Research Day (Arts & Humanities, FIMS, and Education)

Tuning into the Future: Informal Learning and Music Education

Ruth Wright et al. — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 15:00:00 PDT

When adolescents are engaged in learning, research has shown a decrease in alcohol and drug use, higher retention rates and fewer failures throughout high school, lower rates of depression as well as lower rates of anti-social and criminal behaviours. Attention to student engagement with a priority on 21st century learning skills requires the examination of various pedagogies, including using informal learning practices as the foundation for instruction with adolescents in schools.

This pilot project targets Grade 7 to 10 students in two school settings where adolescent engagement is a priority; it examines the viability of implementing informal learning practices within the Canadian context.

A Critical Analysis of Equal Education Rights and Opportunities to All: THE CASE OF IRAN

Ali Khorsandi Taskoh — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 15:00:00 PDT

The right to education and equal educational opportunities for all has been considered a ‘universal entitlement’. Almost everywhere in the world, the main goal of a successful education system is to provide equitable educational opportunities to members of society to enable them to accomplish their diverse needs and interests.

Technology Transfer and Innovation Policy at Canadian Universities: Opportunities and Social Costs

Samuel E. Trosow et al. — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 15:00:00 PDT

This project examines the role of universities in transmitting knowledge in the forms of technology transfer mechanisms, intellectual property (IP) agreements and other knowledge diffusion policies.

Intellectual Property and Its Alternatives: Incentives, Innovation and Ideology

Michael B. McNally — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 15:00:00 PDT

This dissertation examines the ability of intellectual property (IP) and its alternatives to both facilitate and impede innovation. Over the past 30 years there has been both an expansionary IP policy regime marked by significant increases in IP protection and a flourishing of alternatives to IP as digital technologies empower end users to create and disseminate intellectual works. However, it remains unclear as to whether alternatives to IP can mitigate the problems of exclusionary IP rights while also encouraging innovation. This dissertation provides a theoretical framework for analyzing alternatives to IP focusing on the incentives structures utilized, ability to produce innovative outcomes, and the kind of innovation engendered with the aim of identifying which alternatives are substantive alternatives to IP.

Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu's Research

Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 15:00:00 PDT

Connectivism: 21st Century Learning in Action

John Barnett et al. — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 15:00:00 PDT

“Teaching in the Virtual World” was a Masters level course in the Faculty of Education, delivered entirely online through WebCT Owl. There were 18 participants including the instructor. Each student created and taught one module on a topic in which they had experience or interest. Each module contained curriculum materials prepared by the student and a discussion that they facilitated and moderated.

This research aims to explore the practical application of Connectivist learning theory in a Masters course called “Teaching in the Virtual World” from the viewpoints of three course participants – the instructor and two students.

Rethinking Tradition: The Impact of Technology & the Loss of Serendipity on the Historical Research Process

Anabel Quan-Haase et al. — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 15:00:00 PDT

The move towards the digital humanities will see a growing interest in tools such as Ebooks. This study examines how historians perceive Ebooks and other technologies as impacting their research process. Findings indicate that historians are concerned that the digital environment reduces the possibility of chance encounters with a text. They continue to recreate the environment that encourages serendipity to occur within their field, and would readily welcome tools that facilitate this.

Traditions and Receptions in Sixteenth-Century Yucatán’s Visual Culture: The Maya and the Creation of Tihó-Mérida

Cody Barteet — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 15:00:00 PDT

In this project, I address the cultural multivalency of Tihó-Mérida from art historical perspectives to consider how the Maya understood and engaged with Yucatán’s new cultural capital.

Observing Graduate Students' Use of Library Space

Marni Harrington et al. — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 15:00:00 PDT

Based on a “sweeps” study in public libraries (Given & Leckie, 2003), this observational research tracks how the physical space and resources are used in a faculty-supported graduate library. We create a snapshot of what is going on in the library at a given moment in time, and then compile the results to determine how users behave in our space. These results will inform planning for an upcoming move.

Because I Am Not Here: Second Life Based Artists, Four Selected Case Studies

Francisco Gerardo Toledo Ramírez — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 15:00:00 PDT

Second Life (SL) is an on-line virtual world ‘inhabited’ by avatars that are designed by actual life users (SL residents). In SL identity, sociability and subjectivity are important and permanent aspects of the goal of having a second (virtual) existence.

My doctoral thesis (in progress) is centred on the work of 4 artists in SL and how they play with autoempathy, identity an subjectivity in the liminal shifting of aesthetic regimes (that rely upon temporalities rather than spatialities) present in their SL artwork. This is what Anna Munster calls the distribute aesthetics1 of virtual worlds.

Lacan Galicia, my avatar in SL, works in four case studies concerning these subjects. The expected findings of my research can contribute to the discussion of the theories of digital aesthetics and interactive virtual worlds at large.

Immersion Emergencies and Possible Worlds: Engaging Water as Culture and Resource through Contemporary Art

Patrick Mahon — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 15:00:00 PDT

In the present socio-cultural moment, water is increasingly the subject of discussion and contestation in public discourse. As Canadians, we know it as a resource that is ubiquitous within our history and an increasingly desirable international commodity. Our project uses research and practice in visual art to address the subject of water regarding its cultural and environmental importance, linking the historical art practice of picturing nature with the potential of visual representation to offer opportunities for aesthetic and socio-cultural engagement. The project is generously funded by the Social Sciences Research Council of Canada. (see www.immersion-emergencies.ca)

The Mechanistic Roots of Occasionalism: Stage One

Benjamin Hill et al. — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 15:00:00 PDT

What is Occasionalism?

Occasionalism is the doctrine about causal efficacy that exploits the non-observational nature of causation. We observe a prior and a posterior state of the universe, and discern the difference between them. But we cannot observe the force or power causally necessitating the change.

Endorsement, Worth and Well-Being: What Is It for a Life to Go Well?

Michel Hébert — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 15:00:00 PDT

Theories of well-being give an account of what it is for persons to fare well. They state the general features that make a life good for the person who lives it.

Orthography-induced Transfer in L2 Phonological Acquisition of Spanish

Yasaman Rafat — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 15:00:00 PDT

Does exposure to orthographic input promote L1- based phonological transfer, leading to non-target- like productions in English-speaking learners of Spanish?
Do condition of learning and production and grapheme-to-phoneme (in)consistency modulate the rate of orthography-induced transfer?

Psychophysiology and The Warrior Ethos: The Fine Line Between Mental Resilience and Pathology

Andrew Peterson — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 15:00:00 PDT

Misunderstanding & Misdirecting the Liberal Arts

John Thorp — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 15:00:00 PDT

Gender and Genre in Athletic Epigrams: The Case of Kyniska (CEG 820)

Peter Miller — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 15:00:00 PDT

Mouvances Francophones

Servanne Woodward — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 15:00:00 PDT

“It's about Helping People”: Co‐op Experiences of LIS Students in Academic Libraries

Kristin Hoffmann et al. — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 15:00:00 PDT

The current study examines the prominence of service/helping in the field experiences of Library and Information Studies students, and aims to gain greater understanding of LIS students perceptions of helping as a feature of their professional identity.

Holocaust Literature Research Institute/ Institut de recherche sur la littérature de l’Holocauste

Alain Goldschläger — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 15:00:00 PDT

Founder and director of the Institute, Alain Goldschläger has amassed one of the world’s largest collections of published Holocaust testimonials. The collection is housed at the University of Western Ontario and since its creation, researchers and scholars have come to the University of Western Ontario to use this essential library collection in an effort to gain understanding about the Holocaust (Shoah).

The Institute also created a large annotated database on the Internet for easy access and research by scholars: http://hlri.ca/