Browsing by Subject "Multimedia"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Comparing the effectiveness of three instructional approaches in a problem-centered, multimedia-based learning environment.
    (2011-06) Wojtanowski, Scott Thomas
    Throughout the history of the American public education system, many people have predicted that technology would significantly improve the way students learn and the way teachers provide instruction. Unfortunately, each technological innovation has failed on its promise to dramatically improve education. This has led some researchers to suggest that more research is needed to examine the influence that teacher's pedagogy has on technology integration. This study examines three different instructional approaches used within a multimedia-based learning environment and the impact they have on student knowledge. A total of 225 students of varied academic achievement levels and three middle school geography teachers participated in the study. An online multimedia-based learning environment, GeoThentic, required students to use data and information provided in the learning environment to identify the best location in which to build a hospital in San Francisco. Each teacher used a different instructional approach for each of the three classes he or she taught. These instructional approaches were defined by and based on the literature on directed instruction, structured problem solving, and minimally guided instruction. A written response exam and selected response exam measured the ability of a group of students to process information and analyze data provided in the GeoThentic environment. When comparing the results of these two different tests, the analyses found that students receiving minimally guided instruction performed significantly different than those students receiving directed instruction or structured problem solving instruction. Taken together, these results suggest that minimally guided instructional approaches are less effective than directed or structured problem solving instructional approaches for this particular type of learning environment. This study also suggests that teachers must provide a certain amount of guidance to students, however, more research is needed to identify the appropriate amount of guidance needed and when less direction can be provided to students.
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    Multimedia Information Presentation in Smart Cars and Highways
    (Minnesota Department of Transportation, 1995-06) Shekhar, Shashi; Fetterer, Andrew; Kalantar, Maryam
    An essential component of Advanced Traveler Information Systems, in-vehicle route displays give drivers route options, alert them to incidents, and show their present location. In this report, researchers explore multimedia interfaces to present route information to travelers using map, text, and auditory-based representations, focusing on developing portable multimedia interfaces. The report concludes that the graphical user interface (GUI) for display of route information is satisfactory for small road maps. The GUI also proved useful for visually checking map quality. The Tcl/Tk toolkit, in which the GUI was developed, is a reasonable tool to design an interface because it is portable to many platforms. Speech generation tools are not yet robust enough for use with large maps. Future work could include extending the GUI to provide a hierarchical display for large roadmaps, extending the amount of information conveyed to the user, and improving speech generation techniques.
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    Parametric Evaluation of Performance Behavior in Hierarchical Storage Architecture
    (1997) Won, Youjip; Srivastava, Jaideep
    In this article, we investigate lhe performance behavior of a hierarchical storage architecture. Considering both the size of video files and the skewed file access patterns over the available files, it is not cost-effective to store all video files on secondary storage such as disk arrays, since most users may access only a small subset of the available video files. Using tertiary storage, such as a tape library, is a promising solution for achieving the desired cost effectiveness. Though a hierarchical storage structure is desirable, an unbalanced configuration of the storage hierarchy may result in waste of resources and thus degrade overall server throughput. Our effort is focused on investigating the effect of the various system parameters to obtain an optimal configuration of the hierarchical storage. Throughput of the server is defined along with two orthogonal performance metrics, namely expected service rime and system congestion and blocking probability. We establish an analytical formulation for the given performance metrics. Hierarchical storage performance is governed by several factors such as user-access pattern, number of tape drives, capacity of secondary storage, transfer rate of tape drives, and transfer rate of disks. It is observed that speeding up the rate of data transfer may in some cases increase the blocking probability and hence degrade overall server performance. We use a queuing model to obtain an analytical formulation of the server's performance. This enables us to investigate the effects of different configurations of the storage hierarchy and different data access patterns; it also provides a framework to determine the optimal configuration of storage hierarchies. The results of a simulation-based performance evaluation are also presented.
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    Son Dos Alas: A Multimedia ethnography of hip-hop between Cuba and Puerto Rico.
    (2011-02-28) Riviere, Melisa
    From New York to Rio, from Nairobi to Tokyo, hip-hop, more than any other musical genre or youth culture, has permeated nations, cultures and languages worldwide. Hip-hop emerged from race and class rebellions during the New York City fiscal crises of the 1970's. It flourished under grim conditions as a vibrant expression of youthful exuberance used to overcome repression, marginality, discrimination and hardship. I concentrated my research on the globalization of hip-hop in Cuba and Puerto Rico because each island showcases a unique and thriving rap scene yet holds contrasting cultural and economic contexts. Although Cuba and Puerto Rico share common colonial histories, today they hold polarized relationships with the United States, the birthplace of hip-hop. In the case of Cuba the U.S. embargo is older than hip-hop, offering a case of complete exclusion from direct influences. In contrast, Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory and thereby intimately linked to American art movements, youth genres, production resources, and market interests. This dissertation argues that youth utilize hip-hop to express their individual local struggles to unite with each other between Cuba and Puerto Rico as "world citizens" in order to belong to a global majority when they are considered local minorities. Through multimedia production, local artists globalize their repertoires despite geographic, economic or political restrictions. The innovative fieldwork methodology herein termed Ethnographic Production proposes the use of audiovisual media to create a contemporary technological "place" in which youth transcend boundaries to create virtual dialogues through their repertoires in order to overcome isolation between each other. This methodology proposes that the key site for anthropological inquiry is not necessarily to be "discovered" or "located," as traditional disciplinary expectations may assume, rather it can also be "created." As a result, the dissertation demonstrates how the experiences rappers articulated within the media modified their everyday behavior and insinuated a sense of responsibility to each other. This approach differs from traditional uses of media in anthropology used as a form of documentation or dissemination of fieldwork data. The dissertation assesses how musical repertoires transcend localized contexts between the islands and how access to audiovisual recording and reproductive technology has given youth the tools to (re)produce hip-hop. The research data, consisting of collaborative songs between rappers from each location, reveals that it is through value systems and common civil rights struggles, more so than strictly the four elements of hip-hop (rap, break dance, turntablism and visual art), that youth relate to one another and their global audiences.