Exploring the Influence of Students\u27 Perceptions of Instructional Message Content Relevance and Experienced Cognitive Load on Students\u27 Cognitive Learning

Connecting the relevance of course content to students’ lives has been a learning strategy for decades. In educational psychology, Keller (1983) suggested content relevance to be a component within the ARCS model to motivate students toward learning behaviors. Within instructional communication research, Frymier and Shulman (1995) argued that students enter classrooms with the expectation that they will understand the connection between the content and their lives. Specifically, students want to know why they are taking a course and how it impacts their interests, needs, and professional goals (Frymier, 2001). In both education and instructional communication literature, teacher content relevance strategies are known to influence students’ learning behaviors. However, the influence of content relevance messages on students’ cognitive learning has been a missing link in extant research. Building upon previous theoretical framework, this dissertation extends the content relevance research agenda by investigating the extent to which students’ perceptions of instructional message content relevance and students’ experienced cognitive load predicts students’ cognitive learning. Data was collected from 559 undergraduate statistics students who completed an online survey about their perceptions of message content relevance, affect toward the instructor and the class, experienced cognitive load (intrinsic, extraneous, and germane), academic performance, and perceived cognitive learning. Results revealed a regression model explaining 11.1% of the total variance in students’ academic performance and 63.8% of the total variance in students’ perceptions of cognitive learning. Further, the full sample (N = 559) was divided by a median split to determine how low (n = 277) and high (n = 282) categories of content relevance interact with cognitive load, students’ affective behaviors, and learning strategies to predict academic performance and perceived cognitive learning. Analyses revealed significant models for low message content relevance regressed on academic performance explaining 18.2% of the total variance, and for high content relevance regressed on academic performance explaining 7.9% of the total variance. For low and high content relevance categories regressed on perceived cognitive learning, analyses revealed significant models accounting for 61% (low) and 40.3% (high) of the total variance. Implications of the results are presented in the discussion and conclusion

Fertilizing capacity and ultrastructure of fowl and turkey spermatozoa before and after freezing

The fertilizing capacity, motility and ultrastructure of fowl and turkey spermatozoa were examined at various stages of the freezing process. For both species, fertility and motility were depressed after equilibration with dimethylsulphoxide at 5 °C. After freezing, motility was maintained at 55% for fowl spermatozoa and 40% for turkey spermatozoa; however, fertility was 55% for the fowl and 0% for the turkey. Qualitatively, the damage to the spermatozoa of both species was nearly identical, as revealed by scanning and transmission electron microscopy. The plasmalemma was the primary site of damage. \u27Bent\u27 spermatozoa, coiled tails and swollen mitochondria were also present. Damage to the acrosome was only observed in spermatozoa which had been frozen to -180 ° or -196 °C. These changes were attributed to adverse osmotic conditions. Binding of cationic ferritin to the plasmalemma of spermatozoa from both species remained unaltered

A new approach to grain insect control

Western Australian farmers now have a legal responsibility to control stored grain insects on their farms. Ten species of insects, usually referred to collectively as \u27weevils\u27, have been \u27declared\u27 under the Agriculture and Related Resources Act. In Western Australia, grain storage insects are not found in standing cereal crops. Thus, it should be possible to set up a clean delivery pipeline from the paddock to the C.B.H. bin

On the stability of high-speed milling with spindle speed variation

Spindle speed variation is a well-known technique to suppress regenerative machine tool vibrations, but it is usually considered to be effective only for low spindle speeds. In this paper, the effect of spindle speed variation is analyzed in the high-speed domain for spindle speeds corresponding to the first flip (period doubling) and to the first Hopf lobes. The optimal amplitudes and frequencies of the speed modulations are computed using the semidiscre- tization method. It is shown that period doubling chatter can effectively be suppressed by spindle speed variation, although, the technique is not effective for the quasiperiodic chatter above the Hopf lobe. The results are verified by cutting tests. Some special cases are also discussed where the practical behavior of the system differs from the predicted one in some ways. For these cases, it is pointed out that the concept of stability is understood on the scale of the principal period of the system—that is, the speed modulation period for variable spindle speed machining and the tooth passing period for constant spindle speed machining

Resonance f0(1500)f_0(1500): Is it a scalar glueball ?

The ratios of partial widths for the decay of a glueball into two pseudoscalar mesons are calculated under the assumption that the production of light quark pairs ($u\bar u,d\bar d,s\bar s$) in soft gluon-\-induced reactions goes on within universal symmetry breaking. Parameter of the violation of flavour symmetry is fixed by the central hadron production data in high energy hadron collisions and/or by the ratios of radiative decay amplitudes $J/\Psi \to \gamma\eta/\gamma\eta'$ and $J/\Psi \to \gamma \phi \phi/\gamma \omega \omega$. The ratios of coupling constants $glueball\to\pi\pi,K\bar K, \eta\eta,\eta\eta'$ which are calculated with this parameter coincide reasonably with those of $f_0(1500)$, supporting an idea about glueball nature of $f_0(1500)$.Comment: LaTex, 8 pages, 2 .eps figures in one uuencoded file, uses epsfi

Scalar Glueball Mass Reduction at Finite Temperature in SU(3) Anisotropic Lattice QCD

We report the first study of the glueball properties at finite temperatures below T_c using SU(3) anisotropic lattice QCD with beta=6.25, the renormalized anisotropy xi \equiv a_s/a_t = 4 and 20^3 \times N_t (N_t=35,36,37,38,40,43,45,50,72) at the quenched level. From the temporal correlation analysis with the smearing method, about 20 % mass reduction is observed for the lowest scalar glueball as m_G(T)=1250 \pm 50MeV for 0.8 T_c < T < T_c in comparison with m_G \simeq 1500 \sim 1700MeV at T \simeq 0.Comment: This is the second revised version using more gauge configurations. 5 pages, Latex2e, 5 figure

Recent Changes in Irish Fertility. Quarterly Economic Commentary Special Article, May 1984

The main purpose of this paper is to provide a broad description of fertility trends in Ireland over the last two decades. The analysis investigates in particular whether there are regional (i.e., county) differences in relation to the levels of fertility and how these have changed. In the final part of the paper we discuss the likely future pattern of fertility trends and consider some economic and social implications arising therefrom. The last-mentioned aspect is now a matter of considerable significance since there are indications (from the annual births total) that the general decline in fertility has escalated to such an extent in recent years that the effects may be quite substantial and materialise within a relatively short period of time

Hadron Mass Predictions of the Valence Approximation to Lattice QCD

We evaluate the infinite volume, continuum limits of eight hadron mass ratios predicted by lattice QCD with Wilson quarks in the valence (quenched) approximation. Each predicted ratio differs from the corresponding observed value by less than 6\%.Comment: 13 pages of Latex + 2 PostScript files attached, IBM/HET 92-