This study explores the factors that influence the ways in which intermediate students learn comprehension strategies. A substantial scholarship offers evidence of the success of three factors: the teacher, Support structures, and the efficacy of the specific comprehension strategies taught.

Physical educators are concerned with the development of the whole child, as reflected by the affective cognitive and psychomotor domains that drive our standards. However, many times the focus is on one, maybe two, domains in a single task. This session will provide examples and strategies for incorporating all three domains into learning tasks, creating rich learning experiences. These ideas will help teachers of all experience levels and those preparing for edTPA.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among motives for health-related YouTube use, cognitive involvement with health information on YouTube, post-exposure online activity, and sense of empowerment regarding health and health care. As a result of the analysis of data from 263 participants, social utility, convenient information-seeking, habit-passing time, and exciting entertainment motives were identified as four motives for health-related YouTube use. Social utility and convenient information-seeking motives were positively related to cognitive involvement and cognitive involvement was positively related to perceived control. Social utility motive was negatively related to perceived competence, whereas convenient information-seeking motive was positively related to perceived competence. Habit-passing time motive was negatively related to goal internalization, whereas convenient information-seeking and exciting entertainment motives were positively related to goal internalization. The findings from this study imply that YouTube could be a useful health communication media for health professionals and organizations to use for empowering users in coping with health-related concerns.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / In the United States, over 30 percent of children are categorized as overweight or obese. Comorbid conditions, such as cardiovascular disease and other health complications related to obesity, are also on the rise. This public health issue is often related to disproportionate dietary intake and lack of physical activity. Efforts that promote fruits and vegetables (F/V) as preferred food choices over high fat and high sugar foods may help combat the increasing incidence of overweight and obesity. Other benefits from F/V include prebiotics or fiber that helps to create and maintain a healthy microbiota, which is now recognized as essential for long-term positive health outcomes. Many children, however, fall short in consuming the recommended daily amounts of F/V servings, and therefore, lack key nutrients such as vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients and fiber. This study is a pilot, quasi-experimental design that provides information related to the importance of eating F/V to children, ages 11-12 years, who attend a parochial school in Indianapolis, Indiana. The data from this study describe the amounts of F/V servings in home-prepared school lunches. The primary aim of this study is to determine if eight interactive multimedia lessons and activities delivered to one group of students (intervention) and a single lesson delivered to a different group of students in the same school and grade (control), affects the amount of lunch F/V servings, student knowledge, attitude, and self-efficacy/perception. This baseline data will contribute to the design and implementation of a health curriculum for middle school age students. Focus groups, adapted validated assessment tools as well as the on-site observation of F/V servings brought in lunches and consumed at lunch are compared between both groups to document any effects of the instruction. The results show that a statistically significant change in knowledge occurred within the intervention group following the implementation of this F/V education series. Favorable findings, with a positive upward trend in relative amounts of F/V, were identified and more research in this area is warranted.

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This dissertation presents a computational multiscale framework for predicting behavioral tendencies related to human addiction. The research encompasses three main contributions. The first contribution presents a formal, heuristic, and exploratory framework to conduct interdisciplinary investigations about the neuropsychological, cognitive, behavioral, and recovery constituents of addiction. The second contribution proposes a computational framework to account for real-life recoveries that are not dependent on pharmaceutical, clinical, and counseling support. This exploration relies upon a combination of current biological beliefs together with unorthodox rehabilitation practices, such as meditation, and proposes a conjecture regarding possible cognitive mechanisms involved in the recovery process. Further elaboration of this investigation leads on to the third contribution, which introduces a computational hypothesis for exploring the allostatic theory of addiction. A person engaging in drug consumption is likely to encounter mood deterioration and eventually to suffer the loss of a reasonable functional state (e.g., experience depression). The allostatic theory describes how the consumption of abusive substances modifies the brain's reward system by means of two mechanisms which aim to viably maintain the functional state of an addict. The first mechanism is initiated in the reward system itself, whereas the second might originate in the endocrine system or elsewhere. The proposed computational hypothesis indicates that the first mechanism can explain the functional stabilization of the addict, whereas the second mechanism is a candidate for a source of possible recovery. The formal arguments presented in this dissertation are illustrated by simulations which delineate archetypal patterns of human behavior toward drug consumption: escalation of use and influence of conventional and alternative rehabilitation treatments. Results obtained from this computational framework encourage an integrative approach to drug rehabilitation therapies which combine conventional therapies with alternative practices to achieve higher rates of consumption cessation and lower rates of relapse.

This study investigated the use of writing-to-learn strategies in freshman associate degree nursing classes at Wytheville Community College, Wytheville, Virginia. It sought to determine if the use of writing-to-Iearn strategies would affect the students' achievement in the course and their critical thinking skills. The design of the study was experimental. Two groups of freshman nursing students were randomly selected and randomly assigned to either an experiment group or a control group. The experiment group used the writing-to-learn strategies. The achievement in the course was measured using teacher-developed tests. Critical thinking skills were measured using the <u>Cornell Critical Thinking Test. Level Z</u>. The study found that the students in the experiment group achieved higher aggregate semester scores than those in the control group. The difference in mean aggregate semester scores for the two groups was statistically significant. The results of the critical thinking post-test indicated the mean scores of both groups declined, but not significantly. The mean score of the experiment group was higher, but again not significantly. It was concluded that the use of writing-to-Iearn strategies is an effective means of improving community college nursing students' achievement The results of the critical thinking portion of the study were inconclusive. / Ed. D.

The purpose of this study was to discover whether a nurse educator could facilitate the cognitive development of baccalaureate nursing students using writing strategies that challenged their thinking. The literature focuses first on the model of the cognitive development of college students as Perry first delineated it (1970) and later modified it (1978; 1981), as well as on how other researchers have elaborated and extended it from a descriptive to a prescriptive model. Also, literature related to writing as a strategy to facilitate learning, thinking, and developing is investigated, and specific writing tasks used to those ends are described. The study was carried out with two groups of junior nursing students. A study group, consisting of 29 students, participated in a semester long nursing concepts course where writing was used to stimulate cognitive development. The control group, consisting of 16 students, enrolled in another section of the same course, was not provided the writing experience. It was found that the total group (n = 45) demonstrated levels of cognitive development consistent with development of nursing students described in other studies (Colucciello, 1986; Frisch, 1987; Valiga 1983). An examination of student writing in response to writing assignments revealed that different kinds of tasks were effective in challenging students at different levels of development; different kinds of tasks also elicited different kinds of cognitive responses. consistent with other studies (Stonewater & Daniels, 1983), it was found that there was not a statistically significant difference between the two groups in cognitive development at the end of the semester. / Ed. D.

Belt conveyor accidents are mainly attributed to negligence of safety procedures during maintenance work. Entanglement, falling from heights, & collapse of structure or loose materials are the main cause of accidents. While performing maintenance tasks such as cleaning, installation and repair, belt alignment and so on (Lucas et. al. 2007). Current industry safety programs provide general guidelines for safety training, but do not require any specific training program structure (Shultz, 2002 and Shultz, 2003). For example MSHA (Mine Safety and Health Administration) only requires 24 hours of training. Typically this training is broken down into four hours of training before the employee starts work, the remaining 20 hours has to be performed within the first sixty days of work (Goldbeck, 2003). The information collected through site visits showed that in addition to completing MSHA safety training requirements companies try to reinforce safety issues through daily and weekly safety meetings on job sites. Due to lack of a required safety training structure, every company is independent in terms of their training format that they follow to train their new and experienced work force. As a result, safety engineers depend heavily on in-house safety programs (e.g. audio-video presentations) to deliver the required training hours specified by MSHA for miners. Based on a review of current training methods this research identifies four problems; existing training methods to educate miners about dangers involved in conveyor belt environments are mainly passive, safety related information in scattered in various media such as images, videos, paper manuals, etc., access to information in current format is difficult, and updating information is difficult. This research addressed these identified problems by devising a new approach of learning to augment existing methods of training and evaluate the potential of this concept as a safety-training tool. Research has shown that individuals have their own learning style in which they can increase their retention and stimulate their cognitive learning. The proposed work addresses issues relative to passive vs. active learning and classroom-based vs. self-paced training by developing and implementing an interactive multimedia-based safety-training tool called the Digital Safety Manual (DSM). After the DSM was developed it was put through a series of usability evaluation and subjective analysis to measure the potential of the concept. The evaluation and subjective analysis involved both the novice and expert users. The results that were yield after the evaluations and subjective analysis shows that the DSM has more learning advantages than the typical training methods and it can be used as a supplementary training method to complement the current approaches of training. / Master of Science

This study emerged from a desire to put to an end the crisis mentality surrounding the status of History as a subject in the secondary school. There appears to be consensus amongst didactitions and practitioners of the subject that the present malaise from which History teaching suffers derives from a number of complex sources. The study, however, takes as its point of departure the problem of the content orientated (product) syllabus which over-emphasises the acquisition of factual information and neglects the conceptual understanding (process) of the subject. Experience is providing the futility of teaching only content (information) to the modern adolescent. Therefore in order to resolve the problem the study focuses, inter alia, on concepts, structures and syllabuses. It is concluded that all subjects are based on conceptual structures which, in turn, have a direct bearing on the authentic education of pupils in general and conceptualization in particular. It is suggested, therefore, that historical content (product) can only have formative value if it is harnessed to facilitate conceptualization (process). Towards this end a History syllabus which embraces both the product and process approaches is advocated for implementation. In essence this means that the content of History is organised around concepts, that is, relevant concepts are chosen as themes around which the syllabus content is structured. Such an approach, it is believed, would not only help to develop universally valid generalizations but also facilitate the conceptualization process necessary for obtaining historical insight. A model, with examples, is presented as a suggestion for implementation in the classroom. Altenative proposals are also mentioned. If historical conceptualization is to be effevively realised in the classroom, then it becomes necessary to obtain a perspective on the learning-psychological processes involved in conceptualization. In this regard, specific theoris are highlighted to guide the History teacher in the classroom. Ti is finally hoped that the new approach suggested would assist teachers, at least to some extent, to resolve the problem of conceptualization in History teaching and thereby help to store the subject to its original position of respect in the school curriculum / Curriculum and Instructional Studies / D.Ed. (Didactics)