This study reviews characteristics and needs of struggling readers from different age groups. It summarizes special needs characterizing english language learners in relation to reading remediation programs and compare such programs relative effectiveness for younger and older elementary students at various levels of English proficiency.

The thesis is focused on reducing number of nonconformities using quality tools in the company engaged in dyeing and finishing of textile materials. The aim is a proposal of nonconformities management system. Based on analysis of the current method solving nonconformities are designed registration processes of internal nonconformities and complaints, which are followed by evaluation of nonconformities. The proposal will result in a systematic approach in solving of nonconformities.

Nontraditional students enrolled in online courses tend to drop out within their first year because they do not have the basic literacy skills or essential college skills needed for success. They often need the guidance of an online instructor. The purpose of this case study was to explore the perceptions of instructors and students about the effectiveness of Skype as a scaffolding tool for increasing academic achievement for underprepared students in online remedial English composition courses through interactions with their instructor. The conceptual framework included Bruner's cultural-psychological theory of education, Vygotsky's social constructivist theory, and Siemens's connectivism theory. The study was centered on 4 research questions; the first 2 focused on students' and instructors' perceptions of student writing based on student-instructor Skype interactions, and the last 2 concentrated on students' and instructors' perceptions of Skype's effectiveness to scaffold English composition skills to remedial online students. The data sources were 6 student interviews, 2 instructor interviews, and 12 audio recordings of Skype sessions. Data were analyzed for patterns and themes using open coding. The key findings were that students and instructors perceived the Skype interactions created changes in students' writing because of ease of use, indispensableness, rapport, and skill acquisition. This study may affect positive social change by informing online instructors and other personnel of online institutions of higher education about the importance of real-time interactions between students and instructors and providing services for underprepared students using Skype to help enhance their learning of critical writing skills.

The purpose of this research was to test a strategy which uses music-related concepts to teach math. A quasi-experimental study of two high school remedial geometry sections was conducted during a review lesson of ratio, proportion, and cross multiplication. A pretest was given to both groups. Then, Group A received normal textbook instruction while Group B received the treatment, Get the Math in Music, which is an online activity involving proportional reasoning in a music-related context. Afterwards, a posttest was given to both groups. Pretest and posttest scores were used to compare gains in subject knowledge between the groups. Then a second evaluation of the treatment was conducted. Group A received the treatment and took a post-posttest. Score gains for Group A before and after receiving the treatment were compared. After these tests, all participants took a survey to determine if their appreciation of math grew as a result of the treatment. Finally, interviews were conducted to provide better understanding of the results. The research questions of this study were: to what extent does the integration of Get the Math in Music improve students' academic performance in a remedial geometry review of ratio, proportion, and cross multiplication, and to what extent does participation in the Get the Math activity improve students' attitudes towards math? My hypotheses were that students would perform significantly better on a subject knowledge test after receiving the treatment, and that all students would have a more positive attitude towards math after receiving the treatment. Quantitative results did not triangulate to support or refute these hypotheses. Greater improvement from pretest to posttest was statistically correlated with Group B, which was the group first receiving the treatment. But later, between posttest and post-posttest Group A did not show statistically significant greater gains after receiving the treatment. Surveys results showed that students did not necessarily like math any more after the treatment. Interviews revealed that several of these students were apathetic to geometry in particular, if not to math in general. The case of one student's improvement suggested that positive teacher-student relationships are more effective than any particular method to increase academic performance and student engagement. Survey results were consistent with earlier psychological studies claiming teenagers care about music. Additional studies in the future on the merits of using music to teach high school math would be useful. Claims that proportional reasoning is challenging were supported. It would be beneficial to evaluate the treatment in an Algebra or Pre-Algebra setting when students first study proportions.

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The purpose of this research was to document the types of contextual approaches used in developmental education in the California community colleges and compare the effectiveness of those contextual courses to standard basic skills courses. The study used a mixed method design to identify colleges and courses using basic skills math instruction in the context of an occupational program. Survey respondents reporting contextual basic skills math courses provided course materials as evidence of contextualization and the basic skills math level. Logistic regressions were used to analyze student level data from the California community college system office database for contextual and non-contextual basic skills math courses identified at 34 of the responding semester colleges. Contextualization of pre-algebra mathematics was shown to increase the likelihood of successful remediation, accelerated entry into college-level coursework, and success in college-level and transferrable coursework for students in the California community colleges. The increased likelihood of success in college-level courses for students in the contextualized instruction group was evident in both the initial semester when the math course was taken and the subsequent semester. Contextual math instruction was found to be most effective for Black, Hispanic, and Other Non-White students. While there was no significant difference for White students, Asian students were more likely to pass standard basic skills math courses than they were contextual math courses. The research also documents the scarcity of this effective format of remediation in the California community colleges. The research suggests that recent policy changes may be contributing to this scarcity. Policies and practices to direct students into standard math sequences that meet transfer course prerequisites are not only increasing the scarcity of these types of innovative ways to provide engaging remedial coursework but are moving students into remediation that almost guarantees limited success at the community college.

Information and communication technologies are being implemented more than ever in the power industry in order to make smarter power grids, termed as cyber-physical power systems (CPPSs). Along with the privileges of such modern power networks like reducing the total operation cost for end-use customers, they may be negatively affected by cyberattacks, above all false data injection (FDI) attacks as they are easier to be performed. As a case in point, an adversary can detour security systems, penetrate into the cyber layer of a typical CPPS, and manipulate the information, finally leading to security threats. Although prevention and detection mechanisms are significant tools to be utilized by power system operators to improve the reliability of such systems against cyberattacks, they cannot ensure the security of power grids since some FDI attacks might be designed to bypass the detection stage. Hence, a more powerful tool will be required, which is called remedial action scheme (RAS), to be implemented by power system operators to recover the targeted power grid in a timely manner. Toward this end, different RAS frameworks are presented in this dissertation in transmission, distribution, and microgrid levels to highlight the effectiveness of such reaction mechanisms in case of cyber threats targeting modern power systems. In the transmission level, optimal power flow (OPF) integrated with thyristor controlled series capacitor (TCSC) have been utilized to design a RAS to mitigate the negative impacts of FDI attacks, resulting in system congestion or power outages. In the distribution level, system operators take advantage of static VAR compensator (SVC) through solving a customized version of distribution feeder reconfiguration (DFR) problem to mitigate voltage violations in the form of overvoltages and undervolatges, caused by FDI cyberattacks. In light of the fact that some FDI attacks bypass the employed detection methods, it is crucial to prepare in advance for such scenarios. Hence, in this dissertation, a real-world framework is also proposed for mitigating false data injection (FDI) attacks targeting a lab-scale wind/PV microgrid and resulting in power shortage. The proposed RAS is developed as a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testbed within the cyber-physical structure of the smart microgrid. Finally, as a prerequisite of the proposed intelligent RAS, which is able to be used on different levels of a CPPS, power system operator is being in attacker’s shoe to scrutinize different scenarios of cyberattacks to make an initial archive set. The design of such mechanisms incorporates long-short-term memory (LSTM) cells into a deep recurrent neural network (DRNN) for the processing of archived data, termed intelligent archive framework (IAF), identifying the proper reaction mechanisms for different FDI cyberattacks. To react to cyberattacks for which similar pre-investigated remedial measures were not saved in the IAF, a power flow analysis is considered to a) examine the interdependency between transmission and distribution sectors and b) generate appropriate RASs in real time.

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No description available.