Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: Using the work of six elementary school teachers and two University mathematics educators, we employ Grossman, Wineburg and Woolworth’s (2001) construct essential tension to consider the potential of designing 3D geometry lessons as a site for professional development. We highlight how the novelty of the domain promoted intellectual renewal and direct applicability.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Are legislators who present inconsistent voting records truly mavericks or are they simply responding to uncertainty they have over the preferences of their own constituencies? We investigate the impact of these uncertainty-causing and uncertainty-reducing factors on the (in)consistency of senators’ voting records for the period 1915-2004. We theorize and show that uncertainty about constituents’ preferences explains inconsistent voting behavior by legislators nationally. We also show that for southern senators, the interplay between party and the influx of black voters presents a particularly interesting case of legislator response to a changing environment.

Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: Preservice elementary teachers interacted with computer-generated figures to improve understanding and motivation within a geometry-methods course. Subjects rated their content knowledge of geometry, described how prepared they felt to teach geometry, and defined concepts. Modest gains in their knowledge of basic geometry, its applications, vocabulary, van Hiele levels exhibited, and in perceived teaching readiness were observed pre-post course.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This study calls for scholarly and public attention to the importance of health education about the prevention of HPV infection and health advertising about the availability of the HPV vaccine. I tested the effectiveness of avatar-based health intervention inside three-dimensional (3D) virtual worlds of Second Life. Results of a within-subject comparison demonstrated significant improvement in the target audience’s knowledge about HPV after the health intervention conducted by a medical doctor avatar (recommendation avatar). In addition, drawing upon regulatory focus theory and the conceptual framework of self-construal, this study examined the moderating effect of health consumers’ interdependent self-construal in the persuasion process in health communication. Results demonstrated that health consumers with a dominant interdependent view of self perceived health intervention with a prevention focus (vs. promotion focus) as more important.

Publication Type: Session Paper
Abstract: Recent scholarship in popular culture and new media focused on representation aspect of race in cyberspace. Nakamura has argued that networked world “without limits is represented by vivid and often sublime images of displayed ethnic and racial difference in order to bracket them off as exotic.” Martin Kevorkian, in his work on “Color Monitors” pointed to how there is continued placement of the back body in relation to technologies in American visual cultures that serves to place the African-American so that they simultaneously appear less threatening and more disciplined as subjects of modernity. Thus bodies of color are contained in technospaces. In this presentation, I will extend these arguments and examine instances of identity production and network interaction within the three-dimensional gamelike environment known as Secondlife. Having developed the notion of “technocultural agency” at the online/offline interface I look at performances and embodied “voicing’s” in these online settings.