Although nearly every secondary school English teacher includes film as part of the English/language arts curriculum, there is, to this point, nothing published about effectively studying the relationship between film adaptations and their print source texts in secondary school. There are several important works that inform film study in secondary English classrooms. These include Alan Teasley and Ann Wilder's Reel Conversations; William Costanzo's Reading the Movies and his updated version, Great Films and How to Teach Them; and John Golden's Reading in the Dark. However, each of these mention adaptation briefly if at all. Rather, they approach film as a text that students need to learn how to “read." While I certainly agree with this position, I argue that students also must learn how to productively investigate the relationship between films and their literary source texts. To make this case, I survey the field of adaptation theory generally, beginning with George Bluestone's seminal Novels into Film and moving towards contemporary theory, like Robert Stam's work, which suggests theoretical paradigms beyond fidelity analysis. I rely, particularly, on Mikhael Bakhtin's dialogism as a theoretical frame for studying adaptations in school. I also suggest four specific areas that act as foundations for successfully approaching adaptations with secondary English students: (1) economic analysis, (2) intertextualities (the matrix of cultural influences on a text), (3) Gérard Genette's notion of transtextuality (the relationship of one text to others), and (4) an expansion of adaptation to include the relationships of print texts to new media adaptations. In order to further develop ways that secondary school English teachers can specifically approach adaptation in their classrooms, I include two case studies. The first focuses on pairing Laurie Halse Anderson's award-winning young adult novel Speak with Jessica Sharzer's film adaptation. The second suggests methods for teaching Mary Shelley's Frankenstein along with James Whale's film adaptation. Because so little has been written about effectively incorporating film adaptations into the secondary school English curriculum, this project seeks not only to analyze the theoretical foundation for adaptation study, but also to suggest specific methodology that can be utilized by teachers.

This study examined winter habitat use and nesting ecology of greater sage grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) in Strawberry Valley (SV), Utah located in the north-central part of the state. We monitored sage grouse with the aid of radio telemetry throughout the year, but specifically used information from the winter and nesting periods for this study. Our study provided evidence that sage grouse show fidelity to nesting areas in subsequent years regardless of nest success. We found only 57% of our nests located within the 3 km distance from an active lek typically used to delineate critical nesting habitat. We suggest a more conservative distance of 10 km for our study area. Whenever possible, we urge consideration of nest-area fidelity in conservation planning across the range of greater sage grouse. We also evaluated winter-habitat selection at multiple spatial scales. Sage grouse in our study area selected gradual slopes with high amounts of sagebrush exposed above the snow. We produced a map that identified suitable winter habitat for sage grouse in our study area. This map highlighted core areas that should be conserved and will provide a basis for management decisions affecting Strawberry Valley, Utah.

Trauma-informed care is a relatively new construct in K-12 education, and districts across the United States are seeking avenues to meet the needs of their students. The COVID-19 pandemic elevated the need for districts to develop appropriate supports to address student and adult trauma. Traumatic events can affect a child’s mental, physical, social-emotional, and/or spiritual well-being (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration, 2011). Furthermore, children with an elevated risk of trauma may not be able to access these supports outside of the school setting (Baweja et al., 2015). Therefore, educational systems need to develop trauma-informed care models for schools that furnish a sense of safety and community so that students receive the necessary support. This evaluation aimed to identify how the moderating factors of district administrators, site administrators, climate and culture, and teacher capacity affect trauma-informed care via a multi-tiered system of support (MTSS) framework. It included a specific focus on Tier 1, universal access, to improve timely support for students. This formative program evaluation explored the impact of the moderating factors through the viewpoint of a newly created conceptual framework. I used qualitative and quantitative data sources to explore the multiple aspects of the phenomenon. The ARTIC-45 provided descriptive statistics about educators’ attitudes toward trauma-informed care. The observational data and analysis of the Panorama Education social-emotional learning (SEL) survey that assessed 3rd-12th students social-emotional well-being provided character to the evaluation. The data analysis yielded inconsistent results. The observational data strongly indicated a trauma-informed environment in which students were given clear expectations and engaged in positive reciprocal interactions with peers and adults. The ARTIC-45 data showed that administrators, teachers, and support staff responded favorably to trauma-informed care approaches. Though statistical significance could not be obtained due to the sample size constraint of being too small, the data provided context to the other data sources. For example, teacher capacity could not be quantified, but the data provided context to the overall staff capacity. The review of the archival and current SEL survey data showed that favorability among domains varied by site and grade level. The variations in students' social-emotional favorability can be related to their lived experiences and it is important to track over time to monitor how experiences, expressions, and feelings change over time. Students' perspectives regarding themselves and their environment differed from the observational data. This indicates that educators should not solely rely on observational data to determine students’ social-emotional well-being. Furthermore, an SEL survey can be used as a tool to understand students’ well-being and thus provide them with timely support. The evaluation determined that district administration, site administration, climate and culture and staff capacity can positively impact a multi-tiered, trauma-informed care environment. In these settings, student behavior and social-emotional well-being is viewed in a healing-centered manner. Districts can create a multi-tiered, trauma-sensitive culture and provide support to enhance teachers’ capacity to implement trauma-informed care, take advantage of administrative influence, develop community partnerships, and create a culture that is open to systematic change.

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Simulation and experiential training have been incorporated into medical school training for decades. The utilization of medical simulations has become an invaluable tool in healthcare education and training. However, circumstances such as limited resources, geographical constraints, or global health crises may hinder the feasibility of conducting in-person medical simulations. In these scenarios, virtual medical simulations emerge as a compelling alternative. While there are many ways to accomplish experiential-based learning, many faculty and students feel Socratic learning styles provide the best learning experience. As medical students had just finished a predominantly virtual preclinical year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the research was interested in understanding students’ perceptions of virtual and in-person experiential learning activities. The primary goal of this study is to compare medical students’ perceptions of the quality and value of in-person versus virtual experiential learning during their pediatric clerkship.

Missile Combat Crew members are officers in the United States Air Force responsible for operating nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles. They undergo on-the-job training as part of the curriculum necessary to progress in their careers and achieve higher levels of job responsibility. The curriculum they use is created and maintained by 20th Air Force Test and Training Section. This product is known as the Missile Combat Crew Commander Upgrade program, and it has received criticisms from stakeholders who use it for being out of date and failing to capture the necessary topics for ensuring adequate on the job training is being conducted. This project seeks to examine these critiques, break down the curriculum produced by 20th AF into stages (creation, implementation, and feedback) for evaluation, uses principles of user-oriented design drawing on design anthropology to suggest alternative methods for curriculum creation, and utilizes the results of a diagnostic survey to provide data-driven recommendations to 20th AF for future rewrites of their product based on feedback from the crew members who use their product in the field.

This dissertation provides empirical evidence for the effects of the fidelity of VR system components, and novel 3D interaction techniques for analyzing volume datasets. It provides domain-independent results based on an abstract task taxonomy for visual analysis of scientific datasets. Scientific data generated through various modalities e.g. computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), etc. are in 3D spatial or volumetric format. Scientists from various domains e.g., geophysics, medical biology, etc. use visualizations to analyze data. This dissertation seeks to improve effectiveness of scientific visualizations. Traditional volume data analysis is performed on desktop computers with mouse and keyboard interfaces. Previous research and anecdotal experiences indicate improvements in volume data analysis in systems with very high fidelity of display and interaction (e.g., CAVE) over desktop environments. However, prior results are not generalizable beyond specific hardware platforms, or specific scientific domains and do not look into the effectiveness of 3D interaction techniques. We ran three controlled experiments to study the effects of a few components of VR system fidelity (field of regard, stereo and head tracking) on volume data analysis. We used volume data from paleontology, medical biology and biomechanics. Our results indicate that different components of system fidelity have different effects on the analysis of volume visualizations. One of our experiments provides evidence for validating the concept of Mixed Reality (MR) simulation. Our approach of controlled experimentation with MR simulation provides a methodology to generalize the effects of immersive virtual reality (VR) beyond individual systems. To generalize our (and other researchers') findings across disparate domains, we developed and evaluated a taxonomy of visual analysis tasks with volume visualizations. We report our empirical results tied to this taxonomy. We developed the Volume Cracker (VC) technique for improving the effectiveness of volume visualizations. This is a free-hand gesture-based novel 3D interaction (3DI) technique. We describe the design decisions in the development of the Volume Cracker (with a list of usability criteria), and provide the results from an evaluation study. Based on the results, we further demonstrate the design of a bare-hand version of the VC with the Leap Motion controller device. Our evaluations of the VC show the benefits of using 3DI over standard 2DI techniques. This body of work provides the building blocks for a three-way many-many-many mapping between the sets of VR system fidelity components, interaction techniques and visual analysis tasks with volume visualizations. Such a comprehensive mapping can inform the design of next-generation VR systems to improve the effectiveness of scientific data analysis. / Ph. D.