As part of a nationwide effort to increase the postsecondary educational attainment levels of citizens, community colleges have expanded offerings of courses and programs to more effectively meet the needs of students. Online courses offer convenience and flexibility that traditional face-to-face classes do not. These features appeal to students with family and work responsibilities that typically make attending classes on campus difficult. However, many of the students who tend to take courses in this instructional format have characteristics that place them at high-risk for academic failure. Because of the traditional mission of community colleges, they generally serve more students who fit this highrisk profile. Despite the promise and potential of online delivery systems, studies have associated distance education with higher student withdrawal rates. In addition, research has indicated that online students tend to earn lower grades than students in comparable face-to-face classes. The existence of contrasting findings in the literature exposes the need for additional empirical research relative to the overall success of students in online courses, as well as on factors associated with success in distance education. This is especially true for community college students. The purpose of this study was to determine if significant differences existed in student success at the community college level in online courses as compared to face-to-face courses. In addition, the researchers investigated the relationship between selected demographic, academic, enrollment, and external environmental factors and student success in online courses. The study involved secondary data analysis of quantitative data relevant to students enrolled in course sections taught by instructors who taught both online and face-to-face sections of the same course within the same semester from fall 2012 through spring 2015. The target population included 4,604 students enrolled at a public 2-year community college located in Tennessee. Results indicated there was a significant difference in success between students taking a course online and students taking a course face-to-face. Also, there was a significant difference in success based on instructional method when the following factors were considered: age group, gender, student academic classification, and Pell Grant eligibility status. There was no significant difference in success based on instructional method when first-generation college student status was considered.

L'humour culturel anglais est culturel par ses références, les opinions qu'il véhicule et une certaine organisation syntaxique, entre autres. Mais cet humour est surtout culturel car il est ancré dans le contexte anglais et dans la langue anglaise. Une fois traduit, il doit exister dans et à travers la langue-culture cible. À cause de leurs programmes mentaux et de leur conditionnement culturel différents, les lecteurs et les spectateurs français ne pourront pas apprécier l'humour anglais de la même manière que les lecteurs et les spectateurs anglais. Lors de la traduction, le traducteur essaiera souvent de rendre cet humour étranger plus accessible au public français. Ses décisions auront un impact sur les faces sources de l'œuvre, mais aussi sur les faces étrangères que le public français pourra percevoir. En se focalisant sur les allusions culturelles, cette recherche analyse des exemples de textes anglais afin d'observer la différence des effets des textes sources et des traductions sur les deux publics respectifs et de voir si on peut encore parler d'humour culturel anglais une fois qu'il est traduit en français. Les analyses des textes permettront aussi de voir comment la traduction peut affecter la représentation de l'identité culturelle et l'idée que le lecteur ou le spectateur cible se fait de la face de l'étranger. En saisissant l'humour d'un peuple, on peut commencer à le comprendre. Pour cela, la différence de l'humour culturel doit être perçue comme une clé qui permettra au lecteur et au spectateur cible d'établir un rapport dialectique avec l'humour étranger, plutôt que comme une dimension de l'humour de l'Autre qui sera toujours considérée comme un obstacle à surmonter. / English cultural humour is cultural, not only because of the references and opinions it channels or because of its syntax but especially because it is deeply rooted in the British cultural context as well as in the English language. Once it is translated into French, it has to exist in and through French. Due to their different mental programs and cultural conditioning, French readers and spectators will not react to British humour in the same way as British people. This is why translators will often try to make the humour more easily accessible for the French public in translated texts. His decisions will have an impact on the faces of the source language, but they will also affect the British faces the French reader has access to. This research has focused on cultural allusions in an analysis of examples from British texts to see the differing effects each text has on its readers and to see if one can talk about British cultural humour once it is translated into French. The analyses will also make it possible to see how translation can affect the representation of cultural identity and the impression the target text reader will have of the foreign text. If one can understand a nationřs humour, one can start to understand its people. In order to do that, the difference of foreign humour should be seen as a key that can allow the foreign text reader and spectator to establish a dialectical relationship with the foreign humour, rather than as an aspect of Otherness which always has to be overcome.

The obesity epidemic remains a serious issue in the United States leading to significant public health implications and costs. Few weight loss interventions paring mobile technology with face-to-face interventions have been conducted in rural communities. Yet, mobile technology interventions offer good potential for delivery but it is unclear if the combination of these weight loss strategies are beneficial. This study sought to examine how integrating mobile technology with face-to-face weight loss interventions in rural communities affects weight loss. Additionally, to determine if mobile technology paired with face-to-face interventions could increase autonomous and controlled motivation levels among adults in rural Kentucky. The addition of mobile technology with face-to-face intervention provided no significant interaction effect for weight loss compared to the mobile technology group alone. However, a group and time effect was observed for weight loss change. An interaction effect for autonomous motivation indicated that neither group changed independently, but comparing their change over time, the intervention group increased while the control group decreased. A time effect was found as controlled motivation decreased from baseline to final. Future research is required to develop weight loss interventions using technology and face-to-face strategies that may enhance motivation and weight loss outcomes.

Although a mandate was given in an urban southern university for instructors in the Adult Professional Studies Program (APS) to begin transitioning their face-to-face courses to online curricula, few courses have been converted. The purpose of this case study was to determine APS instructors' perceptions of developing and transitioning face-to-face courses to an online format. Lewin's change theory and force field analysis provided the conceptual framework for this study. The research questions concerned the faculty's perceptions of developing and transitioning courses to an online format. A purposeful sample of fulltime and adjunct faculty, with different levels of expertise in online courses within the APS department was invited to participate. Semistructured interview data from these faculty (n = 9) - were analyzed manually using color coding to determine the needs and barriers for instructors transitioning their face-to-face courses to online curricula. According to the study findings, the APS faculty saw value in online education, but perceived many obstacles that keep them from fully investing into this type of instruction. 10 themes were identified through data analysis in this study. These themes were used to create a 3-day professional development (PD) project for faculty members in the APS to assist educators in creating appropriate innovations for teaching and learning in an online setting. Creating a comprehensive, 3-day PD training for APS staff and faculty that address barriers noted in the findings of the study and diverse learning opportunities created learning opportunities for nontraditional students in the APS.

The objective of this research is to help better understand the effects of exit face inclinations on critical gradients. This will lead to more practical ways to predict critical hydraulic gradients and slope stability using soil properties and exit face conditions. Current geotechnical engineering does not consider these factors because they are not thoroughly understood. Despite the attempts to better predict critical gradients, methods developed over 70 years ago to model the heave mechanism are used to model failure mechanisms such as backward erosion (or piping). This critical hydraulic gradient is only calculated by means of the buoyant unit weight of the soil. While modern engineering estimates critical piping gradients near unity, research has shown that calculated critical gradients can largely under-predict actual piping gradients. The results of this thesis research will help provide an empirical, but mechanism-based, grain-scale model that takes into account the effect of non-horizontal exit faces, and soil properties while assessing the potential for piping initiation to occur. This research is expected to help the understanding of the internal erosion mechanism known as piping, and eventually help to develop more practical ways of predicting and preventing conditions which are susceptible to this type of erosion. This research should be used to initiate more research, develop better methods, and eventually increase public safety with regards to designing and improving earth structures such as dams and levees.

The role of local Chinese media has become more important as the size of the Chinese community in New Zealand has increased rapidly in recent years. The function of local Chinese media could be like a bridge connecting the Chinese community and the mainstream society. This was an exploratory study which examined the current situation of local Chinese media to determine such issues as to whether they are the main source of information for the Chinese community, what if any difficulties they are facing and how they may develop in the future. A general research was conducted for the local Chinese media in Auckland, which covers brief introductions for some local Chinese newspapers, radio, websites, and the sole Chinese television company-World TV. Meanwhile, the researcher collected 102 questionnaires and conducted 10 in-depth interviews from the local Chinese residents and the staff working in local Chinese media companies. The findings of research suggest that most local Chinese residents utilize Chinese language media as a tool to collect daily information either from local society or their original countries. The local Chinese media not only provides information for the local community, but also has social value as a means for self-representation of the Chinese community in New Zealand and better adaptation to the mainstream society. On the other hand, the funding shortage as well as the tough competition became the obstacles for the future development for the local Chinese media. The results of this research may point to what the government’s role should be.

Dans le contexte de la génération synthétique et le décodage d'informations linguistiques, non seulement le composant auditif mais aussi le composant visuel de la parole transmettent de l'information précieuse. Nous étudions le regard en tant qu´élément crucial pour enrichir la parole et fournir des informations supplémentaires. Le regard est un geste déictique très important, ainsi il influence de manières variées l'organisation du dialogue et de l'interaction sociale. Dans une première expérience nous étudions comment le regard d'une tête parlante peut être employé comme geste déictique dans un jeu de recherche et sélection sur un écran d'ordinateur. Nous avons trouvé que ces gestes sont capables de réduire le temps de réaction ainsi que la charge cognitive. Cet effet est accentué quand le geste est de caractère multimodal, utilisant la parole de manière adaptée. Dans une deuxième expérience nous avons étudié le rapport entre le regard d'un sujet cible et les différents éléments d'une interaction dialogique. Nous avons défini différents segments dans l'échange d'information dialogique et avons trouvé qu´ils sont liés aux variations du comportement du regard mesuré. Basé sur ces résultats nous proposons un modèle pour le contrôle du regard d'un agent conversationnel animé dans l'interaction face-à-face.

<p>A face tracker is exactly what it sounds like. It tracks a face in a video sequence. Depending on the complexity of the tracker, it could track the face as a rigid object or as a complete deformable face model with face expressions.</p><p>This report is based on the work of a real time feature based face tracker. Feature based means that you track certain features in the face, like points with special characteristics. It might be a mouth or eye corner, but theoretically it could be any point. For this tracker, the latter is of interest. Its task is to extract global parameters, i.e. rotation and translation, as well as dynamic facial parameters (expressions) for each frame. It tracks feature points using motion between frames and a textured face model (Candide). It then uses an extended Kalman filter to estimate the parameters from the tracked feature points.</p>

<p>The dialogical plait in individual vocal education</p><p>Thesis in Music Education by Jannike Huss. Part of the work for the master´s degree. Studies from School of Music, Theatre, and Art, University of Örebro, 2010. Available from Örebro University, SE-701 82 Örebro, Sweden. Original in Swedish.</p><p>This thesis treats the value of communication for individual vocal education on a higher level. The purpose is to examine and illuminate what is happening in the interaction between teacher and student in individual vocal education, and how it in turn can affect learning. To get deeper knowledge and understanding of the subject, observations of singing lessons and openhearted interviews have been conducted with one teacher and two of her students. During the discussions the participants gave their own views on how an effective communication can occur in the interaction between teacher and student. In this study, only individual lessons in singing on tertiary music education have been studied. The students participating in the study are both prospective teachers with a major in vocals, and it turned out that they already were obvious carriers of two different roles, namely their student role and also their future occupational role. Due to this fact they could experience the interaction from both sides. The interviews with both students were directly connected to their lessons, and after the lessons the teacher was interviewed. All the interviews took shape as open conversations, and have since been transformed into a coherent narrative with a narrative approach in order to create meaning and context (Kvale, 2008; Georgii-Hemming, 2005). Data from the empirical material has been processed, and recounted to a theoretical conceptual framework (von Wright, 2003; Buber, 2004).</p><p>Keywords:</p><p>Vocal education, dialogue, interaction face-to-face, intersubjectivity, relationship, teacher training.</p>

Problem: Hög personalomsättning är en realitet i många branscher, vilket gör att företag står för utmaningen att framgångsrikt bevara kunskapen inom företaget när de anställda väljer att lämna. Eftersom att kunskapen i ett företag är starkt relaterad till företagets konkurrenskraft är det av stor vikt att ta till vara på och sprida kunskapen som har utvecklats och som existerar hos de anställda. Tyst personlig kunskap är svår att kodifiera, och på så sätt svår att bevara. Syfte: Denna uppsats syftar till att inom ämnet Knowledge Management undersöka hur kunskap överförs via face-to-face processer. Studien ämnar examinera frågan hur tyst kunskap överförs och bevaras i ett kunskapsintensivt företag, och då vilken roll interaktionen mellan individer spelar i kunskapsöverföringsprocessen. Metod: Denna studie antar en kvalitativ ansats, med karaktären av både deskriptiv och explorativ studie. Data har primärt samlats in genom intervjuer på två olika företag inom revisionsbranschen. Slutsatser: Face-to-face processer såsom teamarbete, nätverk och sociala aktiviteter används på de kunskapsintensiva företagen som metoder för överföring av tyst kunskap, flera av dessa processer är dock inte vedertagna kunskapsöverföringsprocesser för medarbetare. Anställda ser sina kollegor som den främsta källan till kunskap på arbetsplatsen, vilket kan förklaras med att det personliga mötet inkorporerar just den tysta dimensionen av kunskap. Företag kan i större utsträckning tydliggöra för sina anställda vilken betydelse social interaktion har för överföring och bevaring av tyst kunskap inom företaget.