Due to the developmental approach and other macro-environmental factors in South Africa, welfare organisations are faced with specific challenges and the managers of these organisations are required to meet them. These challenges include aspects like the development and adjustment of the organisation’s policies and strategies, delivering a quality service by following a preventative approach, the integration of the service with other providers forming part of the service delivery process, the sourcing of funding, information management, identification of best practices and eventually ensuring the accountability of the organisation. The total functioning of welfare organisations is therefore influenced by these changes. Managers must not only be able to manage these changes, but also ensure that a quality service is delivered that satisfies all role players. A total quality management framework enables the management of welfare organisations to render a quality service. Total quality management is a holistic management framework including all the elements that determine the functioning of an organisation. The aim of the management approach is to create a culture of improving processes, people, systems, team work and service delivery to satisfy both clients and employees. Although welfare organisations are not profit driven and often function with limited resources, total quality management is recommended in order to ensure that limited resources are optimised, funding is acquired and a quality service is rendered to the needy. The management framework enables managers to eliminate inefficiencies, involve people in decision-making, and encourage individuals and companies to provide funding and to achieve the desired results. Total quality management is based on important principles, but this sometimes fails because these principles are not defined and measured. The excellence model is used as a self-assessment framework for determining to which degree total quality management principles are applied in an organisation and to which extent certain results are achieved. The framework offers best practices in terms of each of the quality principles. This study comprises both a quantitative and a qualitative investigation to determine to what degree these principles are applied in organisations as a regular management tool. Despite the fact that the excellence framework is not formally utilised by welfare organisations, the principles of excellence are indeed applied to a medium to high degree. This study reveals areas receiving limited attention, for example the management of finances, resources, processes and results. The organisations displayed a limited ability to implement excellence due to insufficient resources. A qualitative study was done in order to propose a framework unique to welfare organisations and to enhance the existing excellence framework. Practice guidelines for welfare organisations with regard to the various elements of excellence were investigated. The study resulted in an adapted excellence framework complete with practice guidelines and a self-assessment framework that is to be proposed to welfare organisations. With this framework the study provides the opportunity to give recognition to welfare organisations and individuals who offer excellent service. In addition, it allows organisations still striving for excellence, to continuously improve their service delivery and to satisfy all role players. In organisations striving for service excellence, this aim, based on quality-mindedness, will become part of their service delivery and encourage their clients to live a quality life. / Dr. Emmerentie Oliphant

M.Phil. (Training Management) / Training can only be cost-effective and goal-orientated when it is .directed at the needs of the individual. Goal-orientated training is, however, dependant upon the trainers ability to provide for a model aimed at not only the needs of the individual, but which also caters for the specific work situation and the demands of the organisation. The study is therefore directed at the provision of a scientific model to determine and evaluate training needs. The literature study also places the emphasis on especially needs assessment, needs assessment processes and models. The assessment of needs is discussed as part of the systematic approach for training and the chief objective is formulated to provide the correct training for each individual with due cognisance to the knowledge and skills already attained and which will meet the requirements of the post he occupies or will occupy.

This is a case study of how Tshwane University of Technology is implementing quality assurance of its academic programmes in accordance with the requirements of the Higher Education Quality Committee. The focus of the study is on the activities of the central quality unit, the Directorate of Quality Promotion (DQP) regarding the evaluation of its programme evaluations. This is akin to a question raised regarding parliamentary procedures, not long ago when the Auditor General appeared before the parliamentary committee on public accounts. The question was ‘Who is auditing the Auditor General?’ Before this question could be asked at TUT, a strategic decision was taken by the current director of the DQP regarding what the directorate needed to do in achieving leadership in this regard. An introductory description is made of the current curriculum development practices within the new educational dispensation. The statutory roles of the Department of Education, the South African Qualifications Authority&the Higher Education Quality Committee in this process are described. This is followed by an explanation of the new programme outlay within outcomes-based education. In offering a theoretical framework for the study various evaluation models are treated, and the CIPP evaluation model is adopted for this study. The research design for the study is allied to a literature-based model by Brinkerhoff, et. al. This is a six step framework for conducting meta-evaluation. The qualitative data analysis takes the form of evaluating the evaluation against thirty International Evaluation Standards of the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation. These standards are sub-divided into the following categories, namely, utility, feasibility, propriety and accuracy standards. The study concludes that conducting a meta-evaluation for programme reviews has the potential to expose strengths and weaknesses of quality assurance practice. / Dissertation (MEd (Assessment and Quality Assurance in Education and Training))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Curriculum Studies / MEd / unrestricted

Previous research has shown the benefit obtained by hard of hearing people when using inductive means (T-switch) to couple their hearing aids to telephone receivers. Benefit provided by receiver amplification in the telephone handset has also been shown. Informal surveys of hard of hearing people indicate that many of them use telephones having a dual capability: magnetic coupling and receiver amplification. The objective of this investigation was to study user performance with this dual capability. In particular, the effect of receiver amplification on the speech perception ability (as measured by R-SPIN test items) of 10 hard of hearing subjects using inductive means to couple their hearing aid to a telephone receiver was examined under both good and poor telephone line conditions. The influence of the predictability of the speech material presented was also investigated by noting any difference between the subjects' performance on high predictability items and performance on low predictability items (of the R-SPIN test). Results showed that the use of receiver amplification in conjunction with inductive coupling significantly improved the subjects' speech perception scores. Not surprisingly, good telephone line conditions also significantly improved the subjects' scores. Improvement due to receiver amplification was noted, irrespective of line conditions. Similarly, improvement due to good line conditions was observed, irrespective of whether amplification was used or not. Both receiver amplification and good line conditions had significant and positive effects on both low predictability and high predictability scores. We conclude that with speech either in or out of context, receiver amplification will be of benefit to those who use inductive coupling. Clinical implications and recommendations are discussed. / Medicine, Faculty of / Audiology and Speech Sciences, School of / Graduate

Blogs serve multiple purposes, resulting in several types of blogs that vary greatly in terms of quality and content. It is important to evaluate the quality of blogs, which requires appropriate evaluation criteria. Unfortunately, there are minimal studies on framework and the specific criteria and indicators for evaluating the quality of blogs. Moreover, quality is related to user perception, and should therefore be evaluated by the receivers. This dissertation examines the criteria and indicators that blog users consider important for evaluating the quality of blogs, and develops a user-centered framework for evaluating quality by conducting user surveys and post-survey email interviews. The personal characteristics that affect the users’ choices of criteria to evaluate the quality of blogs are examined as well. The study’s findings include 1) the criteria that users consider important when evaluating the quality of blogs are content quality, usability, authority, and blog credibility; 2) the indicators that blog users consider most important for evaluating the quality of blogs are understandability, accuracy, believability, currency, ease of use, and navigation; and 3) gender, education level, age, profession, purpose of use, and specific interests affect the user’s choices of criteria for evaluating the quality of blogs. Future research may involve exploring and applying the framework developed in this study to build automatic quality blog identification system for the purpose of assisting web users and information specialists to identify quality blogs.

Please read the abstract in the front section of this document. / Dissertation (M Inst Agrar (Food Production and Processing))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Food Science / unrestricted

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Various rendering techniques often use different approaches to the same aspects of the image synthesis process, mainly due to their complexity and constant development. Excluding global illumination algorithms, appearance descriptions are key distinguishing factors between the rendering systems. These descriptions might include BRDF models, support for spectral color representation, and even integration of advanced phenomena, such as fluores- cence. Unfortunately, as there are no standardized implementations of these features, their computations might not be completely accurate, which may result in their incorrect representation. This thesis describes an evaluation suite that methodically tests rendering algorithms based on their appearance reproduction capabilities. The core of the suite is a set of scenes that test five specific appearance phenomena - polarization, GGX reflectance, fluorescence, iridescence and the overall spectral accuracy. Each test case scenario contains as few scenes as possible while maximizing the number of covered aspects of the tested feature. For the user's convenience, we wrap the scenes inside an automatic workflow that runs the specified test case scenarios and displays the results. As a correctness metric, we provide manually verified reference images that are considered to...

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