SOIRE 2016

In the field of Public Relations, the notion of what defines the "identity" of an Organization is topic of increased discussion. (Balmer, 2001). Over the past few decades, the disciplines of marketing, public relations, graphic design, and business have all contributed to formulating a comprehensive definition of organizational identity that includes employees' values and practices, company logo and branding, and history and mission statement. This construct, although all encompassing, is largely theoretical. This project attempts to use the concept of organizational identity as an analytical tool to examine the corporate identity of the University of North Georgia. Research was conducted during the summer of 2016 and funded through a FUSE grant award. In-depth interviews and document analysis reveal an organization oriented towards the future, yet suffering from growing pains.

The University of North Georgia and Organizational Identity: The

This spring I had the opportunity to teach at our partner college, Liaocheng University, in China. The lab activities and lectures were designed as explicit modeling of science instructional strategies, physical and earth science topics, and some American educational philosophies. I was amazed at the degree to which college learning has vastly different spectrums of practice in different cultures. For the purposes of this presentation, a discussion will be made concerning the roles of self-discipline, divergent thinking, and creativity in classes in USA and China. I will also discuss the roles of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in how student perceive learning in general and their science educators specifically. Suggestions of how college instructors could shift their teaching paradigms will be made.

CREATIVITY IN EDUCATION; SHIFTING CULTURAL PARADIGMS

This presentation will feature a lecture recital educating and enlightening the participants about the wide range and scope of music for brass instruments, specifically the euphonium. The presentation will include a brief history on the euphonium and highlight a variety of repertoire from various historical periods. Material will span from showpieces transcribed from other instruments by the presenter that show the technical mastery of the instrument as well as lyrical music that demonstrates another side of musical performance. The presentation will also feature a major work specifically composed for UNG faculty member, Adam Frey. The commission and performance of new music represents current research in the music field.

Brass Fireworks - A Performance Presentation of Music for Brass and Piano

The Latino/a population has increased in Georgia and contiguous states in the past 30 years, which has changed the social dynamics in Prek‑12 education (Maxwell, 2015). As part of the Latino/a heritage, many Latino/a students are passionate about soccer and devote important time to playing this game, watching international soccer leagues and other activities, often with family members and close friends. Researchers on the effects of youth participation in sports (Team Up for Youth, 2009) have argued that sports can engage students with the task of learning as they make connections to other students and caring adults. In this presentation, I show how educators can develop culturally significant practices that trigger the Latino students’ interest and engage them in participating in science/soccer activities. Drawing on sociohistorical analysis (De Landa, 2006) and assemblage theory (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), theories that encourage experimentation considering different organization of elements, I co-developed a set of five soccer with science activities with a middle school science teacher and two university researchers. For these soccer and science activities, I use a modified structure of the science assessments developed by the Language‑rich Inquiry Science with English Language Learners (LISELL) project, a National Science Foundation funded project. A total of 20 Latino students from a local middle school participated in five soccer and science activities to promote and support the teaching and learning of the language of science investigation practices using English and Spanish. These five activities showed that soccer is a powerful tool that offered teachers and students possibilities for learning and engaging in science. I conclude with a set of recommendations for science teachers and researchers to explore learning activities based on the soccer and science relationship.

Engaging middle school Latino students in science learning using soccer activities

Diversity education deepens undergraduate students’ experiences, enhances personal growth, and fortifies communities (McLaughlin, McLaughlin & McLaughlin, 2015). While there have been notable efforts to increase inclusion of diversity and multiculturalism in disciplines across the university curriculum, these are often confined to specialized “diversity” courses or focus on only one aspects of diversity such as race, class or gender (Fuentes & Shannon, 2016). A more effective approach to diversity education involves analyzing the intersectionality of aspects of diversity in courses interwoven all across the curriculum (Deuze, 2006). This project seeks to interweave multiculturalism and diversity across the curriculum by using a multicultural teaching framework in two undesignated Communication courses. This framework consists of diversity teaching methods suggested by Feuntes and Shannon (2016) such as cultural self-assessment, shared definitions, and safe academic environments as well as Gunn, Peterson & Welsh’s (2015) case study approach. Change in students’ cultural awareness will be measured at the beginning and end of the term using the Cultural Diversity Awareness Inventory.
<h1>Works Cited</h1>
Deuze, M. (2006). Multicultural journalism education in the netherlands: A case study.Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 390-401.
Fuentes, M. & Shannon, C. (2016). The State of multiculturalism and diversity in
undergraduate psychology training. Society for Teaching of Psychology, 197-203.
Gunn, A., Peterson, B., & Welsch, J. (2015). Designing teaching cases that integrate course content and diversity issues. Teacher Education Quarterly, 67-81.
McLaughlin, J., McLaughlin, G., & McLaughlin J. (2015). Using composite metrics to measure Student Diversity in Higher Education. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management. 222-240.

Incorporating Diversity Training into Journalism and Public Relations Curriculum

With the rapid development of online social networks, exploring influence maximization for product publicity and advertisement marketing has attracted strong interests from both the academia and industry. However, due to the continuous network topology changing, updating the variation of an entire network moment by moment is resource intensive and often insurmountable. On the other hand, the classical influence maximization models IC and LT together with their derived varieties are all computationally intensive. Thus developing a solution for dynamic networks with lower cost and higher accuracy is in an urgent necessity. In this paper, a practical framework is proposed by only probing partial communities to explore the real changes of a network. Our framework minimizes the possible difference between the observed topology and the real network through several representative communities. Based on the framework, an algorithm that takes full advantage of divide-and-conquer strategy which reduces the computational overhead is proposed. The systemically theoretical analysis shows that the proposed effective algorithm could achieve provable approximation guarantees. Empirical studies on synthetic and real large scale social networks demonstrate that our framework has better practicality compared with most existing works and provides a regulatory mechanism for enhancing influence maximization.

Influence Maximization by Probing Partial Communities in Dynamic Social Networks

Studies have confirmed that critical thinking skills are necessary for a comprehensive education and successful business career, but methods for developing these skills are often missing in the classroom. The “Student Self-Initiated Challenge of Examination Questions” method is a pedagogical technique that encourages and increases critical thinking skills by allowing students to challenge objective examination questions through written feedback and classroom debate. The method was found to facilitate class discussion and participation while simultaneously reinforcing course content and was well liked by the students surveyed. Discussion and areas for future research follow presentation of data.

IMPROVING CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS: AUGMENTED FEEDBACK AND POST-EXAM DEBATE

When people manipulate moving objects such as motor vehicles or video game avatars, the sense of being "in control" depends on monitoring the predicted and actually perceived consequences of their actions. Previous work has shown how situational variables (e.g. predictability of action effects and achievement of goals) influence the sense of control during visuomotor tasks. However, relatively little is known about individual differences in action monitoring ability in non-clinical populations. This research investigated whether stable psychological traits predict sensitivity to loss of control by measuring response times to the onset of loss of control in a video game-like tracking task. Response times were correlated with individual differences on a battery of tests with theoretical links to action monitoring and sense of control.

Detection of visuomotor loss of control

This project digitally renders, in an interactive map, Victorian poet and essayist Matthew Arnold's first lecture tour of North America. In addition to accurately plotting the locations Arnold visited, users can click on each location to view archival images of these buildings, as well as archival ephemera related to Arnold's visit and lecture. Finally, in order to bring the past into communication with the present, each location has been photographed in its current condition. The project's purpose is to digitally render the reality of this important visit and bring its vanishing traces to light as well as expose opportunities for archival research. This project has been made possible through the Shott Scholar Award.

Mapping Matthew Arnold's First North American Lecture Tour

Gesture Analysis for Yoga Alignment (GAYA)
Paula Seffens1, Nataly Gonzalez1, William Seffens2
(1) Department of Health & Physical Education, University of North Georgia, Oakwood, GA.
(2) Physiology Department, Morehouse School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA.
Introduction
Yoga Therapy research has recently become the focus of rigorous scientific inquiry to understand and quantify its benefits for a wide variety of medical conditions. There remains health disparity between population segments who can readily access yoga classes and therapies. For difficult to reach individuals, yoga in an exergame format could be utilized in clinical or home environments. Objective of this study is to analyze yoga posture alignment using a gesture analysis program to produce a yoga exergame using the Microsoft Kinect sensor. We captured five yoga postures demonstrated by an advanced yoga teacher, as a gold standard for comparison purposes.
Purpose
The purpose of this research is to utilize existing gesture analysis software to provide skill improvement feedback to students in a college Yoga course setting.
AIM 1: To measure yoga posture alignment over the course of a 10-week period to provide objective feedback toward the goal of improved posture alignment.
AIM 2: To improve balance and kinesthetic awareness utilizing noninvasive measurements via an x, y, and z-point skeletal joint measurement platform.
AIM 3: To provide a hands on research experience for our Graduate Student Assistant in the department of Health & Physical Activity.
Results and Discussion 
Convenience sample of undergraduate students with various levels of yoga experience, was recorded executing the same five postures at the first, middle and final yoga class session. Based on preliminary results the greater the self-rated yoga experience level, the higher the gesture score. Higher gesture scores are closer postures to the “gold standard” (obtained by capturing the postures performed by yoga instructors). Because of the limited sample size it is difficult to conclude the accuracy of the VisualGestureBuilder program in determining the statistical confidence of the study participants experience with yoga. However, because of the inherent differences in participant’s ability to perform yoga at a beginning skill level, the study should yield useful measurements of the skill growth as students learn yoga.
Gesture analysis for yoga alignment training may be a useful tool for the development of home and clinical yoga therapy for hard to reach populations. The Kinect sensor provides a tool that could score the performance of yoga therapy and provide quantitate measures of posture adherence and improvement. Our future plans to increase the sample size, study the potential effects of body mass and age on posture alignment, and assess breathing, heart rate and limb stretch.

.repo-1h6ne0y{background:#ffffff;text-transform:uppercase;padding-right:1.5rem;}.repo-1h6ne0y:after{content:'';position:absolute;background:#adadad;transform:translateY(-50%);top:50%;left:0;width:100%;height:0.1rem;z-index:-1;}Items in this collection

Items in this collection