Learning in a multimedia environment puts many demands on a learner's limited working memory, but this can become even more demanding as the level of distraction increases in a lesson. What has not been investigated much in previous literature is whether higher levels of distraction in lessons are more harmful to some learners than others. This…

Graph data, especially large graph data, come up in many domains, such as social networks, the map of science, biological data, and even knitting! This presents a problem when we consider visualizing these structures. Layouts must be chosen carefully so that the structure of the graph is visible. Some graphs are large enough and connected enough…

This mixed methods study investigated the effectiveness of a novel educational framework, Creative Teacher Preparation (CTP), in enhancing the creative teaching abilities of undergraduate education students during field-based learning. The study focused on pre-service teachers enrolled in an undergraduate program designed for initial…

The creation of new knowledge in the form of scientific models is a cornerstone of the process of science. In physics laboratory instruction, students are very often stuck in a confirmatory mindset; they have been conditioned to believe that the role of experimentation in the classroom and in the world is to verify known facts. This mindset is…

The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the mechanisms involved in phonetic learning of an unfamiliar accent, focusing on understanding what processes underlie changes to phonetic category structure, how such learning affects subsequent online lexical processing, and whether the same mechanisms that underlie learning for a single speaker…

This dissertation detailed the ways by which stakeholder interactions affected interdisciplinary curriculum development in the novel field of esports at Mideast State University. Due to the prevalence of esports in higher education, the sudden popularity of the esports field, and the role of esports in an already overloaded curriculum space, this…

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often demonstrate difficulty communicating with others, and this may impact the extent to which they can engage in language during play. Previous researchers have used interventions to increase commenting during play with caregivers, siblings, and adult play partners. In these previous studies,…

The main question that this thesis addresses is: in what way does structural information enter into the processing of long-distance dependencies? Does it constrain the computations, and if so, to what degree? Available experimental evidence suggests that sometimes structurally illicit but otherwise suitable constituents are accessed during…

How do individuals create a knowledge base over a lifetime? Charles Darwin left detailed records of every book he read from "The Voyage of the Beagle" to just after publication of "The Origin of Species." Additionally, he left copies of his drafts before publication. I use these records to build a case study of how reading and…

Today's American public schools are expected to promote deeper learning and cultivate 21st-century skills in order to achieve equity and excellence for all students. Yet these goals, and the intellectually ambitious instruction they demand, fall far from the status quo of the schools most students attend, particularly in high-poverty school…

The COVID-19 pandemic created a worldwide disruption to the educational system that shuttered traditional classrooms and immediately shifted to virtual teaching and learning. The purpose of this qualitative research study was to explore how novel virtual teaching experiences contributed to primary teachers' perceptions of self-efficacy during the…

This dissertation evaluates the untested assumption that the individuation of events into units matters for word learning, particularly the learning of terms which map onto relational event units (Gentner & Boroditsky, 2001; Maguire et al., 2006). We predicted that 3-year-old children's statistical action segmentation abilities would relate to…

A door, a mirror, and a window are metaphors for how Service-Learning Teaching Assistants (S-LTA's) made meaning from the unfamiliar in their service-learning (S-L) experience. Standing at the threshold of the door, the participants entered the experience and take you through their feelings as they encountered the unfamiliar. Once passed the door,…

Learning is legitimate peripheral participation in the community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Based on Situted Learning Theory (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and the initial work by Kirk, Rovegno and their colleagues, Situated Game Teaching through Set Plays (SGTSP) curricular model was initially conceptualized by Weidong Li at The Ohio State…

The relationship between typological asymmetries and acquisition of phonological patterns has been a controversial topic in the field of phonology. This dissertation approaches the issue by focusing on the source of typological asymmetries involving tone patterns, and the role that typological commonness plays in the learning of patterns that are…