The theme park industry is rapidly growing, as massive companies spend billions of dollars to create increasingly advanced attractions and lands for guests. This paper defines immersion and presence and explores how theme parks are designed. It will then explore the newest ride systems, exploring how technology is used in combination with a themed environment and story to meet and exceed guests’ expectations of an attraction. Attractions also use a variety of displays to convey important information and story elements along with audio. These principles are used to propose an advancement of an element that can be added to previously existing attractions to make guests feel more immersed and part of the story.

Patient identification is becoming more crucially important, particularly as healthcare is becoming more data based and automated. Patient misidentification can cause a series of issues that affect patient safety and the quality of care, including increased time and money from the medical institution. Additionally, with the lack of standardization for identifying patients, interoperability is limited and Health Information Exchange cannot be optimized, One partial solution to the problem would be the implementation of a Unique Patient Identifier system; however, the United States has had some controversy over the implementation of such as system in the past as Congress prohibited any funding from going towards a UPI system in 1998 after HIPAA introduced a Unique Patient Identifier mandate in 1996. However, with more than 2 decades passing since the Congressional ban, the general American perception of Unique Patient Identifiers is not well known. This study attempts to answer the question of the current American perception of the implementation of a UPI system through an informational survey that induces critical thinking when answering qualitative questions with supportive quantitative questions. Participants were generally in favor of the implementation of a UPI system, and through a Chi-square analysis, it was shown that there was an association between knowledge learned about Unique Patient Identifiers in relation to the current identification system and developing a positive perception towards UPI implementation; however, this study cannot be generalized to the public as the sample size was not large enough and was not representative of the entire population. Still, future research should be conducted in relation to this subject as UPIs are a potential solution to our current “identity crisis”.

Online learning has been more prevalent since the rapid increase of the technology field, this paper examines if the interactivity of an online learning website can affect learning, usability, and time spent interacting. Participants were collected from Amazon Mechanical Turk, and they were compensated $1.00 for their time. 39 participants received one of three online learning conditions on the ideal gas law with varying levels of interactivity (video, simulation, quiz). The participants took a pretest, interacted with their condition for a set time, then completed a posttest and a usability survey. An ANOVA was conducted on time, usability, and posttest transfer scores. A repeated measures ANOVA was conducted on pretest and posttest recall scores. There was no significance found for learning, usability, or time spent interacting with the online learning platform. Further studies should consider exposing participants to learning materials for longer periods of time.

This paper explores the technological systems used by Arizona State University’s Housing department during the course of 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 school years at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic which struck the state of Arizona. The COVID-19 epidemic is the largest pandemic in recent memory. It has affected all walks of life, from social economic damages, widespread panic and the rise of civil unrest. One of the most profound effects from this generation of students is the impact it has had in all levels of education from kindergarten to graduate school. The American education system has been heavily affected since the pandemic first started. Due to the lockdowns, traditional education practices such as in-person classrooms, class labs, and even the psychological impact of physical distancing has affected students’ educational experiences. This disruption has also greatly affected our college system. In response to problems such as the lockdowns, slow rate of infections per student, many colleges have made extensive use of technological aids, substitutes, and systems to combat the damage done to the education system. This resulted in switching of in-person course work to online based assignments and tests. The colleges response to the pandemic has not only been online, but in-person as well. ASU has adopted a variety of systems to track its students’ and employees’ health statuses. This is done via the use of the Daily Heath Check System (an application used by ASU to track the health of both students and faculty), and the use of randomized testing. This enabled the tracking and monitoring of the rate of infections within the ASU community. ASU has also installed hand sanitizer machines in every building as well as providing a supply of health and safety equipment to necessary staff. These systems, products, and preventative practices have been put into place for the protection of not only the students but employees of ASU. However, one key consideration about the adoption of these measures, is whether or not they are truly effective. One of the areas explored are the problems with the adoption of these systems and how they were implemented. Meaning that these systems adopted resulted in either less then successful outcomes or causing student displeasure towards the systems that were implemented.

Immersion has become a key buzzword in the theme park industry, with many themed lands and attractions being designed with this objective in mind. This paper defines immersion through the concept of the ironic imagination and examines its role in theme park attractions. A literature review was first conducted to identify general design principles for the creation of immersive theme park attractions. Authentic settings that utilize all of the senses were considered first, along with a system of positive and negative cues for evaluating immersive experiences. The importance of simple and emotional stories was also addressed, before investigating the role that employees and guests play in an immersive attraction. Eight design principles were identified, and using these principles a blue sky design for an immersive theme park attraction was developed. An overview of the attraction is included and accompanied by an analysis of how the design principles were applied.