published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Computer Science and Information Systems / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

User education is one of the essential activities of the library to optimize the use of library services. This paper discusses the use of multimedia based videos for the promotion of library services and activities with the help of emerging trends and technologies and the power of Web 2.0 especially YouTube. Through this paper, it is tried to demonstrate the procedural aspects of promoting user education through developing multimedia based user education program and utilizing the services of YouTube as media of marketing and communication at Jaypee University of Information Technology, Solan, Himachal Pradesh, India.

The past decade has seen extensive research on audio classification algorithms which playa key role in multimedia applications, such as the retrieval of audio information from an audio or audiovisual database. However, the effect of background noise on the performance of classification has not been widely investigated. Motivated by the noise-suppression property of the early auditory (EA) model presented by Wang and Shamma, we seek in this thesis to further investigate this property and to develop improved algorithms for audio classification in the presence of background noise. / With respect to the limitation of the original analysis, a better yet mathematically tractable approximation approach is first proposed wherein the Gaussian cumulative distribution function is used to derive a new closed-form expression of the auditory spectrum at the output of the EA model, and to conduct relevant analysis. Considering the computational complexity of the original EA model, a simplified auditory spectrum is proposed, wherein the underlying analysis naturally leads to frequency-domain approximation for further reduction in the computational complexity. Based on this time-domain approximation, a simplified FFT-based spectrum is proposed wherein a local spectral self-normalization is implemented. An improved implementation of this spectrum is further proposed to calculate a so-called FFT-based auditory spectrum, which allows more flexibility in the extraction of noise-robust audio features. / To evaluate the performance of the above FFT-based spectra, speech/music/noise and noise/non-noise classification experiments are conducted wherein a support vector machine algorithm (SVMstruct) and a decision tree learning algorithm (C4.5) are used as the classifiers. Several features are used for the classification, including the conventional mel-frequency cepstral coefficient (MFCC) features as well as DCT-based and spectral features derived from the proposed FFT-based spectra. Compared to the conventional features, the auditory-related features show more robust performance in mismatched test cases. Test results also indicate that the performance of the proposed FFT-based auditory spectrum is slightly better than that of the original auditory spectrum, while its computational complexity is reduced by an order of magnitude. / Finally, to further explore the proposed FFT-based auditory spectrum from a practical audio classification perspective, a floating-point DSP implementation is developed and optimized on the TMS320C6713 DSP Starter Kit (DSK) from Texas Instruments.

<p>Digital games are marketed, mass-produced, and consumed by an increasing number of people and the game industry is only expected to grow. In response, post-secondary institutions in the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US) have started to create game degree programs. Though curriculum theorists provide insight into the process of creating a new program, no formal research contextualizes curriculum planning for game degree programs. </p><p> The purpose of this research was to explore these processes when planning undergraduate game degree programs. The research methodology included an explanatory mixed-methods approach, using a quantitative survey of participants in the UK and the US, followed by an interview of several participants selected on the basis of their institution's demographics. The study provides insight into the curriculum planning process, including factors that influence the final program content, and a list of recommendations for educators, trade associations, and the games industry to improve game degree programs. </p>

<p> Based on the community of practice theory by Lave and Wenger this quantitative non-experimental study investigated the relationship between economic trust and sense of community of members who participate in virtual communities of practice to help them find answers to work related issues. The Classroom Community Scale and the Economic Trust Scale was the survey instrument utilized in this study. The participants in the study numbered 108 with their ages ranging from 18 to 65. Participants were working adults who currently used virtual community of practices for work related issues. The data collected in the study were analyzed using Pearson correlation and descriptive statistics. The results of the study found a significant correlation between economic trust and sense of community. The study also analyzed the two sub-constructs of sense of community, which are learning and connectedness to determine if a correlation existed with economic trust. The findings showed that learning was not significantly impacted by trust but connectedness was. </p>

<p> I conducted an ethnography of internet entrepreneurs building startups in Mexico. I selected this case as representative of how people engage in technology innovation in middle-income countries. The number of communities of internet entrepreneurs building startups in these countries is exploding, empowered by social media, cloud technologies, and new software frameworks and methodologies. However, while entrepreneurs in the main centers of innovation, such as Silicon Valley, have crucial social, cultural, economic, and material resources to build high-impact startups, these resources are often not present in middle-income countries. I define those resources as innovation infrastructures, stable and dependable resources necessary to systematically conduct technology innovation activities. Entrepreneurs in middle-income countries have a double challenge of excelling at their startups, and creating innovation infrastructures. Mexican entrepreneurs worked as a community to build innovation infrastructures such as technical and entrepreneurship interest groups, learning and networking events, and diverse social media applications to connect with local and global networks of innovation. Combining these infrastructures, this community set off key learning processes to build a stronger startup culture in their country. I used a participant-observer approach, following entrepreneurs across a variety of online and offline locales. To understand the practice of building innovation infrastructures, I helped organize events and spaces to promote the startup culture in Mexico. My findings contribute to understanding technology innovation activities in middle-income countries, explaining how innovation infrastructures initiate key learning processes to create a strong startup culture. The understanding of these infrastructures provides a solid empirical foundation for designing technologies, initiatives, and policies to cultivate new innovation communities in new places and contexts.</p>

<p> Astronomy is becoming a forgotten science, which is evident by its relatively low enrollment figures compared to biology, chemistry, and physics. A portable inflatable planetarium brings relevance back to astronomy and offers support to students and educators by simulating realistic astronomical environments. This study sought to determine if learning is improved in an inflatable planetarium by adhering to the design principles of the cognitive theory of multimedia learning (CTML), specifically the coherence principle, in an authentic classroom. Two groups of 5^th grade students of similar ability were purposefully assigned using a 1-teacher-to-many-students format with mean lesson lengths of 34 minutes. The experimental group was differentiated with <i>seductive details</i>, defined as interesting but irrelevant facts that can distract learning. The control group (<i> n</i> = 28), with seductive details excluded, outperformed the experimental group (<i>n</i> = 28), validating the coherence principle and producing a Cohen's effect size of medium practical significance (<i>d</i> = 0.4). These findings suggest that CTML, when applied to planetarium instruction, does increase student learning and that seductive details do have a negative effect on learning. An adult training project was created to instruct educators on the benefits of CTML in astronomy education. This study leads to positive social change by highlighting astronomy education while providing educators with design principles of CTML in authentic settings to maximize learning, aid in the creation of digital media (astronomical simulations/instructional lessons for planetariums) and provide valuable training for owners of inflatable planetariums with the eventual goal of increasing student enrollment of astronomy courses at the local level.</p>

Providing high-quality assessment feedback for learners is one of the most important activities faculty can do to positively affect learning. Recent advancements in information, communication, and multimedia technologies present opportunities for us to examine how, when, and where we provide assessment feedback. Yet, a scan of the academic research literature shows that technologies are used widely for teaching in higher education, but not necessarily for assessment. This exploratory study utilized an inductive, naturalistic inquiry approach to investigate student perceptions of receiving assessment feedback in digital multimedia format. Findings revealed that students reported positive effects on their cognitive, affective, and psychomotor learning through what they perceived as regularly occurring student-faculty interaction. Although this study had a relatively small and homogeneous sample, these findings indicate that providing digital multimedia assessment feedback asynchronously, online, has the potential to enhance faculty-student interactions, while contributing to student learning, satisfaction, and motivation.

High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) is a cellular system that was standardized by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). HSDPA can support data rates of up to 14.4 Mbps through the use of a shared channel. Due to its high transmission rates, the highly popular multimedia applications are converging over this network. Moreover, as the shared channel is assigned to a single user in a given time interval, the scheduling decision is considered as a crucial one. Conventional HSDPA scheduling schemes utilize the fluctuations in channel condition to maximize system throughput by selecting users with relatively good radio conditions. However, this raises the issue of fairness as users with relatively poor channel conditions might not be served and consequently may suffer from starvation. Furthermore, Real-Time (RT) applications have strict delay constraints and require that packets are transmitted within a certain delay threshold. In this thesis, a Delay Based Scheduler (DBS) is proposed for HSDPA which aims at minimizing the average queuing delay at the packet scheduler without compromising system throughput and fairness. In addition, the scheme can balance the tradeoff between throughput maximization and the minimization of queuing delay through the attunement of a parameter, thus allowing the service provider to choose between these two metrics. The DBS maintains the delay constraints of RT applications by defining delay thresholds for each traffic class and dropping packets that exceed their delay limit. The DBS accommodates Quality of Service (QoS) prioritization by defining and utilizing desired QoS parameters in the scheduling assignment. Finally, it was mathematically shown that the DBS can converge to a Non-Real-Time (NRT) scheme known as the Max CIR algorithm, allowing the scheduler to support RT and NRT applications simultaneously. The performance of the DBS was evaluated and compared to other well known schemes. It was found that the DBS can minimize the aggregate queuing delay of the system and maintain similar throughput and fairness. / Thesis (Master, Computing) -- Queen's University, 2007-08-15 16:12:36.22

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