This dissertation explores the relationship between quantitative phonetic measurements and listener identification of accents of English, focusing on phonetic distance and its perceptual correlates across various English accent varieties. The Levenshtein distance (LD) measure, which quantifies string similarity by calculating the minimum cost of…

Background: Recent field experiments confirm that learning to teach under a more instructionally effective mentor causes teacher candidates to feel more prepared (Ronfeldt et al., 2020; Ronfeldt, Goldhaber, et al., 2018) and demonstrate more effective teaching (Goldhaber et al., 2022). One of these experiments--designed under a research-practice…

Background: Multilevel randomized controlled trials (MRCTs) have been widely used to evaluate the causal effects of educational interventions. Traditionally, educational researchers and policymakers focused on the average treatment effects (ATE) of the intervention. Recently there has been an increasing interest in evaluating the heterogeneity of…

Every year, the national high school graduation rate is declining and impacting the number of students applying to colleges. Moreover, the majority of students are applying to more than one college. This makes a lot of colleges to be highly competitive in student recruitment for enrollment and thus, the necessity for institutions to anticipate…

I situate computer programming as a cultural practice. I develop this perspective in two ways: exploring how programming practices can support intercultural learning, and examining how programming tools themselves embed cultural assumptions and values. For the former, I study how relationships across difference are formed over computing activities…

Applications of machine learning in chemistry are many and varied, from prediction of structure-property relationships, to modeling of potential energy surfaces for large scale atomistic simulations. We describe a generalized approach for the application of machine learning to the classification of spectra which can be used as the basis for a wide…

It is crucial nowadays to predict in a fast and simple manner physical-chemical behaviors like, the size-dependent optical properties of gold nanospheres (Au NSs). The idea behind this experiment is trying to replace (as much as possible) robust and expensive microscopy techniques with UV-vis spectrophotometry and friendly simulations. Students…

Internet users are bombarded with information and need strategies to evaluate its trustworthiness. Expert fact-checkers rely on lateral reading, which involves investigating sources, finding better coverage, and tracing information back to original contexts. This study contrasted college students' preference for and use of lateral reading to…

Intelligent Voice Assistants (IVAs) have become integral to many users' daily lives, using advanced algorithms to automate various tasks. Nevertheless, many users do not understand the underlying algorithms and how they work, posing potential risks to the competent and self-determined use of IVAs. This work develops three online training modules…

Combining observational and experimental data for causal inference can improve treatment effect estimation. However, many observational data sets cannot be released due to data privacy considerations, so one researcher may not have access to both experimental and observational data. Nonetheless, a small amount of risk of disclosing sensitive…

Virtual reality (VR) has emerged as a transformative educational tool, enabling immersive learning environments that promote student engagement and understanding of complex concepts. However, despite the growing adoption of VR in education, there remains a significant gap in research exploring how generative artificial intelligence (AI), such as…

This study investigates the effectiveness of a culturo-techno-contextual approach (CTCA) in teaching flowcharts and algorithms to junior secondary school students. Despite their importance in programming, these concepts are often difficult for students to grasp. The study involved 196 students (average age 12) who were divided into experimental…

Video summarization is a method of deducing the content of video content for generating a summary in video format. The generated summary should have the significant segments of raw video. Recently, the content of video has been rapidly increasing, thus automatic video summarization is beneficial for individuals who want to keep time and learn more…

Entrance awards are financial incentives offered to admitted students at or near the time of admission. These awards are a frequently used tool to enhance yield rates among post-secondary institutions, sometimes among specifically-targeted populations. The impacts of these awards have been studied in many different contexts, using a variety of…

In response to disruptions introduced to the job market by AI résumé screeners, this article introduces a novel theoretical framework for the life cycle of artificial intelligence systems to help unblackbox résumé screening AI systems. It then applies the AI life cycle framework to a digital case study of RChilli's job-résumé matching algorithm.…