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Robotic technologies possess great potential to enter our daily lives because they have the ability to interact with our world. But our world is inherently social. Whilst humans often have a natural understanding of this complex environment, it is much more challenging for robots. The field of social Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) seeks to endow robots with the characteristics and behaviours that would allow for intuitive multimodal interaction. Education is a social process and previous research has found strong links between the social behaviour of teachers and student learning. This therefore presents a promising application opportunity for social human-robot interaction. The thesis presented here is that a robot with tailored social behaviour will positively influence the outcomes of tutoring interactions with children and consequently lead to an increase in child learning when compared to a robot without this social behaviour. It has long been established that one-to-one tutoring provides a more effective means of learning than the current typical school classroom model (one teacher to many students). Schools increasingly supplement their teaching with technology such as tablets and laptops to offer this personalised experience, but a growing body of evidence suggests that robots lead to greater learning than other media. It is posited that this is due to the increased social presence of a robot. This work adds to the evidence that robots hold a social advantage over other technological media, and that this indeed leads to increased learning. In addition, the work here contributes to existing knowledge by seeking to expand our understanding of how to manipulate robot social behaviour in educational interactions such that the behaviour is tailored for this purpose. To achieve this, a means of characterising social behaviour is required, as is a means of measuring the success of the behaviour for the interaction. To characterise the social behaviour of the robot, the concept of immediacy is taken from the human-human literature and validated for use in HRI. Greater use of immediacy behaviours is also tied to increased cognitive learning gains in humans. This can be used to predict the same effect for the use of social behaviour by a robot, with learning providing an objective measure of success for the robot behaviour given the education application. It is found here that when implemented on a robot in tutoring scenarios, greater use of immediacy behaviours generally does tend to lead to increased learning, but a complex picture emerges. Merely the addition of more social behaviour is insufficient to increase learning; it is found that a balance should be struck between the addition of social cues, and the congruency of these cues.

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to describe the experiences of instructor social presence and immediacy on student success for asynchronous online students at universities that offer asynchronous learning in Southern California. The theory guiding this study was Short’s theory of social presence, as it explains the real and present interaction that affects the saliency and interpersonal relationships of the participants. The methodology for this qualitative study followed a hermeneutical phenomenological design of 10 asynchronous online students enrolled in universities in Southern California. Data were collected using individual interviews, letter writing, and a focus group. The data analysis included a phenomenological reduction of data coding to identify common themes and trends. These themes and trends were compared and contrasted against outlying experiences and synthesized to identify merging themes. Three themes and six sub-themes emerged from the study. The three themes included quality of instructor-student interaction, socialization and connectedness with instructors and peers, and effectiveness of online learning. Findings from this study will help current and future asynchronous online instructors use social presence and immediacy to improve students’ academic success.

This quantitative research study focuses on the relationship between college teachers’ nonverbal communication behaviors and the influence that those behaviors have on college students’ perception of immediacy. Understanding the factors of immediacy, or trust and rapport with another, is imperative for educators as the current literature suggests that how students feel toward their instructors plays a role in the retention or attrition of students. Although nonverbal communication is only one part of a complex set of variables that go into the equation of student retention, it is an important aspect of the equation to study because nonverbal communication is constantly happening in every lecture and every student-instructor interaction. By gathering Likert scale data from over 1,800 college students across the nation, this study found that the most highly correlated nonverbal categories (haptics and proxemics) were the two that required individualized interactions with students. The findings from this study suggest a correlation between student-instructor immediacy and educators who go out of their way to connect with students on an individual and personal basis. This study has theoretical implications within the nonverbal immediacy field and practical implications for educators and higher education. Keywords: immediacy, nonverbal communication, college student, relationships

Development of subject matter interest is an important motivator for long term student learning. Fortunately, what teachers do in the learning environment can have an impact on interest. This study was an investigation of how instructor inputs in engineering courses that were taught online were associated with students’ perceptions of instructor relatedness and situational interest. The initial hypothesis was that a student’s sense of social relatedness with the instructor would mediate the relationship between instructional inputs and student perceptions of situational interest in the class. The study employed a multiple methods approach to gather quantitative and qualitative data to gain insights into both instructor and student perspectives of the online engineering educational experience. The frameworks of teacher presence, defined by Garrison’s (2007) Community of Inquiry (COI) model as the design and facilitation of distance learning environments, and Mehrabian's (1971) concept of immediacy, which includes behaviors intended to signal openness to communicative interaction, were used to develop a survey administered to 141 undergraduate engineering students, capturing their perceptions of social relatedness and situational interest. Results indicated that teacher presence online, but not immediacy behaviors, was predictive of student-perceived instructor relatedness and situational interest. A higher reported perception of teacher presence was associated with a greater feeling of instructor-student relatedness and with situational interest. However, the two outcome variables were independent such that instructor relatedness did not mediate the relationship between instructor inputs and interest. Follow-up qualitative interviews indicated that the teacher presence construct provided a sufficient framework to encompass student and instructor perceptions of the role of the instructor, as well as strategies used by instructors for developing instructor-student connection and the encouragement of situational interest during class sessions. A synthesis of the qualitative and quantitative data suggests that instructors can use specific strategies from the teacher presence framework, including a focus on instructional design, facilitation of discourse, and well-organized direct instruction to help students develop feelings of both connection and interest. Although the initial hypothesis of a mediated path to interest via the development of social relatedness was not supported, the final results suggest that both instructor-student relatedness and situational interest develop concurrently and that the affective and cognitive components of online engineering education should be considered simultaneously.

The fields of holistic education and spiritual pedagogy suggest one of the most essential capacities for a teacher is to be present and/or demonstrate presence with students, however a gap exists in specifically defining what presence is and how to exhibit it with students communicatively. Some articles from the fields of mindfulness and contemplative studies suggest that contemplative practices may improve the capacity to be present. This research project sought to more deeply understand presence, define it, and explore the communication practices such as empathic listening, silence and immediacy behaviors holistic educators engage in when being present to students and demonstrating presence. The research questions included: RQ1: What life-experiences shape the way holistic educators communicate with students? RQ2: What contemplative practices do holistic educators use to prepare for communicating with students? RQ3: What communication practices do holistic educators use to be present with students? Using a qualitative approach, autoethnographic stories by the researcher and semi-structured interviews were conducted with six holistic educators. A thematic analysis found four main themes including holistic educators: (1) Combine conceptual and experiential approaches to learning; (2) Engage in contemplative practices daily to be present to students; (3) Seek to be present soulfully with their students, and (4) Communicate for communion. Several key concepts which emerged included presence, being present, communion, connectedness, darshan, student-centered learning, experiential learning, channeling, soulfulness and spirituality to name a few.

This study investigates a possible link between a students’ willingness to engage in out of class communication (OCC) with an instructor and the level of mediated immediacy that the instructor presents through his/her online presence. The hypotheses were that students viewing a Facebook page would be more willing to engage in OCC than those viewing an institutional web page with low levels of mediated immediacy and that students viewing a Facebook page would also be more willing to engage in OCC with their instructor for relationship focused reasons than those who viewed an institutional web page. While both hypotheses were found to be false, this study uncovered a correlation which suggests that the institutional web page creates a higher willingness to engage in OCC for task-focused reasons than a Facebook page and invites further research into the topic.

The dissertation examines the development of sustainable transportation policy in Mexico City. It argues that while sustainable transportation interventions have been defined as examples of a commitment to democratic planning and redistribution of infrastructure investment, in practice these projects have been implemented in a top-down fashion, legitimized by a handful of experts and have targeted only a handful of central districts. The implementation of these reforms are enabling the re-valorization of central neighborhoods and generating new forms of privatization and spatial inequality. The inequality produced is not only spatial. Sustainable transportation initiatives also produce differentiated publics, reducing participation to a handful of non-state actors, namely, experts and international NGOs.I develop these claims through the analysis of Metrobus, the city’s BRT system, the bikeshare system Ecobici, and a street parking management program called Ecoparq. I draw on ethnographic evidence collected in Mexico City over 16 months in 2012 and 2013 consisting of extensive in- depth interviews with over 60 city officials, transportation experts, NGO staff members, social movements activists and citizens. I use this data to analyze política de movilidad as a policy space in which multiple actors within and outside the state have come together to redefine the goals, mechanisms and technologies used to plan and implement transportation infrastructure.I draw on the metaphor of immediacy to analyze the practices that make possible these sustainable transportation projects and bring attention to three important policymaking practices and their effects. First, I argue that the need for an immediate response to environmental crises is generative of new policies that must be implemented quickly by bypassing existing bureaucratic and political structures. Second, I show how first-hand, immediate, experience is as an important temporal- spatial dimension of policymaking. By building pilot projects that appear successful and can make sense to any resident, city officials minimize conflict and bring legitimacy to controversial interventions. And third, I propose that the metaphor of immediacy complicates understandings of the role that infrastructures play in shaping public debates around green futures. Movilidad projects postpone inclusive planning processes in which planners could mediate debates in which citizens, experts and officials co-decide how to make the city more sustainable and democratic.

Instructor immediacy is an essential characteristic of effective instructors. Although instructional communication has done extensive research on the impact of immediacy behaviors on students, there is little available research observing immediacy behaviors as predictors of motivation on engineering students. As a result, this study examined the impact of engineering instructors’ use of immediacy behaviors on engineering students’ motivation. The results indicated that verbal immediacy predicted engineering student motivation. The thematic analysis revealed that when students perceived their instructors as helpful, students’ motivation to learn and ask more questions increased. The thematic analysis also observed that when instructors seemed unapproachable, students were less likely to engage with them. These findings present valuable insight for engineering educators on how their immediacy behaviors can both positively and negative affect student motivation and possible retention.

The field of English Language Arts has a long history of valuing students’ experience and placing it at the center of curriculum and instruction. However, the means of making experience educative for students has proved to be a challenging conceptualization, especially within the realities of classroom life. This dissertation addresses this issue by exploring how a particular school used an 18-week experiential program called “Walkabout” to create opportunities for students’ experiences to become educative individually and collectively through narrative performance. In Walkabout, students reflect upon the educative value of their experiences through multiple oral and written narrativizations of experiences over time. I frame the practice of making experience educative in two ways. First, I build upon Dewey’s (1938) notions of continuity and interaction. Second, I rely upon sociolinguistic scholars who conceptualize narrative according to its situated function as manifested by language-in-use. The larger ethnographic research project from which this study is taken was a two-year study tracing the writing experiences of two senior classes involving 18 case study students. This study was the focus of the second year of the larger study. I use the methods of case study and interactional ethnography to trace students’ participation with narrativizations of experience according to Rogoff’s (1995) three planes of activity—apprenticeship, guided practice, and participatory appropriation—to structure my discussion of students’ sociocultural participation with narrativizations of experience over time on institutional, interactional, and individual levels. Students were apprenticed into making experience educative over time through three primary moves: (1) making immediate evaluations tellable (2) constructing identities through narrativizations and (3) engaging in reflective meaning making on previous and ongoing narrativizations. These moves were evident in the students’ evolving language in use in how they narrativized their experiences over time in different narrative environments such as journals, class discussions, class papers, and public presentations. These moves were also influenced by the historical, institutional, and interactional forces that shaped the Walkabout program and its teachers, including an emphasis on individual and community growth and readiness to transition from adolescence to adulthood. By addressing student-generated narrativized topics over time, teachers were able to transform students’ immediate narrativized evaluations of experience into more complex topics. Three case study students demonstrated both resistance and acceptance of teachers’ attempts to engage them in reflective meaning-making but in all cases students did engage in robust dialogues where they at least considered alternate constructions of meaning regarding their narrativizations of experience. This study offers narrativizations of experience as a way to realize Dewey’s (1938) argument that experiences can be made educative through continuity and interaction and carries theoretical, pedagogical, and methodological implications for the value of using students’ experience as heuristic for teaching and learning.

In 1975, Weinberg (2001) first posed the challenging question that we, as educators, are unfortunately still struggling to answer: Why are we so unable to anticipate the second order effects of the first order victories of science and technology? Forty years later, education is still struggling to identify and address the second order effects of the technological changes that exploded around 1995 with the advent of the worldwide web. Faculty still struggle with rapid technological developments. Students desire greater flexibility with online learning and seek learning that embeds the technological formats they use in their day-to-day lives. Institutions of higher education grapple to meet the demand for more online courses, as well as to resolve the challenges that online learning poses at the institutional level. The field of education is still wondering where online learning fits with more traditional pedagogical designs. One aspect of online learning that has come into the recent limelight is the topic of social presence. Currently, the term social presence is thrown around as a panacea for a variety of online learning design problems. Unfortunately, the topic of social presence is fraught with ambiguity and controversy. Educational researchers define and measure social presence in a multitude of ways, which makes its application all the more problematic. This debate is happening at the same time as instructors and instructional designers work to implement strategies to increase social presence in online courses, seeking to use it as way to address the challenges that online learning brings to current learning environments. This study examines the topic of social presence by harkening back to its original conception: a consilience of psychological closeness and technology modality. The study begins with a literature review, including aspects of immediacy and use of technology in online learning, and ends with a call to the field of education in creating online course design in the years ahead.

This dissertation is a collection of poems preceded by a critical preface. The preface considers emotional immediacy—or the idea of enacting in readers an emotional drama that appears genuine and simultaneous with the speaker's experience—and furthermore argues against the common criticism that accessibility means simplicity, ultimately reifying the importance of accessibility in contemporary poetry. The preface is divided into an introduction and three sections, each of which explores a different technique for creating immediacy, exemplified by Robert Lowell’s "Waking in the Blue,” Sylvia Plath's "Lady Lazarus,” and Louise Gluck's "Eros." The first section examines "Waking in the Blue,” and the poem's systematic inflation and deflation of persona as a means of revealing complexity a ambiguity. The second section engages in a close reading of "Lady Lazarus,” arguing that the poem's initially deliberately false erodes into sincerity, creating immediacy. The third section considers the continued importance of persona beyond confessionalism, and argues that in "Eros," it is the apparent lack of drama, and the focus on the cognitive process, that facilitates emotional immediacy.

The purpose of this study was threefold. First, it sought to conceptually compare two constructs that have numerous similarities, social presence and mediated immediacy. Second, it attempted to empirically test the relationship between those constructs after determining that the conceptual similarities suggested an overlapping relationship. Third, the study sought to determine if aspects of the communicative message, such as the type of target or level of interactivity, influenced how socially present or immediate an individual perceived that message to be. Confirmatory factor analyses, independent groups t-tests, and ANCOVAs were utilized to test the research questions that were posed. The results indicated no uniform effect of target or interactivity on ratings of social presence and mediated immediacy. Additionally, the confirmatory factor analysis pointed toward the independent relationship proposed in existing research as the best model. Limitations such as poor measurement scales and group characteristics could have influenced these findings. Thus, more research attempting to identify the relationship between social presence and mediated immediacy is warranted.

Secondary World: The Limits of Ludonarrative is a series of short narrative animations that are a theoretical treatise on the limitations of western storytelling in video games. The series covers specific topics relating to film theory, game design and art theory: specifically those associated with Gilles Deleuze, Jean Baudrillard, Jay Bolter, Richard Grusin and Andy Clark. The use of imagery, editing and presentation is intended to physically represent an extension of myself and my thinking process and which are united through the common thread of my personal feelings, thoughts and experiences in the digital age.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether a live, synchronous distance delivery technology would facilitate interaction, immediacy, and presence between an instructor and his contiguous and remote classrooms, and whether it would facilitate interaction between the two groups of students. This study researched the opinions of students on whether they felt the platform facilitated interaction between the two groups of learners, both groups of learners and the instructor, and both groups of learners and the content. This research followed the development and testing of a synchronous delivery platform that would replicate a traditional, interactive, classroom in a remote location. The research was conducted at a public university in two undergraduate construction management courses, over two successive semesters with different groups of students. The students and the instructor were observed and interviewed by an independent classroom observer. There were two main components of the delivery platform: the first was the synchronous, sidewall projection of the students in each room and the second was the synchronous, frontwall projection of the instructor and content to the students in the distant classroom. The students in both classrooms reported the platform facilitated interaction, immediacy, and presence between the students in the remote classroom and the instructor. They further reported the sidewall projections did not facilitate learner-learner interaction between classrooms and did not necessarily feel learner-learner interaction was pertinent in either a distant or traditional classroom. The student’s perceptions of student-content interaction were mixed, with the results improving considerably in the final phase of this study. Enough questions have been raised in this study to warrant further research into the effectiveness of synchronous distance instructional platforms using advanced technology. The results also indicate a need for further research into the causal relationships of immediacy and presence on cognitive learning. With minor improvements in equipment and environment, elementary, secondary, and post-secondary institutions could effectively adopt this system for use in replicating interactive, synchronous distance education classes in remote locations. Advisor: James P. O’Hanlon

Comedy has typically been derided as second-tier to drama in all aspects of narrative. Throughout history, comedy has seen short shrift in both critical reception and academic investigation. Merit is simply placed on drama far before that of comedy. This is not for comedy’s own lack of skill or craft, but simply for comedy’s misappropriation as a narrative form. Throughout the years, by way of either competition or economic superiority, comedy has been pigeonholed into the typified dramatic structure that drama so thoroughly encapsulates. Being forced into a form that exemplifies complex, climactic structure and explicit character development, comedy in its purest form has suffered through the ages. Gertrude Stein’s theory of Landscape Drama, and, more specifically, immediacy, is best attuned to comedy in its truest form. Comedy does not require sweeping character development, obtuse narrative design, or fantastic spectacle to produce superior works of art. Comedy, when compared to drama, exists best in a much more punctuated format. Stein’s theories, while never intended for comedy, align absolutely perfectly with the comedic genre’s design. And epitomized through long form improv on the stage, and the newly-fashioned digital short made profitable by the proliferation of the internet and digital culture, comedy’s purest form has become more readily available as narrative has progressed throughout history. With this thesis, I intend to display the disparity between comedy and drama due to comedy’s misallotment into a format that does not properly encapsulate it to its most fulfilling embodiment. Through this display, I seek to uncover the debt done to the comedic form from centuries of neglect in academic query and merit in order to best prove comedy’s need for ii critical scrutiny. Further, in doing so I hope to better construe a community of comedic research and criticism in order to create better art and more diverse comedic offerings.

This dissertation purports to clarify the role of perceived immediacy in interpersonal communication. Immediate behaviors were first identified as behaviors associated with increases in receiver liking and self-disclosure. As such, the first study is a meta-analysis of immediate behaviors and self-disclosure and the second study meta-analyzes immediate behaviors and liking. The magnitudes of the effects yielded from both studies are consisted with indirect relationships. The third study is an experiment which uses a range of previously identified immediate behaviors from the literature as an induction and measures perceived immediacy, liking, and self-disclosure to test perceived immediacy as a mediating variable between immediate behaviors and these outputs. The results of the experiment are consistent with perceived immediacy mediating immediate behaviors and liking, but not immediate behaviors and disclosure.

Three out of five U.S. adults search the Internet for health information, and about one out of ten seek others who have similar health issues. Users can gather information and connect with others through virtual environments. This research tested the effect of the expectancy violations theory through immediacy and communicator reward value on evaluations of a virtual counselor during a health intervention. Participants (N = 91) interacted with a high or low reward communicator in Second Life who engaged in positive or negative immediacy behaviors. The participant’s perception of positive immediacy in the high reward virtual counselor increased evaluations of trust. For the low reward communicator, perceptions of positive immediacy increased evaluations caring and goodwill. These findings are partially consistent with expectancy violations theory. Belief in the virtual representation’s agency increased positive evaluations of the virtual counselor. Implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed.

Our nation’s first Chief Technology Officer, Aneesh Chopra, has said that “technology in education is less about hardware and software and more about what we teach, the method in which we teach it, and professional development and support for educators” (Fletcher, 2009). While technology reform continues to provide schools and colleges with hardware and software (Kern & Warschauer, 2000; Kessler, 2006), the amount of technology teachers use remains low (Barron et al., 2003; Cuban et al., 2001). If our efforts are to reform, as Chopra suggests, what we teach and how we teach it, our instructional technology research must incorporate the voices of teachers who determine what happens inside the classroom. One theory regarding limited technology use has been that teachers’ beliefs and their relationship to practice might provide us with insight that will allow us to aid teachers in their craft (Becker & Riel, 1999; Ertmer, 2005). This qualitative case study examines three Spanish teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and how those beliefs relate to their instructional technology use. Data include interviews, observations, field notes and documents analyzed using a constant comparative approach (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Findings show that beliefs about the classroom environment most influence their choices regarding instructional technology.

Research Question: How can temporality be used to develop new strategies for the design of furniture? This exegesis documents the journey through my Masters of Design project Horological Furniture. An artefact’s temporal form is defined by changes manifest through use over time. In this project I have crafted furniture while considering the role of time as a design dimension. Normally we privilege the new; however with furniture, the temporal form is often one of devaluation and decay. My making has been guided by a Heuristic approach. I have employed a ‘research through design methodology’ of testing ideas through a cyclic process of observation, making and reflection. This text is divided into two distinct phases; the first is an exploration of immediacy and the second of longevity. These explorations parallel the horological modes of clock and calendar. Through research, direct observation, experimentation, making and use I have identified the potential for artefacts to operate in one of two temporal forms, specifically damage or diary. Damage and diary act as metaphors for the analogies of clocks and calendars. This project has affected the manner in which I perceive use, wear, and damage of artefacts. Damage or Diary will now be used as a schema to critique my ongoing practice and as a crucial tool to influence my making.

Previous cross-cultural research in nonverbal immediacy indicates that nonverbal immediacy behavior varies across cultures, and some researchers have suggested that power distance might serve as a moderating variable, however no research has systematically set out to determine whether that is the case. This study assessed the perceived use of nonverbal immediacy under symmetric and asymmetric power conditions, as well as gender, in three cultures: Brazil, Kenya, and the United States. Quantitative data was collected from 527 participants who completed a nonverbal immediacy measure and an individual power distance measure under either a symmetric or an asymmetric power condition. Results related to power distance partially supported the idea that cultural power distance may act as a moderating variable with regard to the use of nonverbal immediacy behaviors. Related to gender, results revealed that: (a) female participants perceived more nonverbal immediacy behaviors than males, (b) under symmetric power conditions females were perceived to use more nonverbal immediacy than males, and (c) under asymmetric power conditions there was no statistically significant difference between use of nonverbal immediacy behaviors between females and males. Implications of results, limitations, and suggestions for future research are presented.

As the current body of instructional communication research focuses primarily on the relationship between teacher and learner, three studies investigating the relationship between learners were completed in order to better understand how student motivation and learning are influenced by learner-to-learner immediacy behaviors within the college classroom environment. Study I resulted in an extensive list of both positive and negative verbal and nonverbal immediacy behaviors commonly used by learners. Study II required the comparison of the behaviors identified in study one to existing measures of teacher to learner immediacy behaviors, producing a new measure focusing on learner-to-learner immediacy. Following a pilot survey, the reliability of this new measure was determined through face validity and factor analysis, producing the Learner-to-Learner Immediacy Behavior Scale. In Study III, the Learner-to-Learner Immediacy Behavior Scale was combined with Christophel's 1990 Immediacy Behavior Scale, Cognitive Learning Scale, Affective Learning Scale, and Trait and State Motivation Scales and administered to 273 undergraduate students to test the affects of common learner-to-learner immediacy behaviors on student state motivation, affective learning, and perceptions of cognitive learning loss. Multiple regression analyses indicated learner-to-learner immediacy as functioning similarly to teacher-to-student immediacy when mediated through state motivation in its influence on student affective learning and perceptions of cognitive learning loss.

This study built on previous literature linking instructor immediacy, student motivation, and student learning. The purpose of this research was to examine main and interaction effects of instructor immediacy and student trait motivation on student state motivation and cognitive learning. A main effect of instructor nonverbal immediacy on student state motivation and cognitive learning was found to be statistically significant. Further exploratory research did not yield statistical significance for a main effect of trait motivation, as measured by need for cognition, on student state motivation and cognitive learning, nor an interaction effect of immediacy and trait motivation on both state motivation and cognitive learning.

Art in the age of digital reproduction thrives as a commodity. Freed from its place of origin and consolidated into data, artcan be endlessly replayed anywhere, anytime, in an unchanging, reliable form. As a result, one's ability to distinguish authenticart from its representation is becoming more ambiguous and considerably less crucial while the performing arts, one of few artforms that cannot be reproduced or commoditized, is not surprisingly experiencing a crisis of identity. Competing for entertainmentdollars, the nature of live performance is now being questioned. Is the live art form becoming irrelevant? Should live performancebe spliced with digital media to capture it as data, thus modernizing and validating it?In response to these questions, two current attitudes behind the design of live event space can be observed. The firstadopts a purist's stance in perceiving the legacy of the live event to survive only if it stands firmly in opposition to forces ofmediation, envisioning live event space as a container for the illusion of spectacle. The other perceives an inevitable demise oflive performance in technology's wake and chooses a proactive position, envisioning live event space as a container for a layered,complex multimedia performance. Finding these responses, which either wholly reject or subsume forces of mediation, to beinadequate, this project argues for a third approach that is commensurate to live performance's immediate, unmediated tradition,while at the same time eager to incorporate current technologies as not a mediating force (or conversely a generator of meaningas-spectacle) but rather a necessary tool for event execution. In the design of a performing arts center in the mountains ofBoulder County, Colorado, this thesis proposes that the design methodology for live event space should arise out of a sensibilityfor the immediate, contextual character of live performance that views the building an extension of, rather than a container for,the performance. Recognizing that the inherent authenticity of a live event binds it to its locality and subjects it to its immediatesurroundings, this project conceives of architecture as an event – a dynamic confrontation in real time that implicates forces of siteand use – rather than a preconceived, static object.

This descriptive-correlational research study examined the relationships between teacher immediacy, autonomy and student self-efficacy, and task value motivation as reported by college students. Respondent demographic characteristics indicated the respondents were 64 percent male and 36 percent female. Freshman, sophomores, and seniors individually represented just over 20 percent each for a collective total of 66.4 percent, while Junior level students comprised 33.7 percent of the respondents. Factory analysis was conducted on the Verbal Immediacy Behaviors (VIB) instrument, Nonverbal Immediacy Behaviors (NIB) instrument and the Learning Climate Questionnaire (LCQ). Results of the factor analysis and re-examination of the foundational theories revealed concerns with the validity of the VIB. While the NIB failed to reveal a single factor construct, the instrument construction and questions utilized were highly supportive of Mehrabian's Implicit Communication Theory. The LCQ was deemed a valid measure of the autonomy-supportive behaviors of teachers. Low to very low correlations existed between immediacy and autonomy constructs and the respondent demographics. Low to very low correlations were evidenced between the independent demographic variables and the dependent measures of student self-efficacy and task value motivation. Results showed a low correlation between the three independent constructs and self efficacy. Results indicated verbal immediacy explained 11% of the variance in self-efficacy and 6% of the variance in task value. Nonverbal immediacy explained 4% of the variance in self-efficacy and 2% of the variance in task value. Autonomy-supportive teacher behaviors explained 11% of the variance in self-efficacy and 6% of the variance in task value. Recommendations include cautioned use of the Verbal Immediacy Behaviors instrument as a measure of immediacy, and continued use of the Nonverbal Immediacy Behaviors and Learning Climate Questionnaire. Additionally, instructors need to be aware of the potential to influence student self-efficacy and monitor their verbal, nonverbal and autonomy-supportive behaviors. Further recommendations include the need for continued research regarding the relationships between instructor communication and student motivation. The use of structural equation modeling was proffered as a possible means to examine, with greater acuity, the relationships between verbal immediacy, nonverbal immediacy, autonomy, self-efficacy, and task value.

This study examines the use of a linguistic structure related to both interruptions and topic change in informal Spanish conversation. Upon analyzing conversations recorded during lunch and dinner gatherings in Valencia, Spain in July 2006, the data reflected the repeated presence of moments in which the conversational context (topics of conversation) and the conversational situation (location of conversation, actions of participants while conversing) connect briefly. This structure, called “parenthesis,” manifests itself in four distinct structural variations depending on whether a topic and/or speaker change occurs immediately before and after the structure. Parentheses are used to carry out four distinct functions in conversation. It is found that the intersection of conversational and situational contexts (the moment of the parenthesis) occurs when one participant expresses an immediate physical, mental, emotional or social need. The concept of immediacy explains the use of parenthesis to express this need in a given moment during conversation.

Transformational leadership is a well documented and validated leadership perspective studied in management and organizational contexts. This study applies the transformational leadership model to the instructional context. Specifically, this study sought to examine the relationships between transformational leadership and teacher immediacy, student empowerment, learning, motivation, and satisfaction. A positive relationship between transformational leadership and the above variables was hypothesized and all hypotheses were significantly supported. The study ends with an analysis of the transformational leadership model in the instructional context, and directions for future research extending the application of the transformational leadership model in the classroom.

This study investigated the relationship between female athletes and head coaches' perceived communication competence. Participants were members ofNCAA Division I institutions in the southeastern United States. Female athletes (n=134) and head coaches (n=13) from two institutions completed questionnaires. Perceptions ofcoaches and athletes were examined to determine if gender differences existed in the measured domains. Results indicated that coaches perceived themselves as communicatively competent, while athletes' perceptions were positive, but not as strong. There was a significant relationship (p

This study examines the theory of social presence and its relevancy to distance learning. Short, William, and Christie (1976) originally designed social presence to evaluate the difference between types of dyads (one-to-one interactions) and the quality of the communication media used for those interactions (Rafaeli, 1988; Rice, 1984; Walther, 1992). However, the theory of social presence was not design to explain mediated communication between multiple individuals. Although studies have investigated the effects of social presence in computer-mediated conferencing, little field research exist on the importance of social presence with multiple individuals communicating together within a Web-based instructional program. Moreover, it is evident from the body of literature that a universal meaning of social presence is lacking. For this reason, social presence in this study referred to the degree to which adult learners perceived that they had established some form of rapport with members of an online community. This includes interactions with other learners and support personnel (i.e., faculty, staff, technical support, graders, etc.). Social presence has emerged as an important social factor in the field of distance learning (Gunawardena & Zittle, 1997; Rourke, Anderson, Garrison, & Archer, 1999). Recent field studies emphasize the importance of examining social and psychological factors that affect student satisfaction, impact learning, and influences the way people communicate in distance learning environments (Blocher, 1997; Gunawardena, 1995, Gunawardena & Zittle, 1997; Hackman, 1990, 1996; Hiltz, 1997; Rourke, 1999; Walther, 1992). Researchers in the fields of education and human interpersonal communication have identified "interactivity" (i.e., interaction), "intimacy," and "immediacy" as attributes that enhance social presence (Christophel, 1990; Gunawardena & Zittle, 1997; McIsaac & Gunawardena, 1996; Mehrabian, 1989; Moore, 1989b; Short et al., 1976). Although social presence has been characterized as an important construct in distance learning (McIsaac & Gunawardena, 1996), little existing field research describes the value adult learners place on it, and whether it affects their satisfaction within a mediated learning environment. This descriptive study examined the adult distance learners' perceived value of social presence (based on interactions, intimacy, and immediacy), in addition to whether it existed within an asynchronous Web-based instructional program.

The purpose of this essay is to examine the sense of immediacy in fiction, i.e., the sense that the story is unfolding before one's eyes; the sense that the story is happening now. What it is and how it can be achieved is discussed in relation to the author's own stories; as well dealing briefly with some more general points in regard to what fiction is and how it seeks to achieve what it attempts.