▼ How will the educational community choose to communicate its knowledge today and in recent years to follow? With personal multi-media devices, non-linear social networking tools, and by the minute updates to everything in our lives, educational information delivery methods must continue to evolve to keep up with these ever changing trends. This thesis investigates how students learning styles, preferences and requirements are changing in the face of asynchronous information delivery methods in their own lives for leisure, interpersonal communications and entertainment. As these asynchronous and non-linear methods increase in presence and speed, careful attention must be paid in the educational realm to ensure that these styles and requirements are being met. Through an experiment, students will be presented with concurrent information in both a traditional lecture environment, as well as an environment that contains an additional self-directed Wiki-based module, including all of the same relevant information for asynchronous exploration. Advisors/Committee Members: Trautman, Donna.

▼ This study demonstrated that complex process control solutions can be reverse engineered using the Linux 2.6 kernel without employing any external interrupts or real-time enhancements like RTLinux and RTAI. Reverse engineering creates knowledge through research, observation, and disassembly of a system part in order to discern elements of its design, manufacture, and use, often with the goal of producing a substitute. For this study Intel x86 compatible computer hardware running custom programs on a Fedora Core 2 GNU/Linux operating system replaced the failure-prone microcomputer-based control unit used in over 300,000 Bally electronic pinball machines manufactured from 1977 to 1985. A pinball machine embodies a degree of complexity on par with the problems encountered in a capstone undergraduate course in electronics and is fair game for reverse engineering because its patents have expired, although copyrighted program code is still protected. A black box technique for data development analyzed the microprocessor unit in terms of a closed-loop process control model. Knowledge of real-time computing theory was leveraged to supplant legacy circuits and firmware with modern, general-purpose computer architecture. The research design was based on iterative, quantitatively validated prototypes. The first iteration was a user program in which control of the solenoids was accomplished but the switch matrix failed to correctly detect switch closures. The second iteration introduced a kernel module to handle low level control, while a supervisory user program managed game play, logging, and fault detection. In the third iteration an emulation of the digital displays was added to the user interface and it was subjected to public testing. Three variables were manipulated: the module process period, the system load, and the use of POSIX real-time scheduling for the supervisory process. Overall game play performance was acceptable when the workqueue process was repeated every two or three milliseconds; at four milliseconds considerable lamp flicker was evident. An economic realizability measure, 25% unit cost savings, was met by minimizing expense with free, open source software and recycled computer hardware. Project cost was reduced by casting the effort in an educational context and by distributing software development among the SourceForge community, boosting overall return on investment. Advisors/Committee Members: Border, David.