There is no abstract available for this dissertation.

The study gathered and analyzed data about the impact of interactive television on student achievement and attitude in high school physics classes. Students enrolled in a distance learning program using interactive television to teach physics were the study population. Data were obtained from eighty-five students at six remote sites and the originating site. Z-tests of the mean scores obtained by the study population on each section of the American Association of Physics Teachers/National Science Teachers Association (AAPT/NSTA) Introductory Physics Examination Version 1988R indicated the study population achieved at a level significantly lower than the test norming population in all four areas analyzed. A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA Model) was completed on achievement data arranged by group according to type of classroom monitoring. Group 1 had certified teachers acting as on-site facilitators; Group 2 had no on-site facilitators. There was no significant difference (p > .05) in achievement between the two groups. A survey was administered to determine the attitudes of students toward interactive television as the method of instruction and to assess student attitude toward the course content. Frequency and percentage distributions of responses to each question on the student survey were descriptive of student attitude. A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA Model) failed to demonstrate any significant difference at the .05 level in attitudes between the group in classrooms monitored by certified teachers and the group in classrooms which were self-monitored. Students enrolled in the interactive television physics course held slightly more positive than negative attitudes toward interactive television as the method of instruction. Student attitude toward interactive television was less positive after taking the course than prior to taking the course. Students in interactive television classes generally held positive attitudes toward the content of physics. / Department of Educational Leadership

Audio description is considered a relatively new research field, and in South Africa it is not yet being used extensively to make visual channels accessible to blind audiences. Therefore research in this field is necessary. The literature review of this study shows that very little empirical research has been done where real audiences were tested. This study set out to test the impact of audio described film on the transportation, identification and comprehension of real audiences. The focus was on mise-en-shot elements specifically and the impact they have on the transportation, identification and comprehension of audiences. A thorough analysis of the two scenes and their audio descriptions showed that in the audio description the emphasis tends to be on the visual elements and not on the way these elements are presented (which forms part of mise-en-shot elements). The way the film is showed to the audience contributes to the film‟s meaning and the director often shows the film to the audience in a specific way to reach a certain effect or feeling in the film. If these mise-en-shot elements are not presented in the audio description of the film it, the blind audience cannot be expected to experience an equivalent effect to that of the sighted audience. In order to test the impact of mise-en-shot elements a methodology based on Bortolussi and Dixon‟s (2010) Psyconarratology was used. Immersion and transportation studies (Green and Brock, 2000 and Tal-Or & Cohen, 2010) were used to develop an experiment for the study. Two groups of respondents were tested by exposing one group to all the available channels of the film and another to only the audio description and soundtrack. The initial hypothesis of this study was that the audience exposed to the audio description and soundtrack of the film would experience less transportation, identification and comprehension due to the loss of mise-en-shot elements in the film. By using T-tests and qualitative comparisons of the responses it was found that the lack of mise-en-shot elements in the film had no statistically significant impact on the transportation of the audience. Furthermore it was found that the lack of mise-en-shot elements has an impact on the identification of the audience. The group that had access to all the channels were more able to identify with the characters. In terms of comprehension it was discovered that there were bigger differences between the two groups in the scenes were the director relied on the visual elements of the film. Thus there are opportunities for further research pertaining to the identification of the audience. Furthermore it is recommended that further research be done to include other film genres as well as alternative ways of doing audio description. South Africa as well as other countries can gain tremendously from the use of audio description to make visual channels accessible to blind audiences. To reach such a goal further research is needed in the field, not only to master the art of audio describing but to also create awareness for this aid. / Thesis (MA (Language Practice))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2013

The majority of learners perform badly at the end of the formal schooling in South Africa. This point is verified by the poor results after almost every Grade 12 Final examination. The statistics of candidates who wrote the Senior Certificate examination at the end of 1996 reflect a 53,9% pass rate and that of 1997, 47,4% (Department of Education, 1999:12). It was also mentioned that the depicted scenario prompted a national outcry from several sectors of the South African community. This study shows that the grade 12 examination results did not reflect a significant change during the years that followed 1997. The study further pinpoints Science as a learning area that learners fail alarmingly. It also goes on to isolate electricity as an area that is difficult for both the learners and the educators to understand, thereby contributing enormously towards the very high failure rate mentioned earlier. The researcher also found that literature revealed that not much in-service education and training has been done to redress the malpractices that may be the contributory factors towards the high failure rate in question. The researcher introduced the audio-tutorial self-study programme to assess its influence on the knowledge and insight of Science educators. Conclusions are made and the recommendations are drawn based on the findings of the study. / Thesis (M.Ed.)--Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, 2002

The purpose of this study was to investigate under experimental conditions whether the self concepts of children could be improved through the use of videotape feedback as a stimulus for discussion in group counseling sessions.The ninety-nine subjects in this study were all of the fourth and fifth grade students at Burris Laboratory School, Muncie, Indiana. The study was conducted during the spring of 1977.Two classrooms were used as experimental groups and two were control groups. Each classroom contained both fourth and fifth grade students. The experimental groups participated in six group counseling sessions over a two week period. Videotapes were made of regular classroom activities and these tapes were used as a stimulus for group discussions one hour later. Discussions were guided by the principles of Grasser's Reality Therapy.The data collected for each subject was the total score obtained on the Piers-Harris Children's Self Concept Scale which was administered as a pre-test, a post-test and a two-week delayed post-test.The effects of the treatment were analyzed through the use of a 2 X 4 X 2 univariate analysis of covariance with repeated measures on the third factor. The pre-test scores were used as a covariate. All factors were considered to be fixed.A non-significant sex-by-treatment interaction was found (F=1.054, P<.373). Also, a non-significant test-bysex interaction was found (F=1.35, p(.26). Because there were no interactions, the effects of the treatment were interpreted directly by a contrast between the experimental and control groups (E1+ E2 - C1+ C2).The null hypothesis stated that there would be no significant differences between the experimental and control groups in the self concepts of the subjects as measured by the Piers-Harris Children's Self Concept Scale. A F ratio of 15.991 (p<.0002) allowed the null hypothesis to be rejected. Because of the degree of non-homogeniety of the groups, the significance was in the direction of the control groups who obtained higher means than the experimental groups. Examination of group means showed that the experimental groups were significantly lower on the pre-test scores, made larger gains during the treatment than the control groups, but still scored lower on the two post-tests than the control groups.The mean of the normative sample for the Piers-Harris Children's Self Concept Scale is 51.84. In this study the mean on the delayed post-test was 59.56 for the experimentalgroups and 67.02 for the control groups.Under the constraints of the study, the following conclusions were made based on the statistical analyses of the data:1.The treatment did not produce more significant change than that observed in the groups which receive treatment.2. As a group, the self concept scores of the students at Burris Laboratory School are higher than those of the normative group.3. There were no significant differences in self concept scores based on the sex of the subjects.4. Becoming familiar with the components of personality which make up the self concept, as defined by PiersHarris, appeared to have a positive effect on the subjects.5. All groups experienced gains in self concept scores during the five weeks of this study.Recommendations were made for further study to include a longer period of treatment, the use of a behavioral. checklist to determine the effects of the treatment, and the use of videotape feedback and the Piers-Harris Children's Self Concept Scale in classroom activities.

A novel framework based on cluster co-occurrence and graph theory for structure discovery is applied to audio to find new types of audio objects which enable the compression of an input signal. These new objects differ from those found in current object coding schemes as their shape is not restricted by any a priori psychoacoustic knowledge. The framework is novel from an application perspective, as it marks the first time that graph theory is applied to audio, and with regards to theoretical developments, as it involves new extensions to the areas of unsupervised learning algorithms and frequent subgraph mining methods. Tests are performed using a corpus of audio files spanning a wide range of sounds. Results show that the framework discovers new types of audio objects which yield average respective overall and relative compression gains of 15.90% and 23.53% while maintaining a very good average audio quality with imperceptible changes.

This dissertation presents a new metadata design, as part of a large digitization management system being developed, to assist in the consistent creation of digital libraries of phonograph records. The Metadata provides digital libraries with an effective tool for the description, discovery, management, control, delivery, and sharing of digital objects of phonograph record. The metadata design is the outcome of two pilot projects for the digitization of phonograph records that took place at the Marvin Duchow Music Library at McGill University. The new design offers an approach to maintaining and using digital sound and ensures the long-term viability of digital libraries of phonograph records. / The dissertation discusses key areas of preservation and addresses the most common retrieval problems of music in digital libraries. These problems include challenges in the digital context of bibliographic control, cataloging, distribution, and copyright protection. The dissertation revisits traditional cataloging approaches, summarizes historical music cataloging and metadata development, sets up preservation principles and rationales for digitizing phonograph records, and presents state-of-the-art techniques for preserving phonograph records in the digital domain. / The dissertation contains three main parts. The first is an introduction to the new metadata design for phonograph records. The second is a metadata dictionary, which assigns precise syntactic and semantic meanings to metadata elements, to guide digitizers working in libraries, archives, museums, and heritage sectors. These will be followed by two case studies of phonograph record digitization projects using the Metadata and the Data Dictionary. The dissertation concludes by examining three challenges that are critical to future development in both the preserving of and access to phonograph records: the issue of interoperability between different metadata standards, the need for usability and quality evaluation of digitization management systems, and the importance of further development in digital library retrieval services and tools.

Thesis (MDistance Ed) -- University of South Australia, 1994

This thesis presents a new approach to the visualization of audio files that simultaneously illustrates general audio properties and the component sounds that comprise a given input file. New audio segmentation and classification methods are reported that outperform existing methods. In order to visualize audio files, the audio is segmented (separated into component sounds) and then classified in order to select matching archetypal images or video that represent each audio segment and are used as templates for the visualization. Each segment's template image or video is then subjected to image processing filters that are driven by audio features. One visualization method reported represents heterogeneous audio files as a seamless image mosaic along a time axis where each component image in the mosaic maps directly to a discovered component sound. The second visualization method, video texture mosaics, builds on the ideas developed in time mosaics. A novel adaptive video texture generation method was created by using acoustic similarity detection to produce a resultant video texture that more accurately represents an audio file. Compared with existing visualization methods such as oscilloscopes and spectrograms, both approaches yield more accessible illustrations of audio files and are more suitable for casual and non expert users.

This thesis presents a new approach to the visualization of audio files that simultaneously illustrates general audio properties and the component sounds that comprise a given input file. New audio segmentation and classification methods are reported that outperform existing methods. In order to visualize audio files, the audio is segmented (separated into component sounds) and then classified in order to select matching archetypal images or video that represent each audio segment and are used as templates for the visualization. Each segment's template image or video is then subjected to image processing filters that are driven by audio features. One visualization method reported represents heterogeneous audio files as a seamless image mosaic along a time axis where each component image in the mosaic maps directly to a discovered component sound. The second visualization method, video texture mosaics, builds on the ideas developed in time mosaics. A novel adaptive video texture generation method was created by using acoustic similarity detection to produce a resultant video texture that more accurately represents an audio file. Compared with existing visualization methods such as oscilloscopes and spectrograms, both approaches yield more accessible illustrations of audio files and are more suitable for casual and non expert users.