Software agents are well-suited to assisting users with routine, repetitive, and time-consuming tasks in various educational environments. In order to achieve complex tasks effectively, humans and agents sometimes need to work together. However, some issues in human agent interaction have not been solved properly, such as delegation, trust and privacy. The agent research community has focused on technologies for constructing autonomous agents and techniques for collaboration among agents. Little attention has been paid to supporting interactions between humans and agents. p* The objectives of this research are to investigate how easy it might be for a user to program his/her agent, how users behave when given the ability to program their agents, whether access to necessary help resources can be improved, and whether such a system can facilitate collaborative learning. Studying users concerns about their privacy and how an online learning environment can be built to protect users privacy are also interesting issues to us. <p>In this thesis two alternative systems were developed for programmable agents in which a human user can define a set of rules to direct an agents activities at execution time. The systems were built on top of a multi-agent collaborative learning environment that enables a user to program his or her agent to communicate with other agents and to monitor the activities of other users and their agents. These systems for end user programmable agents were evaluated and compared. The result demonstrated that an end-user programming environment is able to meet users individual needs on awareness information, facilitate the information exchange among the users, and enhance the communication between users within a virtual learning environment. This research provides a platform for investigating concerns over user privacy caused by agent programmability.

Software agents are well-suited to assisting users with routine, repetitive, and time-consuming tasks in various educational environments. In order to achieve complex tasks effectively, humans and agents sometimes need to work together. However, some issues in human agent interaction have not been solved properly, such as delegation, trust and privacy. The agent research community has focused on technologies for constructing autonomous agents and techniques for collaboration among agents. Little attention has been paid to supporting interactions between humans and agents. p* The objectives of this research are to investigate how easy it might be for a user to program his/her agent, how users behave when given the ability to program their agents, whether access to necessary help resources can be improved, and whether such a system can facilitate collaborative learning. Studying users concerns about their privacy and how an online learning environment can be built to protect users privacy are also interesting issues to us. <p>In this thesis two alternative systems were developed for programmable agents in which a human user can define a set of rules to direct an agents activities at execution time. The systems were built on top of a multi-agent collaborative learning environment that enables a user to program his or her agent to communicate with other agents and to monitor the activities of other users and their agents. These systems for end user programmable agents were evaluated and compared. The result demonstrated that an end-user programming environment is able to meet users individual needs on awareness information, facilitate the information exchange among the users, and enhance the communication between users within a virtual learning environment. This research provides a platform for investigating concerns over user privacy caused by agent programmability.

This study examines Dialect Awareness as an instructional practice when used to teach Spanish Heritage Language (HL) learners at a university located on the U.S.-Mexico border. The author employs bidialectalism as a theoretical perspective, recognizing the important role that U.S. Border Spanish plays in constructing ethnolinguistic identity. A mixed-methods research framework was used that included a pre-post survey instrument, focus group interviews, and classroom observations to examine HL student confidence toward learning a prestige language variety and attitudes toward speaking U.S. Border Spanish. Discourse analysis was employed to examine the discursive practices of the DA classroom. Quantitative survey results showed that students developed a number of significant attitudinal changes after taking a course infused with Dialect Awareness. Triangulated qualitative findings confirmed that student attitudes had changed after one semester. The author proposes an agenda for future application of Dialect Awareness in Spanish Heritage Language classrooms.

This thesis seeks to explain Euroskeptic attitudes by examining the relationship between information and Euroskepticism and the role of Euroskepticism in the post-enlargement integration debate. Drawing upon data from the Eurobarometer survey series and the European Election Studies, this thesis tests the relationship between information and attitudes towards membership, the direction of integration, and voting. This analysis concludes the roles of knowledge and awareness have divergent influences on hard and soft Euroskepticism. While increased knowledge increases support for membership in the EU, increased awareness decreases support for the direction of integration. This conclusion suggests that knowledge initially informs individuals of the benefits of being a member in the EU but greater awareness increases the likelihood they will be a harsher critic of the way in which it is developing, necessitating further examination of the role of the Euroskeptic movement in public opinion.

Teaching preschool children about the environment. A comparative study of how two preschools work with environmental issues. My investigations are based on qualitative interviews and observations carried out at two preschools, one of which has a nature and environment profile while the other works in traditional ways with these questions. I sought to explore the ways in which pedagogues in each preschool raise environmental awareness and, more generally, awaken an interest in nature in the children. The consequences of methodological similarities and differences will be considered. This term paper concludes that the difference between an environmental profile preschool and a traditional preschool working on environmental awareness is not large. The knowledge gained by children in the latter preschool surpassed that gained in the former. Another difference was the greater commitment shown by pedagogues working in the traditional preschool. The big difference had to do with the fact that in the traditional preschool more time was spent in talking about environmental issues that in the profile school.

The primary value of the government lies in responding to different requests of people, and the government reform must be in increasing the execution.The execution of organization has been one of the focuses of government and public affair management. Therefore, the execution is bound to the result of effort and job performance the staff invest, and how to optimize the result is still need to rely on the work environment of justice, mutual confidence, and voluntary involvement that the organization created. This paper aimed to explore the relationship between the awareness of organizational justice and the execution by questionnaire survey., and the samples for the quantitative research were the staff of the land administration in Tainan City. The conclusions were that the execution was predicted by the awareness of organizational justice, the awareness of organizational justice had some significant difference in different individual variables of the staff, and the execution had some significant difference in different individual variables of the staff. Finally, based on the results from this paper, the suggestions are made for administration and the following related researches.

¡@¡@Famous for its products all made in Taiwan and relatively cheap prices, Lativ is one of the popular clothes brands in Taiwan. By a great deal of key word advertising, Lativ gets its popularity and makes its sales rise tremendously. However, taking into consideration of ascending product costs and limited production in Taiwan, Lativ decided to change the location of production lines from Taiwan to China and Vietnam in the beginning of 2012. The issue of production difficulties in Taiwan comes again. In this cosmopolitan trend of division of labour, it's a tough problem that clothes companies in Taiwan could boost the taste of customers in Taiwan by the feature of products made in Taiwan. This research into the change of the customers' tastes with varied brands and different places of production is to find the new way for clothes companies in Taiwan to manage. Country image and other variables are discussed and select to form research model. The goal of this research is to find the relationship between country image and consumers' perceived quality. Another goal is to find the moderator effect between country image and consumers' perceived quality. Sample of 328 collected through questionnaire survey from field and online, and hypotheses were tested by regression analysis. ¡@¡@The result showed that there is a significant relationship between the country image and consumers' perceived quality, and the brand awareness is a moderator between the country image and consumers' perceived quality. The result also indicated that the higher country's design image, prestige, and workmanship image leaded to higher consumer's perceived quality. But country's innovation image did nothing to consumer's perceived quality. Furthermore, brand awareness is a moderator only between the country's design image and consumers' perceived quality. Based on the result, suggestions are as followed: clothing store can claim "brand in Taiwan" instead of "made in Taiwan." They can cooperate with the competitor or form horizontal alliances to increase Taiwan's design image which increase consumer's perceived quality.

Because electronic commerce has been flourishing in recent year, the amount and the variety of information on the web have also been rapidly increasing. However, many problems occur as the result of information overload. This thesis is to study the issue of information overload in the field of multimedia that covers not only medium of diffuse knowledge but also entertainment of everyday life. The main goal of this work is to use personalized recommendation technologies to help users select multimedia he is interested in. The thesis investigates two types of personalized recommendation: tag-based recommendation and context-aware recommendation. Regarding the former kind of recommendation, Folksonomy is the popular Web2.0 application that allows users tagging items to indicate the corresponding characteristics. These tags, provided by the users, directly or indirectly reflect his personal interests. Therefore the recommendation performance is enhanced when the tags are used with computational methods. On the other hand, the latter kind focuses on the contents and the relevant situations, because what multimedia is considered suitable for users can be different under different situations. The advantages of the personalized recommendation technology can improve performance of recommendation and take the context into account at the same time. Meanwhile this study also implements a working system for personalized multimedia recommendation.

Dissertation (Ph. D.)--University of Akron, Dept. of Psychology-Industrial/Organizational, 2009. / "May, 2009." Title from electronic dissertation title page (viewed 11/27/2009) Advisor, Andrea Snell; Committee members, Robert Lord, Aaron Schmidt, James Diefendorff, Matthew Lee; Department Chair, Paul Levy; Dean of the College, Chand Midha; Dean of the Graduate School, George R. Newkome. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.E.)--University of Wisconsin -- La Crosse, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references.