This two-part study employed an experimental design and interviews to examine the effects of videos on adult English as a Second Language (ESL) student listening comprehension. The purpose of the first part of the study was to compare the effects of video in two pre-listening activity conditions on beginner and upper-beginner adult ESL listening comprehension. The participants were 49 Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) students enrolled in two beginner and two upper-beginner ESL classes The beginner classes were randomly assigned either to the audio only (AO) condition or the audio with written script (AW) condition. The upper-beginner classes were similarly assigned to the two conditions, the AO condition or the AW condition. In the AO condition, the students listened to a tape recording of four pre-listening questions prior to viewing the video. In the AW condition, the students listened to the same tape recording and, in addition, were shown the same questions that were printed on large sheets of paper and held up at the front of the class by the teacher. The same pre-test was administered to all four classes. Twelve exercises including pre-listening questions, videos, and comprehension questions were completed. The beginner classes viewed videos from Learning English in the Community LINC 2 (Cameron et al., 1995), and the upper-beginner classes viewed videos from Learning English in the Community LINC 3 (Cameron et al., 1995). The same post-test was administered to all four classes. Results indicated that the written script in the AW condition significantly improved the listening comprehension ability of beginner and upper-beginner adult ESL students. The second part of the study was aimed at gaining insights into the pre-listening questions, the videos, and their value on teaching listening comprehension. All of the students were individually interviewed. Overall the students were positive about the showing of videos as aids for enhancing listening comprehension, the content of the videos, as well as the questions. Some of the students, however, found some of the instruments difficult to understand. They found that the vocabulary was unfamiliar or the speed of delivery was too fast. This lack of comprehension may have affected the results of Part One of the study.

If students are to become aware of the vital, but fragile, interrelationships in their environment, they require many firsthand experiences in the out-of-doors. Environmental education is taught in some classrooms and nature centers, but to date, little research has been conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the instructional methods used. Nature center managers are finding it difficult to personally educate an increasing number of park visitors. School teachers who may lack expertise in the natural sciences need educational resources that can be used to supplement their science curricula. These situations indicate that there is a growing demand for environmental interpretive methods that are dynamic, convenient, and accessible to a large number of people.The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a particular method of interpretation which involves the use of a taped message and hands-on activities along a nature trail. Middle school students took part in the project. The treatment for the experimental group consisted of taped instruction and nature trail activities. The control group toured Christy Woods Arboretum without a taped message. Both groups completed a short written questionnaire after theirexperience. Responses were analyzed to determine if the taped interpretive method was effective in helping students learn concepts and develop positive attitudes toward the natural environment. Teacher response was also evaluated.

This creative project will be a compilation of surgical proceedures performed by the author on patients before a video tape. There was a superimposed narration describing the procedure as it was being performed.Since these tapes were open ended, anytime a patient presented with a problem and a willingness to be taped, a new dimension in resident education is always forthcoming. This project has also forced one author into becoming proficient in the art of surgical techniques and in the art of taping video lectures.Since much of the educational material is in tape of television form now, this will be a readily accepted media in educating future doctors of less frequently mentioned procedures.Three training video tapes, each approximately 10 minutes long were produced dealing with removal of moles from the skin, circumcision, and removal of a toenail.Production was carried out in the surgical suite of the Family Practice Center, Ball Memorial Hospital, Muncie, Indiana during the 1976-77 academic year.

Darbe tiriami iškraipymai audio sistemose ir kaip žmogaus klausa juos suvokia. Autorius sistemina tyrimus, bibliografinius įrašus. Pateikiama alternatyvi tyrimo metodika. Tyrimo rezultatai reikšmingi tobulinant garsinio signalo traktą. / This research is about distortion in audio systems and how human hearing perceives it. Author collects together data from other researches and compares them. The main goal of this research is to find, what type of audio distortion is most audible. Results of the work can be used to improve audio equipment design with properties of human hearing in mind.

Although the identification of humans by fingerprints is a well–known technique in practice, the identification of an audio sample by means of a technique called audio fingerprinting is still under development. Audio fingerprinting can be used to identify different types of audio samples of which music and advertisements are the two most frequently encountered. Different audio fingerprinting techniques to identify audio samples appear seldom in the literature and direct comparisons of the techniques are not always available In this dissertation, the two audio fingerprinting techniques of Avery Wang and Haitsma and Kalker are compared in terms of accuracy, speed, versatility and scalability, with the goal of modifying the algorithms for optimal advertisement identification applications. To start the background of audio fingerprinting is summarised and different algorithms for audio fingerprinting are reviewed. Problems, issues to be addressed and research methodology are discussed. The research question is formulated as follows : “Can audio fingerprinting be applied successfully to advertisement monitoring, and if so, which existing audio fingerprinting algorithm is most suitable as a basis for a generic algorithm and how should the original algorithm be changed for this purpose?” The research question is followed by literature regarding the background of audio fingerprinting and different audio fingerprinting algorithms. Next, the importance of audio fingerprinting in the engineering field is motivated by the technical aspects related to audio fingerprinting. The technical aspects are not always necessary or part of the algorithm, but in most cases, the algorithms are pre–processed, filtered and downsampled. Other aspects include identifying unique features and storing them, on which each algorithm’s techniques differ. More detail on Haitsma and Kalker’s, Avery Wang’s and Microsoft’s RARE algorithms are then presented. Next, the desired interface for advertisement identification Graphical User Interface (GUI) is presented. Different solution architectures for advertisement identification are discussed. A design is presented and implemented which focuses on advertisement identification and helps with the validation process of the algorithm. The implementation is followed by the experimental setup and tests. Finally, the dissertation ends with results and comparisons, which verified and validated the algorithm and thus affirmed the first part of the research question. A short summary of the contribution made in the dissertation is given, followed by conclusions and recommendations for future work. / Thesis (M.Ing. (Computer and Electronical Engineering))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

A revolution is taking place in education today at all levels from kindergarten through college, in virtually all subject matter areas. This revolution is due, in part, to research in learning theory and technological advances. Changes in attitudes have led to the concept of "accountability"--that educators must perform and produce educational programs that are meaningful and interesting as well as informative. The fact that private industry has had satisfactory results in the academic marketplace has also provided impetus for the current educational revolution which has resulted in several innovations.A general education biology course, Man and the Life Sciences, has been taught with an audiotutorial component at Ball State University since 1965. Quarterly evaluations by the students provided the staff with evidence that three of the units should be redesigned 1) to have more appeal to the students; 2) to meet their expectancy of relevance; and 3) to have a higher level of academic quality.The problem for the present research investigation was twofold: 1) to design three audiotutorial units for a college general education biology course titled Aggression, Territoriality and Survival; Time, Adaptation and Change; and Man, Communication and Behavior, with innovative approaches and 2) to evaluate the effectiveness of the newly developed materials.In designing these three units, specific goals of the research undertaking were 1) to integrate the three units in such a way that concepts of organismal biology, evolution and behavior are pervasive throughout all three units; 2) to develop a list of performance objectives for each of the three units; 3) to determine learning strategies which will help the students achieve each of these objectives; and 4) to determine learning strategies which will help make these objectives interesting and relevant to the students.In order to meet these criteria, the principles of systems management were employed bys 1) specifying goals, 2) specifying desired outcomes for students, 3) planning instruction, 4) evaluating student achievement, and 5) revising instructional procedure in light of experience. In planning the instruction, the method used to facilitate the accomplishment of the desired outcomes was the audiotutorial approach which allowed the student to learn at his own pace. Each unit actively involved the student in sequential multimedia learning activities. A learning guide was designed for the student to use in responding to questions posed as he progressed through the audiotutorial learning activities.After development, the unit materials were first tested with a group of ten students. Feedback on the basis of achievement tests and individual interviews provided the rationale for revisions in preparation for field testing. After completion of the field testing, which involved approximately 650 students, additional revisions were made, resulting in the final version which was evaluated to determine the overall effectiveness of the learning materials.Final measurement of student accomplishment was effected by the use of pre-tests and post-tests consisting of parallel quiz items which had been validated in preliminary testing. Forty-five objectives were final tested; difficulty levels from the pre-test indicated that twenty-four of the objectives were achieved by seventy percent or more of the students. Chi square applied to the results of the remaining items indicated that seven additional objectives probably were also achieved at this same level; fourteen of the objectives were not achieved during the final evaluation. Standard item analysis was used to assist in determining why these objectives were not accomplished; this information can be used in making future revisions.Student opinions were solicited in the form of a student unit evaluation. At least forty percent of the students rated each unit's interest level as high and fifty percent rated each as average; thus, the units accomplished what was expected.A program of instruction should evolve with new ideas and innovations with an effort toward continual improvement. Data collected from this research investigation can be used to pinpoint specific areas where additional research would be beneficial.

Although the identification of humans by fingerprints is a well–known technique in practice, the identification of an audio sample by means of a technique called audio fingerprinting is still under development. Audio fingerprinting can be used to identify different types of audio samples of which music and advertisements are the two most frequently encountered. Different audio fingerprinting techniques to identify audio samples appear seldom in the literature and direct comparisons of the techniques are not always available In this dissertation, the two audio fingerprinting techniques of Avery Wang and Haitsma and Kalker are compared in terms of accuracy, speed, versatility and scalability, with the goal of modifying the algorithms for optimal advertisement identification applications. To start the background of audio fingerprinting is summarised and different algorithms for audio fingerprinting are reviewed. Problems, issues to be addressed and research methodology are discussed. The research question is formulated as follows : “Can audio fingerprinting be applied successfully to advertisement monitoring, and if so, which existing audio fingerprinting algorithm is most suitable as a basis for a generic algorithm and how should the original algorithm be changed for this purpose?” The research question is followed by literature regarding the background of audio fingerprinting and different audio fingerprinting algorithms. Next, the importance of audio fingerprinting in the engineering field is motivated by the technical aspects related to audio fingerprinting. The technical aspects are not always necessary or part of the algorithm, but in most cases, the algorithms are pre–processed, filtered and downsampled. Other aspects include identifying unique features and storing them, on which each algorithm’s techniques differ. More detail on Haitsma and Kalker’s, Avery Wang’s and Microsoft’s RARE algorithms are then presented. Next, the desired interface for advertisement identification Graphical User Interface (GUI) is presented. Different solution architectures for advertisement identification are discussed. A design is presented and implemented which focuses on advertisement identification and helps with the validation process of the algorithm. The implementation is followed by the experimental setup and tests. Finally, the dissertation ends with results and comparisons, which verified and validated the algorithm and thus affirmed the first part of the research question. A short summary of the contribution made in the dissertation is given, followed by conclusions and recommendations for future work. / Thesis (M.Ing. (Computer and Electronical Engineering))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

Digital audio is increasingly becoming more and more a part of our daily lives. Unfortunately, the excessive bitrate associated with the raw digital signal makes it an extremely expensive representation. Applications such as digital audio broadcasting, high definition television, and internet audio, require high quality audio at low bitrates. The field of audio coding addresses this important issue of reducing the bitrate of digital audio, while maintaining a high perceptual quality. Developing an efficient audio coder requires a detailed analysis of the audio signals themselves. It is important to find a representation that can concisely model any general audio signal. In this thesis, we propose two new high quality audio coders based on two different audio representations - the sinusoidal-wavelet representation, and the warped linear predictive coding (WLPC)-wavelet representation. In addition to high quality coding, it is also important for audio coders to be flexible in their application. With the increasing popularity of internet audio, it is advantageous for audio coders to address issues related to real-time audio delivery. The issue of bitstream scalability has been targeted in this thesis, and therefore, a third audio coder capable of bitstream scalability is also proposed. The performance of each of the proposed coders was evaluated by comparisons with the MPEG layer III coder. The first coder proposed is based on a hybrid sinusoidal-wavelet representation. This assumes that each frame of audio can be modelled as a sum of sinusoids plus a noisy residual. The discrete wavelet transform (DWT) is used to decompose the residual into subbands that approximate the critical bands of human hearing. A perceptually derived bit allocation algorithm is then used to minimise the audible distortions introduced from quantising the DWT coefficients. Listening tests showed that the coder delivers near-transparent quality for a range of critical audio signals at G4 kbps. It also outperforms the MPEG layer III coder operating at this same bitrate. This coder, however, is only useful for high quality coding, and is difficult to scale to operate at lower rates. The second coder proposed is based on a hybrid WLPC-wavelet representation. In this approach, the spectrum of the audio signal is estimated by an all pole filter using warped linear prediction (WLP). WLP operates on a warped frequency domain, where the resolution can be adjusted to approximate that of the human auditory system. This makes the inherent noise shaping of the synthesis filter even more suited to audio coding. The excitation to this filter is transformed using the DWT and perceptually encoded. Listening tests showed that near-transparent coding is achieved at G4 kbps. The coder was also found to be slightly superior to the MPEG layer III coder operating at this same bitrate. The third proposed coder is similar to the previous WLPC-wavelet coder, but modified to achieve bitstream scalability. A noise model for high frequency components is included to keep the overall bitrate low, and a two stage quantisation scheme for the DWT coefficients is implemented. The first stage uses fixed rate scalar and vector quantisation to provide a coarse approximation of the coefficients. This allows for low bitrate, low quality versions of the input signal to be embedded in the overall bitstream. The second stage of quantisation adds detail to the coefficients, and hence, enhances the quality of the output signal. Listening tests showed that signal quality gracefully improves as the bitrate increases from 16 kbps to SO kbps. This coder has a performance that is comparable to the MPEG layer III coder operating at a similar (but fixed) bitrate.

Thesis (M.S.)--Kutztown University, 1989. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 2807. Abstract precedes title page. Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 50-51).

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University. / Typescript. Sponsor: Max R. Brunstetter. Dissertation Committee: Karl W. Bigelow, Paul W. F. Witt. Type B project. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 115-116).