Large classes that allow smaller amounts of instructor-student interaction have become more common in today's colleges. The best way to provide needed opportunities for students to overcome this lack of interaction with instructors remains unidentified. This research evaluated the use of video lecture capture (VLC) as a supplemental method for teacher-student interaction and what, if any, impact it and attendance have on student performance in large lecture courses. This ex post facto study conducted at a Northeastern research university utilized cognitive and andragogical frameworks to examine the relationships between the independent variables frequency of video viewing, quantity of videos viewed, and course attendance, as well as their impact on course performance in a large lecture course (N=329). Data sources included archival data from the learning management system and student survey responses. Analysis included a series of two-way ANOVA tests. The results indicated that the frequency of video viewing was found to have a significant positive effect on course performance (F = 3.018, p = .030). The number of VLC videos not viewed was also found to have a significant negative effect on course performance (F = 1.875, p = 0.016). Other independent variables were not found to have any significant main effect or interaction effect with the dependent variable, course performance. Findings from this research may be used by educators, students, and administrators planning course sizes and availability to better understand the relationship between these variables and how VLC can be used effectively in large lecture classes thus leading to improved efficacy in VLC use.

Detecting and interpreting sensory events, and remembering those events in in the service of future actions, forms the foundation of all behavior. Each of these pillars of the so-called "perception-action cycle" have been topics of extensive inquiry throughout recorded history, with philosophical foundations provided by early BCE and CE periods (especially during the Classic and Renaissance eras) leading to intensive empirical study in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Such experiments have described detailed (but incomplete) behavioral functions reflecting perception and memory, and have begun to unravel the extraordinarily complex substrates of these functions in the nervous system. The current dissertation was motivated by these findings, with the goal of meaningfully extending our understanding of such processes through a multi-experiment approach spanning the behavioral and neurophysiological levels. The focus of these experiments is on short-term memory (STM), though as we shall see, STM is ultimately inseparable from sensory perception and is directly or indirectly associated with guidance of motor responses. It thus provides a nexus between the sensory inputs and motor outputs that describe interactions between the organism and environment. In Chapter 2, previous findings from nonhuman primate literature describing relatively poor performance for auditory compared to visual or tactile STM inspired similar comparisons among modalities in humans. In both STM and recognition memory paradigms, accuracy is shown to be lowest for the auditory modality, suggesting commonalities among primate species. Chapters 3-5 examined STM processing in nonhuman primates at the behavioral and neurophysiological levels. In Chapter 3, a systematic investigation of memory errors produced by recycling memoranda across trials (proactive interference) is provided for the understudied auditory modality in monkeys. Such errors were ameliorated (but not completely eliminated) by increasing the proportions of unique memoranda presented within a session, and by separating successive trials by greater time intervals. In Chapter 4, previous results revealing a human memory advantage for audiovisual events (compared to unimodal auditory or visual events) inspired a similar comparison in monkeys using a concurrent auditory, visual, and audiovisual STM task. Here, the primary results conformed to a priori expectations, with superior performance observed on audiovisual trials compared to either unimodal trial type. Surprisingly, two of three subjects exhibited superior unimodal performance on auditory trials. This result contrasts with previous results in nonhuman primates, but can be interpreted in light of these subjects' extensive prior experience with unimodal auditory STM tasks. In Chapter 5, the same subjects performed the concurrent audiovisual STM task while activity of single cells and local cell populations was recorded within prefrontal cortex (PFC), a region known to exhibit multisensory integrative and memory functions. The results indicate that both of these functions converge within PFC, down to the level of individual cells, as evidenced by audiovisual integrative responses within mnemonic processes such as delay-related changes in activity and detection of repeated versus different sensory cues. Further, a disproportionate number of the recorded units exhibited such mnemonic processes on audiovisual trials, a finding that corresponds to the superior behavioral performance on these trials. Taken together, these findings reinforce the important role of PFC in STM and multisensory integration. They further strengthen the evidence that "memory" is not a unitary phenomenon, but can be seen as the outcome of processing within and among multiple subsystems, with substantial areas of overlap and separation across modalities. Finally, cross-species comparisons reveal substantial similarities in memory processing between humans and nonhuman primates, suggesting shared evolutionary heritage of systems underlying the perception-action cycle.

Introdução: danos ao sistema vestibular no nascimento ou na primeira infância podem ocorrer e impactar significativamente o desenvolvimento de uma criança em diversas áreas. A avaliação e o diagnóstico infantil na área da otoneurologia têm se revelado ainda como um desafio pela dificuldade de identificar as alterações vestibulares e pelo fato do desconforto dos exames vestibulares clássicos, que se potencializam para essa faixa etária. O avanço tecnológico tem proporcionado considerável progresso quanto à avaliação do reflexo vestíbulo-ocular (RVO) nessa população de modo menos invasivo e desconfortável por meio do video Head Impulse Test (vHIT). Objetivo: este trabalho se propõe a caracterizar o ganho do RVO para os canais semicirculares (CSC) horizontais e verticais em crianças hígidas quanto às variáveis sexo, diferença entre lados e faixa etária, bem como a aplicabilidade do vHIT. Metodologia: trata-se de um estudo clínico, observacional, transversal com análise de dados de modo descritivo e inferencial. Para a avaliação do RVO por meio do vHIT foi utilizado o equipamento Sistema de Impulso ICS Otometrics. A casuística incluiu 52 crianças hígidas na faixa etária de 5 a 10 anos de idade. Resultados: quanto ao ganho do RVO, observou-se diferença significativa em relação ao sexo para CSC posterior esquerdo, diferença significante do ganho entre lados para todos os CSC, mas não foi verificada correlação entre o ganho e a faixa etária. Em relação à aplicabilidade, foram observadas dificuldades na avaliação da população infantil no que diz respeito aos aspectos físicos e comportamentais, sendo comum a presença de artefatos nessa população. Conclusão: a caracterização do ganho do RVO para os CSC apresentou diferença significativa para a variável sexo, mas não para a variável faixa etária, e, quanto aos lados, verificou-se diferença significativa maior à direita. A caracterização da aplicabilidade do exame vHIT na população estudada evidenciou que apesar de demandar maior cuidado com a realização do exame, é possível minimizar efeitos causados pelos aspectos físicos e comportamentais, demonstrando que novas perspectivas da avaliação otoneurológica infantil são possíveis, tendo como aliado o vHIT. / Introduction: damage to the vestibular system at birth or in early childhood can occur and significantly impact the development of children in several areas. Otoneurologic evaluation and diagnosis in children are still a challenge due to the difficulty in identifying vestibular changes and the discomfort of typical vestibular assessments, which is worse for people in this age group. Technological advances have provided considerable progress in the vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR) assessment of such population in a less invasive and more comfortable way through the video Head Impulse Test (vHIT). Objective: this research aims to lay out the VOR gain characteristics for horizontal and vertical semicircular canals (SCC) in healthy children regarding the gender, the difference between sides, and age range variables, as well as the applicability of the vHIT. Methods: this is a cross-sectional, observational, clinical study with descriptive and inferential data analysis. The ICS Otometrics Impulse System was used for evaluating VOR through the vHIT. The sample included 52 healthy children aged 5 to 10 years. Results: regarding the VOR gain, there was a significant difference between genders for left SCC and a significant difference of the gain between sides for all SCC, but no correlation between gain and age group was found. In regard to the applicability, difficulties were observed in the evaluation of the child population with respect to physical and behavioral aspects, and the presence of artifacts was common in that population. Conclusion: defining the VOR gain for SCC showed a significant difference for the gender variable, but not for the age group variable. Regarding the sides variable, there was a significantly greater difference on the right. The laying out of the vHIT exam applicability in the studied population showed that, despite demanding greater care with the assessment, it is possible to minimize effects caused by the physical and behavioral aspects, demonstrating that it is possible to have new perspectives on the otoneurological evaluation of children, and vHIT is a valuable tool in that sense.

<p>Active safety systems for automobiles in the form of camera systems have evolved rapidly the last ten years, Autoliv Electronics in Linköping develops multiple such systems. In their development process there is a need for a Break out Box (BoB) to record and playback video and CAN data as if the camera system was used in an actual automobile. The aim of this thesis has been to develop a BoB for these camera systems. The work has been divided into three phases; identification of requirements, design of the BoB and implementation of a prototype. The project has addressed four known issues with the currently used BoB; bandwidth, modularity, synchronization and usability. The result is a new BoB which is based on an FPGA connecting to a PC over Gigabit Ethernet. The design is an extendible platform for multiple channels of video, CAN data, other serial data and future extensions. A prototype proves the design concept by successfully recording video for the Autoliv NightVision system onto a PC.</p>

This thesis is a preliminary study of the relative performance of the major speech compression techniques, Differential Pulse Code Modulation (DPCM) and Subband Coding (SBC) in the presence of transmission distortion. The combined effect of the channel distortions and the channel codec including error correction is represented by bursts of bit errors. While compression is critical since bandwidth is scarce in a wireless channel, channel distortions are greater and less predictable. Little to no work has addressed the impact of channel errors on perceptual quality of speech due to the complexity of the problem. At the transmitter, the input signal is compressed to 24 kbps using either DPCM or SBC, quantized, binary encoded and transmitted over the burst error channel. The reverse process is carried out at the receiver. DPCM achieves compression by removing redundant information in successive time domain samples, while SBC uses lower resolution quantizer to encode frequency bands of lower perceptual importance. The performance of these codecs is evaluated for BERs of 0.001 and 0.05, with the burst lengths varying between 4 and 64 bits. Two different speech segments - one voiced and one unvoiced are used in testing. Performance measures include two objective tests signal to noise ratio (SNR) & segmental SNR, and a subjective test of perceptual quality - the Mean Opinion Score (MOS). The results obtained show that with a fixed BER and increasing burst length in bits, the total errors reduce in the decoded speech thereby improving its perceptual quality for both DPCM and SBC. Informal subjective tests also demonstrate this trend as well as indicate distortion in DPCM seemed to be less perceptually degrading than SBC. / Graduation date: 1999

Thesis (Th. M.)--Dallas Theological Seminary, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 54-58).

A model was created in order to assist classical musicians, especially pianists, with the process of creating their own musical niches in order to achieve public recognition, build an audience following and experience financial gain. This blueprint involved creating six arrangements for the piano four-hand medium that were then self-recorded, self-marketed and self-distributed. This essay introduces the repertoire used for this project, five Argentinean tangos by Eduardo Arolas and a habanera by Sebastian Yradier and it also examines the criteria by which they were chosen. A discussion of the arrangements follows, focusing on the compositional techniques that were used. Next, the essay presents the methods employed to self-record, self-market and self-distribute the compilation as well as additional means available to independent musicians pursuing a similar endeavor. The discussion focuses on techniques that pertain to musicians who do not have the support of a record label or a music publisher. The conclusion of this study is that there are a number of accessible methods that independent musicians can employ in order to self-record, self-market and self-distribute their music. However, the level of success of such endeavors depends on the musicians' ability to create a high quality musical product, constantly interact with new audiences and employ various promotional methods. A recommendation for further study is enclosed.

The current study was an extension of research reported by Krohn (2010), which showed that daily credit for self-reported participation in designated credit units tended to balance participation across students (i.e., fewer non-participants, more credit-level participants, and fewer dominant participants). The purpose of the current study was to determine if similar results would be achieved by randomly selecting half of the discussion days in designated credit units for participation credit. The study was done in 3 large sections of an undergraduate class (approximately 54 students per class). Students self-recorded their in-class comments each day on specially designed record cards. At the end of each pre-selected unit, instructors randomly selected discussion days and awarded credit based on the number of comments made on the days randomly selected. Three credit points were given for each student’s first comment and two additional points for a second comment. The findings of the current study differed in several ways from those of Krohn’s (2010) comparison study. The differences mainly related to baseline percentages of different levels of participation. Compared to the current study, Krohn’s study had a higher percentage of non-participants, fewer credit-level participants, fewer frequent participants, and more dominant participants. The disparities between the baseline levels of Krohn’s study and the current study made treatment effects more difficult to achieve in the latter study. Nonetheless, there were fewer non-participants and more credit-level and frequent participants during credit units than in non-credit units. Secondarily, a survey was given at the beginning of the course to analyze student beliefs regarding participation. Using the same survey, Krohn (2010) extracted three primary factors: 1) Personal Benefits of Participation, 2) Expectation for Discussion in College Classes, and 3) Personal History and Confidence Regarding Participation. The same three factors were also examined separately and in combination in the current study. Results showed the three-factor model to predict student participation levels better than the total survey. In addition, students were given the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal at the onset of the course. A logistic regression indicated that exam and critical thinking scores, in combination, significantly predicted student participation levels.

With new technology come new possibilities for the creation of artistic works. The invention of sound recording at end of the nineteenth century enabled musical performances to be “written” in the same manner as traditional, printed literature. The status of records as a form of writing and, moreover, as the material for further writing is demonstrated in the work of two hip hop artists, DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist, who assemble new, heteroglossic texts out of a wide array of sampled records. Two concerts, Product Placement (2004) and The Hard Sell (2008) – both of which have been memorialized on DVD – serve as fruitful examples of the potential for artistic production enabled by technology. Indeed, the genre of turntablism, which involves the live manipulation of vinyl records, requires the usage of technology in ways not intended by its original developers – a recurrent theme throughout the history of sound recording. By transforming the turntable from a passive playback device into an active compositional tool, turntablism collapses the distance between consumption and production and so turns the listener into a performer. Furthermore, the exclusive usage of 45 rpm records as the source texts for the two sets dramatizes theories of intertextuality while simultaneously tracing the constraints placed on such artistic piracy by the copyright regime. These texts entail more than just their cited musical content; they also involve visual components. These include not only the video imagery that accompanies and comments on the records being played, but also the physical performance of the DJs themselves and the spectacle of the attending crowds whose response to the music constitutes part of the text itself. Following a theoretical and historical background that will situate these works within the history of hip hop and literature in general, this study will explicate these two multimedia texts and reveal how they demonstrate a concern not only with the history of sound recording, but also such issues as the influence of technology on cultural production, the complication of authorship through intertextuality, and the relationship between culture and commerce. Above all, however, both the form and content of these two performances also serve to highlight the value of physical media as historical artifacts in the face of increasing challenges from incorporeal digital media.

This thesis focuses on scientists and technologies brought together around the desire to improve fallible human memory. Based on extended ethnographic fieldwork, it considers interdisciplinary collaborations among experts who design recording and archiving technologies that seek to maintain, extend, and commemorate life. How are everyday experiences translated as information, and for what purpose? How are our habits of drinking tea, talking on the phone, driving to work, and reminiscing with old photographs, turned into something that can be stored, analyzed and acted upon? How might information be used in real time to supplement the living in a recursive feedback loop? By addressing these questions, I reveal how these memory banks are inherently tied to logics of capital, of stock and storage, and to logics of the technological where, when it comes to memory, more is more. The first sections that make up this dissertation shift in scale from the micro to the macro: from historical national endeavors that turned ordinary citizens into a sensors and collectors of the mundane, to contemporary computational projects designed to store, organize and retrieve vast amounts of information. The second half of this dissertation focuses on two extreme cases of lifelogging that make use of prototypical recording technologies: Gordon Bell, who is on a quest to record his life for the sake of increased objectivity, productivity, and digital posterity, and Mrs. B, a woman who suffers from amnesia and records her life in the hopes of leading a normal life in which she can share the past with loved ones. Through these case studies, I show how new recording technologies are both a symptom of, and a cure for, anxieties about time. By focusing on the design of new objects and by addressing contemporary debates on the intentions that govern the making of recording machines, I examine how technologies take shape, and how they inform understandings of memory and the self as well as notions of human disability and enhancement. In short, I show that the past, as well as the present and the future, are always discursively, practically, and technologically informed.