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No description available.

No description available.

HMC Clinic with Matterport, Inc.

This case study examines some key factors that influence student engagement in a blended learning environment, in particular, when using interactive online resources to learn Carpentry theory. The participants were volunteers from two parallel classes of secondary school students working toward Level 1 Building Construction and Allied Trade Skills Certificate designed for secondary schools by the Building Construction Industry Training Organisation. The participant researcher was also the teacher for both classes. Data in this case study was collected by observation, reflective journal writing, student records, group discussion and analysis of student course results. It showed that the students responded positively to the blended classroom environment and the interactive online resources developed by the researcher for this study. The blended learning environment in the classroom increased student participation, aided classroom management, and more than halved the time needed for both classes to finish the Instrumental Drawing Unit Standard 7502 while the interactive online resources enhanced student engagement and achievement in other areas of their theory. Students responded positively to the automated formative feedback and were encouraged by knowing their results instantly; working to gain top results and correct answers rather than just completing an activity by filling in the blanks. A competitive element was introduced by integrating a timer into the resources. Challenges encountered included limited access to computers and the necessity for students to share computers, a network failure which made the online resources unavailable for an extended period, and storage problems for the online resources to allow them to be accessed from the online learning environment at school and at home. This study concluded that technology can enable teachers to enhance their teaching and enrich the student learning environment through the introduction of a variety of media. Students still depended on face-to-face teacher input but, in the blended classroom environment and the online environment, the role of the teacher changed noticeably to a role of facilitator.

In the Western tradition and beyond, there is a long history of art that has sought to describe and present Jesus of Nazareth from a historical and documentary perspective. The challenge I endeavor is to express the coexistence of the seen and unseen world in the present.As a Christian and an artist this project is an effort to see a marriage between my creative process and my spiritual ethos. My hope in this project is to engage a diverse audience and challenge its perspectives on the merging of faith and art. / Department of Art

The purpose of this study was to create two multimedia projects using computer software that combined a soundtrack with an interpretive visualization of music written for two pianos, and to document the technical procedures involved in the creation of the multimedia projects.This study was a collaborative undertaking between the author and the other member of PALENAI Piano Duo, Adrienne Shannon. A companion to the current dissertation has been submitted by Ms. Shannon, titled Black and White in Color: The Creative Aspects Involved in the Production of Two Computer Multimedia Projects Based on Music for Two Pianos.The goal of the multimedia projects was to produce visualizations of the musical elements and compositional devices found in the selected compositions. The two pieces selected for these visualizations were "Le Cygne", from Le Carnaval des Animaux by Camille Saint-Satins, and the Prologue from the Sonata for Two Pianos by Francis Poulenc. The SWAN project is visualized by means of realistic photography and the PROLOGUE project makes use of abstract imagery.This study examines the technical procedures in all stages of the projects, including the creation of the source photographs and the scanning procedures, the image editing and manipulation stage that was carried out in Adobe Photoshop, the composition of the project using Adobe Premiere, and the output to a computer-based presentation by compiling the project into a QuickTime movie.The projects in this study are intended to express the music by visual means as a creative endeavour, as an educational tool, and as a demonstration of the capabilities of two Adobe software programs within a Macintosh environment. / School of Music

The purpose of this study was to create two multimedia projects using computer software that combined a soundtrack with an interpretive visualization of music written for two pianos, and to document the creative factors involved in the creation of the multimedia projects.This study was a collaborative undertaking between the present writer and the other member of PALENAI Piano Duo, Joy Innis. A companion to the current dissertation has been submitted by Ms. Innis, titled Black and White in Color: The Technical Procedures Involved n the Production of Two Computer Multimedia Projects Based on Music for Two Pianos.The goal of the multimedia projects was to produce visualizations of the musical elements and compositional devices found in the selected compositions. The two pieces selected for these visualizations were "Le Cygne", from Le Carnaval des Animaux by Camille Saint-Satins, and the Prologue from the Sonate pour deux pianos by Francis Poulenc.The study begins with a traditional analysis of the works followed by a description of the images that were selected from the image pool for the visualizations (the image pool is described in detail in the companion dissertation); an explanation of the criteria for image enhancement and manipulations that were carried out in the Adobe Photoshop program; and a detailed outline of the composition stage of the projects using the Adobe Premiere program.The projects in this study are intended to express the music by visual means as a creative endeavour, as an educational tool, and as a demonstration of the capabilities of two Adobe software programs within a Macintosh environment. / School of Music

This thesis is divided into two parts. In part one, we study the k-median and the k-means clustering problems. We take a different approach than the traditional worst case analysis models. We show that by looking at certain well motivated stable instances, one can design much better approximation algorithms for these problems. Our algorithms achieve arbitrarily good approximation factors on stable instances, something which is provably hard on worst case instances. We also study a different model for clustering which introduces limited amount of interaction with the user. Such interactive models are very popular in the context of learning algorithms but their effectiveness for clustering is not well understood. We present promising theoretical and experimental results in this direction. The second part of the thesis studies the design of provably good learning algorithms which work under adversarial noise. One of the fundamental problems in this area is to understand the learnability of the class of disjunctions of Boolean variables. We design a learning algorithm which improves on the guarantees of the previously best known result for this problem. In addition, the techniques used seem fairly general and promising to be applicable to a wider class of problems. We also propose a new model for learning with queries. This model restricts the algorithms ability to only ask certain “local” queries. We motivate the need for the model and show that one can design efficient local query algorithms for a wide class of problems.

This study explores the part that child-orientated exhibitions play in the child and family museum experience. Such exhibitions are characterised by their distinctive approaches to learning, interpretation, and design, being especially devised for children. The research was carried out in children's galleries from three types of museum (a maritime museum, a science museum, and a children's museum) in order to compare and contrast similarities and differences between them. Since most of the research in this area has been carried out in science centres or science museums, there is a need to explore the situation in child-orientated exhibitions and compare it to studies carried out in other informal learning settings. Understanding the qualities of their experience in a child-orientated exhibition which children and families value and why and how design and interpretation decisions may affect family behaviour, perceptions, and learning, will enable educators, museum designers and other museum professionals to plan more responsive and meaningful child-centred exhibitions. Children from seven to eleven years old and their accompanying adults were considered in this study. The research involves both qualitative and quantitative approaches and the use of different methods of investigation, such as face-to-face interviews with children and an adult relative; unobtrusive observation of family group interactions at three exhibits in each gallery; and collection of children's drawings about their favourite exhibit in the galleries. The sample sizes for each investigation varied: 150 families, totaling 300 individuals, were interviewed (150 adults and 150 children); 450 different family groups were observed at the galleries (150 in each gallery); and 120 children's drawings were collected. The guiding principle was to adopt an holistic approach to the situation under investigation, taking into consideration Falk & Dierking's interactive museum experience model (Falk & Dierking, 1992), which considers the personal, social, and physical contexts of a museum visit. Findings from the observations indicated gender effects in adult splitting behaviour from the family group at exhibits according to family members joint-activity compositions, and that differences in exhibit design/tasks affected adult manipulation of hands-on exhibits and the level of proximity between family members. Nine attributes from attractive child-orientated exhibits were drawn from the observed exhibits: element of fun, challenging situation, element of surprise, child-sized exhibit design, imaginative design, opportunity for experiencing things, opportunity for role play, interactive machine/game, and teamwork. The analysis of the children's drawings revealed that drawings can be a valuable source of information about children's interactions with hands-on exhibits and can be used to assess children's understanding of exhibits through the depiction of the exhibit outcomes. The interview data was analysed qualitatively (inductive content analysis) and statistically (chi-squared tests). The analysis of the open-ended interview questions indicated that adult relatives were enthusiastic about the opportunity for the children to interact with exhibits and perceived the hands-on gallery approach as motivating to the child with regard to learning. Children perceived the exhibitions as exciting places and reported positive feelings. A few children mentioned negative feelings, which were related to problematic exhibit design. The majority of children said that they prefer to visit museums in a family context rather than in a school context. The statistical analysis of the closed questions indicated twenty-two significant associations between the adults' and children's interview variables, related to adults' and/or children's age, gender, education, perceptions, behaviour, preferences, visiting habits, and type of museum, supporting the notion that personal, social, and museum aspects affect the child's and adult's museum experience, perceptions and learning. Children's perceptions of their learning in the galleries were found to be affected by the time spent in the gallery, the type of museum, the accompanying relative, and the child's preference for the social context of the museum visit. This investigation provided new insights into the study of galleries designed for children, and has demonstrated that child-orientated exhibitions have features which positively affect the child and family museum experience, that children do perceive that they are learning in this environment, and that it is a effective catalyst for family social activity. Therefore, child-orientated exhibitions are a valuable museum provision for the child and family audiences.