Grounded in both interactionist and collaborative learning theories, this study empirically investigates the effects of interactive second language (L2) practice on subsequent individual L2 Chinese composition writing. In L2 classrooms, the learning of writing is often treated as an individual act. However, researchers (Hamdaoui, 2006; Susser, 1994; Weissberg, 2006) have argued that writing should be socially situated, and collaborative learning of L2 writing may generate the cognitive skills needed for the development of L2 writing ability. Two forms of interactive discussion were investigated: online text chat communication and face-to-face (FTF) oral discussion. Six third-year Chinese L2 learners participated in this study. The participants conducted five online-chat and five FTF pair discussion tasks. Upon completing each interactive task, students immediately wrote a 350-character composition independently on the topic that was addressed in the interactive session. Interviews were also conducted individually with the participants to elicit learner perception data. The primary results indicated that both mediums had benefits for the development of L2 Chinese writing in both cognitive and social dimensions, including improving L2 composition writing fluency and heightened motivation for learning Chinese writing. The collaborative pattern and the transfer process, however, differed between the two mediums. The collaborative pattern in the online chats was relatively equal, whereas the collaborative pattern in the FTF conversations was relatively unequal. The transfer process from the online chats to post-chat composition writing was more of a parallel process, whereas a more selective transfer pattern was seen from the FTF sessions to the post-FTF composition writing. The FTF conversations also stimulated a deeper thinking process and activated higher-level cognitive skills. In summary, the findings in this study support the integration of interactive practice in the learning of L2 Chinese writing.

Computer simulation and animation (CSA) has been receiving growing attention and wide application in the engineering education community. The goal of this dissertation research was to improve students' conceptual understanding and procedural skills for solving particle dynamics problems, by developing, implementing and assessing 12 interactive computer simulation and animation learning modules. The developed CSA learning modules integrate visualization with mathematical modeling to help students directly connect engineering dynamics with mathematics. These CSA modules provide a constructivist environment where students can study physical laws, demonstrate mental models, make predictions, derive conclusions, and solve problems. A mixed-method research was conducted in this study: quasi-experimental method (quantitative), and survey questionnaires and interviews (qualitative and quantitative). Quasi-experimental research involving an intervention group and a comparison group was performed to investigate the extent that the developed CSA learning modules improved students' conceptual understanding and procedural skills in solving particle dynamics problems. Surveys and interviews were administrated to examine students' learning attitudes toward and experiences with the developed CSA learning modules. The results of quasi-experimental research show that the 12 CSA learning modules developed for this study increased students' class-average conceptual and procedural learning gains by 29% and 40%, respectively. Therefore, these developed CSA modules significantly improved students' conceptual understanding and procedural skills for solving particle dynamics problems. The survey and interview results show that students had a positive experience with CSA learning.

Training paraprofessionals who work with children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and other related developmental disabilities can be a challenge due to limited resources, time, and money. Alternative ways to train paraprofessionals on a larger scale is needed. Interactive computerized training—a self-paced program that incorporates audio narration, video models, interactive activities, and competency checks—is one potential training method. Interactive computerized training has been successful at training college students and special education teachers to implement discrete trial instruction but their effectiveness in training paraprofessionals is unknown. The purpose of this study was to extend the literature on interactive computerized trainings to evaluate its utility to teach six paraprofessionals to implement discrete trial instruction. Errorless learning procedures are recommended during discrete trial instruction to minimize student errors and promote quicker skill acquisition. A secondary purpose was to evaluate the effectiveness of the interactive computerized training to teach paraprofessionals to implement an errorless learning procedure. Following the training, all participants increased their fidelity of implementation of discrete trial instruction, at varying levels, with a student in their classroom. One participant reached the performance criterion of 90% or higher fidelity following ICT alone and two participants required performance feedback. Three participants required live coaching to increase their fidelity of DTI components to 80%. All feedback was delivered from a distance. Fidelity remained high to untrained instructional programs and at 2-week follow up. Potential limitations and future research related to training paraprofessionals are discussed.

If cosmetic surgery has become the cultural lens through which Americans look at issues of beauty and ugliness (Haiken 1997), then minor bodily stigma is the personal lens through which we scrutinize our bodies and self-diagnose our own flaws in the first place (Ellis 1998). In this dissertation, I interrogated the stories of eight women who struggled with two specific minor bodily stigmas--strabismus (crossed eyes) and micromastia (small breasts). Cosmetic surgery presents a potential "cure" for both of these conditions, however, as some of my interviewees could testify, the results are unpredictable. While some women reported being grateful that they could try to resculpt their bodies with surgery, others were too afraid to try, or annoyed that the option existed in the first place. Using a Grounded Theory approach, I combined autoethographic techniques with interactive interviewing to collect and interpret my data about how individuals cope with, and talk about, minor bodily stigma in an age of cosmetic surgery. The two flaws I chose to examine carry a great deal of cultural significance because in the West, eyes are revered as "windows to the soul," while breasts are regarded as powerful symbols of sexuality. Consequently, I looked at each woman's exposure to culture at three levels--the mass media, the local culture, and the circle of family and friends. First, I wanted to find out how these women identified themselves as flawed in the first place, and what impact their perceived stigma had upon their lives. I wanted to know if, and how, they communicated to others about their minor bodily stigmas. Next, I delineated the eight coping strategies outlined by my interviewees and examined the efficacy of each. Finally, I looked at how each woman made and communicated her decision regarding whether or not to pursue cosmetic surgery as a solution to her minor bodily stigma. I asked those who had surgery to elaborate on their decision and its outcome.

In this study, the students in my Year 8 high school mathematics class and I set out to develop a functional and effective collaborative peer interactive classroom learning environment. This research was informed by the multiple theoretical perspectives of collaborative learning in mathematics education, Vygotskian learning and teaching approaches, and the Constructivist referent for pedagogic practices. Merging these perspectives into a viable foundation for our classroom practices led to the successful development of our collaborative peer interactive classroom learning environment.Working in groups of three or four, the students developed their social norms and utilised a collaborative approach to their learning of mathematics. Groups engaged in discussion, explanation, negotiation, peer teaching, giving help, receiving help and consensus building as part of their daily routine in our classroom. I kept qualitative and quantitative records of our progress as we worked to improve our collaborative peer interactive classroom learning environment during the first six months of the school year. I collected daily fieldnotes, audio and video recordings, observations taken by researcher colleagues, learning environment surveys and a variety of other artefacts. All of this data was analysed daily, weekly and monthly, so producing the monthly narratives upon which we based our determination of the success of this implementation.By adopting a Vygotskian perspective we utilised our peer interactive environment to develop and enhance 'scientific' and 'everyday' concepts through individual and group dynamic, overlapping (multiple) 'zones of proximal development' as well as our classwide 'zone of proximal development'. Our constructivist perspective aided us in focusing on our prior knowledge and experiences, which in turn enhanced the effectiveness of our collaborative ++ / classroom learning environment. We utilised the MCI and CLES learning environment measures to direct our endeavours to further improve our collaborative peer interactive classroom learning environment. The detailed analysis of the data from Months 1, 2 and 3 of this implementation, coupled with highlight analysis of the data from Months 4, 5 and 6, led me to conclude that teachers and their students can develop a functional and effective collaborative peer interactive classroom learning environment based on the multiple theoretical perspectives utilised in this study.This research improved my practice as a teacher and provided a functional and effective collaborative peer interactive classroom learning environment for the students to work in. It informed many of the calls for further research of this type and established that the theoretical concepts, upon which the implementation was founded, were valuable and useful in the practical setting of our collaborative peer interactive classroom. The findings are also valuable for the support which they offer to the latest movements in education, particularly the student-centred, outcomes-based approaches to learning and teaching. These approaches advocate the use of collaborative learning environments, and this study provides strong guidance as to how such environments can be successfully implemented.

A key feature of recent agricultural extension programs has been the focus on increased participation for local, rural communities in the overall decision-making process. This move towards increasing community participation has raised expectations in terms of communication: communication between central research facilities and rural communities, between rural communities and central research facilities, and amongst the rural communities themselves. In order to provide effective communication along each of these channels, attention is turning to the extension trainers deployed in the field. For extension trainers this emerging communication role is distinct from, and supplementary to, the conventional technical training function. The thesis highlights the lack of effective training in communication skills in existing extension training programs. It identifies the flip chart as the most widely used visual aid for farmer training, and the overhead projector as the most widely used visual aid for in-service training. The thesis develops a comprehensive set of training competencies and content for teaching those two technologies, derived from individual task analyses and an extensive literature review. A range of strategic alternatives for the delivery of those competencies in a developing country are then formulated and examined. Central to the different strategies considered is the use of interactive multimedia as a key delivery technology. Two proprietary CDROMs have been designed and produced specifically to the support training in the design and production skills for overhead projector and flip chart technologies. The design, content and production of the CDROMs is described, and both technical and user evaluations are presented. The two CDROMs have been field-tested in Sri Lanka, across a broad range of strategic alternatives. The outcome is a set of guidelines and specific structures for training programs in overhead projector and flip chart technologies. The guidelines are generic and broadly applicable. The case studies also indicate a particular subset of preferred strategies for the future deployment of interactive multimedia-based training in developing countries. Most specifically, the thesis indicates a balance between and the need for mix of interactive multimedia modules along with face-to-face training support / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis develops and presents a design methodology that enables designers to work with the moving body in the design and evaluation of interactive, immersive environments built on motion-sensing technologies. The notion of making strange, that underpins the methodology, calls for designers to re-examine and revitalise their assumptions and conceptions of the moving body through bodily-based movement inquiries. This thesis addresses research questions about ways of understanding human movement, of describing and representing human movement and of accessing the felt experience of the moving body in the emerging field of movement-based interaction design. The research questions were explored through a series of three distinct, yet related, projects, each one focusing on different aspects of designing for moving bodies in interactive, immersive environments. The first project analysed an existing interactive product, Sony Playstation2c EyetoyTM, as a prototype of future movement-based interactive, immersive environments. The second project involved the design and development of a specific interactive, immersive artwork, Bystander. The third project worked with trained dancers and physical performers in a constructed design situation. The contributions of this research are first and foremost the design methodology of Moving and Making Strange: a design approach to movement-based interaction that prioritises the lived experience of movement by both designers and users and values the creative potential of the experiential, moving body. It consists of methods and tools for exploring, experiencing, describing, representing and generating movement that enable designers to shift between the multiple perspectives of the mover, the observer and the machine. It makes particular contributions as follows: • Laban movement analysis and Labanotation as a design tool. • Moving-Sensing schema: Suchman’s analytic framework adapted as a design tool. • Extension of existing human-centred design tools to explicitly represent moving bodies, in the form of movement-oriented personas and movementoriented scenarios. • Patterns of watching: a catalogue of audience behaviour in terms of movements and stillness in relation to engagement with a specific interactive, immersive artwork. • New methods for generating, enacting and experiencing movement, sourced from dance and movement improvisation practices.

This dissertation was motivated by the exponential growth in bandwidth capacity of the Internet, coupled with the immense growth of broadband adoption by the public. This has led to the development of a wide variety of new online services. Chief amongst the emerging applications is the delivery of multimedia contents to the end users via the network on-demand. It is the “on-demand” aspect that has led to problems which, despite the advances in hardware technology and network capacity, have hampered wide scale adoption of multimedia delivery. The focus of this dissertation was to address these problems, namely: scalability, cost-effectiveness, and network quality of service for timely presentation of multimedia contents. We proposed an architecture, which we referred to as “Delayed-Multicast”, to address the scalability problem. The new architecture introduced buffers within the network to reduce demands on core network bandwidth and server load. A feasibility study of the architecture was conducted through the use of a prototype. It was found that such a system is within reach by demonstrating the prototype using cheap, common-of-the-shelf (COTS) components, and with help of freely available system software such Linux with real-time support. The introduction of buffers within the network led to the requirement of how to minimize buffer space. We developed an optimal algorithm for allocating buffer space in a single level caching layout (i.e. only one buffer in the transmission path from the server to the end user). For the case of multi-levels network caching, we thoroughly examined different optimization problems from an algorithmic perspective. These problems included how to minimize total system memory, and minimize the maximum memory used per node. We proved that determining the optimal buffer allocation in many of these iv v cases is an NP-complete problem. Consequently, we developed heuristics to handle multi-level caching and showed through simulations that the heuristics greatly help in minimizing buffer space and network bandwidth requirement. An important aspect of the heuristics was how to handle the case when the arrival times of client requests were not known a priori. For these “online” problems we also proposed heuristics that can significantly reduce overall system resource requirements. If the cost of buffer space was also taken into account along with the cost of network bandwidth, a different optimization problem was how to minimize the total system cost. Here, we also proposed heuristics, which in simulations show that the total system cost can be significantly reduced. Besides the problems associated with resource allocation, in terms of buffer space and bandwidth, we also examined the problem of how to provision the necessary network quality of service on-demand. Most current networks rely on best-effort delivery which is ill suited for the delivery of multimedia traffic. We proposed a solution which relied on the use of a programmable network plane, that is present in many current routers, to dynamically alter the priority of flows within the network in real-time. We also demonstrated the effectiveness of the flow prioritization on an actual Nortel router. Finally, we examined the problem of how to admit and achieve fair bandwidth allocation for the end-users within a Differentiated Service (DiffServ) network. Diff- Serv is an IETF standard that aims to provide a “better than best-effort” network in a scalable manner, and is used widely, especially within the same autonomous domain for prioritization different classes of traffic. However, there are open problems on how to provide fair bandwidth allocation amongst competing flows. We proposed an edge-aware resource discovery loop, which as the name suggests, sent packets to gather information about the internal states of the core network. With this information, we proposed a price-based admission control algorithm for use within the DiffServ network that would allow fair admission, effective congestion control, and fair bandwidth allocation amongst different traffic flows.

The thesis describes the development during the 1990s of visual artists' utilisation of computer-based interactive multimedia and the production internationally, with a focus on Australian artists, of artworks on the CD-ROM media format. Earlier parts of the author's research led to the exhibition, 'Burning the Interface &lt International Artists' CD-ROM&gt', which he co-curated, opening at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, in 1996, before touring to Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide. The thesis surveys the range of practice by artists working with digital media and the opportunities for exhibition in the public spaces of museums, galleries and the street, and advances scenarios for correcting the laxity of response by the exhibiting institutions to the vigour with which Australian artists represented their work and ideas at this time in national and international forums. Four published artists' work on CDROM are analysed in detail, and a concluding chapter about 'interactive multimedia' and its usefulness as an art medium to the artist introduces the studio practice component of this MFA submission. This takes the form of a prototype 'experimental' version of an interactive multimedia work on CD-ROM, ('Strangers on the Land') a copy of which is contained in a pocket at the rear of the bound version.

Master of Visual Arts / Digital/video games1 have entertained for 40 years and are a medium with the ability to reach a vast audience. In an article published in the Sydney Morning Herald, Charles Purcell reports that; “Globally, Halo 2 has sold more than 7 million copies. Both in the US and Australia it broke the film box-office record for the most earnings in the first 24 hours of release. The worldwide Halo 2 community on X-box Live has about 400,000 players… at the World Cyber Games in Seoul. Last year, gold medallist Matthew Leto won $US20,000 ($AUS27,0000) after his second consecutive Halo title.” 2. Game consoles have become a part of many lounge rooms just as the television did before them. Games are even commonplace in many coat pockets and carrying bags. This dissertation is concerned with the medium of digital/video games in relation to its effect on Game Art. It is also concerned with the concept of my studio work that deals with “evil” and the “uncanny” which are discussed in chapter four. My research looks at games and how they have developed and the relationship to contemporary art. A history of this development is explored in chapter two. My research will help me in developing an interactive piece. Throughout my current research the thoughts of author of The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit Sherry Turkle resonate: “…not what will the computer be like in the future, but instead, what will we be like? What kind of people are we becoming?” 3 It is interesting to consider the video/digital games as experiments of who we are or who we would like to be, little fantasies of empowerment. In a game we are able to live out our frustrations or fantasies in a closed and predictable experience.