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Due to the development of the broadband Internet access and advanced learning technology, online synchronous teaching with teachers and students located at many different countries becomes feasible nowadays. Online international teaching not only enhances the varieties of teaching environments but also arouses learners to generate multiple thoughts through interacting with foreign instructors and classmates without living their own countries. However, online international teaching is a more complex educational environment, the cross-cultural differences and the characteristic of computer-mediated communication result that a single instructor would not be possible to handle all the matters in an online synchronous classroom. In the past, international instructors employed teaching assistants to reduce problems of cultural differences. This idea can be applied to online international teaching, a group of instructors can form a teaching team which includes different nations¡¦ instructors, teaching assistants and technicians such that the problems caused by the cross-cultural communication and challenges of information technology can be reduced. Online international team teaching is a brand new teaching environment, there are few researches being done in this kind of teaching environment so far. Therefore, this study wants to explore the components and the important criteria for online international team teaching. The case we adopted for this study was an online international team teaching course called ¡§Business English and Communication¡¨ offered by the MIS department of NSYSU. This research used participant observation and in depth interview to get primary data, and then use the phenomenology to analyze the secondary data which extracted from course discussion boards. The research findings are three main components and 17 criteria in total for online international team teaching. The three main components are ¡§online international teaching¡¨, ¡§online collaboration by teaching team¡¨ and ¡§interacting instruments¡¨. ¡§Online international teaching¡¨ includes 6 criteria offering guidelines for international teaching. ¡§Online collaboration by teaching team¡¨ includes 5 criteria offering suggestions for international collaboration. And ¡§interacting instruments¡¨ includes 3 criteria related to the interacting instruments of online international team teaching course. The last 3 criteria are for the common intersection of the three main components. We also proposed suitable suggestions from three different aspects, teaching aspect, material/ system aspect and learning aspect for researchers to do further study and for instructors to better teach online international team teaching courses.

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Children become diagnosed with neuropsychiatry diagnostic. The diagnostic of children is critiqued from. The national board of health and welfare because the child psychiatric clinics differ in the reliability of diagnostic. This is a problem both in the same clinic and between clinics. The purpose is to investigate if parents of children with neuropsychiatry diagnostic consider that the diagnostic criteria were met when the child was diagnosed. The method was first a pilot study with surveys and interviews. The study was a telephone survey with parents of diagnosed children. The result indicates that the parents didn’t experience that the diagnostic criteria was met. The discussion suggests that communication between parents, child psychiatry and school needs to improve. / 0761777843

Conservation science applies research in the natural and social sciences to practical problems of nature conservation, thus presupposing various goals and values. This dissertation examines normative roles for the decision sciences in biological conservation. I am primarily concerned with two philosophical problems that arise in applications of the decision sciences to biological conservation problems: commensurability of multiple values and cooperation between multiple agents. I argue that models from decision analysis should be used to construct preferences over complex tradeoffs, and game theoretical models should be used to identify situations in which multiple agents pursuing their own interests cause outcomes that are worse for everyone. While these models allow values to be made explicit for decision-making, in other situations conservationists’ goals and values are obscure. I discuss this distinct problem in the context of conservation biology, where the central concept of biodiversity is analyzed and shown to necessarily reflect the values of its users. The multiplicity of meanings of ‘biodiversity’ and measures of biological diversity raise risks for conservation biology and motivate multi-criteria approaches to conservation decision-making. Finally, the goals and values of conservation scientists and landscape managers may or may not reflect those of people who are affected by conservation policies. I argue that while decision science can aid in making values of various stakeholder groups explicit, facilitating reflection and learning, it cannot resolve ethical dilemmas on its own without input from normative and applied ethics, particularly in identifying legitimate stakeholders and weighing multiple biological concerns against concerns for rights, welfare, and social justice. / text

This research studies project success in the context of decision-makers in young, entrepreneurial companies, namely startups. More precisely the companies are European companies that are independent, active and under 10 years of age, and furthermore identified as startups through a framework created from literature derived from Organizational Life Cycle theory and other pluralistic literature about startups. The main concentration is in the concepts related to project success: Project Success Criteria and Critical Success Factors, based on two research questions: 1. “What success criteria are perceived to be most relevant in the project management of startup firms?” 2. “What critical success factors are perceived to be most relevant in project management of startup firms and why?” Previous studies on project management have been mostly conducted in the context of large organizations and typically in a quantitative form. Studies in project management of startups have been scarce, and in project success, nonexistent. Researchers have called upon project literature that concentrates on particular organizational context. In this study, existing theories are studied to find the most suitable framework for success criteria. This study is conducted as a case study, wherein interviews were conducted with startup founders, partners and CEOs, located in Finland, Sweden and Germany. The data collection in the interviews consisted of both semi-structured questions and rating of importance regarding the elements of aforementioned theoretical frameworks of Project Success Criteria and Critical Success Factors, creating a rich set of data, forming holistic cases of the view of project success. The resulting indicate that the most relevant success criteria for startup decision-makers are connected to customer relations, which dictates also the importance of short-term and long-term goals. The economic goals as well the preparation for future were more polarizing. The concentration on customer criteria is not divergent from previous research, but the importance of team criteria is a noticeable difference and a common theme across cases. It is also noticeable in the statements of interviewees that in the startup context the uncertainty regarding products, customers, and economical factors create certain tensions in project success assessment. In Critical Success Factors, there were also clear themes that mirror the aforementioned results. It furthermore became apparent that startups do not have clearly established tools or methods for their project management, which may distinguish them from larger, more established organizations.

This article seeks to enhance multi criteria decision making by providing a scientic approach for decomposing and structuring decision problems. We propose a process, based on concept mapping, which integrates group creativity techniques, card sorting procedures, quantitative data analysis and algorithmic automatization to construct meaningful and complete hierarchies of criteria. The algorithmic aspect is covered by a newly proposed recursive cluster algorithm, which automatically generates hierarchies from card sorting data. Based on comparison with another basic algorithm and empirical engineered and real-case test data, we validate that our process efficiently produces reasonable hierarchies of descriptive elements like goal- or problem-criteria. (authors' abstract)

When selecting applicants for professions with job descriptions involving complex human interaction, identifying suitable candidates is essential. This strongly applies in police selection, because police officers must act appropriately at all times, deal with difficult and sometimes dangerous work situations, and come into contact with people who are in highly emotional states, such as anxiety, fear, excitement, and shock. However, suitability is a broad and vague concept that cannot be even defined without understanding the value of various personal skills and qualities for specific duties, ways that such skills are manifested during life as an officer (potentially both on- and off-duty), and appropriate ways to assess them. The overall aim of this thesis was to explore the personal skills and qualities that are relevant to suitability for the police profession with a special focus on the concept of empathy, and to investigate how it can be conceptualized and measured in the context of selection. Two of the four studies focused on different perspectives regarding the personal skills and qualities of a good police officer, while the other two focused on theoretical aspects and practical measurement of empathy. Mixed methods were used, in acknowledgement of the value of using different forms of data collection, material, and analytical methods to achieve valid information. The results and findings support several of the personal skills and qualities that have been identified in previous research and also can be found as criteria in police selection. Empathy should be considered in the selection process, but it is also important to ensure that there is an alignment between the definition of the concept and practical outcomes in police work. The findings indicate that empathy could be conceptualized in a relevant way using a social cognitive neuroscience (SCN) approach. In particular, a modified, Swedish 4-factor version of the Empathy Assessment Index (based on recent theoretical advances in SCN) appears to have considerable potential for further development. Future studies will focus on areas identified as requiring further research, such as the development of this instrument by adding complementary measures focusing on manifestations of empathy and other relevant qualities in actual work-related situations. Other aspects that require further attention include the definition, assessment, and impact of social desirability in selection contexts.

The use of goal programming in various real-world areas - including resource allocation, engineering, agriculture and other applications - has increased a lot in the past few years. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate goal programming approaches in determining prices. Various aspects of price determination - such as cosls, existing prices, competitors' prices, volume change due to price change and other aspects are incorporated in the model in order to suggest reasonable and realistic prices. Taking just these factors into account will not completely solve the problem, as there are usually certain goals that the decision maker would like to achieve. For example, the decision maker would probably like to attain an acceptable pre-specified minimum profit level without adjusting current prices too much whilst keeping prices competitive to insure that customers are not lost in the process of change. In this study, a goal programming model is developed for the determining of products' prices with consideration of these goals. The model makes provision for the change in demand due to the change in prices. / Mini-dissertation (M.Com. (Computer Science))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

Products are priced in order to sell them and make a profit. Every firm, therefore, needs a pricing strategy. Such a strategy should be simple. It should ensure simplicity in tactics and decisions and minimize complications. It is difficult to set a price with the help of only one pricing model. The price of a product may vary due to factors like geographical area, different clients and time difference. Prices must always be cost-compatible. An essential step in deciding on a pricing strategy involves looking at the characteristics of pricing decisions. The classic economic theory is based upon demand and supply and attempts to balance these two concepts. In most cases it works on the basis of cost plus profit. This way of thinking about prices does not guarantee a profit, because costs and profit depend upon volume and volume is dependent on the correct price. Prices can be cut at first. In this way only a small profit will be ensured. If the price is too low it will not automatically ensure a profit. Usually little attention is paid to the market itself in deciding on a price. It is not an easy task to arrive at the 'envelope of acceptable prices". Not to fall into the standard trap of adding profit to cost, one has to have a broad overview of pricing strategies. Multiple approaches are followed in determining prices. Firstly, one can look at cost and its characteristics. By adding a profit margin to cost, one can determine a new price. It may be too low or it may be too high, resulting in the risk that customers will buy the competition's product. It is there for essential to look at strategic concepts like the competition's price as well. The way a buyer looks at certain prices and then decides whether to buy or not, also plays a very important role. All of these factors have to be taken into consideration and all aspects have to be balanced to arrive at a price. A framework for pricing decisions includes the recognition of the need for a pricing decision, determining a price, developing a model, identifying and anticipating pricing problems, developing feasible courses of action, forecasting the outcomes of each alternative and monitoring and reviewing the outcome of each action. Management's pricing decision is taken after studying all this information. Information can be given as a single answer or in detail. Costs can be divided into direct costs and absorption costs. Although prices can be determined in more ways than one, the ideal is to take more than one factor into consideration. Every aspect must carry a weight and these weights can be changed. That is why the multiple criteria decision method is so effective. With this method a few factors are taken into account. Each of these factors adds to the price definition in a certain manner with regard to each product. By changing the profit margin, the price can be adjusted until one is satisfied with the new price. A company's structure, location and nature will play a role in determining which technique is used to determine a price. The best technique is one that can be adjusted and where multiple criteria can be set. The choice of a technique is a personal choice. The multi-criteria method is flexible and prices can be determined uniformly for all products or for a single product. / Thesis (M.Sc. (Computer Science))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2004.