Diaries are private documentations of people’s lives. They contain descriptions of events, thoughts, fears, and desires. While diaries are usually kept in private, published ones, such as the diary of Anne Frank, show that they bear the potential to give personal insight into events and into the emotional impact on their authors. We present a visualization tool that provides insight into the Bergen-Belsen memorial’s diary corpus, which consists of dozens of diaries written by concentration camp prisoners. We designed a calendar view that documents when authors wrote about concentration camp life. Different modes support quantitative and sentiment analyses, and we provide a solution for historians to create thematic concepts that can be used for searching and filtering for specific diary entries. The usage scenarios illustrate the importance of the tool for researchers and memorial visitors as well as for commemorating the Holocaust.

There has been little research which shows that students use critical thinking skills when they write. The use of journal writing has been studied for a variety of purposes, but little evidence exists that journal writing can enhance critical thinking skills. The writing assignments presented in this study were designed to enhance the critical thinking skills of college students enrolled in a reading methods course at a small college in southern West Virginia. Case studies were used to describe the critical thinking skills used by the four participating students. Each of the six writing assignments was developed to elicit as many critical thinking responses as the student could write during the time allotted in class. All of the writing assignments were completed within the framework of the reading class, and two of them were completed as collaborative group work. Twenty critical thinking skills were used as the criteria for examining the responses that students used in their writing. The twenty skills were placed in these four categories: Analyzing Arguments/Issues which included five critical thinking skills; Clarifying Information which included four critical thinking skills Inferring which included six critical thinking skills; and Evaluating Arguments/Issues which included five critical thinking skills. These twenty critical thinking skills were coded so that they could be easily recorded on tables. Findings indicated that the four participating students used more Inferring and Analyzing skills than they did the Clarifying and Evaluating skills. All of the skills were used at least one time in the six assignments. Students praised the journal for giving them an opportunity to "freely express ourselves,·' / Ed. D.

Self-report retrospective estimates of sleep behaviors are not as accurate as prospective estimates from sleep diaries, but are more practical for epidemiological studies. Therefore, it is important to evaluate the validity of retrospective measures and improve upon them. The current study compared sleep diaries to two self-report retrospective measures of sleep, the commonly used Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and a newly developed sleep questionnaire (SQ), which assessed weekday and weekend sleep separately. It was hypothesized that the new measure would be more accurate than the PSQI because it accounts for variability in sleep throughout the week. The relative accuracy of the PSQI and SQ in obtaining estimates of total sleep time (TST), sleep efficiency (SE), and sleep onset latency (SOL) was examined by comparing their mean differences from, and correlations with, estimates obtained by the sleep diaries. Correlations of the PSQI and SQ with the sleep diaries were moderate, with the SQ having significantly stronger correlations on the parameters of TST, SE, and sleep quality ratings. The SQ also had significantly smaller mean differences from sleep diaries on SOL and SE. The overall pattern of results indicated that the SQ performs better than the PSQI when compared to sleep diaries.

The aim of this study is to reveal how LBD adheres to postmodern tenets while also being ultimately suspicious of these principles. This suspicion of postmodern principles is reflected in the interaction between the main subject of the videos, Lizzie Bennet, and the audience. This examination invokes the questions of when, where, and how the audience experiences LBD. This illuminates the manner in which LBD functions as a postmodern literary text and how this text is critical of its digital composition. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2014. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

This thesis investigates undergraduate experiences of studying within a blended learning environment at a UK university in the first decade of the 21st century. Blended learning in this context comprises the use of institutionally provided technologies including a university-wide managed learning environment, alongside campus-based classroom teaching to support student learning. The personal ownership of technologies and their importance for the student learning experience is also considered. The University of Hertfordshire has promoted itself as a ‘blended learning institution’ since 2005 and this study considers what blended learning means and how students use information technology to support their learning. The study approaches the student experience of blended learning by considering three constituent themes: the student, their HE study and their use of technology. The preliminary study for this work used student constructed reflective video and audio diaries over a period of 18 months. Subsequently a new conceptual framework was drawn up by the researcher. This provided a matrix structure with which to explore through interviews with students their uses of technology for learning, and the relationship with approaches to pedagogy. The analysis of the interviews has provided a snapshot of students’ experiences of pedagogy and technology use across their studies. A Venn diagram was used to explore the three themes and provide a representation of the extent to which technology is seen by students as a part of their everyday lives whether for study or leisure. The student experiences reported here demonstrated a high degree of dependence on technology overall in both their personal and study lives. Their preferences were for a learning environment which included both the taught campus–based experience and the opportunity for easy online access to materials and supplementary activities to support their studies twenty four hours a day. As the students reported on their ‘maturing’ as learners during the course of the study, they described increasingly sophisticated online searching strategies and independent approaches to their learning regardless of their personal pedagogic preferences. Garrison and Vaughan assert that the ‘ideal educational transaction is a collaborative constructivist process that has inquiry at its core’ (2008:14). The outcome of this study presents a more complex view of the student experience of pedagogy in Higher Education. While recent research has reported on the student experience of either technology or pedagogy, the unique contribution of this study is its consideration of both pedagogy and the use of information technology from the viewpoint of the student experience.

This thesis examines the way genocide leaves marks in the writings of targeted people. It posits not only that these marks exist, but also that they indicate a type of psychological resistance. By focusing on the ways Holocaust diarists depicted Nazi perpetrators, and by concentrating on the ways language was used to distance the victim from the perpetrator, it is possible to see how Jewish diarists were engaged in alternate and subtle, but nevertheless important, forms of resistance to genocide. The thesis suggest this resistance on the part of victims is similar in many ways to well-known distancing mechanisms employed by perpetrators and that this evidence points to a “crisis of imagination” – for victims and perpetrators alike – in which the capability to envision negation and death, and to identify with the “Other” is detrimental to self-preservation.

Indian cities have been witnessing rapid transformation due to the synergistic effect of industrialisation, flourishing-economy, motorisation, population explosion, and migration. The alarming increase in travel demand as an after effect of the transformation, and the scarcity in transport infrastructures have exacerbated urban transport issues such as congestion, pollution, and inequity. Due to the escalating cost of transport infrastructure and the scarcity of resources such as space, there has been an increasing interest in promoting sustainable transportation policy measures for the optimum use of existing resources. Such policy measures mostly target the activitytravel behaviour of individuals to bring about desired changes in the transport sector. However, the responses of individuals to most of the measures are complex or unknown. The current ‘commute trip-based’ aggregate travel demand analysis strategy followed in most of the Indian cities is inadequate for providing basic inputs to understand the activity-travel behaviour of individuals under such policy interventions. Furthermore, the current analysis strategy also ignores the activitytravel behaviour of non-workers – who include homemakers, unemployed, and retired individuals – whose inclusion to transportation planning is relevant when the proposed policies are mostly ‘citizen-centric’. Analysis of activity-travel behaviour of non-workers provide important inputs to transportation planning as their activity-travel behaviour, and responses to transportation policies are different from that of workers. However, case studies exploring the activity-travel behaviour of non-workers from Indian cities are very limited. Appraising the practical importance of this subject, the current research undertakes a comprehensive analysis of the activity-travel behaviour of non-workers from a developing country’s context. To fulfil the goal, a series of empirical analysis are conducted on a primary activity-travel weekday survey data collected from Bangalore city. The analysis provides insightful findings and interpretations consistent with a developing country’s perspective. The day-planner format of time use diary, which was observed to have satisfactory performances in developed countries, is apparently have inferior performances in a developing country’s context. Further, the face-to-face method of survey administration is observed to have higher operating and economic efficiencies compared to the drop-off and pick-up method. The comprehensive analysis of activity-travel behaviour of non-workers indicate that comparing with their counterparts in the developed world (e.g. the U.S.), non-workers in Bangalore city are observed to have lower activity participation level (in terms of time allocation and number of stops), higher dependency on walking, lower trip chaining tendency, and a distinct time-of-day preference for departing to activity locations. On the other hand, the analysis shows similarities (mode use and trip chaining) and differences (time allocation and departure time choice) with the findings of the case studies from the developing world (e.g. China). Activity-travel behaviour of non-workers belonging to low-income households is characterised by lower activity participation level, higher dependency on sustainable transport modes, and lower trip chaining propensity, compared to other two income groups (middle and high-income groups). The research also suggests that built environment measures have their highest impacts on non-workers’ travel decisions related to shopping. Finally, the joint analysis of activity participation and travel behaviour of non-workers indicate that in-home maintenance activity duration drives the time allocation and travel behaviour of non-workers, and non-workers trade in-home discretionary activity duration with travel time. The joint analysis also shows that the time spent on children’s and elders’ activity is an important time allocation of its own. Keywords: Activity-travel behaviour, Non-worker, Time Use, Income Groups, India

Though feminist scholars criticize Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones series as they feel that Bridget’s diary minimizes her work, close analysis reveals that Bridget’s work is equally important to her as her relationships. The novels charts Bridget’s linear progression toward autonomy and creative freedom, and her work mistakes function as ironic commentary on the creative industries. Though she critiques the entertainment industry, she validates its accessibility to a variety of audiences, particularly through adaptations. Throughout the series, Bridget documents her own life into her diary, and, in the final two novels, adapts her past diaries for a new purpose. The diary form departs from Austen’s more distanced narrator as well as from the traditional scholarship on the diary, which dictates the diary as a way to work through trauma. Fielding alters the diary form, and through her use of interiority, creates a complex protagonist whose success does not make her inaccessible.

This thesis explores the ways in which the television adaptations of Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, and The Vampire Diaries become more homogenized during the adaptation process, thus contributing to an implied exclusivity from which Alloy, Inc.—the media and marketing company that owns these products—might benefit. This paper points out the ways in which the three products become structurally similar to one another during the adaptation process through the implementation of soap opera conventions. An exploration of consumption and class in each of the three works reveals an emphasis on class-based exclusivity in the adaptation process. Finally, a focus on portrayals of race within the source texts and their respective adaptations reveals the ways in which African American characters are presented as invisible, outsiders, or antagonists, thus creating products that become more exclusive on a race basis.

This Diploma thesis deals with the use of diaries from the Terezín Ghetto in project teaching. Their use should be made through a series of worksheets designed for project teaching. The benefits and success of worksheets were tested on several groups of elementary and secondary schools. The first chapter is devoted to theoretical introduction to the issue of projects and project-based teaching, the following chapter discusses the history of Terezín, the third chapter deals with the Terezín diaries and their authors, in the fourth chapter are placed excerpts of diaries with the relevant historical context. Into the last chapter are included worksheets created on the basis of excerpts from the diaries, their solutions and evaluation for their success by students. The last pages are devoted to the work attachment list and a list of references and online resources. The work demonstrates that diaries are a good source for creating worksheets about everyday life in the Terezín Ghetto and that they bring to learning new ways of work and wider view of the issues being discussed.