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Educational games have been demonstrated to increase engagement and engagement has been demonstrated to increase achievement. Therefore, the researcher attempted to investigate how to better measure engagement and refine the measurement of engagement in this study. To frame the engagement, three domains of engagement – behavioral, cognitive, and emotional– are analyzed in detail to be able to examine the qualities of each type. Moreover, three game attributes –clear goals, immediate feedback, and balance between challenges and skills- are presented and discussed as fundamental features of virtual manipulatives and educational games used in this study to make an impact on students’ engagement. To measure effects of educational games and virtual manipulatives on three domains of engagement, the researcher designed an engagement survey that examines each domain separately with their sub-domains. The Cronbach’s alphas for engagement pre-test and post-test were found .89 and .91 respectively. In this pre-test and post-test quasi-experimental design, four fifth-grade classrooms (N=86) from four schools in southwest Virginia were assigned as three experimental groups and one control group. In the first experimental group, participants played an educational game called Candy Factory and in the second experimental group, the students played another educational game called Pearl Diver on iPod Touch for eight days consecutively, for 20 minutes each. In the third experimental group, participants performed activities with virtual manipulatives, whereas in the control group, participants did paper-and-pencil iii drills for the same duration. All of the groups studied on the same topic, fractions. According to the results of ANCOVA, experimental group students’ engagement scores were found significantly higher than control group students’, F(1,80)=11.568, p=.001. When three domains of engagement were analyzed, significant differences were found among all three domains between experimental and control groups. When the researcher conducted separate analysis for educational games group and virtual manipulatives group, students who played educational games were also found significantly different than control group students in terms of all three domains of engagement and general engagement, F(1, 58)= 8.883, p=.004. In addition to this, students who did activities with virtual manipulatives showed significantly higher engagement than students who did paper-and-pencil drills in control group, F(1, 46)= 7.967, p=.007. Statistical difference was found in emotional and cognitive engagement while the results showed no significant difference in behavioral engagement between virtual manipulatives and control group students. Therefore, the three game attributes were considered as the main determining factors to engage students more to the content. / Ph. D.

This dissertation focuses on the problem space of heterogeneous-ISA multiprocessors – an architectural design point that is being studied by the academic research community and increasingly available in commodity systems. Since such architectures usually lack globally coherent shared memory, software-based distributed shared memory (DSM) is often used to provide the illusion of such a memory. The DSM abstraction typically provides this illusion using a reader-replicate, writer-invalidate memory consistency protocol that operates at the granularity of memory pages and is usually implemented as a first-class operating system abstraction. This enables symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) programming frameworks, augmented with a heterogeneous-ISA compiler, to use CPU cores of different ISAs for parallel computations as if they are of the same ISA, improving programmability, especially for legacy SMP applications which therefore can run unmodified on such hardware. Past DSMs have been plagued by poor performance, in part due to the high latency and low bandwidth of interconnect network infrastructures. The dissertation revisits DSM in light of modern interconnects that reverse this performance trend. The dissertation presents Xfetch, a bulk page prefetching mechanism designed for the DEX DSM system. Xfetch exploits spatial locality, and aggressively and sequentially prefetches pages before potential read faults, improving DSM performance. Our experimental evaluations reveal that Xfetch achieves up to ≈142% speedup over the baseline DEX DSM that does not prefetch page data. SMP programming models often allow primitives that permit weaker memory consistency semantics, where synchronization updates can be delayed, permitting greater parallelism and thereby higher performance. Inspired by such primitives, the dissertation presents a DSM protocol called MWPF that trades-off memory consistency for higher performance in select SMP code regions, targeting heterogeneous-ISA multiprocessor systems. MWPF also overcomes performance bottlenecks of past DSM systems for heterogeneous-ISA multiprocessors such as due to significant number of invalidation messages, false page sharing, large number of read page faults, and large synchronization overheads by using efficient protocol primitives that delay and batch invalidation messages, aggressively prefetch data pages, and perform cross-domain synchronization with low overhead. Our experimental evaluations reveal that MWPF achieves, on average, 11% speedup over the baseline DSM implementation. The dissertation presents PuzzleHype, a distributed hypervisor that enables a single virtual machine (VM) to use fragmented resources in distributed virtualized settings such as CPU cores, memory, and devices of different physical hosts, and thereby decrease resource fragmentation and increase resource utilization. PuzzleHype leverages DSM implemented in host operating systems to present an unified and consistent view of a continuous pseudo-physical address space to guest operating systems. To transparently utilize CPU and I/O resources, PuzzleHype integrates multiple physical CPUs into a single VM by migrating threads, forwarding interrupts, and by delegating I/O. Our experimental evaluations reveal that PuzzleHype yields speedups in the range of 355%–173% over baseline over-provisioning scenarios which are otherwise necessary due to resource fragmentation. To enable a distributed hypervisor to adapt to resource and workload changes, the dissertation proposes the concept of CPU borrowing that allows a VM's virtual CPU (vCPU) to migrate to an available physical CPU (pCPU) and release it when it is no longer necessary, i.e., CPU returning. CPU borrowing can thus be used when a node is over-committed, and CPU returning can be used when the borrowed CPU resource is no longer necessary. To transparently migrate a vCPU at runtime without incurring a significant downtime, the dissertation presents a suite of techniques including leveraging thread migration, loading/restoring vCPU in KVM states, maintaining a global vCPU location table, and creating a DSM kernel thread for handling on-demand paging. Our experimental evaluations reveal that migrating vCPUs to resource-available nodes achieves a speedup of 1.4x over running the vCPUs on distributed nodes. When a VM spans multiple nodes, it is likelihood for failure increases. To mitigate this, the dissertation presents a distributed checkpoint/restart mechanism that allows a distributed VM to tolerate failures. A user interface is introduced for sending/receiving checkpoint/restart commands to a distributed VM. We implement the checkpoint/restart technique in the native KVM tool, and extend it to a distributed mode by converting Inter-Process Communication (IPC) into message passing between nodes, pausing/resuming distributed vCPU executions, and loading/restoring runtime states on the correct set of nodes. Our experimental evaluations indicate that the overhead of checkpointing a distributed VM is ≈10% or less than that of the native KVM tool with our checkpoint support. Restarting a distributed VM is faster than native KVM with our restart support because no additional page faults occur during restarting. The dissertation's final contribution is PopHype, a system software stack that allows simulation of cache-coherent, shared memory heterogeneous-ISA hardware. PopHype includes a Linux operating system that implements DSM as an OS abstraction for processes, i.e., allows multiple processes running on multiple (ISA-different) machines to share memory. With KVM-enabled, this OS becomes a hypervisor that allows multiple, process-based instances of an architecture emulator such as QEMU to execute in a shared address space, allowing multiple QEMU instances to emulate different ISAs in shared memory, i.e., emulate shared memory heterogeneous-ISA hardware. PopHype also includes a modified QEMU to use process-level DSM and an optimized guest OS kernel for improved performance. Our experimental studies confirm PopHype's effectiveness, and reveal that PopHype achieves an average speedup of 7.32x over a baseline that runs multiple QEMU instances in shared memory atop a single host OS. / Doctor of Philosophy / Computing devices are ubiquitous around us. Each of these devices is powered by specialized chips called processors. These processors take in instructions, process them, and produce output. Such processing is what enables us, humans, to send messages to our loved ones, take photographs, as well as carry out various business functions such as using spreadsheet software. The kinds of instructions these processors execute are classified into so-called Instruction Set Architectures or ISAs. Chip designers build processors adopting different ISAs for various applications ranging from computing on mobile phones to cloud computing data centers used by large technology companies. Within a data center, there are typically hundreds of thousands of computing devices that serve an organization's purpose to serve millions or even billions of users. Programming these computers individually to serve a collective goal is an arduous task requiring hundreds of software engineering experts. To simplify programming these computers on a large scale, this thesis envisions an abstraction where tens of devices appear as one computing unit to the programmer, allowing them to program multiple computers as if they are one. This allows for better resource utilization in the sense that the power of multiple computing devices can be pooled together without the need to acquire newer, larger, and more-expensive computers. Furthermore, such pooling allows the software to leverage multiple different ISAs on different computers instead of a single ISA on one computer. This thesis also envisions a way for software to run on multiple computers with potentially different ISAs without exposing the difficulty of managing them to the software engineers.

In the Western classical tradition, musicians play music from notated sheet music, called a score. When playing music from a score, a musician translates its visual symbols into sequences of instrument-specific physical motions. Hence, a music score's overall complexity represents a sum of the cognitive and mechanical acuity required for its performance. For a given instrument, different notes, intervals, articulations, dynamics, key signatures, and tempo represent dissimilar levels of difficulty, which vary depending on the performer's proficiency. Individual musicians embrace this tenet, but may disagree about the degrees of difficulty. This thesis introduces musiplectics (musiplectics = music + plectics, Greek for the study of complexity), a systematic and objective approach to computational assessment of the complexity of a music score for any instrument. Musiplectics defines computing paradigms for automatically and accurately calculating the complexity of playing a music score on a given instrument. The core concept codifies a two-phase process. First, music experts rank the relative difficulty of individual musical components (e.g., notes, intervals, dynamics, etc.) for different playing proficiencies and instruments. Second, a computing engine automatically applies this ranking to music scores and calculates their respective complexity. As a proof of concept of musiplectics, we present an automated, Web-based application called Musical Complexity Scoring (MCS) for music educators and performers. Musiplectics can engender the creation of practical computing tools for objective and expeditious assessment of a music score's suitability for the abilities of intended performers. This thesis is based on research submitted for publication at ONWARD'15." A 'pause' is a pleasant interruption along a path; followed by an architectural invitation to stop, explore, stand, lean, sit or lay down. A successful place of 'pause' stimulates the senses and possibly alters the mood of the visitors. / Master of Science

Yes / Understanding the factors that make it more or less likely that healthcare practitioners (HCPs) will perform certain patient safety behaviors is important in developing effective intervention strategies. A questionnaire to identify determinants of HCP patient safety behaviors does not currently exist. This study reports the development and initial validation of the Influences on Patient Safety Behaviors Questionnaire (IPSBQ) based on the Theoretical Domains Framework. Methods: Two hundred and thirty-three HCPs from three acute National Health Service Hospital Trusts in the United Kingdom completed the 34-item measure focusing on one specific patient safety behavior (using pH as the first line method for checking the position of a nasogastric tube). Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was undertaken to generate the model of best fit. Results: The final questionnaire consisted of 11 factors and 23 items, and CFA produced a reasonable fit: χ2 (175) = 345.7, p < 0.001; CMIN/DF = 1.98; GFI = 0.90 and RMSEA = 0.06, as well as adequate levels of discriminant validity, and internal consistency (r = 0.21 to 0.64). Conclusions: A reliable and valid theoretically underpinned measure of determinants of HCP patient safety behavior has been developed. The criterion validity of the measure is still unknown and further work is necessary to confirm the reliability and validity of this measure for other patient safety behaviors.

Yes / Many asylum seekers have complex mental health needs which can be exacerbated by the challenging circumstances in which they live and difficulties accessing health services. Regular moderate physical activity can improve mental health and would be a useful strategy to achieve this. Evidence suggests there are barriers to engaging black and minority ethnic groups in physical activity, but there is little research around asylum seekers to address the key barriers and facilitators in this group. Methods: A two stage qualitative study used semi-structured interviews underpinned by the Theoretical Domains Framework. The interviews were conducted in voluntary sector groups in four towns/ cities in Northern England. Purposive sampling recruited 36 asylum seekers from 18 different countries. Interviews were audio recorded, transcribed verbatim and subject to framework analysis. Stage two involved a nominal group technique with five key stakeholders including asylum seekers and those that work with them. They followed a four stage process to rank and reach consensus on the key barrier to undertaking physical activity/ exercise that could be addressed locally through a future intervention. Results: A number of barriers and facilitators were identified including a lack of understanding of the term physical activity and recommended levels but knowledge of the health benefits of physical activity/ exercise and the motivation to increase levels having engaged with activities back home. Living as an asylum seeker was considered a barrier due to the stress, poverty and temporary nature of living in an unfamiliar place. The outcome of the nominal group technique was that a lack of knowledge of facilities in the local area was the prevailing barrier that could be addressed. Conclusions: Public health practitioners could develop interventions which capitalise on the motivation and knowledge of asylum seekers to encourage an increase in physical activity which may in turn reduce the breadth and depth of mental health needs of this group. / Internal funding was received from the University of Bradford

No / Background: Cognitive deficits are a core symptom of schizophrenia, severely debilitating and untreated by current medication. However, to date there is limited research focusing on the precise nature of the cognitive disturbances at first episode in ethnic populations. Improved understanding of this will allow improved approaches to therapy. The aim of this study was to investigate cognitive function with a first episode of psychosis South Asian patients. Methods: Twenty South Asian first episode psychosis patients and 15 healthy South Asian matched controls were recruited. All were second generation South Asian people living in the UK. Subjects who took part in the study completed the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (patient group), the Wechsler Test of Adult Reading and a battery of neuropsychological assessments to assess specific domains of cognition of relevance to Measurement and Treatment Research to Improve Cognition in Schizophrenia using the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) (all groups). Results: Results show that first episode patients performed significantly worse than controls across all cognitive domains tested using CANTAB. Significant impairments were found in tests of visual and spatial memory, executive function, working memory, spatial planning and attention. Importantly, a number of cognitive performance indices (visual memory, spatial memory, executive function) were positively correlated with the severity of negative symptoms. Conclusion: We demonstrate that first episode South Asian patients display significant and specific cognitive deficits with evidence to support an association between negative symptoms and certain cognitive domains at first episode in this patient population.