VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Principle-based Implementation of Knowledge Building Communities

This thesis investigates issues and challenges surrounding the use of teacher study groups as a means of addressing the gap that must be closed between design principles and classroom practices in order to effectively implement an educational innovation. A multiple-case design was used to examine how teachers’ perceived understanding of the Knowledge Building Communities principles changed over time and affected their implementation of the Knowledge Building Communities model—a model that requires student engagement in the collaborative production of ideas that are continually improved by all participants. Knowledge Forum® is an on-line environment designed to support Knowledge Building. Data sources for this study include teacher interviews, transcripts of study group meetings, teachers’ ratings of their perceived understanding of Knowledge Building principles, teacher and student activity in Knowledge Forum, and student interviews. In total this study involved seven teachers and eleven study group meetings across three school sites. Based on work at a site already engaged in Knowledge Building a tentative proposition was developed: discussing Knowledge Building principles increases teachers’ perceived understanding of these principles and contributes to increasingly effective designs for implementing them. This proposition was tested and refined at two additional elementary public schools. Taken together the findings suggest the importance of and difficulties surrounding study groups focused on principle-based approaches to pedagogical change. In particular, the findings point to discussion and active engagement with the principles as a catalyst for change. A data analysis technique was developed to examine the discourse patterns of select episodes of study group meetings. The resulting pattern suggests the principles can frame a study groups’ work and set the groundwork for change through discussion of goals underlying the principles, stories relevant to their implementation, and commitment to ongoing experimentation to address obstacles. Detailed accounts of teacher difficulties and change form the basis of a descriptive model developed to convey how teachers address contextual concerns in their study groups, with elaboration of the types of interactions that help them move to deeper understanding of principles and to more successful implementations of the Knowledge Building Communities model.

Keywords: innovation
knowledge building
principle-based
study groups
Advisor: Scardamalia, Marlene
Clerical Workers: Acquiring the Skills to Meet Tacit Process Expectations Within a Context of Work Undervaluation and Job Fragility

Since the late nineteenth century, clerical work has transformed from a small cluster of respected occupations dominated by men to a rapidly changing group of occupations 90 percent of which are held by women. Due to bureaucratization and the feminization of clerical work, clerical jobs are assumed to be routinized and simple, and clerical workers deemed easily replaceable. With further changes to the occupation caused by technology and globalization, clerical workers today have become increasingly vulnerable to unemployment, precarious employment and underemployment. In this research, an Ontario-wide survey with approximately 1200 respondents (including 120 clerical workers) and in-depth interviews with 23 Toronto clerical workers were combined to explore the employment situation of Ontario clerical workers. It is apparent that clerical workers are underemployed along all measured conventional dimensions of underemployment, including credential, performance and subjective as well as work permanence, salary levels and job opportunities. Relational practice is a largely unexamined aspect of clerical work that is often essentialized as a female trait and seldom recognized as skilled practice. In this dissertation, I argue that relational practice is critical to the successful performance of clerical roles and that relational practices are not innate but rather learned skills. I explore some ways in which clerical workers acquire these skills. I conclude by noting that recognizing and valuing relational skills will make the value of clerical workers more apparent to their employers, potentially reducing for clerical workers both their subjective sense of underemployment and their vulnerability to job loss.

Keywords: clerical workers
relational skills
Advisor: Livingstone, David W.
A Mixed Methods Study of Class Size and Group Configuration in Online Graduate Course Discussions

Class size has long been recognized as a factor affecting achievement in face-to-face contexts. However, few studies have examined the effects of class size in online courses, or the effects of dividing an online class into smaller discussion groups. The current study examined the relationship between class size and the use of grouping strategies on note reading, note writing, and collaborative discussions in online graduate-level courses. This mixed-methods study analyzed tracking logs from 25 graduate-level online courses using Web Knowledge Forum (25 instructors and 341 students) and interviews from 10 instructors and 12 graduate students with diverse backgrounds. The quantitative and qualitative data analyses were designed to complement each other. Findings suggested 13 to 15 as an optimal class size and four to five as an ideal subgroup size. Not surprisingly, the results revealed that, as class size increased, the total notes that participants read increased significantly. However, as class size increased, the percentage of course notes that students read decreased significantly (i.e., students were reading a smaller proportion of the course notes). In larger classes, participants were more likely to experience information overload and students were more selective in the notes that they read. A significant positive correlation was found between class size and total notes written. Students’ note size and grade-level score were negatively correlated with class size. The data also suggest that the overload effects of large classes can be minimized by dividing students into small groups for discussion purposes. Interviewees felt that the use of small groups in large classes benefited their collaborative discussions. The preceding results underscore the importance of using small discussion groups when class sizes are large. The research concludes with a list of pedagogical recommendations and suggests new software features that may help enhance learning in online courses.

Keywords: class size
group configuration
mixed methods study
graduate course discussions
Advisor: Hewitt, James
Conservation by Consensus: Reducing Uncertainty from Methodological Choices in Conservation-based Models

Modeling species of conservation concern, such as those that are rare, declining, or have a conservation designation (e.g. endangered or threatened), remains an activity filled with uncertainty. Species that are of conservation concern often are found infrequently, in small sample sizes and spatially fragmented distributions, thereby making accurate enumeration difficult and traditional statistical approaches often invalid. For example, there are numerous debates in the ecological literature regarding methodological choices in conservation-based models, such as how to measure functional traits to account for ecosystem function, the impact of including rare species in biological assessments and whether species-specific dispersal can be measured using distance based functions. This thesis attempts to address issues in methodological choices in conservation-based models in two ways. In the first section of the thesis, the impacts of methodological choices on conservation-based models are examined across a broad selection of available approaches, from: measuring functional diversity; to conducting bio-assessments in community ecology; to assessing dispersal in metapopulation analyses. It is the goal of this section to establish the potential for methodological choices to impact conservation-based models, regardless of the scale, study-system or species involved. In the second section of this thesis, the use of consensus methods is developed as a potential tool for reducing uncertainty with methodological choices in conservation-based models. Two separate applications of consensus methods are highlighted, including how consensus methods can reduce uncertainty from choosing a modeling type or to identify when methodological choices may be a problem.

Keywords: statistical methods
conservation biology
endangered species
ensemble models
Advisor: Jackson, Donald Andrew
Fetal Exposure to Antidiabetic Drugs: The Role of the Placenta

Gestational diabetes, a common medical complication in pregnancy, may lead to severe fetal consequences if left untreated. A major concern with the use of antidiabetic drugs in pregnancy is the potential for placental transfer and fetal toxicity. The presence of endocytic pathways and several ABC transporter proteins has been demonstrated in the human placenta and are believed to play an important role in determining fetal exposure to drugs used in pregnancy. The objective of this thesis is to investigate the safety and transfer of the oral hypoglycemic agent, glyburide, and the new long acting insulin analog, insulin glargine, across the human placenta. The oral antidiabetic, glyburide, has been shown to be actively effluxed across the placenta in the fetal to maternal direction. The transport of glyburide in the presence of a breast cancer resistance protein (BCRP) inhibitor was investigated in the dually perfused human placenta model. The results of the perfusion studies indicate that BCRP plays a role in protecting the fetus from the accumulation of glyburide. Subsequently, cellular studies were carried out to determine the effect of the naturally occurring single nucleotide polymorphism within the coding region of BCRP (C421A/Q141K) on glyburide transport. Results suggest that glyburide transport may be reduced in the presence of the Q141K polymorphism. While insulin remains as the gold standard, the potential for maternal hypoglycemia with insulin injection has resulted in the development of insulin analogs. Insulin glargine, a human insulin analog, has a long half life with no pronounced peak when compared to currently used NPH insulin. Human placental perfusion experiments examining the extent and rate of transfer of insulin glargine across the placenta demonstrated that, at therapeutic concentrations, insulin glargine does not cross the placenta to a measurable extent. To further determine the fetal safety of insulin glargine therapy compared with NPH insulin, a systematic review and meta-analysis were performed. No evidence was identified for increased adverse fetal outcomes with the use of insulin glargine during pregnancy. Overall, the results of this research serve to provide improved treatment options for women with diabetes in pregnancy.

Keywords: gestational diabetes
placental transport
insulin glargine
glyburide
Advisor: Koren, Gideon
Characterization of BMP Signalling Pathways Mediated by the BMP Type II Receptor, BMPRII, Regulating Neuronal Morphogenesis

Bone Morphogenetic Proteins (BMPs) regulate numerous biological processes including neuronal development. The growth and morphological differentiation of dendrites are critical events in the establishment of proper neuronal connectivity and neural function. One extrinsic factor, BMP7, has been shown to specifically affect dendritic morphogenesis. Here, I describe the elucidation of novel signalling mechanisms involving the BMP type II receptor, BMPRII, during BMP7-dependent dendrite formation. The carboxy-terminal tail of BMPRII binds regulators of the cytoskeleton, and acts as a scaffold to localize and coordinate cytoskeletal remodelling. BMP7-induced localized remodelling of the actin and microtubule cytoskeleton mediated by BMPRII-bound LIMK1 and JNK, contributes to BMP7-dependent dendrite formation. In addition, in efforts to understand how BMP-induced activation of LIMK1 and JNK is regulated, upstream regulators, Rho GTPase, Cdc42, a Rho GTPase effector, PAK1, and a guanine exchange factor (GEF), αPIX, were identified as novel interacting partners of the BMP type I receptor, ALK2. Thus, elucidation of the molecular mechanisms governing BMP7-dependent dendrite formation, defines the extracellular cue, BMP7, as a critical regulator of cytoskeletal dynamics in neurons.

Keywords: cell biology
biochemistry
molecular biology
neuroscience
Advisor: Attisano, Liliana
Stream Computing on FPGAs

Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are programmable logic devices used for the implementation of a wide range of digital systems. In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in design methodologies that allow high-level design descriptions to be automatically implemented in FPGAs. This thesis describes the design and implementation of a novel compilation flow that implements circuits in FPGAs from a streaming programming language. The streaming language supported is called FPGA Brook, and is based on the existing Brook and GPU Brook languages, which target streaming multiprocessors and graphics processing units (GPUs), respectively. A streaming language is suitable for targeting FPGAs because it allows system designers to express applications in a way that exposes parallelism, which can then be exploited through parallel hardware implementation. FPGA Brook supports replication, which allows the system designer to trade-off area for performance, by specifying the parts of an application that should be implemented as multiple hardware units operating in parallel, to achieve desired application throughput. Hardware units are interconnected through FIFO buffers, which effectively utilize the small memory modules available in FPGAs. The FPGA Brook design flow uses a source-to-source compiler, and combines it with a commercial behavioural synthesis tool to generate hardware. The source-to-source compiler was developed as a part of this thesis and includes novel algorithms for implementation of complex reductions in FPGAs. The design flow is fully automated and presents a user-interface similar to traditional software compilers. A suite of benchmark applications was developed in FPGA Brook and implemented using our design flow. Experimental results show that applications implemented using our flow achieve much higher throughput than the Nios II soft processor implemented in the same FPGA device. Comparison to the commercial C2H compiler from Altera shows that while simple applications can be effectively implemented using the C2H compiler, complex applications achieve significantly better throughput when implemented by our system. Performance of many applications implemented using our design flow would scale further if a larger FPGA device were used. The thesis demonstrates that using an automated design flow to implement streaming applications in FPGAs is a promising methodology.

Keywords: Field Programmable Gate Array
FPGA
Streaming
Behavioral synthesis
Behavioural synthesis
Data parallelism
Task parallelism
Replication
Throughput
Scalability
C2H
High-level synthesis
Reduction
Parallel reduction
FIFO
Strength reduction
Advisor: Vranesic, Zvonko
Brown, Stephen
A Qualitative Examination of Health Care Professionals' Experience as Patient Educators: Cases from Canadian Chiropractors

This qualitative research study examined the patient education experience from the point of view of health care professionals, namely doctors of chiropractic in the Greater Toronto Area practicing for up to ten years. Health care professionals’ views and beliefs of this important aspect of health care have not been well studied. Patient education is defined as, “the process by which patients learn or acquire knowledge about his/her health status or condition and may involve learning in the cognitive, affective, and/or psychomotor domains.” The study explored eight participants’ views on the nature of patient education in their early and current practices by examining their feelings, beliefs, and use of patient education, its role in their practices, as well as the perceptions of their roles as patient educators. Two semi-structured interviews were conducted with each of the participants. The transcribed interviews underwent detailed qualitative analysis to determine response trends and consensus. The key findings revealed that the participants felt that, while they were well prepared in their undergraduate curricula to diagnose and treat patients, they were not as well prepared to be effective patient educators when they entered practice. Early in their careers, they did not understand or appreciate patient education’s importance and value as a component of their practice. Over time, their beliefs and understanding of patient education changed and participants reported that with experience, they began to value patient education to a greater extent. Changing values reflected changing behaviours. For example, participants increased their time and efforts related to patient education with increased clinical experience. A variety of teaching aids were used with wall charts/posters, three dimensional anatomical models, printed materials and images from textbooks being among the most common. Most of the teaching described by the participants would be characterized as transmission with a one-way flow of information from the doctor to the patient. To a great extent, patient education involved speaking with individual patients. Participants reported encountering, throughout their careers, intrinsic and extrinsic barriers that interfered with the effectiveness of their patient education. The findings suggest that curricular planners for health care professional programs, and specifically for chiropractors, might consider developing content aimed at improving students’ patient education knowledge and skills.

Keywords: patient education
doctor patient relationship
patient teaching
health care professionals responsibilities
health care professionals roles
Advisor: Kilbourn, Brent
Exile in Homeric Epic

This dissertation examines exile in Homeric epic and in particular the relationship between exile as a narrative motif and the thematic significance of exile in specific contexts. The Homeric exile motif is defined and found to include four stock elements involving the causes of exile, the role of compulsion in exile, the permanence of exile, and the possible outcomes of exile. The more thematic issues surrounding exile are also considered, especially in the light of ancient and modern theoretical discussions of exile. Three examples of exile in the Iliad and the Odyssey are then analyzed. In each case, close attention is paid to the way in which the exile narrative fits into the immediate context and is thematically relevant to it. The exile narrative delivered by Phoenix to Achilles in Iliad 9 is interpreted as an attempt to dissuade Achilles from carrying out his threat to abandon the expedition against Troy. More precisely, it is argued that Phoenix uses the parallels between his own exile and the situation facing Achilles to suggest that in abandoning the expedition Achilles would become something close to an exile himself, thereby compromising his heroic standing. It is argued that the ghost of the unburied Patroclus uses his exile narrative to Achilles in Iliad 23 to present his experience of death as a parallel to his experience of exile in life and does so in order to persuade Achilles to provide him with ‘hospitality’ in the form of burial, just as Achilles’ family provided Patroclus with hospitality as an exile. Finally, the false exile narrative delivered by Odysseus to Athena (disguised as a shepherd) in Odyssey 13 is interpreted as a reaction to Odysseus’ uncertainty as to whether or not he has reached Ithaca. It is argued that Odysseus uses his exile narrative to contrast the possibility that he is finally home with the possibility that he is still a nameless wanderer. The exile motif is found to be flexible enough to be adapted to the thematic requirements of the contexts in which these three exile narratives occur.

Keywords: Classics
Homer
Exile
Advisor: Burgess, Jonathan
Tidal Dissipation in Extrasolar Planets

Many known extra-solar giant planets lie close to their host stars. Around 60 have their semi-major axes smaller than 0.05 AU. In contrast to planets further out, the vast majority of these close-in planets have low eccentricity orbits. This suggests that their orbits have been circularized likely due to tidal dissipation inside the planets. These exoplanets share with our own Jupiter at least one trait in common: when they are subject to periodic tidal forcing, they behave like a lossy spring, with a tidal ``quality factor'', Q, of order 10^5. This parameter is the ratio between the energy in the tide and the energy dissipated per period. To explain this, a possible solution is resonantly forced internal oscillation. If the frequency of the tidal forcing happens to land on that of an internal eigenmode, this mode can be resonantly excited to a very large amplitude. The damping of such a mode inside the planet may explain the observed Q value. The only normal modes that fall in the frequency range of the tidal forcing (~ few days) are inertial modes, modes restored by the Coriolis force. We present a new numerical technique to solve for inertial modes in a convective, rotating sphere. This technique combines the use of an ellipsoidal coordinate system with a pseudo-spectral method to solve the partial differential equation that governs the inertial oscillations. We show that, this technique produces highly accurate solutions when the density profile is smooth. In particular, the lines of nodes are roughly parallel to the ellipsoidal coordinate axes. In particular, using these accurate solutions, we estimate the resultant tidal dissipation for giant planets, and find that turbulent dissipation of inertial modes in planets with smooth density profiles do not give rise to dissipation as strong as the one observed. We also study inertial modes in density profiles that exhibit discontinuities, as some recent models of Jupiter show. We found that, in this case, our method could not produce convergent solutions for the inertial modes. Additionally, we propose a way to observe inertial modes inside Saturn indirectly, by observing waves in its rings that may be excited by inertial modes inside Saturn.

Keywords: tidal dissipation
inertial modes
close binaries
hot Jupiters
Rings of Saturn
pseudospectral method
Chebyshev expansion
astrophysics
dynamical tide
asteroseismology
Advisor: Wu, Yanqin