Fluorescence intensity was highly pronounced even when the concentration of ONP and fluoride (FL) was as low as 2.0 x 10–6 M and 2.5 x 10–5 M, respectively. UV-vis spectroscopy could not detect 2.5 x 10–6 M ONP; similarly, ion chromatography was not sensitive towards 2.5 x 10–5 M FL. Since the extent of quenching varies linearly with the concentration of ONP and FL in aqueous solution, the Stern-Volmer equation can be used for quantification of these