The meteoric rise in software and technology has altered the paradigm of information security and privacy. Classified information, stored earlier behind locked doors, is now stored on the internet on servers that can be accessed from anywhere on the globe. As a result of these advancements, we are now vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Cyber-attacks are…

The education of students on existing and emerging technologies in higher education environments requires access to complex software. The rise of the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) phenomenon in many postsecondary educational institutions, along with the increasing complexity of technological coursework, creates challenges for students needing…

Navigating indoors without a map can be challenging, especially for visually impaired individuals in unfamiliar settings. Many existing indoor navigation methods rely on building maps, pre-deployed infrastructure (like BLE beacons or RFID), or visual-based systems that require a clear line of sight to a camera. These requirements can make…

Healthcare professionals and individuals underutilize substance use screenings, driving exploration of innovative approaches like virtual agent-guided screening. This study assessed the virtual counselor app's equivalence to in-person evaluation for substance use screening. Participants also completed a user experience questionnaire and a…

The purpose of this nonexperimental correlational quantitative research design is to examine if there is a relationship between parents' understanding of summative student score reports and accessing further resources online, while also examining the relationship between parents' comprehension of the summative student score report and other…

The purpose of this study was to examine character racial, ethnic, and gender representation of main and secondary of apps designed for preschoolers using a quantitative content analysis. Because of the design of characters for apps differs from other forms of media, this study examined traits associated with racial, ethnic, and gender groups…

Children's exposure to technology primarily depends on parental decisions concerning when and how to introduce them to technology and some parents are not aware of the dangers on cognitive and social growth. However, there are significant research gaps on the factors that influence parental decisions on introducing preschool-aged children to…

This study explored how developing digital literacy skills could influence digital self-efficacy, cognitive load, mindfulness, and productivity among Generation Z college students in Karachi, Pakistan, using the Pauseitive app. With digital tools playing an ever-growing role in education, understanding their impact on students' mental processes…

Since near the very beginning of electronic computing, Monte Carlo particle transport has been a fundamental approach for solving computational physics problems. Due to the high computational demands and inherently parallel nature of these applications, Monte Carlo transport applications are often performed in the supercomputing environment. That…

Filling out printed forms (e.g., checks) independently is currently impossible for blind people, since they cannot pinpoint the locations of the form fields, and quite often, they cannot even figure out what fields (e.g., name) are present in the form. Hence, they always depend on sighted people to write on their behalf, and help them affix their…

Mindfulness apps have shown promise to reduce stress and improve well-being among college students however the mechanisms of these beneficial effects are less clear. In addition, findings are inconclusive about the necessary dose of mindfulness app usage to achieve improvements in mental health. Thus, more dose-response research is needed on…

This dissertation was developed in response to a significant rise in stress, anxiety, and depression within the adolescent population during 2019-2021. The research was exploratory in nature to determine the feasibility of utilizing targeted social emotional mobile applications with high school students. A single case study design with changing…

Modern advances in communication technology have allowed for the expansion of asynchronous online sport coaching services. In this intra-individual repeated time measures study, the effects of coaching communication scheduling on athletes' affective state and the coach-athlete relationship were observed as well as measures of performance in the…

The problem addressed through this qualitative study was that middle school teachers in a suburban public school district in the southern United States were inconsistently using Google Classroom in their classrooms. At the project site, middle school teachers were creating a blended learning environment; however, administrators expected them to…

This dissertation studies the advancement of consensus-aware technologies in the context of collective decision-making, focusing on the integration of these technologies into information systems to effectively represent, detect, and characterize consensus among people and other agents. Despite the proven value of collective intelligence in…