Software product lines provide enhanced means for systematic reuse when constructing systems within a particular domain. In order to achieve this, systems in a product line are expected to have a significant amount of commonality. Variability is what distinguishes these systems from one another and is spread across various product line artifacts. This thesis focuses on modeling and managing product line variability. The concept of concerns is proposed as a means of variability modeling. Another proposal is related to the use of context free grammars to represent product line variability and to guarantee that any application derived according to the variability framework thus defined will be a valid one. This approach is evaluated for an example domain, in the light of novel evaluation criteria that are also introduced in the scope of this thesis.

CSOM/PL is a software product line (SPL) derived from applying multi-dimensional separation of concerns (MDSOC) techniques to the domain of high-level language virtual machine (VM) implementations. For CSOM/PL, we modularised CSOM, a Smalltalk VM implemented in C, using VMADL (virtual machine architecture description language). Several features of the original CSOM were encapsulated in VMADL modules and composed in various combinations. In an evaluation of our approach, we show that applying MDSOC and SPL principles to a domain as complex as that of VMs is not only feasible but beneficial, as it improves understandability, maintainability, and configurability of VM implementations without harming performance. / CSOM/PL ist eine Softwareproduktfamilie (software product line, SPL), die erstellt wurde, indem Techniken der mehrdimensionalen Belangtrennung (multi-dimensional separation of concerns, MDSOC) auf die Domäne der virtuellen Maschinen (VM) für höhere Programmiersprachen angewendet wurden. Dazu wurde CSOM, eine in C implementierte Smalltalk-VM, mittels VMADL (virtual machine architecture description language) in Module zerlegt. Etliche Eigenschaften von CSOM wurden in VMADL-Module gekapselt und auf unterschiedliche Weisen komponiert. Die Auswertung des Ansatzes zeigt, dass die Anwendung von MDSOC- und SPL-Prinzipien auf die komplexe VM-Domäne nicht nur machbar ist, sondern darüber hinaus auch Vorteile mit sich bringt, da die Verständlichkeit, Wartbarkeit und Konfigurierbarkeit von VM-Implementierungen ohne Beeinträchtigung der Ausführungsgeschwindigkeit verbessert werden.

Since the advent of distance learning, interaction has played a crucial role in learner satisfaction and more recently the quality of learning online. Even though the crucial nature of incorporating interactive learning environments is not lost on the education community, it has been at troubling odds with meeting the expectations of learners and establishing why some proposed “interactive” activities fail. Because technology has changed, offering varying levels of interaction between learner-learner, learner-instructor, and learner-content some argue that re-conceptualizing interactive can provide unique learning advantages. This literature review explores the most vital aspects of interactivity, the variables that determine its appropriateness and significant findings as they pertain to meeting the expectations of e-learning.

BACKGROUND: Oral communication impairments (OCIs) are a common childhood problem with often long-term negative outcomes for both the child and society. Despite the growing body of knowledge about the epidemiology of this problem, the shift from traditional treatment approaches to population based approaches to management has been slow. One suggested reason for this is a lack of community based population data on such problems with which to plan services more broadly. AIM: The aim of this thesis is to contribute to the population knowledge of children with OCIs by developing and trialing a data collection method at a community level. LITERATURE REVIEW: One of the major issues in understanding OCIs from a population perspective is the disparate and often incongruent nature of epidemiological data reported in the literature. Five areas of epidemiological research were reviewed in order to critically evaluate the existing evidence base and identify gaps for further research. The five areas reviewed were: Prevalence (Regardless of the methodology used to collect prevalence data, OCIs have been described as a common childhood problem), Life Course (Children with OCIs often have ongoing communication problems and are at risk for poorer life outcomes in social, educational and occupational domains), Comorbidities (OCIs rarely occur in isolation and most children will have other developmental or health issues), Risk factors (There is no one easily definable cause of OCIs, however, genetic and environmental factors appear to increase the risk of OCI in the general population), and Service use (Only around half of children with recognised OCIs will access specialist intervention services).The review concluded that local community data measuring the 'burden', or impact, of the problem, comorbidities and service use in children with and without OCIs would assist in service planning. Therefore a methodology would need to be developed which addressed these issues.A further review of the literature considered this methodology development with specific reference to the issues of study design, sampling and identification of OCIs. The review concluded that a cross-sectional survey design of a community sample could provide the necessary data. Parent and teacher report was suggested as a method for identifying OCIs in surveys, however, a tool needed to be developed and trialed to ensure this method was effective, valid and reliable. PILOT STUDY: A survey tool for parents was designed which included the Child Health Questionnaire (PF - 28), questions relating to socio-demographic features, health and development conditions, service use and specifically developed questions regarding OCIs. The survey methodology was trialed in one school and one childcare centre. The results of the study were reviewed and suggestions made for methodological changes before a community trial was carried out. The reliability and validity of the questions designed to identify OCIs was assessed in a number of ways. Test-retest reliability of parent completed questionnaires proved to be good. Interrater reliability was examined by comparing parent and teacher responses. Parents and teachers agreed on identification of OCI in over 75% of cases for each of the OCIs studied. Criterion validity was assessed by comparing parent report to speech pathologist evaluation in a clinical sample and by comparing parent and teacher report to screening assessments of communication skills in a school sample. Both parents and teachers tended to over-identify children, however, when parent and teacher reports were considered together the validity approached that of the 'gold standard'. Construct validity was assessed by comparing reported OCIs with reports of other developmental conditions known to be commonly comorbid with OCIs. Once again using both parent and teacher report proved to be the most valid method of identifying OCIs using the developed tool. COMMUNITY STUDY: A targeted community survey of 3 to 7 year old children was conducted in a regional centre in Queensland, Australia. Children were sampled through schools and childcare centres. Information letters were distributed to the parents of 898 eligible children. Completed questionnaires were received for 397 children. Teachers completed questionnaires on 375 children which was 42% of the population sampled. Parents and teachers identified OCIs in 16% of the children. However, only 3% of the population were rated by parents or teachers as having severe problems. Over 70% of parents and teachers of children with a reported OCI rated the problem as having an impact on the child's life. Ratings of impact were not related to parent/teacher ratings of severity. Children with OCIs were reported to have significantly more health, developmental and behaviour problems than their peers. Children with OCIs were rated lower by their parents on most aspects of the Child Health Questionnaire (PF-28). In particular, parents reported impacts on their own time and family activities due to the child's problems. No significant differences were found between children with and without reported OCIs on any of the socio-demographic variables studied. Children with reported OCIs used more health and educational services than their peers. Around 60% of children with reported OCIs had seen a speech pathologist, but many parents had also sought advice from a range of other health and educational professionals. Those with two or more OCI conditions were more likely to have seen a professional, however socio-demographic variables did not generally predict service use. Parents reported that the type of service they chose was most commonly influenced by advice from a doctor or teacher. The limitations of this methodology for collecting this type of data are discussed. However despite these limitations data were collected which has major implications for the provision of population based services for children with OCI. CONCLUSION: This thesis has contributed to the understanding of children with OCIs by researching the development of a methodology to study this problem in a defined community sample. The information gained from the literature review and the community study were considered within two models of service provision. The models encompass service delivery from individualised to more population based approaches to the management of OCIs in children. From these models, specific suggestions for the community involved in the study were discussed. This thesis, therefore, provided a survey methodology that is resource efficient in the collection of community data useful in suggesting improved services for children with oral communication impairments.

This thesis focuses on two under-researched areas of consumer behaviour: conflict handling styles and consumer bargaining. As illustrated in this thesis, consumer bargaining is a substantial and important behaviour that has rarely been studied from a consumer perspective. Further, conflict handling, which is considered an important and wellresearched phenomenon in an organisational context, has been rarely applied to consumer behaviour, despite the potential for conflict in many areas. The aims of this thesis were to a) examine consumer bargaining behaviour across a variety of culturally diverse nations; b) develop and validate a new instrument to measure conflict handling styles; and c) examine the relationships between the likelihood of consumer bargaining, preferred conflict handling styles, and personal values. Consumer bargaining was found to be common in both developed and developing nations. Respondents from Australia and Germany reported bargaining for a broad range of products that vary in their prices, including cars, electronics, appliances, clothing, and computers. Bargaining in South Korea was even more common, including everyday purchases like clothing, and food and drink. Finally, bargaining in Brazil was almost as common as in South Korea, and also included expensive consumer durable purchases, such as electronic products and cars, in addition to everyday purchases, such as clothing, and food and drink. The conflict handling style instrument developed in this project had convergent validity with existing ratings scales, reproduced the theorised structure of the dual-concerns model of conflict handling, and had predictive validity in a service recovery context. The benefits iii of the new scale over existing ratings scales include: a) capturing relative preference for the conflict handling styles; b) reduction of sources of common method variance; c) reduction of ratings scale response biases; and d) reduction of numerical effect biases, such as different perceived distances between response categories. The newly developed scale was also used to assess the hypothesised relationships between personal values, conflict handling styles, and consumer bargaining intensity in a developed Western country (Germany). As expected, the dominate conflict handling style was positively related, while the avoid conflict handling style was negatively related to consumer bargaining intensity. Although no relationship was found between personal values and consumer bargaining intensity, personal values were found to be an antecedent of conflict handling styles. Specifically, the power value type was found to be a positive predictor of the dominate conflict handling style, while benevolence and social universalism were found to be positive predictors of the integrate conflict handling style.

Les plateformes de calcul se multiplient, grandissent en taille et gagnent encomplexité.De nombreux défis restent à relever pour construire les prochaines générationsde plateformes, mais exploiter cesdites plateformes est également un défi en soi.Des contraintes comme la consommation énergétique, les mouvement de donnéesou la résilience risquent de devenir prépondérantes et de s'ajouter à lacomplexité actuelle de la gestion des plateformes.Les méthodes de gestion de ressources peuvent également évoluer avec laconvergence des différents types de plateformes distribuées.Les gestionnaires de ressources sont des systèmes critiques au cœur desplateformes qui permettent aux utilisateurs d'exploiter les ressources.Les faire évoluer est nécessaire pour exploiter au mieux lesressources en prenant en compte ces nouvelles contraintes.Ce processus d'évolution est risqué et nécessite de nombreuses itérationsqu'il semble peu raisonnable de réaliser in vivo tant les coûts impliquéssont importants.La simulation, beaucoup moins coûteuse, est généralement préférée pourfaire ce type d'études mais pose des questions quant au réalisme des résultatsainsi obtenus.La première contribution de cette thèse est de proposer une méthode desimulation modulaire pour étudier les gestionnaires de ressources et leurévolution --- ainsi que le simulateur résultant nommé Batsim.L'idée principale est de séparer fortement la simulation et les algorithmes deprise de décision.Cela permet une séparation des préoccupations puisque les algorithmes,quels qu'ils soient, peuvent bénéficier d'une simulation validée proposantdifférents niveaux de réalisme.Cette méthode simplifie la mise en production de nouvelles politiquespuisque des codes issus à la fois de gestionnaires de ressources de productionet de prototypes académiques peuvent être étudiés dans le même contexte.La méthode de simulation proposée est illustrée dans la seconde partie de cettethèse, qui s'intéresse à des problèmes de gestion de ressourcesnon clairvoyants mêlant optimisation des performances et de laconsommation énergétique.Différents algorithmes sont d'abord proposés et étudiés afin de respecter unbudget d'énergie pendant une période de temps donnée.Nous étudions ensuite plus généralement les différents compromis réalisablesentre performances et énergie grâce à différentes politiques d'extinction denœuds de calcul. / Computing platforms increasingly grow in power and complexity.Numerous challenges remain to build next generations of platforms,but exploiting the platforms is a challenge per se.Constraints such as energy consumption, data movements and resiliencerisk to initiate breaking points in the way that the platforms aremanaged --- especially with the convergence of the different types ofdistributed platforms.Resource and Jobs Management Systems (RJMSs) are critical middlewaresthat allow users to exploit the resources of such platforms.They must evolve to make the best use of the computing platforms whilecomplying with these new constraints.Each evolution ideally require many iterations, but conducting them in vivois not reasonable due to huge overhead.Simulation is an efficient way to tackle the subsequent problems,but particular caution must be taken when drawing results from simulationas using ill-suited models may lead to invalid results.The first contribution of this thesis is the proposition of a modularsimulation methodology to study RJMSs and their evolution realistically --- andthe related simulator Batsim.The main idea is to strongly separate the simulation from the decision-makingalgorithms.This allows separation of concerns as any algorithm can benefit from a validatedsimulation with multiple levels of realism (features, accuracy of the models).This methodology improves the production launch of new policies since bothacademic prototypes and production RJMSs can be studied in the same context.Batsim is used in the second part of this thesis,which focuses on online and non-clairvoyant resource management policies tosave energy.Several algorithms are first proposed and analyzed to maximize performancesunder an energy budget for a given time period.This thesis then explores more generally possible energy and performancestrade-offs that can be obtained with node shutdown techniques.

ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION OF Yahya Assiri, for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Curriculum and Instruction, presented on August 19th, 2016, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: SCIENCE TEACHERS’ KNOWLEDGE, BELIEFS, VALUES, AND CONCERNS OF TEACHING THROUGH INQUIRY MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. D. John McIntyre, Professor Emeritus of Curriculum and Instruction, Ed.D., Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Department of Curriculum and Instruction. This study investigated elementary science teachers’ knowledge, beliefs, values, and concerns of teaching through inquiry. A mixed-methods research design was utilized to address the research questions. Since this study was designed as a mixed-methods research approach, the researcher gathered two type of data: quantitative and qualitative. The study was conducted in Mohayel School District, Saudi Arabia. The information was collected from 51 participants using a questionnaire with multiple choice questions; also, 11 participants were interviewed. After collecting the data, descriptive and comparative approaches were used. In addition, themes and codes were used to obtain the results. The results indicated that the mean of elementary science teachers’ knowledge was 51.23%, which was less than 60% which was the acceptable score. Also, the qualitative results showed that science teachers had a limited background of teaching through inquiry. In addition, the elementary science teachers had a high level of belief to teach science through inquiry since the mean was 3.99 out of 5.00. These quantitative results were confirmed by the qualitative data. Moreover, the overall mean of elementary science teachers was 4.01, which indicated that they believed in the importance of teaching science through inquiry which was also confirmed by the responses of teachers in the interviews. Also, the findings indicated that elementary school science teachers had concerns about teaching science through inquiry since the overall mean was 3.53. In addition, the interviewees mentioned that they faced some obstacles when they teach by inquiry, such as time, resources, class size, and the teachers’ background. Generally, the results did not show any significant differences among elementary science teachers’ knowledge, beliefs, values, and concerns depending on gender, level of education, and teaching experience. However, the findings indicated there was one significant difference which was the level of teaching experience between groups: (6-10) years and (11-15) years, and (16- more) and (11-15) years. In addition, the implications and suggestions for future research were provided to enhance teaching science through inquiry.

Every software program that interacts with a user requires a user interface. Model-View-Controller (MVC) is a common design pattern to integrate a user interface with the application domain logic. MVC separates the representation of the application domain (Model) from the display of the application's state (View) and user interaction control (Controller). However, studying the literature reveals that a variety of other related patterns exists, which we denote with Model-View-* (MV*) design patterns. This thesis discusses existing MV* patterns classified in three main families: Model-View-Controller (MVC), Model-View-View Model (MVVM), and Model-View-Presenter (MVP). We take a practitioners' point of view and emphasize the essentials of each family as well as the differences. The study shows that the selection of patterns should take into account the use cases and quality requirements at hand, and chosen technology. We illustrate the selection of a pattern with an example of our practice. The study results aim to bring more clarity in the variety of MV* design patterns and help practitioners to make better grounded decisions when selecting patterns.

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to explain and to create an understanding if personalized advertising online creates value for customers.  Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative study through 14 semi-structured interviews.  Findings: The study found personalized advertising to be seen as value co-creation in some cases, but because privacy concerns exist and affect the perception of advertising, it can in many cases lead to value co-destruction instead. It is thus a consideration between privacy concerns and the perceived value of the personalized advertising that decides if the offering will co-create or co-destroy value.  Research limitations/implications for future research: Our study did not involve respondents’ younger than 21 years old, which could have affected the result as this is a generation seen as technology savvy. Through a quantitative study, future research could try to find extremes in personalities by conducting a survey with a large sample of people in different ages, nationalities, gender, active online, etc. in order to see if there are correlations between for example age and privacy concerns.  Practical implications: One purpose of the study is to provide companies with insights of how different customers perceive personalized advertising online in terms of customer value in order for companies to know how to think when targeting their customers.  Keywords: online advertising, personalized advertising, personalized-privacy paradox, privacy concerns, value creation, value co-creation, value co-destruction.

Increasingly, online social media networks allow users to use geotagging. This method of adding location data to various content shared in real time has introduced privacy related issues and threats to the users of such networks. Previous research present opposing findings on whether users actually care about their location privacy or not, and it has also been shown that users often display a behaviour inconsistent with their concerns. When asked, users tend to report high privacy concerns, but in contrast, they will then not let their privacy concerns affect or limit their behaviour online; the privacy paradox is a description of this dichotomy. The problem, however, is not only that location privacy seems to be a paradoxical issue; the sharing of location data provides users with new possibilities that can potentially have negative consequences for them, such as someone else being able to identify one’s identity, home location, habits or other sensitive information. Social media network users communicate that a part of this is due to the lack of control over which information they share, with whom and where.This study employs a qualitative method, using unstructured interviews in a pre-study and a self-completion questionnaire. The purpose of the study is to examine and gain a better understanding of how the privacy paradox can help to better explain users’ location data disclosure preferences in the context of social media networking, and to help social media network developers in order to reduce privacy-related issues in social media networking applications with geotagging capabilities. The findings indicate that the paradox indeed is evident in user’s stated geotagging behaviour, and that users are slightly more worried about their location privacy than their overall online privacy. The conclusions offer a couple of different explanations for the paradox, and we argue that the contradiction of the paradox can be seen as a constant trade-off between benefits and risks of geotagging. We also give some examples of such advantages and disadvantages.