Prior eResearch Seminar Presentations
Posted by mark, Mon Jan 28 16:00:00 UTC 2008
eResearch Seminar Presentations - Fall 2007
September 21, 2007
Center for eResearch
John Foley, Director
LuAnne Roth, Associate Editor
Mark Jarvis, IT Manager
Title: Ongoing Projects @ CeR
The Center for eResearch fosters interdisciplinary collaboration and exchange via digital and internet-based media. It seeks to democratize academic research by using electronic tools and strategies to remove barriers to learning and knowledge-sharing, and to promote a broader, more inclusive, and more diverse academic community. The CeR supports campus-level, national, and international research efforts through a series of projects:
Oral Tradition, an online, open-access, free-of-charge international academic journal.
eEdition, a digital, web-based edition of The Wedding of Mustajbey’s Son Bećirbey.
The Pathways Project, a multimedia venture that explores the similarities and correspondences between humankind’s oldest and newest thought-technologies.
SyndicateMizzou, an online resource for research news, presents the research and creative activities of University of Missouri-Columbia faculty in their very own words.
MizzouTube, currently under development, will serve as a video-sharing site for the University of Missouri-Columbia community.
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September 28, 2007
Department of Music
Darin Olson
Julia GainesTitle: An Analysis of Information Provided by Music Publisher’s Online Catalogs
With the evolution of internet sales and marketing over the past ten years, most sheet music publishers have developed web-based catalogs to replace the hard copies of previous generations. These online catalogs provide musicians with immediate access to an abundance of literature with the click of a mouse. However, a quick review shows the information provided by publishers is subjective and sparse. A quick comparison of an online clothing catalog illustrates this point. The Dillard’s website contains information on price, brand, shirt style, color, size, fabric, sleeve length, and design regarding men’s “sport shirts.” A typical music entry by a publisher includes price, title, composer, and instrument. In a composition there are many musical elements to address, such as duration, key signature, type of notation (manuscript/engraved), and many different types of technical aspects. The online music catalogs do not provide adequate information for the consumer to make an educated purchase.
The purpose of this study will be to review the information provided about solo marimba literature by ten major music publishers. Through the comparison of various catalogs, similarities and differences will be discovered. With the assistance of a faculty advisor, fifty pieces will be acquired an analyzed from the online catalogs to reveal the objective contents of the pieces. The discoveries will be related back to the publisher¹s website to unveil any discrepancies. The information collected about each piece will then be entered into an unbiased, searchable internet database already in existence. The site is www.percussionmusiconline.com and the creator of the site, Tim Palmer of the UK, has already agreed to include the information from this research into the site.
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October 5, 2007
Department of Sociology
Adam Rendall
Edward BrentTitle: Second Life Terrorists: A Study of Terrorism and Griefing within the Online World Second Life
This project is an ethnographic study of ‘Terrorism’ and ‘Griefing’ within the online world Second Life, based in grounded theory as put forward by Glaser and Strauss in their 1967 work, The Discovery of Grounded Theory. As such, there will be no initial theoretical framework going into this research; one will be developed out of the information that is gathered. The methodology will combine participant observation and semi-structured interviews to garner information on both those who are labeled as terrorists and griefers and those who are affected by this behavior. Interviews will be solicited from leaders of groups that have been defined as terrorist or griefer groups, those who are making the accusations, and those who have been most affected by the acts. Participant observation will be made among those communities who have been accused (either in the Second Life Herald, an online newspaper dedicated to events within Second Life, blogs about Second Life, or even occasionally within the mainstream news) of being a terrorist or griefing organization. Operationalizing the terms terrorist and griefer is difficult, because there is some disagreement as to what these terms mean, even among those who are making the accusations. The overarching theme is that the activities being labeled as terrorism or griefing are disruptive or destructive to residents and/or property within Second Life.
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Full-size PresentationSecond Life in-game videos.
Professor Heidenstam in action Educator & Research Network Space
October 12, 2007
Learning, Teaching, and Curriculum
Hsiao-Chien Lee
Carol GillesTitle: Online Cross-Cultural Literature Discussion: Blogging, Talking, and Critical Thinking
With the symbolic shrinking of the globe, it is important for educators to provide students with opportunities to get to know other people and to hear other voices. Literature discussion, reading and discussing literary works, plays a significant role in helping students navigate the world around them, because talk is a powerful tool for learning, thinking, and reflecting. Blogging, a promising practice in New Literacies, allows students to communicate with people who live in far-away geographical regions and who have diverse cultural backgrounds asynchronously. It also creates an arena where students can write for real purposes and for real readers. Although researchers have been exploring the nature of cross-cultural email exchanges and the benefits of face-to-face literature discussions, little research exists on the integration of blogging and multicultural literature discussions.
This qualitative case study investigated the nature of the online interactions about picture books between five 5th grade students in the U.S. and seven 10th grade students in Taiwan. Examples and transcripts examine the difficulties and rich opportunities that such collaboration creates. Findings from this study can help educators understand the nature of integrating blogging in literacy curriculum and its benefits and limitations.
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October 19, 2007
Human Development and Family Studies
Jessica Troilo
Marilyn ColemanTitle: The Content of Mother and Father Stereotypes
The purpose of our study is to assess stereotypes held about parents (married, divorced residential, divorced nonresidential, step-, never-married, adoptive, and lesbian and gay) as well as mothers- and fathers-in-general, and women- and men-in-general. In our attempts to assess parent stereotypes, we have primarily used student samples, which may not represent stereotyped beliefs held by the general population. Also, to test all the variations of parents we would like to assess, we need a large diverse ample, and using the Internet seems like a promising way to collect data. First, we will ask people to visit our website and post phrases and adjectives that come to their minds when thinking about a randomly generated parent type (e.g., single-parent fathers). Then, we will ask a new sample to review the generated phrases/adjectives and post a percentage that represents the extent to which they believe each phrase/adjective is characteristic of each parent type. For example, if “busy” was a generated adjective and if a respondent believed that all lesbian mothers were busy, then she/he would post “100” next to busy. We will use these percentages to understand how parents are stereotyped in American culture.
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October 26, 2007
Textile and Apparel Management
Sanjukta Pookulangara
Ge XiaoTitle: Consumers’ Channel Switching Behavior for Hedonic and Utilitarian Products using Theory of Planned Behavior
Today’s consumer market is driven by factors such as lack of time, technological revolutions, and a myriad of shopping choices not only among different products and brands but also among diverse retail formats such as brick-and-mortar stores, catalogs, and the Internet. These customers refuse to abide by the arbitrary designation of channels, instead hopping between brick-and-mortar stores, catalogs and Web visits (i.e. both to retailers' Web sites and others') using each channel to advance their goals. The challenge, then, is to understand how and when consumers use these channels, and their propensity to switch between retailer and between channels.
This is an exploratory study to examine channel switching behavior using “theory of planned behavior”. The theory assumes that individual attitudes and beliefs, along with subjective norms and control factors will lead to an intention to perform a certain behavior, i.e. whether to switch channels or not. The data will be collected using an online survey instrument using a convenience sampling method. The data collected for this study will be analyzed using SPSS for descriptive and factor analysis purposes and Analysis of Moment Structures for structural equation modeling.
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November 2, 2007
Department of Anthropology
Carolyn Orbann
Lisa SattenspielTitle: An Agent-Based Computer Simulation of Infectious Disease Epidemics in Newfoundland, Canada
The goal of this project is to develop expertise in computer modeling using a Java-based package, RePast, which has been designed to facilitate simulations of social activities. This software is used to develop a simulation model that applies to a study of the spread of infectious diseases in Newfoundland, Canada. The details of community structure and parameter estimates for the simulation are derived from data collected during the summer of 2006. The resulting model illustrates possible patterns of infectious disease spread on Newfoundland in an engaging way. The model is designed in a flexible manner, so that it can be adapted for future projects involving data from other locations and time periods.
RePast is a relatively new simulation package and allows for complex simulations, as well as displaying the data in user-friendly formats. These include both data charts and graphs that are Microsoft Windows and Macintosh compatible and the creation of animations to better visualize epidemic processes. Being able to see how diseases spread across space adds a dimension to explorations of factors influencing those processes. Ultimately, it will be possible to present the model developed in this project on a webpage and to allow site visitors to explore interactively disease transmission patterns across space.
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Full-size PresentationAgent-Based Computer Simulations
RePast model for land use in a tropical environment
Example of a working disease model
November 9, 2007
School of Journalism
Jacob J. Stokes
Byron ScottTitle: Measuring Controversy: Evaluating the Print Media’s Response to Press Freedom Surveys
This study will examine the print media coverage of various press freedom indices with particular focus on the studies produced by the two most well-known and most often cited studies, those conducted by the groups Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders. The resulting publications, in paper and news article form, will examine how the indices’ findings are reported in the English language news media of every country in the world, including the United States.
The paper’s purpose is to examine the print media coverage of the surveys in order to better understand the impact of those surveys on policymaking and in the general cultural perceptions of the reviewed countries.
In addition, systematically surveying print media response to the studies will point out differences in cultural perceptions of press freedom. Principal study materials will be the indices themselves as well as any print articles that discuss the studies themselves or general discussions of press freedom issues that cite the studies.
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