This thesis deals with the issue of barriers to participation in adult education. Survey, which investigates the strategies used for overcoming the barriers to participation in adult education by parents on parental leave, has been prepared on the basis of the contemporary theoretical knowledge on barriers to participation in adult education and inequalities in participation in adult education. Parents on parental leave are one of the groups with uneven access to adult education and they are deterred from participation in education because of situational barriers. Research participants (n = 6, M = 34.5) participated in semi-structured interview, which consists of seven topics related to the respondent's personal history, his academic and professional career and the circumstances of his life. Based on the data, the conditions and mechanisms that help to overcome group-specific barriers to participation in adult education were identified. On the basis of the common elements of respondents' answers the economically oriented strategy for overcoming barriers and the alternative strategy for overcoming barriers were defined. Key words: adult education, continuing education, lifelong learning, lifelong education, barriers to participation in adult education, deterrents to participation in adult education,...

This master thesis on the theme Educational activities of a chosen company deal with the program for graduates called ČP Naděje which is organized by Česká pojišťovna. The thesis is divided into five chapters. The first one explains the terms of human resources and human capital and characterize the concept of personnel work. There is also derived from knowledge of organizational structures how important human resources are for organizations. The second chapter is about adult education. This chapter consists of learning process characterization and determination of position of corporate learning and development in the educational system. The third chapter deals with the corporate training and development. There are mentioned personnel planning, recruitment and selection of new workers because these come before training and development of human resources. The fourth chapter focuses on the company Česká pojišťovna and its human resources department. The fifth chapter discusses the program for university graduates ČP Naděje. This chapter describes the form and development of the program. There are discussed the results of questionnaire survey performed among the program participants. The final chapter includes also comparison of the program ČP Naděje with program for graduates organized by competing company.

Dans un problème de prédiction à multiples pas discrets, la prédiction à chaque instant peut dépendre de l’entrée à n’importe quel moment dans un passé lointain. Modéliser une telle dépendance à long terme est un des problèmes fondamentaux en apprentissage automatique. En théorie, les Réseaux de Neurones Récurrents (RNN) peuvent modéliser toute dépendance à long terme. En pratique, puisque la magnitude des gradients peut croître ou décroître exponentiellement avec la durée de la séquence, les RNNs ne peuvent modéliser que les dépendances à court terme. Cette thèse explore ce problème dans les réseaux de neurones récurrents et propose de nouvelles solutions pour celui-ci. Le chapitre 3 explore l’idée d’utiliser une mémoire externe pour stocker les états cachés d’un réseau à Mémoire Long et Court Terme (LSTM). En rendant l’opération d’écriture et de lecture de la mémoire externe discrète, l’architecture proposée réduit le taux de décroissance des gradients dans un LSTM. Ces opérations discrètes permettent également au réseau de créer des connexions dynamiques sur de longs intervalles de temps. Le chapitre 4 tente de caractériser cette décroissance des gradients dans un réseau de neurones récurrent et propose une nouvelle architecture récurrente qui, grâce à sa conception, réduit ce problème. L’Unité Récurrente Non-saturante (NRUs) proposée n’a pas de fonction d’activation saturante et utilise la mise à jour additive de cellules au lieu de la mise à jour multiplicative. Le chapitre 5 discute des défis de l’utilisation de réseaux de neurones récurrents dans un contexte d’apprentissage continuel, où de nouvelles tâches apparaissent au fur et à mesure. Les dépendances dans l’apprentissage continuel ne sont pas seulement contenues dans une tâche, mais sont aussi présentes entre les tâches. Ce chapitre discute de deux problèmes fondamentaux dans l’apprentissage continuel: (i) l’oubli catastrophique d’anciennes tâches et (ii) la capacité de saturation du réseau. De plus, une solution est proposée pour régler ces deux problèmes lors de l’entraînement d’un réseau de neurones récurrent. / In a multi-step prediction problem, the prediction at each time step can depend on the input at any of the previous time steps far in the past. Modelling such long-term dependencies is one of the fundamental problems in machine learning. In theory, Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) can model any long-term dependency. In practice, they can only model short-term dependencies due to the problem of vanishing and exploding gradients. This thesis explores the problem of vanishing gradient in recurrent neural networks and proposes novel solutions for the same. Chapter 3 explores the idea of using external memory to store the hidden states of a Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) network. By making the read and write operations of the external memory discrete, the proposed architecture reduces the rate of gradients vanishing in an LSTM. These discrete operations also enable the network to create dynamic skip connections across time. Chapter 4 attempts to characterize all the sources of vanishing gradients in a recurrent neural network and proposes a new recurrent architecture which has significantly better gradient flow than state-of-the-art recurrent architectures. The proposed Non-saturating Recurrent Units (NRUs) have no saturating activation functions and use additive cell updates instead of multiplicative cell updates. Chapter 5 discusses the challenges of using recurrent neural networks in the context of lifelong learning. In the lifelong learning setting, the network is expected to learn a series of tasks over its lifetime. The dependencies in lifelong learning are not just within a task, but also across the tasks. This chapter discusses the two fundamental problems in lifelong learning: (i) catastrophic forgetting of old tasks, and (ii) network capacity saturation. Further, it proposes a solution to solve both these problems while training a recurrent neural network.

<p>Докторска дисертација разматра утицај<br />информалног учења на ниво информационе<br />писмености ученика. У циљу тога, анализирају се<br />карактеристике информалног учења, начини<br />коришћења информалних извора знања, као и<br />начини на који ученици најчешће долазе до<br />информација и знања о ИКТ. Истраживање је<br />вршено на узорку од 930 ученика четвртих разреда<br />средњих школа, а мерни инструмент за<br />истраживање је наменски конструисан као<br />сумациона скала за процену начина стицања и<br />усвајања знања о ИКТ. На основу резултата<br />истраживања, утврђено је да ученици у великој<br />мери користе информалне изворе знања, утврђени<br />су начини на који ученици најчешће долазе до<br />информација и знања о ИКТ, а посебно се истиче<br />значај коришћења Интернета као информалног<br />извора знања. Такође, резултатима истраживања је<br />утврђено да се коришћењем информалних извора<br />знања доприноси повећању нивоа информатичке,<br />дигиталне и мултимедијалне писмености ученика.<br />Резултати истраживања могу да послуже као<br />допринос валидацији информалног учења.</p> / <p>Doktorska disertacija razmatra uticaj<br />informalnog učenja na nivo informacione<br />pismenosti učenika. U cilju toga, analiziraju se<br />karakteristike informalnog učenja, načini<br />korišćenja informalnih izvora znanja, kao i<br />načini na koji učenici najčešće dolaze do<br />informacija i znanja o IKT. Istraživanje je<br />vršeno na uzorku od 930 učenika četvrtih razreda<br />srednjih škola, a merni instrument za<br />istraživanje je namenski konstruisan kao<br />sumaciona skala za procenu načina sticanja i<br />usvajanja znanja o IKT. Na osnovu rezultata<br />istraživanja, utvrđeno je da učenici u velikoj<br />meri koriste informalne izvore znanja, utvrđeni<br />su načini na koji učenici najčešće dolaze do<br />informacija i znanja o IKT, a posebno se ističe<br />značaj korišćenja Interneta kao informalnog<br />izvora znanja. Takođe, rezultatima istraživanja je<br />utvrđeno da se korišćenjem informalnih izvora<br />znanja doprinosi povećanju nivoa informatičke,<br />digitalne i multimedijalne pismenosti učenika.<br />Rezultati istraživanja mogu da posluže kao<br />doprinos validaciji informalnog učenja.</p> / <p>The doctoral dissertation examines the impact of<br />informal learning on the students&rsquo; information literacy<br />level. For that purpose, it analyses characteristics of<br />informal learning, the ways informal knowledge<br />sources are used, as well as the methods most<br />frequently used by students to obtain the information<br />and knowledge on ICT. The research has been<br />conducted on a sample of 930 fourth grade secondary<br />school students, and the research measuring instrument<br />has been a questionnaire created with a specific<br />purpose to assess the ways knowledge on ICT has been<br />obtained and acquired. Based on the research results, it<br />has been concluded that students use informal<br />knowledge sources to a large extent, the means<br />students use most frequently to obtain information and<br />knowledge on ICT have been identified as well,<br />whereas the significance of the use of internet as<br />informal knowledge source is most remarkable. The<br />research results have also shown that use of informal<br />knowledge sources contribute to the increase of the<br />level of the students&rsquo; information, digital and<br />multimedia literacy. The research results may serve as<br />a contribution to validation of informal learning.</p>

MEd / Department of Curriculum Studies / See the attached abstract below

Thesis Community services of library for middle-aged citizens deals with ways, which transform services of libraries from traditional borrowing services to community services in recent years. Most importantly, it discusses which kind of events are seen as interesting for middle-aged citizens aged 40-55, or more precisely what makes this group visit the library. First part of the thesis deals with definition of basic terms, such as community library, services of libraries, middle-age citizens and lifelong education. Further, it describes examples of new concept of libraries and library services in practice in age, when printed documents are not as necessary for users as they used to be. Next step of the thesis is the analysis of statistic figures, services and events hosted by three chosen libraries - Masaryk public library in Vsetín, town libraries in Nový Jičín and Valašské Meziříčí. The survey of interest preferences of middle-aged users is divided into two parts. First part deals with effects of survey research among users and potential users of libraries in monitored age, where interest preferences and relationship of respondent to library and its services. Second part summarizes answers of nine of them, who were asked to comment on composition of events, which occurred in libraries in course...

The thesis focuses on the profession of librarian and information professional in health care in the context of lifelong learning. The target group are professionals of information institutions in the network of public health information services in the Czech Republic. Content analysis of Czech and foreign materials and sociological quantitative research carried out by questionnaires in the Czech Republic's health information institutions are methods for analysing the needs of the librarian and information specialist in the health care sector in the Czech Republic. The output is a proposal of the concept of a lifelong professional education program called Competencies of the medical librarian for the performance of library and information activities. The lifelong education of medical librarians in connection with the concept of lifelong education of librarians in the Czech Republic is a process that will enable to gain necessary qualifications (professional knowledge and skills, general skills and soft skills) to perform this responsible and demanding profession.

For school libraries to sufficiently contribute to better information skills’ development and creation of a culture of lifelong learning among students, they require backing through well articulated policies both at national and individual school level. This study investigated the prevailing status of school libraries in public secondary schools in Nairobi County, Kenya. Using a survey research design, with a response rate of 68% for school principals and 66% for school librarians, this study established that although the majority of the schools had school libraries, these were individual schools’ efforts. There were no government policies on school libraries and most of the schools lacked explicit library policies. Additionally, they had not embraced contemporary trends in technology and the major impediment was lack of financial support. The study concluded that school libraries in Nairobi County were inadequately resourced and supported and recommended that the government of Kenya should come up with national policies that will entrench school libraries in the education system. / Information Science / M.A. (Information Science)

(in English): Dissertation is focused on the continuing education of teachers in terms of the current legislation of the European Union and the Czech Republic as one of the key adaptive mechanisms that ensure the ability of the education system to adequately respond to the ever changing social conditions in today's globalized world. The theoretical part through the analysis of different theoretical approaches to further education, defines and describes the issue of further education of teachers , the system - specific conditions , areas and its financing. It deals with the areas of the teacher's profession, their competences , career structure and professional standards. The empirical part of this dissertation, based on empirical research, describes the system of further education of teachers both in terms of school leadership , and from the perspective of teachers and it maps specific factors affecting the quality of the current further education of teachers.

The thesis concentrates on unintended consequences of putting emphasis on education in the current society and their impacts on labour market success of school graduates as well as on fulfilment of employers needs from the perspective of occupying job positions in accordance with the demographic aging of the population. The thesis is trying to answer the question, if education has an adequate influence on the social mobility as it was in the recent past. The author is also trying to suggest possible solutions of the situation occurred on the labour market from the viewpoint of the qualified labour shortage with lower educational level, especially in the secondary sector. Possibilities are seen in the consistent assertion of the LLL conception, increasing the relevance of the education content and adapting to the changing requirements of qualifications through of cooperation between schools and employers. Last but not least the thesis also draws attention to the need of relevant information about the labour market development and chances of graduates to find a job in the chosen field.